Saturday, August 6, 2011

stir fry; roast chicken; chicken salad

Ah, the season of abundance. I can tell already we're going to have trouble using up the box this week. Not that I'm complaining!

Wednesday I decided to use up the huge head of bok choi we got this week, so made a stir fry. Usually I just invent stir fries, but wanted something different so did hunt down a recipe. This is taken from Sarah Brown's World Vegetarian cookbook, though I did swap some of the ingredients and added leftover pork:

Sauce:
1 tsp corn starch
250 ml vegetable stock (I used beet water saved & frozen from cooking beets a night or two ago)
2 T soy sauce
2 T rice wine (I didn't have any so used regular wine)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
(I found this really salty, so also added about 3 T rice vinegar. Next time I would probably cut the salt.)

Stir fry:
3 tsp peanut oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1 inch ginger, grated
2 shallots, finely chopped (I used 1/2 an onion)
2 carrots, in matchsticks
1 head broccoli, in pieces
2 handfuls snap peas
2-3 cups bok choi, sliced

Dissolve the cornstarch in cold stock. Stir in rest of sauce ingredients. Heat the oil in a wok and cook garlic, ginger and onions. Add carrots, then broccoli, then peas, then bok choi, stir frying for a minute or two each. Add the sauce and cook until the sauce thickens, 5-10 minutes. Serve over noodles or rice.

Note: this used up about a third of the bok choi, even though the wok was full! Sigh.

Thursday Kenneth made a roasted chicken - meat share - so tasty. He follows Jamie Oliver's method (sometimes with modifications when we lack ingredients - such as oranges for lemons, as this time). It's the only chicken Ria will eat; she devoured more than I did, about three slices of breast and some leg. He served it with steamed fresh broccoli and carrots, and leftover rice.

Tonight Kenneth was planning spaghetti, but it was such a nice day we wanted to stay outside and didn't feel like cooking, so I made a big salad with leftover chicken, romaine lettuce, basil, snap peas, carrots, cucumber, and herbed dressing. Ria got a happy-face salad plate, and made a pretty good dent in it, though once again the chicken was the favourite. She has discovered the toddler joy of 'dipping' vegetables, so ate a fair bit of broccoli, carrot and cucumber, too.

Other ways we're using up the boxes:
-leftover pork or chicken sandwiches
-blueberry pancakes
-berries on cereal
-carrots, apples, cucumber and peas for snacks or sandwich sides
-berry popsicles (drop a few berries into the moulds, top off with diluted juice - I use white cranberry or grape, because it's less messy when it drips - and freeze)

Still in the fridge: bok choi, kale, cucumber, peas, basil, spinach x2, broccoli ... hum, we might be freezing some this week!

Happy sun ... for a few days at least.

Kathy

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