Gluten-free, paleo-ish, Crouch house deliciousness

Tagged: Chinese

Fried rice

We made this amazing deliciousness as part of our Valentines dinner, 2013.

Ingredients

  • 6 c. cooked white rice (2 cups uncooked) or, for a paleo version, “riced”/grated cauliflower
  • 1.5 c. of frozen peas and carrots mix, thawed (or 2/3 c. chopped carrots and 2/3 c. peas)
  • 2 tbsp canola oil
  • 3 eggs
  • tamari (or soy sauce if you ain’t a glutard), to taste
  • sesame oil, to taste (this is the secret ingredient! you’ll probably use about a tbsp)

Instructions

  1. Heat a skillet over high heat, poor in oil, stir in peas and carrots
  2. Crack in eggs, stirring quickly to scramble with the veggies
  3. Stir in cooked rice or “rice” and then shake in some soy sauce and sesame oil until taste is right (it’ll be the color you’d expect from your favorite take-out joint)

Serve with General Tso’s or other Chinese favorite! Or mix in some cooked meat and eat alone as a greasy meal :o)

General Valentines Tso

Although cooking for me is usually most fun as a zoned out, meditative, creative solo process, Evan and I decided to cook together for Valentine’s Day this year. It was a good opportunity to bond and communicate and just hang out with some candles and CPR Classical music. Evan picked the menu (general tso’s, fried rice, and chocolate fondue) because he loves Chinese take-out and chocolate. The Chinese food turned out amazing; I am totally impressed with us. Seriously, the meal was at least as delicious as the take-out variety (read here for the secret to the fried rice). The fondue was awesome, too. (And so easy!)

We doubled the general tso’s recipe because (1) well, again with the Evan-enthusiasm, (2) we had a Costco supply of chicken thighs and (3) if you’re gonna bother to get a bunch of oil really hot, you might as well make plenty of leftovers of whatever you’re deep-frying. (We deep fried all of the chicken but then kept half of the chicken and sauce separate and made the second batch a couple nights later once we’d consumed our V-day dinner and the first round of leftovers.)

Ingredients

This recipe took a while to make, so get your cookin’ tunes turned on. Makes 4 servings.

Chicken:

  • 1 pound boneless, skinless chicken thighs
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 1 TBSP soy sauce (gluten free tamari)
  • fresh ground pepper, to taste
  • cornstarch

Sweet Sweet Sauce:

  • 3 TBSP soy sauce (gluten free tamari)
  • 1.5 TBSP rice vinegar
  • 3 tsp try sherry
  • 1.5 TBSP white sugar
  • 5 TBSP chicken broth or water
  • 2 TBSP minced, fresh ginger
  • 3 tsp minced garlic
  • 3 tsp cornstarch

Saute:

  • 1 quart of vegetable/canola oil for deep-frying and stir-frying, as needed
  • 10+ small dried chili peppers (Evan counted out 10 Thai chilies, then I dumped in most of the little bag)
  • 4 green onions, 1/2 inch slices

Equipment:

  • fire extinguisher (Seriously, deep frying scares me and water doesn’t put out oil fires.)
  • kitchen shears
  • cutting board
  • large, sharp knife
  • medium mixing bowl
  • small mixing bowl
  • large frying pan (or a wok)
  • tool for removing hot chicken from very hot oil
  • paper-towel lined platter

Preparation

  1. Rinse the chicken and, using the kitchen shears, trim off any large areas of fat
  2. Cut the chicken into approx 1-in cubes/pieces
  3. Mix egg, soy sauce, and pepper in your medium mixing bowl with the chicken and, working with a scant 1/4 c at a time, mix in cornstarch until the chicken is well-coated
  4. Combine the sauce ingredients in your small mixing bowl, stir to start the sugar dissolving.
  5. Poor oil into your pan so that it is at least 1 inch deep and heat over medium-high heat until 350 degrees F. Drop the chicken pieces into the hot oil a few at a time (you don’t want to drop the temp of the oil significantly by overcrowding the chickens) and cook for 4 minutes, until crispy and just golden. Remove the chicken cubes and drain on paper towels (they’ll keep cooking because they’re so hot).
  6. Drain oil into some heat proof vessel to cool before you dispose of it (ideally for use in a bio-diesel engine, haha) and add chilis and the deep-fried chicken cubes to the frying pan, stir-frying a minute or so until hot and a bit more browned.
  7.  Give your sauce another stir to disslove the sugar and suspend the cornstarch, push the chickens to one side of the pan and poor the sauce on the other. Mix to combine and to stir for a couple of minutes to thicken the sauce. Add green onions and stir again. Serve!

 

I rarely follow a recipe to the T, but since we had no idea what we were doing with this, the recipe is taken exactly from Rhonda Parkinson on About.com