Kung Pao Chicken
Many years ago the mister and I would often go to PF Chang’s and get Kung Pao chicken. It used to be a favorite, but over the years PFC’s food has seemed to go downhill and we haven’t been back in many years. One night I decided to come up with a version of Kung Pao Chicken that we both liked and that was fairly simple to throw together on a weeknight. I’m not claiming this is “authentic” or even a copy of PF Chang’s … I made this multiple times before I settled on this recipe – and it’s really tasty and easy to make. Once the veggies are your desired tenderness add garlic and saute a few minutes, be careful not to burn the garlic. Add chile pepper pods and give a good stir. Add the cooked chicken to the pan and give it a good stir to combine everything. Add in the sauce and stir well. The sauce will thicken a bit as it cooks. But if you want it thicker feel free to mix 1 Tbs of reserved sauce with 2 tsp cornstarch and drizzle over the pan and stir to combine. Cook until desired thickness. Add in a good handful (about½ C) green onions and however many toasted peanuts you desire and stir. This Kung Pao Chicken is one of the easiest recipes to whip up on a weeknight for a delicious and easy dinner. The chicken is beautifully velvety and tender with tender veggies and the sauce is spicy and flavorful. The sauce can be spicy hot or you can easily tame it down by adjusting the chiles. Marinating the chicken makes this chicken amazing and velvety smooth and so so so tender! Don’t skip the marinade with the cornstarch and Mirin/Saoxing wine. Something magical happens when you marinate meat this way. What you need to make this wonderful chicken: Chicken breast or thighs Dark + light Soy Sauces Chicken broth Sesame oil + Neutral cooking oil Cornstarch Chile oil Black pepper + Kosher salt Ginger Garlic Mirin or Saoxing wine Red bell pepper White + Green onions Peanuts Carrots (optional) Tien Tsin dried chiles or red chile pepper flakes Start by combining your sauce ingredients in a bowl (~2 cup size) and set aside. Combine the chicken, cornstarch, and Mirin – or – Saoxing wine, salt and pepper in a bowl,stir to combine. Pop in the fridge and marinate for a min 30 minutes. For a little more flavor feel free to add a splash of dark soy to the marinade. (This is optional.) In a large wok or pan, toast the peanuts until desired toastiness. Set aside. Add 2 tablespoons cooking oil to a hot wok/pan and heat a few moments, then add the chicken, being careful to not add the liquid from it to the pan. Cook the chicken until done and lightly browned. You may need to do it in batches, depending on the size of your pan. Remove from the pan and set aside in a clean bowl. Add a few teaspoons of cooking oil to the hot wok/pan, add bell peppers and onions and stir fry until desired tenderness. *Optional – cook the carrots with the peppers and onions, if desired. Once the veggies are your desired tenderness add garlic and saute a few minutes, be careful not to burn the garlic. Add chile pepper pods and give a good stir. Add the cooked chicken to the pan and give it a good stir to combine everything. Add in the sauce and stir well. The sauce will thicken a bit as it cooks. But if you want it thicker feel free to mix 1 Tbs of reserved sauce with 2 tsp cornstarch and drizzle over the pan and stir to combine. Cook until desired thickness. Add in a good handful (about½ C) green onions and however many toasted peanuts you desire and stir. Garnish with more chopped green onions and peanuts. Serve over steamed rice. VARIATIONS Peppers, onions, and peanuts are pretty traditional in Kung Pao chicken, but you can add carrots or other veggies to beef up the dish. I’ve also used cashews because they are a favorite of ours and we almost always have them on hand. Carrots – I made a version of this with carrots… It was absolutely delicious! This version was also made with red chile pepper flakes for the heat. Cashews – Here is a version with cashews because that’s what I had on hand that night. This Kung Pao Chicken is one of the easiest recipes to whip up on a weeknight for a delicious and easy dinner. The chicken is beautifully velvety and tender with tender veggies and the sauce is spicy and flavorful.
