Imitation Chinese Takeout

I am not going to name names, but suffice it to say I'm never going hesitant to order Chinese takeout from any establishment in my town. And because, on occasion, my husband and I are in the mood to watch a movie while eating our food out of cardboard containers with chopsticks, we've had to improvise. 

Fortunately for us, it appears that Six Sisters love to improvise as well. I've now tried two of their homemade, healthy(er) Chinese food recipes and really thought both of them were super! One of them even allowed me to show my face again at Eric's office pot lucks (recall the banana episode). 

The Baked Sweet and Sour Chicken was awesome. I made it once at home for dinner and then again for the most recent office pot luck because we liked it so much. By following the veeeery simple recipe, you'll get yourself some tender chicken bites with a delightful crisp.

Please forgive the awful picture...

The other recipe I tried was the Slow Cooker Honey Sesame Chicken. Honey sesame chicken is one of my personal favorite takeout foods. I have to say that this rendition was good, but didn't imitate Chinese takeout quite as well as the Sweet & Sour chicken recipe did. This, of course, has a lot to do with the fact that the Honey Sesame Chicken recipe does not direct you to fry the chicken at all. Recipe pros: very tasty, very easy, and healthier because not fried; cons: doesn't quite satisfy the takeout craving as well. If you have a hankering to be bad (gasp, flash-fried foods) with honey sesame chicken, I'd suggest using the cooking technique from the sweet & sour chicken recipe with the (slightly adapted) sauce from the honey sesame chicken recipe.

1 cup honey
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup ketchup
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (or not, or more)
*sprinkle sesame seeds on chicken before serving

So, as for the Chinese takeout/movie date night checklist...

movie: check (thank you Netflix)
food: check (kudos to the Six Sisters for figuring out a way to  make easy, gooey, Chinese takeout at home)
chopsticks: check
my date: check (note: the checklist does not indicate order of importance)
cardboard containers: work in progress
fortune cookies: to be continued...

Udon-awanna make this!

And, if you love spicy food as much as I do, udon-awanna make this my way...

I found the recipe for Peanut Curry Noodles with Seared Shrimp & Scallops on one of my favorite food blogs, love & olive oil. I can't really speak for what the recipe would have tasted like had I followed it because I did some omitting and substituting. However, I can tell you that what I ultimately produced by following the "gist" of this recipe was exceptionally delicious...and spicy!

Note: if you prefer not to clear your sinuses during mealtime, disregard a lot of what I say and follow the recipe. 

Fresh ginger, which I am happy to say I had thanks to a reader's suggestion to keep ginger root handy by freezing it

Ingredients I added:
1 large jalapeno, diced (not seeded)...duh

Add to the skilled with the garlic, ginger, red bell pepper, and pepper flakes.

When I made this dish, I made two errors on this step of the recipe. First, I forgot to add the ginger, which I didn't realize until I was getting ready to cook the shrimp. Naturally, per my modus operandi, this mistake resulted in a mini-meltdown. Eric, per his modus operandi, came to my rescue, sauteed the ginger in the shrimp-skillet before the shrimp, took it out of the pan, and added it to the sauce. Hooray for ridiculously awesome sous-chefs! My second error was adding the scallions at this point rather than at the end to finish the dish. Texturally, it would have been better to add them at the end rather than at the beginning, but it didn't hurt the flavor...

Ingredients I substituted:
2 heaping tablespoons fresh chili paste instead of 2 rounded tablespoons red curry paste.

I didn't have red curry paste so I just used what I did have. It just so happened that what I did have dramatically kicked up the spiciness of the sauce.

Ingredients I wish I substituted: 
crunchy peanut butter for creamy peanut butter.

Why? Well, why not?

I fully admit this looks a little less-than-appetizing, but I assure you, it is delicious!

Whisk soy sauce into PB

Add coconut milk & brown sugar...mmm.

I'd also like to try grilling the shrimp instead of heating them in the skillet.

Pre-cooked shrimp rubbed with five spice powder, all we had to do was heat 'em up!

And add to sauce...

Ingredients I omitted:
Scallops 

Didn't have any! Didn't miss 'em.

 
This was definitely one of those meals that I was sad to see end. If you have a taste for Thai food, peanut sauce, or anything made with coconut milk, I definitely suggest giving this recipe a whirl.

I am going to try to refrain from making it nightly.

Stuck in a rut

Toward the end of one week, when the contents of my refrigerator were dwindling and the vegetables I still had were rapidly approaching their end of shelf-life, I found myself standing in the kitchen looking at a bag of shrimp, a pile of fresh basil, and a bundle of the largest asparagus I'd ever seen.

