About Me

I'm a full-time working mom of 3 in the IT industry, with a great husband. When not spending time with the family, I like to spend my time in the kitchen. I like to cook. I love to eat. I adore entertaining people. I prefer not to go by any particular recipe, but experiment on my own. I'm not professionally trained in any way and I don't claim to be correct on anything I might post. Meals are often tossed together at the last minute. Sometimes I think about them during the day, sometimes I browse my cook book library and compare ingredients of great chefs before me. Sometimes I scour the internet, and sometimes they are literally pulled from the freezer and tossed into a pan.

I also used to dabble in cake decorating. {shameless plug: Cakes By Jenn Facebook}

These are those stories. I play with my food.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Chinese at Home

So, I crave Chinese food on a fairly regular basis.  I think they put something it in that tells your brain "In four to seven days, you will want me again."

To entertain, I think yet another football night Rob had a buddy coming over several years ago, I looked up how to make "Chinese food."  What kind of Chinese food, isn't that hard?  Well yes and no.  Don't you need a wok?  Nope!  And to be more specific I had certain dishes in mind that I researched, not just "chinese food."  I have found that most of the recipes I review aren't that complicated, they just require a lot of ingredients and a well stocked pantry for said ingredients, which can get costly.  But, you can cheat your way through some of them and not always have to include every single ingredient and still satiate the pallete. 

One of my cheats is "red meat" as my daughter calls it (aka Boneless Spareribs).  Check your local grocery store in the ethic foods aisle and locate "Ah-so" sauce.  That's all it takes.  Find your favorite cut of pork, slice it up, drown it in Ah-So and bake.  If you let it marinate overnight, it's WAY better, but just tossing it around and throwing it into the oven works too.  I broil mine in a Pyrex clear dish until they look "done."

 So, I did this Tuesday night but needed a side dish.  Duh, fried rice.  Doesn't every single Chinese food meal come with Fried Rice?  And what could I do to it so I wouldn't have to make an extra vegetable.  Pork was a toss and cook.  I can take a little time to make a good rice.  Compared a few recipes, left some ingredients out, and produced the following:

Ingredients:
  • 2c uncooked rice – cook it according to package directions (makes 4 cups cooked, give or take)
  • Handful of bean sprouts
    • now, when I say a "handful", it means, as much as you think should go in there
  • Handful of Frozen peas
  • Handful of Frozen diced carrots
  • 1 egg, scrambled raw in bowl
  • Mini pre-cooked tiny frozen shrimp, thawed or frozen, i started frozen, I was in a rush
  • Oyster sauce
  • Soy sauce
  • Sesame oil
And away you go, start playing:
  • Heat skillet/wok/sturdy non-stick frying pan really really hot
  • Add sesame oil, get it hot
  • Add the shrimp – stand back!
  • Toss around until heated nicely, takes like 1 minute
  • Add the carrots, peas and bean sprouts
  • Add oyster sauce
    • probably about a 1/4 cup, I don't really know, I just tossed some in until it looked good and tasted nice
  • Add soy sauce, to taste, but not more than a few tablespoons
    • you don’t want it to taste like soy, unless you like that
  • Toss around, keep moving until veggies cooked through
  • Make a hole in the veggies so you have the center of the pan clear
  • Add the egg, let sit to cook, chop it around, stir into rest of veggies
  • Add rice and toss
  • KEEP THINGS MOVING AT ALL TIMES

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