Beef, I mean Pork, with Broccoli

Friends, I have been away.  To give you the short version, my mom had brain aneurysm surgery at the beginning of January and unfortunately, suffered a stroke during or right after. She's spent 2 weeks in the hospital and is now in a rehab hospital. She's improving everyday but it's a long road we have been set upon.


Here's something I can tell you:  if you're a food lovin' fool like I am, it's really, really hard to assist someone you love with a "mechanical soft" diet.  Know what that means?  It's not pureed, which is gross on a whole other level, but it's not much of an improvement. It means whatever is on the menu gets chopped up beyond recognition.  Tastes the same, but presentation goes out the window.  And bless her heart, I think my mom has been served mashed potatoes at every meal.  I mean, everyone loves mashed potatoes, but if you want to kill that for someone, just serve it to them meal after meal after meal. 

My dad and I spend every day at the hospital, helping with therapy, hypothesizing with the doctors, watching and observing.  I have to hand it to Neil; he has really stepped in and taken the wheel many a night on the dinner front because after spending a day in a hospital, you return home a victim of the mental time suckage vortex.  You hardly know your own name and all you want is wine.

Today was a really good day and I was excited about cooking tonight.  I mean, that's my hobby, right?  I had a beautiful pork loin that I had already cut up into chops. (Used part of that yesterday for a crockpot going all day at my dad's pad and one here!). The remainder I used tonight for stir-fry.  For some reason, my mind settled on the "beef with broccoli" idea but with my boneless pork.  So, I followed my basic Bw/B recipe and just jazzed it up a little.

I sliced my pork into thin strips and marinated it in 1/2 cup soy sauce, 2 Tbs cornstarch, 2 Tbs Sherry cooking wine and 2 tsp sugar.  I then stir-fried chopped onion, small broccoli florets, & julienned carrot. I took those out of the wok and then added chopped ginger and the pork. After a couple of minutes, I added my veggies back in, added the marinade liquid and some chiffonaded (is that a word "chiffonade-ed"?) spinach.  Served it over fragrant jasmine rice and we were happy little people. 

You know, if I were to chop up the pork, I bet this could qualify as "mechanical soft." It sure as hell looks better than what mom's been getting at the hospital! 

 

Pacific Rim

I've told you guys before how easy it is for me to get burned out on chicken.  But, when you think about it, if you're a meat-eating person, it's hard to exist without chicken. Not only because it's so versatile, but because it's a very lean protein, which we all know is better for us than, oh let's say, fatty mutton from Kazakhstan. As a funny aside, I met a girl once who was performing an internship in Kazakstan...and she was a vegetarian.  It was a very long year in her life.

Back to chicken.  As much as I love it and appreciate it, I can become bored with it very easily.  This is one reason that I have a library of cookbooks to see me through these chick-a-bore times. Today, I hit one of those moments when I thought about dinner, pictured chicken and then nothing but static on the monitor. I went to the fridge and took inventory and came up with a stir-fry idea based on a recipe I've read about 401 times over the years. "Pacific Rim."

Topped off with some almonds and peanuts

 This was a lovely stir-fry consisting of carrots, red bell pepper, broccoli and chicken flavored with a sauce of soy sauce, basil, a little curry powder, corn starch, and chicken broth. I served it over rice stick noodles and a side of pea pods (snow peas). I altered the printed recipe a bit, based on what I had on hand. The result was quite nice.  I particularly liked the subtle combination of the basil with the curry and soy.  I also included a smidge of crushed red pepper (only a smidge because of the wunderkind).  It still may have been a bit on the spicy side for her tastes, but she ate her dinner without complaint.  Well, that's not completely true; she wasn't crazy about the rice sticks.  Those of you with kids know that if all they reject is noodles, you're doing something right!

 

Baby's First Dish

As you all know, it's always been my goal to engage my child in cooking, food and nutrition.  As soon as she was old enough, I've had her in the kitchen.  Starting at things like pushing the buttons on the food processor, to measuring ingredients, mixing stuff up and even some beginner knife work.  But, tonight was the culmination of it all...my baby COOKED!

She's ready to roll!

 That's right.  She cooked an entire dish all by herself.  Of course I was standing right there overseeing, and I did all the prep work (chopping) but she cooked all by herself!  We decided to go with a Chinese flair tonight, so I worked on beef with broccoli while Viv worked on the veggie fried rice.  

