Stay-in Take-out: Pork Lo Mein

This is an America's Test Kitchen recipe originally, which means it's absolutely delicious but persnickety and step-heavy.  If you want to try it Chris Kimball's way, you can prep it ahead for same day or next day cooking with no problem...assemble the marinade for the meat and get that started, make the sauce, chop the veggies and grate/mix the ginger-garlic and set all that aside in the fridge.  But you can't freeze it ahead as a kit well, and the final cooking process comes to way more than 3 or 4 steps which my mental processing limit at 6pm.

 

So I keep the best parts of this recipe (the sauce, the cut of pork and the basic method of cooking) and reconfigure all the other parts to achieve simplicity and freezability.  If I do say so myself.  For vegetables, you'll need about 8-9 cups of veg...it seems like a lot, but it cooks down.  I park some frozen veggies in the freezer kit and plan to make up the remainder with fresh vegetables purchased the week I'll make this dinner or canned stirfry favorites like water chestnuts or bamboo shoots.  Use what you like in any combination. 

 

For the "lo mein", I've used udon, soba and whole wheat linguine, all with perfectly good results.  Just make sure to read the package directions since each type requires a different cooking time.

 

The sauce ingredients are perhaps a bit outside of the usual pantry staples, but are worth finding if only to duplicate this recipe many times over.  Oyster sauce is in the Asian foods section of even my podunk grocery stores, and it's like a steak sauce but much less vinegar-y.  Hoisin is an Asian-style barbecue sauce, and 5 spice powder is a mix of pepper, fennel, cloves, cinnamon and anise (at least my jar is).

 

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Teriyaki Tofu and Roasted Pineapple

I make my own teriyaki sauce for this dish because the sauce is so prominent in this recipe and store-bought teriyaki sauce is just foul.  I make up the sauce a day before I'm going to use it, so I'll start pressing the tofu and make the sauce the night before Dinner Day, strain out the garlic cloves and ginger chunks and start marinating the cubed tofu the morning of, and then drain off the marinade to roast that night.  If you make this as a freezer kit, I'd freeze the teriyaki sauce separately from the pressed but uncut tofu block.  When you thaw it, cube the tofu and marinate at least an hour before roasting.

You can substitute just about any protein you want in this dish...marinate chunks of chicken breast or pork loin and roast for the same amount of time and at the same temperature.  It's a great way to accomodate vegetarians and non-vegetarians at the same meal without making completely separate main dishes.  If you do use tofu however, you can strain, freeze and reuse the marinate once more (if you marinate chicken or pork, chuck the remaining marinade).

I nearly always serve this with broccoli, steamed or roasted.  Tonight, I'm roasting broccolini on the same sheet pan with the fruit to save creating more heat with the stovetop.  And tonight's oven-use three-fer (#1 tofu/pineapple, #2 broccolini side dish)...a blind-baked crust for strawberry pie! 


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Tofu Broccolini Salad with Udon Noodles

Another try-out from Cooking Light May '11.  The picture is so mouth-watering, I immediately picked up ingredients for the recipe before really reading through the steps.  Oops.  Incredibly step-heavy.  A lot of last-minute cooking.  So not how I roll.

The majority of my changes to this recipe are in preparation timeline and combining separate steps to produce a more streamlined, make-ahead friendly dish.  The one major ingredient change I made is to use WAAAAYYYYYY less sriracha than the recipe calls for. Ginger brings its own heat, radishes typically have some zing and you just don't need to blow the roof of your mouth off with an additional half tablespoon of liquid fire, thankyouverymuch.

There are 4 main components to this dish, and almost all of them can be done up to a day ahead.  Store each element of the salad separately, boil the noodles (and broccolini, if desired) last minute and toss everything together. 

Tofu under a paver

You need to press the tofu as it's full of water which will prevent the tofu taking in the marinade.  You can wrap it in paper towels and press it under a weight (I use a fluorescent yellow paving stone) overnight, all day long or for as little as 30 minutes, though the less water you press out of it, the less marinade it will take on later. 



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Big Batch Kung Pao Stirfry Sauce

With Orange-Sesame Stirfry Sauce, this sauce represents my arsenal of make-ahead no-recipe stirfry building blocks.  This recipe makes 3 portions of sauce that can be frozen. 

Kung Pao is typically finished with a sprinkling of peanuts (or cashews, when I'm serving peanut-free folks), so you can also freeze a cup of peanuts/cashews in a vacuseal bag for each frozen portion of sauce to ensure you have some on hand when you make the stirfry; a good idea at my house since nuts are prime snacking targets and I can't always guarantee that I'll have some for cooking purposes.

