I tell ya, after a big Thanksgiving re-cap week on the blog, it’s time for something a little less ‘North American’ on the blog here, and you can’t get much farther away from here than China!
While doing some surfing I found the following recipe and it just so happened to call for a number of ingredients that I still had on hand in the veggie crisper, and more importantly, called for a protein that wasn’t turkey! (I love you turkey, we’re just on a break for a while…)
This one was very quick and easy. The most time consuming element here was the rice. That’s a pretty hands-free thing to go about making, it just takes time – roughly 45 minutes from start to finish for that to properly cook. Everything else here went pretty fast. Warm up a pan with some oil, chop up on onion that you saute down before you start adding the other ingredients. I picked up a bottle of Chinese 5 Spice the other week and hadn’t quite figured out what to do with it yet. This works. All told, the kids all enjoyed it. My “picky eater” even said they enjoyed it although in her words “I’ve had chinese food before, and it’s better at the chinese restaurant”. Yup. I should hope so! If there ever comes a day one of my dishes bests that of a paid chef or line cook at a restaurant? Well, I guess that’s the day I can start selling ads on this blog or something. Haha.
For the recipe, I followed the link pretty closely. Chinese/Asian cooking isn’t something that’s really in my wheelhouse or that I’ve had much experience with so I still need some more practical hands-on time with the flavours before I start experimenting. My one notable adjustment…I didn’t have fish oil on hand. From the sounds of it it’s a very salty/briny flavour, so I subbed in a spoonful of the brine/juice from the feta cheese in the fridge and just a little dash of lemon juice for good measure. It worked. I also was missing a dried red chili, so a very small pinch of dried chili pepper flakes went in early on to add just a minor touch of heat.
Other than that, I followed along the recipe as written. It’s a pretty flavourful dish, you’ll want to salt/pepper to taste. I found it didn’t need too much of that. I could have gone for a bit more sweetness overall. I was wondering about some brown sugar into the mix to accomplish that, or perhaps just a bit more honey? My only real complaint is there isn’t a lot of ‘extra’ sauce when it’s all said and done. I’m a big fan of drenching my rice in sauce, you might be the same.
Budget wise?
Chicken – $4.50 for a pound of boneless skinless (on sale and frozen)
Onion – $0.70
Green Onion – $0.50
Rice – $0.50
Peas – $1.00
The rest was honey, soy sauce and some spices I’d say it would be about $1.00 worth, if that. At the least, we’re looking at $7, at the most, about $8. Fed 4 of us at dinner with a decent portion of leftovers for the fridge.
Maybe it’s this cold that I’m fighting off, but I’ve been really enjoying dishes with ginger infused as of late. Watch for some more of those in the future!
-g
Dad's Turn To Cook 