![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Mother's Day Stirfry
Sometimes I think I should start a recipe blog titled 'cooking as the art of the possible'.
Like, for example, today's dinner.
Recipe:
Realize it's Mother's Day, you should probably actually cook Mom a real meal.
Refuse her suggestion of "hot dogs and beans" because you are an adult(-ish)! woman(-ish)! dammit!
Suggest her old Sweet & Sour Chicken recipe, because you don't cook steaks, you had pork yesterday, you had burgers for lunch, Mom thinks meals all need meat, and it's too hot for most of your richer standards or anything that involves baking.
Realize there is no canned fruit in the house, unless you count tomatoes or pumpkin or some single-serving 'superfood' fruit cocktail things that may or may not include chia seed that she bought because they were on clearance.
End up with this instead, based on what you found in the kitchen:
Ingredients:
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts (or at least that is what it said on the ziploc you found in the bottom of the freezer, you kind of suspect they are halves of giant monster mondo chicken breasts.))
petite broccoli florets (frozen, from a bag)
1 can mushrooms in water (because there is always a can of mushrooms in the house)
soy sauce (use old packets from takeout if necessary.)
HP Brown Sauce (because the 1960s church cookbook recipe you are basing this on calls for corn syrup, corn starch, vinegar, and ketchup, and that seems way too hard, and you don't have corn syrup and you used all the corn starch on slime, and those are all basically ingredients in brown sauce anyway, right? Except the corn syrup, but substituting molasses for corn syrup has never led to worse food. Don't ask why we have an unopened bottle of brown sauce when we clearly celebrate the wrong mother's day to be people who own brown sauce, it's a long story.)
cooking oil
rice (boil-in-bag brown rice, because Mom thinks that is how rice is supposed to taste and doesn't believe you when you say real rice takes exactly the same amount of time.)
1. Microwave chicken breasts until they are soft enough to cut.
2. Put enough oil to basically cover the bottom of the pan into med/large frying pan over medium heat.
3. "Rend chicken into gobbets", as your 14th century recipe book puts it.
4. Put chicken pieces in oil to stir-fry. Stir-fry until appears mostly no longer raw. Continue to stir-fry for rest of recipe.
5. Realize you should have started water boiling for rice, do that.
6. Microwave broccoli until it is mostly thawed-ish.
7. Dump broccoli in frying pan. Stir-fry.
8. Attempt to dump mushrooms (incl. water), realize you can't find a can opener.
9. Excavate can opener, dump undrained mushrooms in frying pan. Stir-fry.
10. Add soy sauce (several tablespoons?) and brown sauce (as much as will come out of the bottle, probably also several tablespoons?) Stir-fry.
11. Realize broccoli looks much less once it's cooked down. Say screw it and add more frozen broccoli straight from the bag. The rice water hasn't even boiled yet anyway. Stir-fry.
12. The rice water is *almost* boiled. Add rice bag to boiling rice water.
13. Stir-fry contents of pan.
14. Start thinking about if you want a side dish and look in the fridge. Remember there's some leftover steamed yellow squash. Add yellow squash to frying pan - it's going to have plenty of time to heat up anyway, the rice still hasn't boiled, and it was starting to look a little too solidly puke-brown. Stir-fry.
15. Stir-fry.
16. Stir-fry.
17. AUUUGH the rice water is boiling over!!! Turn down the rice!!!
18. Stir-fry.
19. Stir-fry.
20. Okay I think the rice is finally done! Plate stir-fry over rice in corel pasta bowls. Serve in front of M*A*S*H reruns.
Verdict: Chicken is slightly overcooked, broccoli is almost perfect though.
Mom claims to like it.
Would change the sauce ratio slightly in favor of soy over brown, it's a little more sour than expected, but it's still pretty good (if I was doing it with fruit instead of veg, would tilt it more toward brown sauce.)
Approve of a national cuisine based on "put some brown sauce in it", A++
I bet I could come up with one recipe a month along those lines for at least a couple years. As long as "different ways of serving peanut butter" counted.
