Once again, it's been awhile since I posted. I'm not very good at keeping up on this whole blogging thing.
But alas, there was a success in the kitchen today, and I decided I better blog about it before I go and forget what it was that I did that turned out so tasty!
I've been following a budget lately.... the master plan... save money, pay off bills, buy some freedom from the daily grind. But that's another topic for another blog perhaps. The short of it is that I had boneless pork loin steak in the freezer, and have been hankering for a stir fry. I tried looking up some recipes online, but every recipe called for a bunch of ingredients that I didn't have. Given said budget, I have exactly $0.00 spending dollars for the next few days. So going to the store for the extra ingredients just wasn't happening.
So I decided to improvise. Now this is a decision that more often than not leads to tragedy in my kitchen. But just maybe, I am getting better at cooking.
What I did:
I sliced the pork loin into strips (cutting against the grain).
Then I put them into a ziploc plastic bag, and poured in a few tablespoons of soy sauce.
Next I used a microplane to grate some fresh ginger into the bag.
I stirred it all around so that the soy sauce and ginger evenly covered the meat,
and I let the whole thing marinate for the afternoon (about 4 hours by the time I was ready to cook dinner).
I took the meat out of the refrigerator and heated some corn oil in my wok.
Once the oil was warm I cooked the meat over medium heat until it was cooked through.
Next I took the meat out of the pan, and set it aside, leaving the juices in the pan.
I poured a package of frozen stir fry veggies into the pan and put the head to high.
I stir fried the veggetable until they were soft (about 5 minutes),
Then I put the meat back into the pan.
I served the stir fry with white rice, and edamame which I seasoned with some roast red pepper, kosher salt, and chilli powder.
The meal was a hit! I'll definitely be doing this again. It was a definite bonus that it was really inexpensive to make, and didn't take much time to pull together at all (well provided I remember to do the marinade ahead of time).
My boyfriend even told me it was good enough to make for the Sunday dinner I've started having with a small group of friends, two of whom are excellent cooks who I get a little intimidated cooking for. I think I'll practice it a few times more before I serve it to company, just to make sure I can make it consistently good, but for now, I think this one's a winner! Kitchen Success!!!