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Beurre Manié

Say wha?  Not so much a recipe for a finished product as an aggravation-saving hint.  This something I'm convinced everyone should put in their freezer stash if any stews, sauces or gravies are in their future.  It's not hard to cook a roux-based sauce at all, and truly getting out a tbsp or two of butter and flour to start a sauce isn't all that hard either, but due to counter space restrictions, flour lives in my pantry which is a toddler-free zone which in turn means a Royal Cage Match with the aforementioned toddler every time I want to get it out and put it back.  Not worth it for 1 tbsp of flour, know what I mean?

This is THE thickener of French cuisine (and also of cheese sauce and turkey giblet gravy...very important).  Beurre manié is a combination of flour and butter, and is used to thicken a finished stew, cooked briefly to start a sauce or cooked a long time to form a flavoring agent in Cajun cooking. 

Most recipes call for equal parts butter and flour, which is perfectly fine by me, though I do think you can go as high as a 2 -to-3 ratio of butter to flour and still be fine if you want to cut out a little fat. 
Beurre Manié
Makes 8 portions (each corresponds to 1 tbsp flour called for in a recipe)

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

Combine well using a pastry cutter, food processor or mixer. 

Roll into a log and cut into 8 portions.

 
Freeze on a cookie sheet and put into a zip-top bag.

Lower-fat Beurre Manié
Makes 12 portions (each corresponds to 1 tbsp flour called for in a recipe)

1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup all-purpose flour

Same procedure as above.

How do you use this?  Where a recipe says, "Melt X tbsp of butter and whisk in X tbsp flour", use 1 portion of this mixture for each tbsp of flour called for.  An example:

Cheese Sauce
Makes about 2 1/2 cups

2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour

OR

2 portions of frozen beurre manié

1 1/2 cup milk
1 cup shredded cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Melt butter over medium heat and whisk in flour, or stir beurre manié until melted and well-incorporated.  Cook 1 minute.  Whisk in milk slowly to avoid lumps.  Raise heat to medium-high until bubbles start to appear.  Reduce heat to medium and simmer 5-7 minutes, until thickened.  Stir in cheese and season with salt and pepper. Pin It

Stay-in Take-out: Hot & Sour Soup

Again, adapted from the Argo cookbook.  I add more "stuff" than the original because I like soup that falls closer to the "hearty" end of the hearty-brothy spectrum, and I dialed the heat back (too much for the hubbie's liking, but good for me). 

I think the big issue in controlling the heat in this soup is which chili-garlic hot sauce product you use.  The recipe calls for "chili garlic sauce" which I interpret as the relatively mild Thai garlic chili sauce, though there is also sriracha's chili garlic cousin which will make your nose sweat and your head run.  The original recipe also calls for ground white pepper, which I do not keep in my spice collection, for which I substitute more chili garlic concoction rather than using another ground pepper.  Next time I make this, I'll use 3 tsp of the milder chili garlic sauce, or perhaps 1 tsp of the super-hot version.

This is a great prep-ahead meal.  It took me about 25 minutes to get everything sliced and measured in the morning, and only about 5 minutes to cook the soup.  Do the prep the night before and stick everything in the fridge for super-duper fast dinner the next day.

Clockwise from top left: seasoning sauce, mushrooms/tofu/bamboo shoots, broth, sliced pork, eggs, cornstarch

Hot and Sour Soup
Makes 6 servings

1 oz. dried woodear mushrooms (or other dry mushroom)
4 oz. sliced fresh button mushrooms
1 4 oz. can bamboo shoots, sliced lengthwise
8 oz. tofu, cubed small
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8 oz. lean pork, sliced thinly
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1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup rice vinegar
3 tsp chili garlic sauce (mild) OR 1 tsp chili garlic sauce (hot)
1 tsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp sugar or Splenda
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6 cups broth, vegetable or chicken
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1/3 cup cornstarch
3/4 cup water
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2 eggs, beaten well
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Garnish (optional):  sliced green onions, cilantro, parsley, chives
Soak the dry mushrooms in warm water for 15 minutes.  Meanwhile slice the fresh mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and tofu and combine in a container.  Drain the soaked mushrooms and chop coarsely.  Add those to the other vegetables. 

Slice the pork and put that in a separate container.  Combine the soy sauce, vinegar, chili garlic sauce, sesame oil and sugar in another container.  If prepping ahead, measure out  broth, if necessary, and put in a sealable container.  If prepping ahead, measure out cornstarch but do not add water until just before cooking.  Beat eggs and place in another container. 

When ready to cook, add the water to the cornstarch and mix well.  Boil the broth in a 3 or 4 quart pot.  Add the pork and boil 1 minute (the pork will cook in this time if you have sliced thinly; cook longer if the pork is in bigger pieces).  Add the seasoning sauce, vegetables and cornstarch slurry.  Cook 1 minute longer.  Stir the pot in a circular motion while slowly pouring in beaten eggs.  Cook until eggs form cooked strands.  Top with optional green stuff. Pin It