Day Eighty-Three

She Said:

This was a wonderful addition to our own Julie/Julia project. Absolutely delicious - but one word of caution - make sure those threads are removed from your snow peas, no matter how fine they seem!

This is from Serving Up the Harvest by Andrea Chesman.

Stir-Fried Shrimp and Snow Peas in Black Bean Sauce

Shrimp and Marinade
1½ pounds medium shrimp, shelled and deveined
1 tablespoon rice wine or dry sherry (we used sherry)
2 thin slices fresh ginger
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon salt

Sauce
½ cup chicken broth
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice wine or dry sherry
1 teaspoon cornstarch
½ teaspoon sugar

Stir-Fry
4½ tablespoons peanut or canola oil
1 pound snow peas, tails and strings removed
2 teaspoons Chinese fermented black beans, minced
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger
1 scallion, minced
Hot cooked rice

1. Rinse the shrimp and pat dry. Place in a medium bowl. To prepare the marinade, add the wine, ginger, sesame oil, and salt to the bowl. Toss several times. Set aside for 20 minutes to marinate.

2. To prepare the sauce, combine the broth, soy sauce, wine, cornstarch, and sugar. Mix well. Set aside.

3. When you are ready to cook, heat a large wok over high heat. Add 1½ tablespoons of the oil and heat for a few minutes. Add half the shrimp to the wok and stir-fry for 2 to 3 minutes, until the shrimp change color. Remove from the wok and set aside in a bowl to keep warm. Add another 1½ tablespoons oil, heat, and repeat. Add the shrimp to the bowl with the other shrimp and wipe out the wok.

4. Add the remaining 1½ tablespoons oil to the wok and heat until very hot. Add the snow peas and stir-fry until almost tender, about 1 minute. Make a well in the center of the peas and add the black beans, garlic, ginger, and scallion. Stir-fry until fragrant, about 10 seconds. Stir into the peas. Add the shrimp and stir-fry for 1 minute until heated through. Add the sauce and stir-fry until the sauce thickens and clears, about 2 minutes longer.

5. Serve hot over rice.

This was really, really good, but somewhat tainted by my snow-pea-thread ordeal (read about it here). I would love to try it again. And, given the fact that we couldn't find the fermented black beans in the store and I ordered a life-time supply from Amazon, we should make it again. But I will be sure to clean my snow peas better! (Let me know if you need any fermented black beans - I'd be happy to share!)

Day 83/365:Recipe 38/175

Day Seventy-One

She Said:

Another tired day but we need to stop eating the fast food and get back to some healthy eating. So, we cooked last night. It was another dish that counts toward our own Julie/Julia Project and it was from Serving Up the Harvest by Andrea Chesman.

This meal was dynamite! A one-dish affair that made me ask He to go make it again as soon as I was done eating it the first time. Absolutely delicious!

Chinese Beef and Broccoli

1 pound beef, preferably flank steak or top sirloin roast, cut into matchsticks (we used buffalo flank steak from the farmer's market and the strips were a bit larger than matchsticks - see prior mention of being tired)
3 tablespoons oyster sauce
3 tablespoons soy sauce, divided
2 tablespoons Chinese rice wine or dry sherry, divided (we used sherry)
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons dark sesame oil
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 large heads broccoli (2 pounds), stems sliced and florets roughly chopped (12 cups)
⅓ cup chicken broth
1 tablespoon cornstarch
3 tablespoons peanut or canola oil
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
1 tablespoon finely minced garlic
Hot cooked white rice

1. Combine the beef, oyster sauce, 2 tablespoons of the soy sauce, 1 tablespoon of the wine, sugar, sesame oil, and pepper in a medium bowl and set aside to marinate.

2. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the broccoli and blanch for 3 minutes, until the broccoli is barely tender and bright green. Drain, plunge into cold water to stop the cooking, and set aside to drain. (This last step seems to be important because we skipped it and we got broccoli mush.)

