Meatless Monday: Stir Fried Bok Choy and Lettuce with Shiitake Mushrooms

It's just another Manic Monday right?  Not when dinner is a quick and easy stir fry!  I don't know about you, but my job sure isn't getting any less busy, and recently, I'm never sure what time I'll be home.  This recipe, from start to finish, took less than an hour and was filling without being heavy.  

 

Knowing that my local farm, Hydro Harvest Farms, has an abundance of bok choy and lettuce, I scoured the internet in search of inspiration and happened upon this recipe from Cooking Light magazine.  I tweaked it a bit to my tastes by adjusting the sauce and using fresh mushrooms and ended up with this stir fry.  I was intrigued, and I am kinda getting tired of salads. You may say that stir frying lettuce sounds crazy, but apparently there are other ways to eat lettuce!

 

Combine soy sauce, wine, and sugar in a small bowl, stirring with a whisk.  Heat your wok over medium-high heat. Add 1 teaspoon oil and ginger to pan; saute 30 seconds. Quickly add your sliced mushrooms and saute for 1 minute. Add one cup of broth and bring it to a boil. Cook until your mushrooms reduce in size and take on a shine. 

Combine the oyster sauce and cornstarch in a small bowl and stir the mixture until the corn starch is mixed in well.  Stir your oyster sauce mixture into the mushrooms in the wok and bring it all to a boil, stirring constantly. Cook it all for about a minute or until thickened and then remove the mushrooms from the heat.

To your wok, add the remaining oil and heat until shimmering.  Then, add your garlic and stir fry it for 10 seconds. Add your bok choy to the wok and the rest of the broth. You may have to add the bok choy in batches but stir fry it all for about 2 minutes or until the bok choy begins to soften.

Add the lettuce, again potentially in batches, and stir fry for about 2 minutes or until lettuce wilts. Add the mushroom mixture and the soy sauce mixture to the wok and continue cooking 3 minutes or until bok choy is tender.

To serve, I used our rice cooker to make some brown rice and just spooned the stir fry over top.

Ingredients:

2 cups sliced fresh shiitake mushrooms (about 20 total)
2  tablespoons  low-sodium soy sauce
1  tablespoon  Shaoxing (Chinese rice wine) or dry sherry
1/2  teaspoon  sugar
4  teaspoons  canola oil, divided
1  teaspoon  minced peeled ginger
2  cups  fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth, divided
4  tablespoons  vegetarian oyster sauce, or regular if you have it
2  teaspoons  cornstarch
3  large garlic cloves, thinly sliced
8  heads baby bok choy, halved lengthwise (about 6 cups of greens)
1  medium head romaine lettuce, cut crosswise into 1-inch pieces (about 8 cups)

Verdict:  I am so looking forward to lunch tomorrow.  I was hesitant about stir frying lettuce, and was pleasantly surprised. 

Slow Cooker Chicken Cacciatore

Knowing that I have to work late this week, I wanted to make sure that I don't have a repeat of the last two weeks' funk fest and got ahead of the game with a slow cooker adaptation of a old family favorite.  My mom used to work in an Italian restaurant as a teen, so I had the strange childhood comfort food pairing of Italian foods and Eastern European Jewish foods.  At a favorite restaurant in the area, The Refinery, my hubby and I enjoyed a fantastic rendition of Chicken Cacciatore.  So good, I felt like I was back in grade school and sitting down to the table for a plate of my mom's cooking!  So good, I've been craving it ever since and felt the need to make a slow cooker version of my mom's Chicken Cacciatore.

With a nod to my mom, it's not cooking until there's garlic sauteing in oil. 

To me, chicken cacciatore is a braised stew of chicken and bell peppers in tomato sauce.  To adapt this to a slow cooker, I sauteed the onions, a red and green bell pepper, and a half pack of mushrooms with a small can of tomato paste and white wine with some oregano, salt and pepper to taste. 

After cooking this mixture with a can of tomato sauce to get all of the flavors to mingle before pouring this tomato love over chicken thighs. If you had the time, you should sear the chicken parts first. 

I just took a pack of chicken thighs I had in the freezer and put the tomato mixture over the top and stored it in the fridge until the next morning when I set the slow cooker up to cook for the day.

After cooking on LOW for 6-8 hours, here is the final result.

