Teddy Bear Picnic

Ah, dinner. That meal I used to cook with leisurely ease.

I had a whole three hours to make dinner last night (well, all night really, but I was getting hungry) and I ended up with a stirfry. Tons of time and I make a super fast dinner. I am highly amused. It was one hell of a tasty stirfry, and based on a dish I used to have at a little Asian fusion place on the island. It’s actually gained a lot of popularity and you can find it as a “tapas” sort of dish all over the place now. It’s fun to eat, totally sharable, and a little on the messy side, but that just makes for tasty sticky fingers to lick, which is always fun on date night. ;)

But it’s not just a stirfry, it’s a wrap that you build as you eat. Think tacos, but with lettuce instead of tortilla shells, and stirfry instead of meat, beans and cheese… mmm… tacos…

Stirfry. That’s what I made (but I may need to make tacos some time soon)

The place on the island used a wicked hoisin sauce in theirs. Hoisin is like bbq sauce, but with Asian flavours. It has all the same elements: a base (usually tomato in the west, beans in the east), some salt (soy works), some sour (rice vinegar rather than cider or white), some sweet (brown sugar is what I usually see in bbq, but honey sometimes too), and then the seasonings.

Black bean paste is the typical base for hoisin, but peanut butter can work to. And since I was fresh out of bean paste, I opted for the pb. And before I start, I have to admit to a bit of a guilty pleasure.

So, when I was a kid, my mom refused to buy this one kind of peanut butter that I was sure that aaaalll my friend’s moms bought. And now that I’m a reasonable hand drawn facsimile of a grownup, I can buy what ever kind I want. So there. I know it’s going to make Taneasha have half a heart attack, and so I apologize in advance for my love of sugar sweetened, partially hydrogenated oil stabilizied, Kraft (*cringe*) peanut butter. I know the all natural stuff is better for me. I don’t care. I want the one with the bears on it.

Chicken Stirfry in Lettuce Wraps with Home Made Hoisin Sauce

What You Need:

Hoisin

•  4 tablespoons soy sauce
•  2 tablespoons peanut butter or black bean paste
•  1 tablespoon honey or molasses or brown sugar
•  2 teaspoons rice vinegar
• 1 clove garlic
•  2 teaspoons sesame oil
•  1 tsp Sriracha cock sauce

Stir Fry:

•  1 clove garlic
•  1 bit of minced ginger
•  1 tbsp peanut oil
•  a few drops sesame oil
•  1 chicken breast
•  1 large red bell
•  ½ small onion
•  a few mushrooms
•  ½ c cashews
•  1 head lettuce

 What You Gotta Do:

Dump all of the ingredients for the hoisin into a bowl much bigger than you need.You can leave out the hot sauce and add it a bit at a time once it’s mixed.

Mixing the hoisin doesn’t take long, but it really looks strange at first.

Don’t worry, keep whisking and it’ll all come together. See.

Add as much or as little (or none if you insist) of the hot sauce as you like. Dip a bit of lettuce in to taste as you add.

There, you just made hoisin sauce. Fancy schmancy. It really does work well on the bbq too.

Since the stirfry cooks really fast, it’s best to have everything chopped and ready to go before you start heating the pan. Start with the chicken, then grab a fresh cutting board.

I used a head of romaine for my wraps. I like the boat shape of them. The restaurant where I first had this dish served it with a quarter of a head of iceburg. Use which ever lettuce you prefer, but make sure it’s one that will hold up under the weight of a warm stirfry.

Rinse the lettuce and dry it well. I lay my leaves out on a teatowel and roll them up. Works just fine, and keeps them out of the way while I’m cooking.

 

Chop the onion, pepper and mushrooms into less than bite sized pieces, and mince the garlic and ginger.

Heat a dry pan over medium heat, add the cashews. Those are some wrinkly nuts.

Shake them around from time to time so they don’t burn, just get nice and toasty brown. Dump them out of the pan and back into the bowl.

Add some peanut oil and add a few drops of sesame oil to the hot pan. Peanut oil has a really high smoke point, and sesame oils is probably one of the lowest. Combining them tempers sesame’s tendency to burn before you can get anything else into the pan.

Sautee the chicken in the oil until the pink is all gone,

Then add the veggies.

Shove them around in the pan until the onions are just barely translucent and have lost their crunch.

 

Add about half of the hoisin sauce. The rest can be stored in the fridge for… probably as long as the shelf life of the ingredient with the shortest shelf life. I dunno, it’s never lasted more than a week or two in my fridge.

Mix in the sauce then add the cashews. Cashews will soften quite a bit in a saucy stirfry, so you only want them in there long enough to get them coated.

It looks good, but it seems to be missing something…

I haven’t been able to find cilantro or beansprouts to save my life lately, so I scrounged a half wilted green onion from the bottom of the veggie drawer.

That did it. Cilantro would have been much better, but this'll do.

Serve the stirfry in a bowl, with the lettuce leaves on the side.

Hold a leaf in your hand and spoon in a bit of the stirfry. Just like building a taco.

mmm…. Tacos….

What are you bringing to the teddy bear (peanut butter) picnic??

Easy Egg Drop Soup.

Ok, so I lied.  I didn’t really drop an egg this morning.  The truth is, I had some Harry Potter business to take care of (Squee!).  Yes, I admit it.  I am a total Harry Potter nerd.  Anyway, I thought, since I was actually planning to make egg drop soup, it was only fitting to say I’d dropped an egg.  So yes, it’s late, but here’s my recipe for easy egg drop soup.  The final post of food that can be made in a pathetic hotel room kitchen.  (Yay!!)

Here’s what you’ll need: 

4 cups of chicken stock
3 eggs
3 green onions

Yep, that’s it. 

This will be one of the quickest, simplest soups you’ll make, and because of that it’s important to use high quality ingredients.  Especially when it comes to the chicken stock.  If you don’t have homemade, buy something really good.  Wolfgang Puck is my personal favorite. 

So, let’s get started.  Pour your chicken stock into a sauce pan over high heat.  Dice your green onions and throw them right on top. 

While you’re waiting for that to come to a boil, crack your eggs.  I like to use a measuring cup because it’s easy to pour from. 

Add a tablespoon of water and whisk.  When your stock comes to a boil, slowly pour in the eggs while stirring. 

Keep pouring and stirring. 

It looks like too much egg, but it’s not.  Trust me.  Just keep drizzling and stirring. 

As soon as it’s all in, remove the pan from the heat, and continue to stir for about a minute.  You can serve it with crispy wontons or chowmein noodles, or just sprinkle on a few more green onions like I did and slurp away. 

    

Ok, now back to talking about how AWESOME the final Harry Potter movie was.  Have you seen it yet?