Its been a long week, and cooking has been at a minimum. Stress in the form of, "OMG, I actually have to perform and get stuff done" has been relatively low. However stress in the form of nit-picking, make me crazy, DRAMA! (say that with a breathy lisp and I think you've got it) has been exceptionally high. Unfortunately, that kind of stress makes me shut down and not do much more than pray to god my beloved will cook for me or we can find something cheap and easy that doesn't involve actually doing much more than throwing away the wrappers.
Yesterday wrapped up at about 3pm with several hours to spare. I'm not sure how on Earth that happened, usually come Friday I'm struggling to make my work hours. Usually, on Friday I care about coming home and listening to the new Annie Mac for the week and drinking a bottle or 12 of wine or other assorted alcoholic beverages. This week actually found me with energy to spare on a Friday and a desire to use up some produce I got last weekend in the hopes of having the energy to cook during the week. I know, poor me, my life is just horrible.....I work hard, I cook well, and have an enviable life....so enough of that, let's talk about Sweet Chili Sauce.
Its no secret I love Asian cuisine. I'm convinced it is super hard to screw up and the flavors always keep my interest. This will probably sound very disjointed, yes, the way I cook is somewhat intuition....my appologies if it doesn't make sense, you can get hold of me for more details if you need to!
So here's what I did.
I started the sauce, only instead of hot chilis like serranos or jalepeno, I used sweet peppers. Not a bell pepper, although I'm sure it would be a suitable substitute, but the cute little ones that come in a plastic carton. Instead of pureeing those with the garlic, I just julienned them and threw them in the sauce in a bowl. I also used the whole carton, I think it was 6 or 8 oz instead of just 2 peppers. I also added half a pound of cocktail shrimp to the mix. Cocktail shrimp were super onsale...I couldn't believe it, $13/lb less than uncooked shrimp! I let that all soak together while I prepped the rest of the veggies.
A small head of cabbage, cut across the grain, to make ribbons, and a good 2 handfuls of matchstick carrots, several slices of onion, cut in half to also make ribbons.
Started the pot of water for the E-fu noodles. E-fu noodles are one of my favorites. I actually didn't even know about them until I moved to Salt Lake. Something about their chewy, meringuey texture just makes a dish like this for me.
At this point I pulled the shrimp out of their soak and set them aside.
I started a big skillet, recipes like this make me wish I had a giant wok, with about 3 tsp. soybean oil and 1tsp seasame oil going. Brough it to smoking, turned the heat down to medium high and tossed in the veggies. These cook quick! A couple of quick tosses and viola, things are just starting to wilt and look perfect....the telltale sign is when the edges of the cabbage just start to clarify.
Added the cornstarch to the sauce, quick stir, into the still hot skillet, brought to boil, pulled off heat, and let set.
Noodles into boiling water, pressed them down in the boiling water. Throw shrimp on top of still hot stri-fry. Boil noodles for 2 min. Drain noodles.
Throw noodles into skillet with stir-fry....toss with tongs, and cover. I let the residual heat in the skillet keep it all warm.
Wait 10 min for the husbear to get home....one more quick toss with the tongs and onto plates.
It was amazing!
Some things I want to do differently next time:
- Use uncooked shrimp and cook them properly. The cocktail shrimp flavor was just a bit off and they were a bit overdone.
- Make the sauce in its entirety ahead of time. It isn't super thick and I won't need the extra cooking time on the stir-fry which resulted in ever so slightly overdone cabbage.
- Use a bit less sauce, it was just a bit drippy...
This weekend is about finally getting to see a Debussy symphony as the "headliner"....so dining out is the course of the weekend as is taking it easy today. For me, getting to finally see a Debussy in its entirety is almost like some of the best raves of my 20s. I'm conserving energy and spoiling myself all day.....I absolutely must look and feel my best for this awesome occassion!
No comments:
Post a Comment