Asian-Style Venison and Vegetables

Chinese New Year is Sunday, February 10. Here is a quick Asian-style skillet (or wok) meal for the occasion. Served over rice or noodles, this could be a complete meal.

And, of course, use any meat that you like.  Beef, pork, chicken or even shrimp would all work just fine in this recipe.

Asian-Style Venison and Vegetables

1 pound venison or beef steaks, sliced across grain as for fajitas (or use chicken, pork, etc.)
4 cups vegetables, cut into bite-sized chunks (I used zucchini, onion, red and yellow bell peppers, celery and Brussels sprouts)
1 teaspoon cornstarch

Marinade:

1/2 cup soy sauce (low-sodium might be preferred)
1/3 cup orange marmalade
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
1-2 teaspoons Srirachi sauce (optional - I used 1 teaspoon with the option of adding more at the table)

Combine all marinade ingredients in a small bowl until smooth.

Place meat in one bowl (or food-safe plastic zipper bag), and vegetables in a separate bowl or bag.  Pour half of marinade over meat, half over the veggies.  Stir each, cover (or zip shut) and chill for at least 30 minutes and up to 2 hours.  Stir or shake contents of each container occasionally.

Drain meat, reserving marinade. 

Heat peanut oil over medium high heat in a large skillet or wok.  Add meat to pan and stir-fry until no longer pink and just barely cooked through.  Remove from skillet and set aside in a covered dish to keep it warm.

Drain vegetables, reserving marinade.

In same skillet, over medium-high heat, add a small amount of additional oil if needed, then stir-fry vegetables until tender-crisp.  Return meat to pan.

Place 1 teaspoon cornstarch in a glass measuring cup.  Gradually whisk in up to 1 cup of reserved marinade.  If needed, add water to make 1 cup.  Pour mixture into skillet with vegetables and meat, stirring constantly until sauce begins to thicken just slightly.

Serve immediately over hot cooked noodles, rice or other grain (quinoa pictured).

Makes 4 servings.

Homemade Fortune Cookies

Chinese New Year is Sunday, February 10.  This week will feature three Asian-style recipes you can make this weekend.

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Admit it.  The fortune cookies you get at the end of your Chinese restaurant meal aren't all that tasty.  If you're lucky, they taste like vanilla cardboard.  And if you're not so lucky, well, they're just...bad.  The good news is that they aren't very hard to make at home.  It's just a quick batter, baked and wrapped around hand-written fortunes or silly sayings.

Fortune cookies, while not complicated, can be just a little tricky to make.  Here are a few tips:

• I found that using parchment paper for these works better than a silicone mat, a greased pan or a pan lined with foil. 
• Tilting the pan in a circular motion seems to work better than trying to spread the batter with the back of a spoon.
• Wearing cotton or silicone gloves makes it easier to handle and shape the hot cookies. 
• Setting the folded cookies in the cups of a muffin tin will help them to hold their shape until the cool and become firm. 
• You may want to make two batches, because you'll finally get the hang of shaping these by the end of the first batch.

Begin by writing fortunes on 3-1/2 inch by  x 1/2 inch strips of paper, then follow the recipe.


Homemade Fortune Cookies

2 large egg whites
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
3 tablespoons oil of choice (something with neutral flavor)
1/2 cup flour (probably best to use white flour in these)
1-1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3 teaspoons water

Heat oven to 300°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, lightly beat the egg white, vanilla and almond extracts, and oil until frothy, but not stiff.

In a separate boil the flour, cornstarch, salt and sugar. Stir the water into the flour mixture.

Add the flour and water mixture into the egg white mixture and stir until you have a smooth batter. The batter should not be runny, but should pour or drop easily off a wooden spoon.

Place level tablespoons of batter onto the lined cookie sheet, spacing them at least 3 inches apart. Gently tilt the baking sheet in a circular motion so that each tablespoon of batter forms a 4-inch circle.

Bake until the outer edges of each cookie turns golden brown and they are easy to remove from the baking sheet with a spatula (14 - 15 minutes).  