So, this is onion, carrot, broccoli and ginger (which I think is nectar of the gods!)

I was so proud of her.  One: because she actually listened to and followed all of my directions.  Two: because she was talking constantly about her observations and her technique of stir-frying the veggies.  Three:  she sloped the rice up the sides of the wok like I told her and scrambled the egg down in the center. She did it all and we ended up with a great batch of fried rice. The real joy of it all was, of course, her pride in her creation and the excitement of being allowed to work with the stove and just do it.  Like all cooks though, at the table she kept insisting that my dish was better than hers while Neil and I insisted that the rice was the best.  

The beef with broccoli did turn out well too.  I used a flatiron steak, sliced really thin. Marinated in soy sauce, a little flour, a tiny bit of sugar and sherry cooking wine.  Stir-fried broccoli then cooked the steak with its marinade, which creates the sauce. 

I can't ever give Viv the plate that was chipped by the dishwasher. Ever.

  I may have said this to you all before, but I'm going to say it again. The beauty of Chinese cuisine is quantities.  Over dinner, we talked about this.  People walk into a place like Longhorn and order a 12 oz. steak.  That's a hell of a lot of meat.  That's more meat than a person is supposed to eat at any given sitting. Our dinner tonight was made with 8 oz. of steak and it was more than enough for the three of us.  What the Chinese know and have known for thousands of years is that you can take a little bit of a lot of things and make a satisfying meal.  


Think about this for a minute.  Fried rice is loaded with vegetables and tiny cubes of pork, chicken, tofu, or shrimp, right?  But, it's plenty for you.  MooGooGaiPan is thin slices of beautiful white chicken surrounded by tons of veggies.  Sweet and sour pork uses about 8 oz. of meat and the rest is all veggie.  And for those people who always say after eating Chinese food, they are hungry an hour later...all I can say is vary your selections.  You can't eat a wheelbarrow-load of fried rice, fried wontons or egg rolls and escape the carbohydrate coma and hunger that comes quickly.  You simply must treat this cuisine like any other.  Incorporate a salad, a main dish with protein, a veggie side and yes, carbs too.  But don't lump all Chinese in with your starch/MSG stupor and subsequent hunger.  Don't do it, I say!

My happiness tonight isn't stemming from the fact that I made beef and broccoli that Neil, the Vivver and I loved, but rather from the fact that my baby got in the kitchen tonight and OWNED  it!  I've waited for this day. Having her cooking alongside me, not having to worry about her getting hurt or spilling some hot something all over herself.  It was wonderful! If you have kids, bring them into the kitchen.  It will prepare them, in many ways, for their future life but also will bring so much joy to the here and now.  For you both.

Loaves and Fishes Stir-Fry

My mom is quite a person.  She's smart, creative, funny, inventive and resourceful.  She's also the type that will give you the shirt off her back, literally.  No really, I've told her to put her shirt back on before.

The other day I was at mom and dad's house and casually mentioned that I needed to stop at the grocery to get some vegetables.  You guessed it, mom sprung into action.  Now get this...she actually had matchstick carrots, asparagus, pea pods, broccoli florets, sliced mushrooms and sliced bell peppers in her fridge.  A stir-fry ready to go.  So, she offered to split it with me.  Because you know, stir-fry doesn't require a lot of any one thing, just a good variety.  It goes far...like loaves and fishes.  

Starting with the broccoli, onion and bell peps

Adding the pork and the rest of the veggies

Then, to top it all off, she said "Oh, I also have this roasted pork loin from the other night.  Why don't you take that too?"  Can you believe this?


So, in the same spirit as my"kitchen sink" fried rice, dinner was born.  The only things I added were diced onion, I sliced the pork into strips, and stir-fried it all with a combo of Teriyaki glaze, soy sauce and garlic.  Whipped up a pot of rice and (as Vivian loves to say) Voila!


My "kitchen sink-ness" has definitely been learned from the master.  I've actually walked into my parents' house and my dad has announced, "We have to go out, there's no food here."  Mom goes into the kitchen, rifles through her freezer and pantry and an hour later dad is eating lamb chops and orzo.  I think he thinks mom is magic.  To some extent, he's right.  So, thanks to my shirt-off-the-back mom, we had a veggie packed, delicious pork stir-fry dinner.  

Finished product

Happy Valentine's Day Dottie!