Teddy Bear Picnic

Ah, dinner. That meal I used to cook with leisurely ease.

I had a whole three hours to make dinner last night (well, all night really, but I was getting hungry) and I ended up with a stirfry. Tons of time and I make a super fast dinner. I am highly amused. It was one hell of a tasty stirfry, and based on a dish I used to have at a little Asian fusion place on the island. It’s actually gained a lot of popularity and you can find it as a “tapas” sort of dish all over the place now. It’s fun to eat, totally sharable, and a little on the messy side, but that just makes for tasty sticky fingers to lick, which is always fun on date night. ;)

But it’s not just a stirfry, it’s a wrap that you build as you eat. Think tacos, but with lettuce instead of tortilla shells, and stirfry instead of meat, beans and cheese… mmm… tacos…

Stirfry. That’s what I made (but I may need to make tacos some time soon)

The place on the island used a wicked hoisin sauce in theirs. Hoisin is like bbq sauce, but with Asian flavours. It has all the same elements: a base (usually tomato in the west, beans in the east), some salt (soy works), some sour (rice vinegar rather than cider or white), some sweet (brown sugar is what I usually see in bbq, but honey sometimes too), and then the seasonings.

Black bean paste is the typical base for hoisin, but peanut butter can work to. And since I was fresh out of bean paste, I opted for the pb. And before I start, I have to admit to a bit of a guilty pleasure.

So, when I was a kid, my mom refused to buy this one kind of peanut butter that I was sure that aaaalll my friend’s moms bought. And now that I’m a reasonable hand drawn facsimile of a grownup, I can buy what ever kind I want. So there. I know it’s going to make Taneasha have half a heart attack, and so I apologize in advance for my love of sugar sweetened, partially hydrogenated oil stabilizied, Kraft (*cringe*) peanut butter. I know the all natural stuff is better for me. I don’t care. I want the one with the bears on it.

Chicken Stirfry in Lettuce Wraps with Home Made Hoisin Sauce

What You Need:

Hoisin

•  4 tablespoons soy sauce
•  2 tablespoons peanut butter or black bean paste
•  1 tablespoon honey or molasses or brown sugar
•  2 teaspoons rice vinegar
• 1 clove garlic
•  2 teaspoons sesame oil
•  1 tsp Sriracha cock sauce

Stir Fry:

•  1 clove garlic
•  1 bit of minced ginger
•  1 tbsp peanut oil
•  a few drops sesame oil
•  1 chicken breast
•  1 large red bell
•  ½ small onion
•  a few mushrooms
•  ½ c cashews
•  1 head lettuce

 What You Gotta Do:

Dump all of the ingredients for the hoisin into a bowl much bigger than you need.You can leave out the hot sauce and add it a bit at a time once it’s mixed.

Mixing the hoisin doesn’t take long, but it really looks strange at first.

Don’t worry, keep whisking and it’ll all come together. See.

Add as much or as little (or none if you insist) of the hot sauce as you like. Dip a bit of lettuce in to taste as you add.

There, you just made hoisin sauce. Fancy schmancy. It really does work well on the bbq too.

Since the stirfry cooks really fast, it’s best to have everything chopped and ready to go before you start heating the pan. Start with the chicken, then grab a fresh cutting board.

I used a head of romaine for my wraps. I like the boat shape of them. The restaurant where I first had this dish served it with a quarter of a head of iceburg. Use which ever lettuce you prefer, but make sure it’s one that will hold up under the weight of a warm stirfry.

Rinse the lettuce and dry it well. I lay my leaves out on a teatowel and roll them up. Works just fine, and keeps them out of the way while I’m cooking.

 

Chop the onion, pepper and mushrooms into less than bite sized pieces, and mince the garlic and ginger.

Heat a dry pan over medium heat, add the cashews. Those are some wrinkly nuts.

Shake them around from time to time so they don’t burn, just get nice and toasty brown. Dump them out of the pan and back into the bowl.

Add some peanut oil and add a few drops of sesame oil to the hot pan. Peanut oil has a really high smoke point, and sesame oils is probably one of the lowest. Combining them tempers sesame’s tendency to burn before you can get anything else into the pan.

Sautee the chicken in the oil until the pink is all gone,

Then add the veggies.

Shove them around in the pan until the onions are just barely translucent and have lost their crunch.

 

Add about half of the hoisin sauce. The rest can be stored in the fridge for… probably as long as the shelf life of the ingredient with the shortest shelf life. I dunno, it’s never lasted more than a week or two in my fridge.

