![DSC_5411 [1600x1200]](https://whats4dinnersolutions.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/dsc_5411-1600x1200.jpg)
I had another bunch of the Chinese broccoli to use up so I thawed a couple of boneless chicken thighs and threw them together with the veggies for a stir fry. Oyster sauce and stock with soy sauce and plenty of garlic, nothing complex. I am getting pretty good at the fried rice. The thick red sauce is sambal oelek – I can raise the heat level of the dish right at the table and don’t have to listen to Mrs J complain. About the food, anyway.
oyster sauce
Shrimp and noodle stir fry
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Not that much to this. The shrimp were pre cooked and just needed warming. I cooked the onions and broccoli with garlic and ginger and added a sauce that was little more than oyster sauce and chicken stock with a little sesame oil and soy sauce, thickened with corn starch. I plated Mrs J’s dish and then added chili paste for a little heat and extra flavor to my portion. The box the noodles came in said they were Chinese noodles and the box was printed mostly in Chinese characters but as far as I can tell they are just your basic wheat noodles.![DSC_4828 [1600x1200]](https://whats4dinnersolutions.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/dsc_4828-1600x1200.jpg)
Shrimp fried rice and pork egg rolls
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For the egg rolls we just followed the simple recipe on the wrapper packaging. It came out very close to using up all of the wrappers. The wrap count was about 21 and we had 3 to spare. Those extra won tons Mrs J fried plain because the dogs just love those things as treats. Here’s the recipe from the package: 1 lb pork, 1 t minced ginger, 2 C shredded cabbage, 1/4 lb bean sprouts, 1/2 C shredded carrot, 3 green onions finely chopped, and 2 T of oyster sauce for flavoring. They were excellent, and I’m now a big fan of the sweet and sour sauce I tried out for the first time, Mae Ploy Spring Roll Sauce. They also make a chili sauce I want to try now.![DSC_4752 [1600x1200]](https://whats4dinnersolutions.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/dsc_4752-1600x1200.jpg)
Mrs J and I have the system down for assembling and frying these things, I tend to the hot oil while she fills and rolls. I generally put the recipe together and fire the deep frier and call her when the oil is hot. I cook 3 or 4 at a time and flip them once halfway through to make sure they are browned evenly. We keep them warm in a low oven on a tray as you see in the photo above. Two hundred degrees F. works fine, but don’t leave them in there too long.
Mmm… beef and broccoli ramen stir fry
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Mrs J didn’t eat all of her strip steak from the other day so I sliced the leftovers thin and tossed them with broccoli and a few other veggies in a sweet and sour chili sauce with a bit of oyster sauce and served them over ramen noodles. All the sauces were from bottles, no recipes for those today.
Mmm… not so sticky chicken
I did something similar not too long ago. The wings were cooked in a crockpot that time but that was overkill so I roasted these in a similar marinade in my trusty toaster oven. I finished the thighs I used this time on the stove top in a non stick pan after separating the fat from the marinade and cooking juices. These spent some time in the pan over medium low heat but they never got to the sticky as glue stage. I decided I wanted sauce more than a crusted glaze so I added some stock with a bit more soy and oyster sauces along with more grated ginger root and minced garlic. Yummy stuff. Made fried rice to accompany the chicken.
Mmm…ramen for breakfast
I started out this morning wanting to use up some last few mushrooms. The broccoli caught my eye and looked like it was starting to wilt so I chopped some of it. I reached for the egg carton thinking omelet when a stray thought began its slow rise from the depths until it was bobbing merrily along the stream, wearing an orange life vest or I would have missed it, probably.
Ramen…
Like the distant echo of a prayer to the FSM, I heard: “ramen”…
And why not? I like noodles.
Shrimp in Lobster Sauce
A pal of mine has mentioned ordering in Chinese pretty often. He lives in Los Angeles and has a much better selection of eats than I do, living out here in the boonies. He’s mentioned shrimp in lobster sauce often enough that I finally decided to look it up. Surprise! No lobster in it. In fact, the recipes I looked at seemed to be fairly easy-I decided to give it a whirl.
I won’t link to a recipe, Google can find all you need, but I will talk a little about the dish. The “lobster” sauce is nothing more than ground pork fried with aromatics-onions, garlic, ginger, fermented black beans-and then doused with chicken broth that has been fortified with some Chinese cooking wine. This sauce is thickened with corn starch and flavored with oyster sauce, or soy sauce and the shrimp are dumped in to cook quickly as the sauce simmers. Just before serving drizzle a beaten egg into the sauce and stir just a little as it sets.
As with any recipe there are variations, but this is the general thrust of the dish. Normally it will be served over rice, today I made some fried rice to go with it. Mrs J announced her approval after eating her plateful. If it was only me I was cooking for there would have been some red peppers in there, Szechuan peppercorns maybe.
Garnish with sliced green onions and optionally top with a squirt of oyster sauce.
Enjoy!
Beef and Broccoli with Noodles
These beef and veggie dishes are a generic “Chinese” staple for the buffets, and with good reason. Easy to prepare and quite tasty. Nothing special about this recipe. Did a marinade for the thin cut beef steak, some soy sauce, a bit of garlic and ginger, some corn starch, a drizzle of oyster sauce. Decided to add a fair number of Szechuan peppercorns, I’d guess maybe a tablespoon full. I cooked the meat in a nonstick pan and set it aside until I needed it later.
Used wheat noodles for this dish-I like ’em and that’s plenty enough reason. I did have some rice noodles that would have worked just fine, or rice, of course. Went ahead and cooked the noodles, drained them, and set them aside in the boiling pot, covered.
The veggies were broccoli, carrot,and onion. I minced a good amount of garlic and ginger root and started them in some hot oil, then dumped in all the veggies, plus a wee splash of water and covered. Let that go about five minutes then added some beef stock with cornstarch, a bit of dark soy sauce, more oyster sauce, a dash of hoisin sauce, some black vinegar, a touch of rice wine and more stuff I’ll remember later, maybe. Stirred the cooked beef in while the sauce was thickening, the corn starch in the beef marinade helped that along. As the sauce started to thicken I dumped in the drained noodles. Some stirring and lifting with the tongs to coat the noodles and “dinner’s ready, Sweetie Pie”.
Enjoy
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