Working quickly, remove the cookie with a spatula and flip it over in your hand*. Place a fortune in the middle of a cookie. To form the fortune cookie, fold the cookie in half, then gently pull the edges downward over the rim of a glass, wooden spoon or the edge of a muffin tin. Place the finished cookie in the cup of the muffin tin until cooled.

Continue with the rest of the cookies and batter.

Makes 9-12 fortune cookies.

* Flipping and placing the fortune on the side that was touching the pan results in a better looking cookie, IMO.

Pleasant Weekend and Our First "International Meal"

We had a very pleasant weekend and enjoyed the last couple of days of really nice weather.  Rain is in the forecast for most of this week, with daytime temps back into the 60s.  That's still very nice for this time of year in these parts, but after last week, it will seem a just a little on the cool side.

Saturday saw us dropping Kat off at her mom's house for the weekend, then heading to the City Market.  It's early in the year for many of the local farmers to be there, but we thought that we might find one or two of them set up with some bedding plants for sale.  That we did, along with a couple of vendors selling homemade breads and tropical plants, but we didn't find anything we wanted.  We also checked out the "permanent vendors", which are mostly produce importers and ethnic grocers.  Didn't find anything we wanted there, either. 

These pictures aren't from this weekend, but from all the way back in July of 2007.  The market looks about the same, but Kat looks very different.  She was just 4 years old here.

We did buy a couple of items at one of the Asian markets in the same general area, then we were off to take a look at all the weird stuff at Weird Stuff. Weird Stuff is a junk store/antique shop of sorts that specializes in the odd-ball and off the wall.  Saturday the proprietor was dressed in a clown suit and had his fur-covered Cadillac pulled up out front.  That's not always the case, so we felt we'd been treated.  Anyway, we were there to look at a guitar they'd listed on their website.  As it turned out, it wasn't what Shane thought it was, so he didn't buy it.  He needs another stringed instrument like he needs a hole in his head.

We stopped for lunch at a dive called LC's Barbecue.  It's near our sports stadiums and has been in business, like, forever...but I'd never tried it.  (There are so many barbecue joints in KC that it's probably impossible to try them all.)  In my opinion, it was just ok.  The meat was smoked well, but didn't have a lot flavor.  The portions were big, I'll say that for them.  But the place really is a dive.  They had a recent food inspection certificate on display, but I couldn't help but wonder how they earned it...LOL.  Lucky for them, that kind of thing doesn't bother us much and we stuffed ourselves silly on pig and french fries.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol pulled into LC's right behind us, but not because we did anything wrong.  The Troopers just wanted some sandwiches.  Hauling this around is hungry work, I guess.  They'd had the 1959 Dodge cruiser in town for the St. Patrick's Day Parade.

The rest of the day was less eventful for us.  No more Troopers, clowns or fur-covered cars to be seen, so we came home and had a very nice supper of grilled salmon, grilled asparagus and pasta salad.  Some of the asparagus actually came from our garden!

Yesterday was fairly calm.  Shane worked in the back yard, building more raised beds, moving more topsoil from the big pile out front, and generally doing whatever needed to be done before the rain moves in.  Here's a quick pic of what's going on outside.  I can't get it all in one shot, but I plan on posting more garden pictures later in the week.

While Shane gardened, I hung a couple loads of laundry and did some cooking.  As I mentioned in my last post, Kat suggested that we cook an international meal every now and then, choosing a different country's food each time.  Since she was gone on Saturday, we decided to have our Irish/St. Pat's meal yesterday.

I used my friend Alea's recipe for corned beef, potatoes and cabbage cooked in the pressure cooker.  It turned out great, and was an excellent reminder that I should use my pressure cooker more often.  You can find her recipe HERE.  Trust me, you'll want to bookmark it and try it next March.  Or maybe even this week, if your local store puts their excess corned beef on sale. 

When Kat got home, we enjoyed our meal and played a couple of games afterward.  I don't think she was very pleased about spring break being over, or that she had to go to bed on time so she could get up early for school today.

So, tell me...how was your weekend?  Did any of you celebrate St. Pat's Day in a big way, or did you keep it low-key like we did (I didn't even drink a beer this weekend).  And what's in store for your week ahead.  Me?  I'm off to pay some bills this morning, but beyond that, I have no clue!