Day 299: Kitchen Sweet Kitchen

I love eating and I dislike doing dishes, but tonight, after a week on vacation, I was excited to be home where I'd have to cook and clean.

I decided to make up for my insanely unhealthy diet of the past week with a meal packed with lean protein, whole grains, and lots and lots of veggies.  That manifested itself in brown rice with shrimp and sauteed vegetables.

Ingredients (serves 2):

1/2 cup brown rice, prepared as suggested on the package

2 T olive oil

1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

24 large shrimp, peeled and deveined and cut into three pieces each

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1.5 inch piece of ginger, peeled and minced

1 shallot bulb, minced

White wine or chicken broth

1 medium zucchini, chopped

1 red bell pepper, chopped

1 cup sugar snap peas, halved crosswise

2 stalks of celery, chopped

Zest from 1 large lemon

Pre-heat olive oil & red pepper flakes in a saute pan over medium heat.  Add shrimp, season with S&P, and saute for a minute or two until pink.  Remove, set aside, and cover.

Reduce heat to medium-low and cook garlic, ginger, and shallot until soft.  Turn up the heat to medium-high, add a few splashes of white wine or chicken broth, add all veggies, and saute for 8-10 minutes until all veggies are crunchy tender.  If the pan dries out during cooking, add another splash of liquid.

When veggies are cooked to desired consistency, add shrimp and cooked rice to the pan and mix all ingredients together until it's all heated through.  Turn off the heat, mix in the lemon zest, and serve!

I adore vacation, but I also like getting back to "normal life", especially when it includes homemade, nutritious, tasty dinners like this one!

Day 245: Urban Adventure

Despite having lived in SF for over two years, we still live our lives like New Yorkers.  This means that we walk everywhere and rarely leave our neighborhood.  We actually chose to live where we did because it was conducive to that type of lifestyle - tons of restaurants and everything you need within just a few blocks from home.

Once in awhile we decide to venture out of our comfort zone and try someplace new.  It's our idea of an urban adventure.

Tonight was one of those nights.  We hailed a cab and went over to Hayes Valley to try out Indigo.  We had a good meal, the stars being the appetizers, but as usual I was left with the feeling that we could have eaten just as well if not better at one of the stellar restaurants in the 'hood.

We started with two appetizers, which we shared.  The tuna tartar with mango was delicious, especially when scooped up into a homemade waffled potato chip.  The grilled shrimp over risotto was amazing as well.

I continued with the fish theme as I moved into the next course, with salmon over soba noodles.  The soba salad with scallions and julienned carrots was the best part of this dish.  I adore the flavor and mild sweetness of soba and because they are made with buckwheat, I think they're more wholesome than a lot of other types of noodles.

I'm always glad when we leave the borders of our neighborhood but usually, it just makes me even gladder that I live in an area with such great and diverse food options.  Three cheers for Cow Hollow!

Day 195: What the...?

I had grand plans for cooking up some fish tonight, but when I got to the store, the butcher area had closed early.  I was so surprised and with no back-up plan, I left empty handed wondering, "What the...?"

By the time I got home I had gathered my thoughts and decided to cook one dish and order in the rest.  Over the weekend, I had purchased a bag of snowpeas at Trader Joe's.  I sauteed them with some other simple ingredients I had in the fridge and the outcome was yummy:

Ingredients:

1 lb snowpeas

1 T olive oil

1 heaping T of minced ginger

3 cloves of garlic, minced

2 T white wine

Juice of 1/2 a lemon

1 scallion, thinly sliced

Add oil to a large non-stick skillet and heat up on medium-low heat.  Once hot, add ginger and garlic and saute, stirring frequently for a couple of minutes.

Add snowpeas and wine and mix everything up.  Turn heat to medium-high and cook for about 10 minutes, mixing from time to time to ensure all peas get cooked and none of them burn.  

Once the liquid has evaporated and the peas are cooked to your liking, add lemon juice and stir.  Turn the heat off, add the scallion, toss, and serve.

I supplemented my snowpeas with a take-out order of prawns and mango from the awesome and amazing Country Sky around the corner.  

Turns out, it wasn't such a bad thing that the butcher called it a day early today.  Why cook when someone can cook for you?

Day 109: Tuna, Take 2

It may sounds odd, but I was craving soy sauce tonight so I found a recipe for ginger soy sauce and tweaked it a little.  The original recipe comes from a great book called "Brilliant Food Tips & Cooking Tricks", which has lots of the basics covered.  

Unfortunately, the original recipe was way too oily, but the addition of the juice from half a lemon really balanced it out:

Sauce:

In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, combine 2 tsp sesame oil, 1 T each of soy sauce and dry sherry (I used mirin in place of the sherry), 1 tsp each grated fresh ginger and honey, and a pinch of ground red pepper (cayenne).  Like I said, I added the juice of half a lemon - and two minced cloves of garlic, too.

I let the sauce simmer for about 10 minutes or so, and then drizzled it over the tuna, which I coated in sesame seeds prior to searing in hot olive oil.

If you've been reading this blog awhile, you know that I cook a lot of tuna at home.  Making a sauce is a great way to change it up a little bit.  If you have any favorite sauce recipes, please share!