Friday, May 7, 2010

Cooking Healthy

Thursdays are long days for me.  I'm in class till 10 pm and when I get home I tend to be hungry, tired, and impatient.  Its nights like Thursdays that motivate me to cook as quickly as possible.  Tonight, stir-fry was on the menu.  Its the perfect late in the week, late night meal.  I can get rid of some of the extra crap in my refrigerator and have dinner on my plate in under 20 minutes! And check out this plate, part of a set my sister Kieran gave me for Christmas. LOVING it.  

Anyway, back to the stir fry. Tonight, I got home, rummaged through my refrigerator (which is always crowded. I think I take after my parents that way.)  I wasn't feeling like having turkey sausage another night in a row, so I went with the shrimp in my freezer, and added in some asparagus and green beans.  Yes, I could have put any number of things in there. I had mushrooms, peppers, peas, carrots, and eggplant, among other things, but there was something that sounded really good about just going simple, and throwing a lot of bright colors on that pretty, pretty plate.
Check out the yummy raw ingredients -- As with the pasta, I only did a little bit of rice and a ton of veggies.   And I made a really yummy marinade for the shrimp with mustard, soy, sriracha (hot sauce for those poor souls who don't know,) a little bit of honey, and a little bit of toasted sesame oil.  Also threw some garlic into the pan with the veggies, because, well, I just can't keep the garlic out of my meals. Not even joking -- I think every single meal I've made myself (except breakfast) this week has had garlic in it. I'm an addict. Anyway, I got down to prepping. Not very hard for this meal. Peeled the shrimp, sliced the garlic, cut the vegetables small, cooked the rice, mixed the shrimp with the marinade.  It was pretty simple. 


To the right-- Pretty yummy goodness all prepped and ready to go. It's really important to make sure you have everything ready for a stir fry because things move fast when working with a hot wok.   Oh, and that's the other trick. Get your wok or pan good and hot before starting. Otherwise you end up with a soggy stir fry and no one wants that.  

And to the left-- shrimp in a good spicy marinade. The same marinade also works really well for chicken, squid, and tofu.  And that is quite possibly the last thing you'll hear me say involving "really well" and tofu in the same sentence. Sorry all you bean curd lovers out there--I am not a tofu fan.


Now for the step by step cooking pictures.  Garlic smells incredible hitting the searing hot pan.  I used a little bit of spray on vegetable oil to lube up the pan, and nothing more. I'm careful about my oil intake.once the garlic started to get all golden brown and really yummy smelling, I added a bit of salt. As I'm sure you'll learn, I'm all about the salt.





Once the garlic was golden brown and delicious, I added the green beans and asparagus and let them cook a while, tossing the wok a bunch.  Yeah, there's a happy wooden spoon in the picture, but I spend more time tossing stuff around in the pan than using the spoon.




Once the veggies were pretty much all the way cooked I added the shrimp in about half of their marinade. I didn't want to get things too wet. I love the way the shrimp look as they cook.




 I cooked the shrimp for a couple minutes, till they lost that pretty, translucent quality and voila! Dinner on the table in under 20 minutes. . . Yes, this includes cooking the rice, which I didn't take pictures of, cuz, well, steaming rice just isn't sexy.  I have a rice cooker, but did it on the stove, since trying to cook 1/4 cup of rice in the  rice cooker has proved to be hopeless. 


Yummy meal! If anyone knows how to get more fiber into my diet while maintaining the level of quality and flavor I have become accustomed to (HA!) cue me in!!!! I apparently need more fiber.

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