Like, for example, today's dinner.
Recipe:
Realize it's Mother's Day, you should probably actually cook Mom a real meal.
Refuse her suggestion of "hot dogs and beans" because you are an adult(-ish)! woman(-ish)! dammit!
Suggest her old Sweet & Sour Chicken recipe, because you don't cook steaks, you had pork yesterday, you had burgers for lunch, Mom thinks meals all need meat, and it's too hot for most of your richer standards or anything that involves baking.
Realize there is no canned fruit in the house, unless you count tomatoes or pumpkin or some single-serving 'superfood' fruit cocktail things that may or may not include chia seed that she bought because they were on clearance.
End up with this instead, based on what you found in the kitchen:
Ingredients:
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts (or at least that is what it said on the ziploc you found in the bottom of the freezer, you kind of suspect they are halves of giant monster mondo chicken breasts.))
petite broccoli florets (frozen, from a bag)
1 can mushrooms in water (because there is always a can of mushrooms in the house)
soy sauce (use old packets from takeout if necessary.)
HP Brown Sauce (because the 1960s church cookbook recipe you are basing this on calls for corn syrup, corn starch, vinegar, and ketchup, and that seems way too hard, and you don't have corn syrup and you used all the corn starch on slime, and those are all basically ingredients in brown sauce anyway, right? Except the corn syrup, but substituting molasses for corn syrup has never led to worse food. Don't ask why we have an unopened bottle of brown sauce when we clearly celebrate the wrong mother's day to be people who own brown sauce, it's a long story.)
cooking oil
rice (boil-in-bag brown rice, because Mom thinks that is how rice is supposed to taste and doesn't believe you when you say real rice takes exactly the same amount of time.)
1. Microwave chicken breasts until they are soft enough to cut.
2. Put enough oil to basically cover the bottom of the pan into med/large frying pan over medium heat.
3. "Rend chicken into gobbets", as your 14th century recipe book puts it.
4. Put chicken pieces in oil to stir-fry. Stir-fry until appears mostly no longer raw. Continue to stir-fry for rest of recipe.
5. Realize you should have started water boiling for rice, do that.
6. Microwave broccoli until it is mostly thawed-ish.
7. Dump broccoli in frying pan. Stir-fry.
8. Attempt to dump mushrooms (incl. water), realize you can't find a can opener.
9. Excavate can opener, dump undrained mushrooms in frying pan. Stir-fry.
10. Add soy sauce (several tablespoons?) and brown sauce (as much as will come out of the bottle, probably also several tablespoons?) Stir-fry.
11. Realize broccoli looks much less once it's cooked down. Say screw it and add more frozen broccoli straight from the bag. The rice water hasn't even boiled yet anyway. Stir-fry.
12. The rice water is *almost* boiled. Add rice bag to boiling rice water.
13. Stir-fry contents of pan.
14. Start thinking about if you want a side dish and look in the fridge. Remember there's some leftover steamed yellow squash. Add yellow squash to frying pan - it's going to have plenty of time to heat up anyway, the rice still hasn't boiled, and it was starting to look a little too solidly puke-brown. Stir-fry.
15. Stir-fry.
16. Stir-fry.
17. AUUUGH the rice water is boiling over!!! Turn down the rice!!!
18. Stir-fry.
19. Stir-fry.
20. Okay I think the rice is finally done! Plate stir-fry over rice in corel pasta bowls. Serve in front of M*A*S*H reruns.
Verdict: Chicken is slightly overcooked, broccoli is almost perfect though.
Mom claims to like it.
Would change the sauce ratio slightly in favor of soy over brown, it's a little more sour than expected, but it's still pretty good (if I was doing it with fruit instead of veg, would tilt it more toward brown sauce.)
Approve of a national cuisine based on "put some brown sauce in it", A++
I bet I could come up with one recipe a month along those lines for at least a couple years. As long as "different ways of serving peanut butter" counted.