Top Chopped Cook: A Date Night Idea
Each month we do a date night with 2 other couples. We take turns going to each couple’s home for dinner, games, etc. Our goal was to get out and do something with friends on date night. It’s been a lot of fun! This month it was Kelly & Kaisa’s turn to host and they chose to make dinner a game in itself. They sent out a note to each of us with our assignments. Greetings Home Cooks: You are all hereby invited to an evening of challenge, intrigue, and culinary crafting at the Norton’s on Saturday, February 5th, at 5pm. As it is couple’s night, each couple will be responsible for cooking–yes, cooking–at our house, ONE dish, to be chosen at random: an appetizer, a main course, or a dessert. There will be a time limit for each course, followed by tasting (eating), and discussion (laughing or crying). The rules are pretty simple. You can do whatever you want, but for each course there will be a basket of THREE mystery ingredients drawn at random. Although no one is a trained chef, you still must use all three ingredients in your dish. You can use a little bit, you can use a lot. In addition to the mystery ingredients, you will have access to whatever is in our pantry, spice rack, refrigerator and freezer. So, you won’t only get those three ingredients to work with. We also have a library of cookbooks and recipes to peruse prior to cooking. WHAT TO BRING: THREE ingredients of your choosing **Use your own discretion at how much of each ingredient you bring, keeping in mind that the combined ingredients with the items from our pantry and fridge need to feed 6 people. For example, one apple alone won’t feed 6, but one apple used as a garnish for pork chops can. WE WILL PROVIDE THE MEAT, SO YOU DO NOT NEED TO CHOOSE A MEAT AS ONE OF YOUR INGREDIENTS. To keep the ingredients somewhat of a MYSTERY, put them in a dark or sealed bag, write down each of your three ingredients on a separate slip of paper, and throw the slips of paper in the “HAT” upon arrival, LOL. Come with your fantastic ideas, your cooking skills, and special kitchen implements if you so desire. BON APPETIT Well, Brent and I put our thinking hats on an came up with a few fun mystery ingredients to bring. We decided that we didn’t want to go too “far out” with ingredients.. just things that could be pretty versatile. The mystery ingredients that we contributed were: Pretzels, Pineapple, and Puff Pastry To start the night we each drew a “course” and then ingredients (written on strips of paper) from a paper sack. We all laughed when we saw that Kaisa and Kelly also contributed pineapple and pretzels. Here’s what I drew: Ay yi yi… and Oh my. So I put on my thinking cap and thought Brent and Kelly went to work on creating their own culinary masterpieces. (They both drew appetizers.) Here’s Brent trying to figure out what to do with Puff Pastry… We were each given a few minutes to flip through cookbooks to try to figure out what to do. And then he and Kelly took over the kitchen and went to town. Kaisa and I sat back and watched them figuring it all out. It was great! Hrmmm… I wonder what this could be? Could it be my FAVORITE appetizer of all time?? Hrmmmm….. I do have to say that the boys did an amazing job on their appetizers. Here are the final results, all neatly plated (and bowl’d)… Kelly’s appetizer: Vidalia Coleslaw with a twist Secret ingredients: Pretzels & Tomatoes This was soooo yummy!! He used a vidalia onion dressing as the coleslaw dressing and used the pretzels as a garnish and drizzled some rasberry chipotle dressing over them. I thought I would hate the raspberry chipotle sauce because I’m not a fan of raspberries but it was so good! It added a nice sweet and spicy bite to it… I even added a little more! Brent’s appetizer: Puff Pastry Mozzarella Basil Rolls & Tomato Bruschetta Secret ingredients: Puff Pastry and a Baguette Absolutely delicious! Tomato Bruschetta is my all time most favorite appetizer in the whole world. There are some nights we make it and eat it for dinner… yah, just tomato bruschetta… with a little asiago cheese sprinkled on it. DIVINE. The Puff Pastry Mozzarella Basil Rolls were equally delicious. And then it was my turn. Thankfully I was allowed a sous-chef since I had the main course. I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to make with my THREE mystery ingredients. Yes, I got THREE because I drew last and there was an extra one in there. Doh! I finally knew what I wanted to make and peeked in the cookbook but the recipe I wanted for my sauce was not going to work… we didn’t have mirin or sake so I decided to wing it. While my sous-chef cleaned up and fileted some chicken breasts I set to work making my sauce. … and some garnish…. It was a lot of fun whipping