Beef Stir Fry

My cooking style tends toward the Mediterranean but we all need to branch out. So tonight was Asian night. Recently, I was at the grocery store and bought a steak. It was on sale, beautifully marbled and I had nothing to do with it but I bought it anyway and put it in the freezer.

Now it's coming out - to make steak stir fry.

Apparently stir fry is hard to mess up, because I had no idea what I was doing but the results were delicious. I started here but I had no idea what I was supposed to do with the sauce?!? The directions are horribly unclear but I had already bought ingredients planning to cook this recipe...so I winged it.

Ingredients

2 cups water
2 tablespoons corn starch
1/2 cup soy sauce (you can use reduced sodium if you want)
6 oz steak (I don't actually know what cut I used)
2 tablespoons of olive oil
garlic
Sesame oil (optional)
2 cups frozen pepper strips
10 baby carrots

Slice steak into strips, cutting across the grain. Boil water and mix in corn starch thoroughly, add soy sauce and allow the sauce to reduce while cooking the rest of the ingredients. Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a large frying pan. Sear the steak with garlic and sesame oil and remove it from the pan. Cook frozen peppers in the pan with additional garlic and sesame oil, about 3 minutes before they are fully cooked add the carrots and return the steak back to the pan. The sauce should now be reduced (not thick, but thicker than is started out); add it to the pan with the steak and vegetables. Serve with white rice.

You'll notice my sauce diverges from my starting recipe, I tried making what I thought they wanted me to do and it was a disaster and I had to start over. This sauce had a great taste! I might try it again with some beef bouillon to see if it improves but I was pretty happy with the results. I served mine with the steamable frozen rice which makes for a quick evening meal.

Chicken fried rice with cumin

I enjoy a tasty bowl of rice but am something of a rice failure in the cooking department. My friend Diana, in Grad school, made the best rice dishes you can imagine, out of I-have-no-idea-what. Just whatever, happened to be in her refrigerator at the time, or so it seemed.

I am a fan of Uncle Ben's ready rice, it's quick and usually tastes pretty good. However, I'm also committed to advancing my rice repertoire! With that in mind, over the last few days I've whipped up a few rice dishes, most were pretty basic, white rice with some kind of stir-fry-esk vegetables on top. Last night I got fancy and made chicken fried rice.

Ingredients

1 chicken breast
2 cups rice - prepared (instructions below)
1-2 cups frozen pepper strips
2 carrots, chopped (or maybe 1/2 cup of baby carrots)
2 eggs
cumin ~1/4 Tb
turmeric ~1/4 Tb
pepper
salt
olive oil

To prepare rice:

Cook rice according to package directions, making approximately 2 cups. Instead of boiling rice in water, boil in chicken broth. (I highly recommend making a big pot of rice to use for a few days, if you are on a rice eating fest. I made about 6 cups in chicken broth and used it for 2-3 recipes.)

To prepare chicken fried rice:

Chop chicken into bite sized pieces, sprinkle with cumin, pepper and salt and cook in large skillet with a small amount of olive oil. All the other ingredients will be added to this same pan, so make sure you have enough space. When chicken is about 1/2 cooked, add pepper strips and all additional spices. When chicken is finished cooking add rice, egg and carrots. I pushed all the rice-chicken mixture to one side of the pan to let the eggs cook on the other side and then scrambled them in when they were done.

This was a pretty tasty rice dish, though, next time around I will probably add more turmeric and cumin to give it a little more zest.

Cost: B+
Waste: A+
Taste: B (more spices needed)