The weekly menu

Apparently last week I had Asian flavors on the brain stomach.  As you’ll see from our menu it is definitely heavy on the Far East flavors.  Yummm…usually I stick to very basic Thai and Chinese cuisine when I’m cooking because I don’t have all the pantry staples (or culinary skills) that are required for other recipes, but I had a bunch of recipes starred in my reader (Vietnamese, etc.) that didn’t require too many crazy ingredients so I went for it.  Now, I’m sure my cooking is far from the real deal but whatever.  They tasted good.  So without further ado.

First up, shrimp fried rice.

Nothing fancy about this.  I made the rice in the cooker the day before.  Usually I save the easy meals for mid-week when I have no time with all of P’s activities, but I made this on Sunday because we were at a (kid’s) birthday party til late.  Rice, eggs, veggies, and shrimp with fish sauce, tamari, ginger, and (non sesame) oil.  P had the veggies and rice and shrimp separate before I added anything allergenic (i.e. tamari).

Chili garlic chicken skewers with greek yogurt dip.

Holy hell Jessica, this was a spicy mother effing dish!  I sautéed it in the pan (with all of the marinade) instead of ditching the extra sauce and grilling it.  But the reason it was so spicy is because I subbed sriracha for garlic chili paste, which, as it turns out, are not the same thing!!  Way spicy.  We ate alllll the greek yogurt dip with it just as a way of preserving our mouths.  Hot hot heat.  But despite all that, it was super yummy.  I’d make again for sure (using the correct paste though).

We both paired ours with broccoli (plus leftover carrot rice pilaf for Kyle).

This Vietnamese rice noodle salad was super good too.

I decreased the amount of chicken in it, because I thought it was hearty enough without meat, but I was baking the chicken for P anyway, so i still added it to ours.

As nervous as I was about the THREE serrano peppers, they were fine and the heat was present but not insane.  I removed all the ribs and seeds but they were large peppers, so if you’re nervous you could use two and it would be great.  Also, don’t worry if your hands burn all day long after prepping them.  Mine did (literally the rest of the day – while out and about doing errands and stuff – on FIRE) and that’s why I was freaking out that I’d poison us at dinner, but for whatever reason (are my hands super sensitive or something?) there was no burning in my mouth.

Continuing with the Vietnamese theme, here are Lemongrass pork patties with Vietnamese dipping sauce.

This dish was outstanding.  It was also my first time working with lemongrass.  Not as intimidating as I thought!

Everything about this recipe was good.  P ate his ground pork plain and had some of the lettuce as well.  Kyle had rice on the side with extra dipping sauce on top.  The flavors were all super and it wasn’t too difficult.  I could also see it working as a crumble (which I almost did instead) instead of sliders while still stuffing it in lettuce.  Definitely a keeper.

The next night I made drunken chicken marsala and served it with quinoa.  A non-Asian dinner!

This recipe is 100% worth keeping on a regular rotation.  It’s crazy easy, takes minimal time/effort, and tastes great.  I made it super last minute because we had a friend over for a baby play date til kinda late.  So I made this dinner from start to finish (the quinoa was already made but nothing else was prepped or started) while making dinner for P while he was in his high chair and waiting for food.  As in, not my usual planned ahead constitution.  But that just goes to show you how easy this was to make!  P ate plain chicken and mushrooms and quinoa from our meal (plus some other stuff).

As is my nature, I made a few tweaks in the recipe.  Instead of the dairy I used plain almond milk.  And we didn’t have marsala wine, so I just subbed what we had on hand (we keep the last itty bits of wine in the fridge for cooking purposes just like this).  I think it was a combo of chardonnay and cabernet, but mostly chardonnay.  Weird, I know, but it worked.  I also used garlic infused olive oil instead of minced garlic and butter.

Friday night was so very welcomed, I’m not sure why but this week felt long.  I made yet another one of Jessica’s recipes (she is a favorite in our house).

Say hello to the honey chipotle chicken bowl.  Full of awesomeness.

This was my first time using adobo sauce and I would love suggestions on what to do with the chipotle peppers that went unused from the can.  I doubled the marinade for the chicken so I could use it as a sauce (both on this recipe and for other things later) because I anticipated it would be bomb.com.  I don’t understand marinating meat and then ditching the marinade when you cook it?  Why can’t you use the marinade too?  It seems a waste to throw it out.  I never do because I like extra sauce and flavor, but I’m wondering if I’m missing something.

Anyway, I baked it with some of the marinade and then sliced it and let the juices soak into the breast even more.

When it came time to serve it I added extra honey chipotle sauce on top of our salads as dressing too.  Delicious winner.

Last (but SOOOOO not least) were these pork spring rolls.  I used the recipe on the back of the Nasoya wrapper because it sounded better than anything I could come up with.

I also used the extra Vietnamese dipping sauce that we had leftover from the pork lettuce cups.  I think I’ll do a separate post with the whole recipe because it was really good and I thought it would be harder to work with the egg roll wraps but it totally wasn’t!

I almost made a peanut dipping sauce, but instead we just used plain tamari.  In all honesty though, no dipping sauce was necessary.  Totally flavorful and great on their own.