I can't be the only one who gets stuck in ruts with certain kinds of food. For example, I always either grill or roast asparagus with a little olive oil, some salt & pepper, and whatever other spices or herbs I feel like throwing on there. Don't get me wrong, I love eating asparagus that way, but on that particular night, I just didn't feel like it. I turned to Google, typed in, "shrimp, asparagus, and basil" and found Angel Hair Pasta with Shrimp, Asparagus & Basil.  

Well, why didn't I think of that? I skimmed the recipe and quickly realized it's an easy-to-make, mess-free dinner. And if it tasted as good as it sounded, it definitely had potential to join the ranks of go-to dinners for nights when I don't feel like cooking, but definitely feel like eating.

  

The recipe directs you to cook the asparagus stalks and tips separately as the stalks need a few more minutes to soften. However, I had monster asparagus and knew that those big wamma-jammas would need more cooking time all together. I cut off the asparagus tips and then cut the stalks into matchstick-sized chunks. Then, I halved the matchsticks. I added all of the asparagus to the skillet when I added the white wine, allowing it to cook for the duration of the time it took to prepare the dish. They were perfectly cooked in the end (go me).

 

 

 

 

You know it's a crowd pleaser when conversation from the peanut gallery (of one) ceases with the exception of lots of "mmm" and "yum." And just as the recipe's author promised, it was E-A-S-Y to make. From now on, this dish will most certainly be a regular at our dinner table. 

Perhaps I will try on a new asparagus rut for a while...

First I roasted a chicken and then I did this

Roasting a whole chicken is both an easy and economical way to go about cooking for your family. It's easy because basically all you have to do on night #1 is stuff it and throw it in the oven. It's economical because there is so much you can do with it once its roasted. From preparing multiple meals to making homemade chicken stock, one little chicken goes a long way! The other night, I used a recipe my mom sent me from Taste of the South Magazine for, well, easy roasted chicken.

I didn't have fresh sage or thyme, but I had a ton of fresh rosemary so I threw that in there instead. You can probably substitute just about any fresh herb for the herbs listed in the recipe. It all tastes good! Or an orange in place of lemon? I don't know, but I am sure I will be experimenting in the future because this dinner was such a piece of cake! 

Oh, and I accidentally cut up a bunch of onions that were actually supposed to be used in the accompanying sweet potato recipe. Since I wasn't planning on making sweet potatoes as a side dish, I just stuffed as many onion wedges as I could into the bird and placed the others around the chicken in the roasting dish. They ended up being very tasty.

I served the roasted chicken on the first night with roasted potato coins and a side salad. It was a home run!

The recipe for roasted potato coins is pretty simple, too. Wash whatever kind of potato you'd like to use. I love potato skin so I rarely ever peel potatoes (unless I'm using Russets in mashed), but this means I have to scrub them well.

Slice your potatoes into half-inch coins. You can soak the slices to reduce the starch content or you can just sprinkle them with a little salt and pat dry with paper towels. Lay the potatoes out on a baking sheet- trying not to overcrowd. Drizzle a small amount of olive oil over the potatoes (just a couple of tablespoons) and toss by hand until all potato coins are coated in oil. Spread them out in a single layer again and season with whatever you want. Another idea is to do this in a bag. Put your potato slices, olive oil, and seasoning in a bag and shake it up!

Bake in a 450-475 degree oven for around 30 minutes. Keep an eye on them though, because their cooking time depends on the thickness of the coins you cut. Flip them once and give them 5ish more minutes. They should get nice and crispy!

 
Naturally, we had quite a bit of chicken left over after dinner #1, which I love. Why do I love this? Well for starters, because of what I said earlier: a lot of recipes call for 1-2 cups rotisserie chicken. Having a bowl of leftover pulled-off-the-bone chicken opens up a world of possibilities for the rest of the week's dinners.

I also love it because it means I have to take some time out of my busy day to actually pick the meat off the bones (I hope no one reading this is squeamish- sounds quite grizzly). Why is this such great news? Well, because as far as I can tell, cleaning a chicken takes enough time to justify watching a movie in the afternoon. See how I did that? 

Anyhoo, on to dinner #2 from the one little chicken: BBQ Chicken Quinoa Salad.  I love me some quinoa salads because quinoa salad = protein rich salad = filling and satisfying salad. Also, they are lettuce-less salads, and sometimes my salads need a break from lettuce...

I took my off-the-bone chicken, mixed it with some BBQ sauce, put it in a casserole dish and baked it in the oven on 350 degrees while I prepared the rest of the dish. You could also prepare chicken for this recipe in the crock pot days ahead of time. I think grilled BBQ chicken would have been pretty yummy, too!

The recipe didn't call for black beans, but they were in my fridge so in they went!

I cubed my cheese- didn't feel up to shredding...

 
And there you have it! Two great dinners form one little chicken! Thank you, little chicken.