3. To make the sauce, combine the broth, remaining 1 tablespoon soy sauce, remaining 1 tablespoon wine, and cornstarch. Whisk until thoroughly combined.

4. Heat a large wok or skillet over high heat. Add 1 tablespoon of the oil and heat until very hot. Add half the beef and marinade and stir-fry, stirring constantly, until well browned, about 4 minutes. Use a heatproof rubber spatula to scrape the beef into a medium bowl and keep warm. Return the wok to high heat. Repeat with another 1 tablespoon of the oil and the remaining beef and marinade. Transfer the beef and marinade to the bowl and wipe out the wok. (We found this to be impossible because the marinade contains sugar and the wok could not simply be wiped out. For one thing, it was REALLY hot. For another, the sugar had begun to burn, so we let it cool down for a little while and then washed and dried it.)

5. Heat the remaining 1 tablespoon oil over high heat until very hot. Add the broccoli and stir-fry, stirring constantly, until heated through, about 3 minutes. Push the broccoli to the sides of the pan and add the ginger and garlic. Cook until fragrant, about 45 seconds. Toss with the broccoli.

6. Return the beef to the wok. Whisk the sauce and pour into the wok. Cook, stirring constantly, until the sauce is thickened and evenly coats the beef and broccoli, about 1 minute.

7. Serve immediately with the hot rice.

Seriously delicious meal!

Day 71/375:Recipe 36/175

Scallop Stir-Fry, Take 2

She Said:

Hey - long time, no see! Well, we have been very busy over the last few months but now things are finally starting to settle down a bit.

This is about a meal that we made last night. Our priorities have shifted since the economic woes of this country made us stop to think about our wild and crazy spending habits. So now, we are stretching that food dollar just as far as it can go! This is difficult to do when entertaining, which we did for the last two weekends, but it netted us some nifty little leftover situations. Last night's dinner was pretty much the end of the leftovers but I think it may have been the best meal we've made in a long time.

Last weekend, I went to the store and bought a pound of petite sea scallops, which were on sale. I popped them in the freezer until yesterday. Then I started to scrounge around for stir-fry ingredients and found a huge number of veggies to use. Here's how it all ended up.

Scallop Stir-Fry

1 cup uncooked brown rice
1 lb. petite sea or bay scallops
1 medium onion, sliced
2 Italian frying peppers, seeded (from our garden!)
1 small red bell pepper, seeded (from our garden!)
1 small broccoli crown
2 stalks celery
10 baby carrots
1 pint yellow wax beans, parboiled (from our garden!)
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
2 tablespoons dry sherry
1 tablespoon low-sodium tamari (soy sauce)
1 teaspoon corn starch
Fresh ginger
Canola oil
Sesame oil

Cook the brown rice according to package directions. That usually takes 45 minutes or so, so you have some time to do the rest of the prep work.

Chop up the peppers, broccoli, celery and carrots into the size you prefer. I usually go for smallish bite-size. Throw all of the chopped up veggies into a bowl and grate a couple of teaspoons of fresh ginger onto the top. Set aside.

Rinse the scallops and pat them dry. Grate about a teaspoon of fresh ginger over the top of the scallops. Heat a couple of tablespoons of canola oil and about two teaspoons of sesame oil in a large wok over high heat. When the oil is hot, add the scallops and cook them for about three or four minutes, stirring constantly. When the scallops are cooked, remove them from the wok and set aside.

Add more oil, if necessary. Add the garlic to the wok and cook until golden. Add the vegetables to the wok and cook, stirring constantly, until the veggies are as tender as you want them. I like them soft so I let them go for a while. Add the scallops back in and mix well until scallops are heated through.

In a small bowl, combine the sherry, tamari, and cornstarch. Add to the wok and mix well. Toast the sesame seeds in a dry pan until golden.

Serve over rice, sprinked with the toasted sesame seeds, and enjoy! We sure did!