this up without a real recipe and having to use my mystery ingredients. Here’s my entree all neatly plated. Erin’s main dish: Teriyaki Island Chicken Secret ingredients: Pretzels, Pineapple and Coconut I don’t want to toot my own horn too much, but man, this turned out REALLY GOOD. The secret is in the sauce – for real. I created a teriyaki sauce with dark brown sugar, low sodium soy sauce, minced garlic and thickened it with a cornstarch-water mixture. The sauce was a little too thick for my liking so I thinned it with some pineapple juice… oh man.. that made it. (Next time I will try it with a little lime juice, too!) The chicken filets are breaded in crushed pretzels, cornstarch and plain breadcrumbs. The coconut
Paninis – PuertoCuban style! (or Almosta Cubans)… An International Culinary Adventure… or something…
So I may be buried under piles of paper and jewelry supplies but occasionally I pull myself out of the mess and make dinner for the Brent-man and myself. My friend, Jamie, has been sharing recipes and pictures of her new “skinny” meals and one of them caught my eye and whet my appetite 🙂 It’s called “Cuban Sandwich Quesadilla” and is made with Pernil, a slow cooked pork, pickles, ham, swiss cheese and mustard. Now, I’m not a fan of mustard but I like everything else on the sammie so I figured we’d try it out. Here’s what you need for a traditional Cuban: Pernil (skinny variety from skinnytaste.com) Some type of bread (we used Naan) Dill Pickles Mustard Deli sliced ham Swiss cheese (or other easy melting white cheese) On Saturday Brent and I spent the afternoon shopping up in the “big city” and hit WinCo and Sunflower Market… our two new fave stores. We picked up some yummy organic veggies at Sunflower and made our own peanut butter at WinCo. We were like small children at the peanut butter station. LOL! It’s actually very cool to watch and it tastes DIVINE.. nothing but peanuts… no additives or extra “fluff”. So after we unloaded all our goodies we pulled out the pork roasts (they were small 1 lb roasts) and threw a couple in a glass bowl, mixed up the marinade and let it sit over night. We turned it a few times that evening and then into the crock pot it went Sunday morning. Our house smelled absolutely DIVINE and thankfully since the roasts were smaller we didn’t have to let it cook the full 8 hours. I think we made it 6 before our stomachs demanded to be fed. LOL! We pulled the pork out, barely let it cool, and shredded it with forks. We probably could have just used the tongs because that pork just fell apart if you looked at it hard. I took a little “culinary license” when creating our sandwiches… 1) we were out of mustard and 2) I forgot to buy ham, but that’s ok with me. On my sammie I subbed provolone cheese for the swiss because I don’t handle swiss cheese very well. SO much for authentic, eh? So these are “almosta Cubans”…. they were delicioso anyway! I am all about KEEPING IT REAL here on my blog. You may see fru fru art, but the rest of it is all me, all real… the good, the bad, the ugly, and an occasional panini. The bread that we used is called Naan. It’s an Indian flat bread and I am sure it can’t be that difficult to make… I’ve been reading about it today and we’re going to try it out sometime in the near future. Yeah, so I think I have REALLY messed this recipe up.. they’re PeurtoIndaCuban Paninis now… and Panini is an Italian word.. well heck.. it’s an international culinary adventure. And we made them again tonight with Dijon mustard… great, now the French are involved… what has this kitchen come to? But alas, we continue… So I don’t have a traditional “panini maker” but I was able to create the same effect with a few everyday kitchen gadgets that are common in most kitchens. Brent has this FABULOUS cast iron griddle that can be used across two burners on our gas stove, so I flipped it over to the “grill” side of the griddle and laid out the sammies, then I folded them over and let them heat up. To “press” the sammies and get the “panini effect” I used a metal cookie sheet and Brent’s new BSA 100 anniversary cast iron skillet (Lodge). See.. Keeping it REAL… always open for an opportunity for creative cooking 😛 Look at those yummy little treats getting all nice and squooshed and heated through! LOVE IT! LOVE IT! NOM, Nom, nom, nom…. noooomm… So we let them sqooosh there for a while.. I didn’t track the time… I flipped them over once and grilled the other side . When they looked all nice and toasty and crunchy on the second side I slid them off onto a plate and sliced each one in half. I served them up with grapes and marinated cucumbers and onions. Delicioso! Now go out and make your family something adventurous! Inky Smiles! PS.. we made them again tonight… so good.