Beef Stirfry with(out) Gai Larn (Chinese Broccoli) - 2 stars

and here is meal #3 from the week of hellishly time consuming meals. this was supposed to take less than a half hour, and ended up being over an hour!

the dish is supposed to be made with fresh rice noodles and gai larn (chinese broccoli). there were many problems with making this dish:

1. i had purchased the fresh rice noodles a couple days before i made this, thinking they'd be just fine... oh no. i soaked them in hot water to try to separate them - they just dissolved into mush. they weren't close to the expiration date on the package, but they were far from fresh anyway. gross! so i cooked up some dry rice noodles that i had in the cupboard.

2. i had broccoli rabe and regular broccoli crowns - no gai larn. here's a little broccoli education for you:




on the top left is regular broccoli, top right is broccoli rabe, and on the bottom is gai larn. when i was buying the ingredients for this, my friend amy accidentally grabbed regular broccoli for me. i didn't realize it til i was home - and the store that i went to later in the week only had broccoli rabe. i purchased it, thinking it'd be close enough to chinese broccoli... only while i was chopping it up to add it to the dish did i remember that i've cooked broccoli rabe before, and i do not like it. in my opinion, it's really, really bitter and tough, and the amount of work that's required to make it palatable is not worth it.

in the end, i tossed the broccoli rabe, just used the regular broccoli, and it was fine. however... the last problem...

3. the dish called for a substantial amount (1/2 cup) of kecap manis, which is a thick, dark, sweet soy sauce. i had some in the refrigerator, but apparently never bothered to look at the label. in EACH SERVING of the kecap manis, there were 200 calories and 85% of my daily sodium intake (2 tsp or 1 tbsp is the serving size - i can't remember which). that is disgusting, and so unhealthy. no one needs to eat that much salt. the calorie part... well, that's not as surprising because it's a sweet soy sauce, so the sugar content adds most of those calories to it. i look at labels on everything i buy because of the whole lactose intolerance thing, so i'm not sure how i missed this one. i tossed the kecap manis bottle (i think - if not, i'll throw it away tonight :) ). i've only found one brand (ABC is the name) that makes it, so unless i find another lower sodium, healthier version, i'll not be cooking with it again.

so... to assemble the dish, i sauteed everything together according to the recipe. i cut the salt with a lot of lime juice, which the recipe did not call for. in the end, it didn't taste too bad - but only because of the lime juice. without it, it was just a pile of sickly salty noodles with some beef and broccoli.

i strongly considered throwing the whole thing out half way through the process, but i just couldn't bring myself to waste that much. instead, i tried to keep my portion small and avoid the leftovers. i didn't want tony to have to eat anything that unhealthy either, but he seemed to like it just fine.

i'd like to try cooking with gai larn sometime, so i'll have to find a different recipe in my Wok Cookbook that uses it. and that doesn't use kecap manis. :)

Roasted Pork Tenderloin & Potatoes - 2 stars

this meal just didn't do a whole lot for me. my goal had been to roast the pork over the vegetables so that the meat juices would drip down onto them and give them a flavor boost. i think the problem was that the pork tenderloin really wasn't fatty enough to give off the juices that i wanted.

to make this, i rubbed a dry chinese 12-spice rub all over the outside of the tenderloin. i tossed together baby red potatoes, whole garlic cloves and hunks of white onion in a little olive oil. i spread that in the bottom of the pan and put the tenderloins over it. here's what it looked like in the oven.



see? it looks good! i was excited for it, and then so disappointed! :)

one of my challenges with cooking larger cuts of meats is figuring out when they're done. i often use a thermometer to help me with this - however, i must not have inserted it properly into the tenderloin here, so the pork registered as being done MUCH too early, and was way undercooked. the onions came out totally soggy, not crisp roasted as i expected (i roasted at 425 degrees F). the potatoes were hard as a rock, and took an additional half hour to finish roasting.

i ended up pan searing my portion of the tenderloin to finish the cooking process, while the potatoes finished cooking. i left the nasty onions in the pan and ate only the potatoes and pork. :) i rounded it out with a salad and steamed green beans - both of which were good.




the best part of the meal was the green apple lambic!!! :-)

1/12 follow up - i read a favorite cookbook of mine over the weekend, and there was a recipe that was similar to what i was attempting with this one. that recipe suggested boiling the baby red potatoes for 15 minutes, then thin slicing them and layering them on the bottom of the baking dish. you can then put your meat (the recipe actually called for salmon steaks - YUM!) over that, and both the potatoes & the meat will be done properly, and the potatoes will absorb the meat juices.

Pork Salad - 2 stars

i think i need to find a way to better photograph my salads. this looks gross - and it was actually very tasty, only a couple complaints. i also probably need to come up with some tastier-sounding names. pork salad? uh..... doesn't sound too tasty to me.

this was a day when my dinner was simply a salad. it was a combo of baby romaine & spinach, topped with sliced pork (leftover peri peri rubbed pork from previous post), avocado, red onion slivers, garbanzo beans, mandarin orange, sliced tomato, croutons and a mandarin sesame dressing, i believe. oh, and i see some pomegranate seeds in there. everything but the pork was very good. seared pork butt is great when it's hot, not so great when it's cold. it's too fatty, and when it's cold, the fat congeals. and congealed fat does not make for a good salad. use only lean cuts of meat if you're using leftover cooked protein in your salad.

two stars.