P.S. I would have thrown some mushrooms into this mix but ours were past their prime, to put it lightly. Ew!

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He Said:

There are certain words that just get my culinary juices excited.  "Scallops" and "Stir-Fry" are most definitely right up there at the top of that list.  So when She said "Hey, would you be interested in a scallop stir-fry tonight?" my heart (ok, my belly) just went all a-flutter.  

This is such a great meal.  It's easy and, dare I say, fun to make (lots of action, noise and smells).  And best of all, it is so ding-dang delicious!   In my opinion, this is a great weekday, after work meal that you can whip up in almost no time.  Plus, have I mentioned the leftovers?  Mmmmm......leftovers..........

Spicy Scallop Stir-Fry

11/30/07
More leftover magic.

She Said:

This has been a weird week for us. "She" doesn't normally do the cooking but has been seen quite a bit in the kitchen this week.

I can't tell you the last time I cooked five dinners in a row. Suffice it to say that my 20-something kids were very young the last time it happened.

Tonight was supposed to be the traditional Friday night "Pizza, Wine & a Movie" night. But neither of us was hungry on the way home so we didn't pick up a pizza. In fact, we didn't get hungry until much later in the night. That's when I started scrounging around the kitchen.

I found a pound of frozen scallops in the freezer and thawed them in cold water. I found a box of brown rice pilaf mix in the pantry and got that going. I chopped up half an onion I found in the fridge, along with one carrot, one stalk of celery and two cloves of garlic - all on hand. "He" was in the kitchen by then, too, so he grated some fresh ginger root (when I say "fresh", I mean that it was in the freezer) on top of the veggies and set them aside. I mixed a sauce of:

2 T. dry sherry
1 T. soy sauce
1 T. dark sesame oil
1 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. Sriracha sauce (go buy this NOW if you don't have it in your house!!)

And I set the sauce aside.

I found a handful of frozen broccoli florets in the freezer and blanched that to get rid of the freezy crystals; then He heated up some oil in the wok. A blend (see? that blend thing is pervasive!) of olive oil and sesame oil (about 2-to-1) until it was smoking hot. He threw the veggies in (carrot, celery, onion and garlic first - broccoli at the very end, since it was already blanched) and started to stir-fry. They cooked for a few minutes. I tend to like my veggies on the soft side so I let them cook longer than most people would, I think.

Once the veggies were done, I threw in the scallops and let them cook. After about 3 minutes or so, I threw in the sauce and mixed it all up and let that cook for 6 or 7 minutes. The mixture was wetter than I normally like, but the brown rice pilaf was drier than a white sticky rice, so it balanced out.

Folks, this was a good meal. Healthy, delicious, fast, and it used up a lot of leftovers! Perfect!!

I actually sort of liked this week of cooking. I didn't do any heavy-duty stuff, but it was fun to flex my cooking muscles again. And it was also nice to get a few "free" meals out of things we already had in the house! I have no problem if I accidentally save a buck here or there!

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He Said:

What a week we had! I was super busy and She ended up doing all of the cooking, a chore I'm sure she just loved. Right. Well, last night, after announcing that there was nothing to eat in the house, She came up with, incredibly, a scallop stir fry. What the....?? It's a mighty big leap from "nothing to eat" to a full blown scallop stir fry but, seriously, who am I to complain?

Turns out, this was a mighty tasty meal complete with scallops (my favorite!), nice soft veggies and some rice pilaf. Yumm! I added a few (read: a bunch) of dashes of soy sauce and it was a meal fit for a king. Ok, maybe a duke. The only downside to this meal was the aforementioned soy sauce. It's really got me drinking a lot of water. No, I mean A Lot. I can't seem to get un-thirsty and since I have a bladder the size of an Altoid, I'm enjoying way too much bathroom-time.

So my recommendation here is, try the recipe. It's ding-dang delicious. But maybe hold back a little on the soy sauce. Just sayin'.