Meredith's Meatball Phở

Once upon a time in 1984, when my family moved to the United States, I was a little girl, and our neighbors became good friends with my parents. They had a daughter that was the same age as me, and we became fast friends. We roller skated in her garage, to the Pointer Sisters, Wham! and Prince, and swam in the lake, and caught sunfish and left them to "dry" on the pontoon, where we forgot them for several days, and then decided to toss them back in the lake. Who knew that sun-dried sunfish were buoyant? They floated to shore and bobbed in the waves.

As a child of the 80s, it's also worth noting, that my dear friend got me my very own  Cabbage Patch doll for my birthday. And for one glorious week in the summer, our two families rented a full sized motor home and vacationed together all over Minnesota and Wisconsin, hitting up all the mini golf courses, RV parks, water theme parks, and camp sites. These are those lingering sweet memories of my youth.  Anyway, we moved many times, time passed, and we did -- as kids did in those days -- stay in touch via regular letter writing. Thanks to modern times, internet, and social media, we are now still able to exchange photos and updates with far more frequency than we did the last few years.  And since I'm a newbie mom with little to no time to blog about recipes, I asked her to share a guest post with me that she had written about on Facebook.

She had me at "Phở" ... This Vietnamese savory soup is easily one of my favorites! (Note: I may add more photos when I get a chance to make this myself. )

So here it is:

Meredith's Meatball Phở

1 lb. Ground pork

1 cup water chestnuts, small dice; divided.

1/2 cup soy sauce; divided

1/4 cup fish sauce

1 tsp. Fresh ginger puree; divided

1 tsp. Fresh garlic puree; divided

1Tbsp. Dark sesame oil

2 quarts chicken stock

1 package rice noodles (fresh preferred)

1 cup asparagus chopped into 1" pieces

1 cup oyster mushrooms, cleaned and chopped into bite-size pieces

1 head bok choy, sliced

1 cup snow peas, halved

Garnish:

1 bunch green onions, chopped; divided

1 bunch pea shoots (or bean sprouts)

Fresh cilantro, chopped

Sriracha

Fresh lime (optional)

For meatballs:

Place ground pork, half of the pureed ginger, garlic, water chestnuts and soy sauce in a bowl. Mix well with your hands, and roll into approximately one and a half inch meatballs. (Should make about 24). Place on baking sheet and bake in 350° oven for 20-25 minutes.

For soup:

In a large pot on medium low heat,  combine stock, remaining ginger, garlic and soy sauce. Add fish sauce and bring to a simmer. Add in snow peas and asparagus and simmer for 5 minutes. Add mushrooms, bok choy, some green onions and noodles. Cook until noodles are soft.

When ready to serve, add meatballs and garnish as you like.

This is ALWAYS a hit in our house no matter what fresh ingredients I use!

 

 

      

Stir Fried pork with eggplant, peppers and shiitake and noodles

I made this twice in a month, because it was quite good. So I figured I'd share it with my faithful 15 readers, because that's what I do-- I'm so nice, right?  And there is a decidedly Asian slant to so many of my recipes when I go through them, but what can I say? Living on the West Coast has a pretty predominant Asian-cuisine influence on a person.  I assure you, though, I also had Swedish meatballs with red potatoes and lingon-berries, just a few days later.  It was just like a trip to the cafeteria at IKEA, only homemade.

So since I didn't blog this immediately, and only took photos the second time, I had to scribble down notes from memory, and it turned out roughly the same both times.  I guess that's the thing about most recipes-- they don't always turn out identical, but you're going for a basic effect and that's usually good enough.  It's "Off The Cuff Cooking" after all.

INGREDIENTS:

Main ingredients:

1/2 package of Stir Fry style Rice Noodles -- soak in hot water according to package directions
1/2 cup dried shiitake mushrooms -- soak in the same water as the rice noodles, at the same time
3/4 - 1 pound thinly sliced pork (I had 4 pork cutlets that I cut into strips)
1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
1/2 onion, (red or white) thinly sliced
2 small eggplant (or one medium sized one) unpeeled, and cut into 1/4" thick "half moons"

Marinade for meat:

2 tbsp sesame oil
2 tbsp coconut oil
1 whole lime (half of it for the marinade and half of it cut into wedges for garnish)
2 tbsp Thai fish sauce
1 tbsp Sriracha Sauce
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 clove minced garlic

DIRECTIONS: 

First, cut up the eggplant about half an hour ahead of time, and soak it in a bowl of salty water. 

Secondly, whisk together the marinade in a small bowl.

Cut the pork into strips.  Let the meat marinade at room temperature in the sauce while you prepare other ingredients.  Reserve a small amount of marinade to drizzle over the finished dish. 