Ingredients:

1 package chicken parts, or thighs (skinless)
2 tablespoons olive oil
6 garlic cloves, sliced
1 medium sized yellow onion, sliced
1 red and green bell pepper, sliced
1 6 ounce can of tomato paste
1/2 package of white button mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cup of white wine
1 28 ounce can tomato sauce
2 tablespoons dried oregano

Recipe:
Saute sliced garlic in olive oil until tan.  Add onions and bell peppers to the pan.  Cook until the onions become translucent and the bell peppers brighten and lose their crispness. Add the tomato paste to the pan and saute it with the pepper mixture for one minute.  Add the white wine to the pan and cook until the tomato paste is cooked into the wine.  Add the tomato sauce, with oregano, salt and pepper, to the pan and cook for five minutes - while scraping the pan to ensure that no bits get left behind.  Pour this mixture over chicken parts and into the slow cooker.  Set on low for 6 - 8 hours and serve over pasta or with garlic bread.

Chicken "Burgers"

Recently, I've been playing with my new cast iron grill pan, and the house favorite to play with is burgers.  In keeping with the New Year/New You idea, I went with chicken "burgers" for dinner tonight. I say burger in quotation marks because I just can't write chicken and burger together without them.  If I did, I'd end up feeling that I was somehow not be honest with you.  Burger = beef  and "burger" = any other patty in my book.

Tempted by the Brew (I haven't decided on a blog nickname for my husband yet, but since his hobby is brewing beer, he suggested this one) made the meal while I was busy getting caught up in my work.  While shopping on Sunday, we decided to use some sliced "gourmet" mushrooms hidden away in the produce section of Whole Foods that called my name from the forgotten corner and now sitting in my refrigerator mocking me.  To add on the delicious produce and pretend a "burger" can ever be healthy, we added the arugula picked up this weekend from the farm, and a red onion to make a great "burger".  Ok, I lied.  He had the onion.  I can't, or at least shouldn't, eat raw onions due to a diagnosis with acid reflex that I remember when it suits me.

While I was busy forgetting what time it was due to good news in the world of social work,Tempted by the Brew got busy cooking.  This is what I came home to tonight:

The Murray's Chicken "Burgers" I found on sale at Publix were sizzling away on the cast iron grill pan and all it took for the mushrooms to be added to the stove top was a gentle reminder by way of me taking it out of the refrigerator and putting it out on the counter.  Subtle, right?  Let's just say mushrooms are notTempted by the Brew's favorite addition to our meals and they make it in very often anyway.  I just can't get enough of them!

This is the part of the night when the greens argument rages again.  Our home is at a stalemate - I like mine at least wilted unless the greens are part of a salad.  He likes them raw.  He's right health-wise and texture-wise, but I know what I like and my tastebuds just don't want to hear it.  I lost this battle tonight and had my burger with raw arugula.

But......It didn't matter!  This burger looked so good that I just had to dig in, even before I remembered to take a photo.

Recipe:

4 Murray's Chicken "Burgers"
4 Cottage Cheese Dill Rolls from earlier in the week, sliced in half
1 Package of Mixed Sliced Gourmet Mushrooms - a mix of oyster, cremini and another mushroom that I have already forgotten
1 garlic clove, sliced
About 20 medium sized arugula leaves - thicker stems removed
*Red Onion
1 tablespoon Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper

Serves 4 - 1 burger per person

Heat grill pan and small saute pan on medium heat. While these are heating up, slice up the garlic clove and onion and prep the arugula. I went with the idea of about five leaves per burger.  Grill chicken for about 3 -5 minutes per side.  Chicken is not ok undercooked in our house, so we err on the side of caution here.  At the same time, you should also begin to saute the garlic and a minute later, add the mushrooms to the garlic and oil.  Tempted by the Brew did this a little later, after the mushrooms mysteriously ended up on the counter by the fridge. When the "burger" is seared well on one side and easily separates from the pan, flip it for another 3-5 minutes.  At some point, check the mushrooms to make sure they are cooking evenly in the pan.  Stir them occasionally while you are at it.  When the chicken is cooked throughout, set them to the rest and reabsorb all the meat-juices (it's chicken, so that's not much).  While this is happening, we grilled the rolls in the grill pan until they developed some nice grill markings. It was about this time that the mushrooms looked done and were taken off the heat.

Now comes the best part - putting it all together. I won't tell you how to do that.  If you are making this, it is your unalienable right to put together your "burger" however you see fit.  If you see a chicken "burger" fit at all, that is.  If this recipe is making you say, "Where's the Beef" a la old school Wendy's commercials - then by all means, go for beef!

*This is where my wonderful sense of measurement fails my blog responsibility.  We just did two slices since Tempted by the Brew was the only one eating it, but the slices were probably equal to 1/4 of a medium sized onion.