Mix in the sauce then add the cashews. Cashews will soften quite a bit in a saucy stirfry, so you only want them in there long enough to get them coated.

It looks good, but it seems to be missing something…

I haven’t been able to find cilantro or beansprouts to save my life lately, so I scrounged a half wilted green onion from the bottom of the veggie drawer.

That did it. Cilantro would have been much better, but this'll do.

Serve the stirfry in a bowl, with the lettuce leaves on the side.

Hold a leaf in your hand and spoon in a bit of the stirfry. Just like building a taco.

mmm…. Tacos….

What are you bringing to the teddy bear (peanut butter) picnic??

The 32 Hour Day

I need one.

I do promise that eventually I will make Creamsicle cookies for Lyra. But omg math. I spent 9 hours on one day of the long weekend doing homework (more on other days too!) and I'm just managing to keep up. I've also started hiding in empty boardrooms on my lunch break so I can scribble numbers in peace. This is not looking like my funnest summer ever.

And after eating sandwiches and cereal for dinners last week I decided I really needed to make freezable meals again this weekend. Not that I object to cookies for dinner from time to time (you so have and you know it) but I just don't think a full week of it is a good idea.

So instead, I made meaty balls. Froze them. No pics.

And chili.

Or at least, what I call chili.

I'm sure there are purists of all kinds who are going to complain about one thing or another but you know what? Go make your own freaking chili. No beans allowed? Too bad. I love the musical fruit so they're in there. Ground beef? Yup. Deal with it. Tomatoes? Holy freaking crap you'd think the world was gonna end if someone put tomatoes in chili. But you know what? I did. And I still have an assignment due next week so obvioulsy it can't be that catastrophic.

Chili, The Way I Felt Like Making It

What you need:

• about 1 lb of lean ground beef
• 2-3 onions
• 6 cloves of garlic
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1 tbsp cumin
• 1 tbsp paprika
• 1 tsp dried crushed chilis
• 1 chipotle in adobo sauce
• 3 poblanos
• 2 anaheims
• 2 sweet red peppers
• 1 jalapeno (at least)
• 1 c dried pinto beans
• 1 c TVP (I'll explain later)
• 2 c crushed tomatoes
• 2-3 c beef broth

What you gotta do:

Chop your onions and garlic and combine them in the biggest pot you have (you know, the one you have to put on top of the cupboards because it doesn't fit inside them) with the ground beef and oregano.

While that's cooking (stir it from time to time to bust up the meat) chop your peppers. A coarse chop is fine. They're going to be in there all day simmering and will break down quite a bit, so save yourself the work.

Speaking of saving work, since you're going to be adding heat and seeds to this, don't worry about picking every single seed out of your peppers. If you just cut around the top:

And then pop the core out:

Good enough.

It's particularly easy to do this with poblanos, but it works on any pepper really.

Do it to them all, chop em, and toss em in the pot.

Give it a stir and then pile in the spices.

May as well stir them in too.

Now, add the dry stuff. Beans and TVP.

Textured Vegetable Protein. Yeah, I see you making that face. But you've probably already eaten it. I first learned of it from a vegetarian roommate. He'd use it to make spaghetti sauce, meatballs, pretty much anything that would normally have meat in it. It's cheap, fat free, veggie sourced protein and when it's reconstituted it has the same texture as ground beef. Even some restaurants use it (yup, you've probably eaten it). You can find it at most bulk stores, any health food store, and even at some supermarkets.

And it makes a pound of beef make a lot of chili.

But it is dry, and needs liquid. That's where the tomatoes and beef broth come in. You could use water, beer, or any other liquid you like. Start with about a cup and a half.

After a while, the beans will be wrinkly.

But then they'll start to puff up. You might need to add more liquid. I did.

I cooked mine on fairly low heat with the lid on (do not need the extra humidity in here). But still, check it from time to time, and add more liquid of choice if it seems too dry. And then eventually, you'll have something that looks like this:

And you'll be able to mash a bean against the side of the pot.

And the peppers will have broken down, and the TVP will look exactly like the beef, and the whole house will smell freaking amazing.

And since there was no way I was turning the oven on (it's finally warm here and I'm really thinking I need to get myself a little window AC unit) to make corn bread, I had it with corn chips. Organic blue ones. Fun!

And then I bagged the rest and froze them for later this week.

And probably for dinner next week as well since I really don't like eating the same thing for dinner every night. Except, apparently, when it's a bowl of cereal.

I really need a couple 32 hour days so I can get all the crap done that needs to be done. Like feeding myself.

What would you do with a 32 hour day?