Then, start soaking your rice noodles and shiitake in a pot, according to package directions.  Some instructions vary, so definitely follow those, and take the timing into account.

Prepare your other vegetables, and when the eggplant has soaked in salt water for a while, preheat a wok or skillet at medium heat, and put in 1 tbsp each of the coconut and sesame oil, and reserve the rest for frying the meat.   

Place the eggplant half-moons evenly in your skillet and fry them on each side until they're tender, and somewhat browned.  Don't crowd them, and set the finished ones aside in a bowl or on a plate, to add to the finished stir fry later on.  Cook the eggplant in batches until all done.

Use the same skillet and turn up the heat to medium high now, and add the rest of the oil.  Stir fry the meat in small batches until browned and cooked through, about 2-3 minutes.  Set aside the cooked meat in the same bowl as the eggplant. 

Now stir fry the onion, and bell pepper in the skillet few minutes until they're tender and browned.  Add in the rice noodles, and shiitake, along with a few table spoons of water to deglaze the skillet.  This adds a nice savory flavor to the noodles. 

 Add in all the meat, and eggplant, and pour over any marinade that's still left over, and stir rapidly to prevent sticking.  When everything is reheated through, remove the skillet from the burner, and serve up a piping hot and tasty noodle dish.

Add more lime juice and sriracha if desired.

Pork Schnitzel with sauteed mushrooms and egg noodles

My husband and I recently celebrated our anniversary by going up to the quaint Bavarian-themed tourist town of Leavenworth, located in the Cascade mountains in Washington State.  Clearly, with the Alpine menu options that are prevalent, we had to do at least one “authentic German” meal.  So we had schnitzel, with red cabbage sauerkraut, and egg noodles with mushrooms. Now back in the day-to-day of normal life, I thought we would try to recreate that meal (all but the red cabbage sauerkraut which I didn't have...) to take a bit of Bavaria back home to us. 

Mandarin Ginger Glazed Mahi Mahi

I almost always keep a bag of mahi mahi filets in the freezer, because, well, you can't get fresh Mahi Mahi unless you live in Hawaii, I'm pretty sure.  And I do really like it.  Since I didn't feel like going out to grill this, I made a pan-fried dish, with an Asian-inspired truly off-the-cuff marinade.

Pork Stir Fry

I just threw this together last night.  I can’t say anything for its authenticity (as you have discovered to be the theme of my blog, being Off The Cuff) but it was pretty tasty, so I thought I’d share the gist of it.

Pad Thai

I absolutely love Thai food, but I have really thus far only learned a few recipes. My mainstay is Pad Thai, which is delicious, and I've found that I've got a decent grasp of making my own sauce for the noodles, which is really half the battle of making a good Pad Thai.

I also incorporate bell peppers (because I love them and buy a bag of six of them every week at CostCo, and you can put them in Mexican Food, Italian Food, Asian food... you name it).

This recipe is sort of an amalgam of the directions on the back of the noodle-package, as well as some various pad-thai sauce recipes that I've fused together the last couple of years.

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 package Thai rice noodles -- prepare according to directions and set aside
1 lb of chicken meat, cubed** (See Short-Cut below)
2 eggs
1 red bell pepper, sliced thinly into strips
6-8 green onions, trim ends and tops off about half way, and slice lengthwise)
1 bag of fresh Asian bean sprouts (or 1 can, if fresh can't be found)
1-2 limes, washed & wedged
1/2 cup crushed peanuts
1 cup fresh chopped cilantro (rinse & drip-dry first)

SAUCE INGREDIENTS:

4 tbsp Fish Sauce
1 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp paprika
1-2 tbsp lime juice
2 cloves crushed garlic
1/4- 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper (more if you like super spicy!)

Mix sauce ingredients together in a small bowl, and set aside until last minute.

DIRECTIONS:

Heat a wok (or large, deep skillet) to medium high, and add 1 tbsp of sesame oil. When oil is hot, crack 2 raw eggs into it and IMMEDIATELY stir-fry the egg. It will get an interesting, bubbly texture from being fried in oil. Scoop it out and set it aside in a small bowl for now.

Add cubed chicken into wok, (or chicken tenders which can be cut up once cooked) and stir fry until nearly cooked through.

Add all ingredients in this order: Bell peppers and green onions, (stir fry for 3-5 minutes until softened), the noodles, (stir fry 1-2 minutes to heat up the cold noodles.) Then add bean sprouts, the fried eggs, distribute sauce evenly by drizzling it over the wok as you keep turning the ingredients, and lastly top the whole thing with cilantro and stir it in. Top with crushed peanuts, lime wedges and serve it up piping hot.

(**My favorite short-cut is to just saute the "chicken tenders" and then use tongs and scissors to cut them into bite size pieces while they're still hot & cooked... less messy that way, since you're not handling raw poultry. )