Tag Archives: Cooking

Pork in a Sweet Ginger Sauce

This stirfry came together on a humble Monday evening–a week ago yesterday, in fact. Normally my husband cooks on Monday nights because my yoga class conveniently interferes with my regular dinner-making time. Heh heh. However, the class happened to be cancelled because my teacher was still traveling back from the Superbowl. And I never thought I’d say this–but I’m so glad yoga was cancelled! Because it allowed me to make this stirfry. And while I love stirfries and have made many in my day, the sauce in this one quickly topped the charts as the awesomest.

Adapted from Kayotic Kitchen’s Pork in Sweet Soy Sauce, this stirfry packs a flavor that had me drinking up the sauce at the end of the meal. It’s very easy to make, and I can promise you will love it.

Ingredients

(Serves 5)

2 lbs boneless pork chops

5 TBS peanut oil, divided

4 TBS dark soy sauce

4 TBS light soy sauce

4 TBS ginger syrup (‘ginger juice’)

6 TBS sriracha (sweet chili sauce)

2 TBS brown sugar

1/2 tsp chili powder

1 tsp curry powder

1 large onion

2 bell peppers (1 red, 1 green)

5 cloves garlic

3 green onions

Now there’s a lot of prep work up front, but if you own a sharp knife and listen to some music, the chopping and mincing and dicing will get done in no time at all.

So! Slice the bell peppers into thin strips and then halve the strips.

Halve the onion lengthwise, then crosswise like so . . .

. . . and slice it into quarter-rings.

Set the vegetables aside.

Now grab your cloves of garlic. You can loosen the papery skin by pressing down hard with the flat of your knife, but it’s easier to just bash them a couple times with a can.

The skin comes off so easily that way! Really–the Pioneer Woman taught me.

Mince the garlic, set it aside.

Slice the pork, and set it aside.

Hint: at the end there will be a quiz asking how many times the instructions ‘set aside’ have been repeated. The winner gets a garbanzo bean.

Grab the green onions and dice them–set them aside too.

Now let’s make that killer sauce. Assemble the ranks!

Combine the dark soy sauce, light soy sauce, ginger syrup, sriracha, brown sugar, chili powder and curry powder, and mix.

Set aside.

On a side note, my ginger syrup was labeled ‘ginger juice,’ but it was thick like a syrup. The ginger flavor is unbelievable. I picked up my bottle at Golden Pacific Market, but I’m sure you could find some at almost any Asian grocery store. And if you don’t have any Asian grocery stores in your neck of the woods, you can even make your own!

So now that everything is chopped and minced and diced and mixed, we’re finally ready to fry! Heat half the peanut oil in a wok or large (12”) cast iron skillet. When hot, add the vegetables and fry for 5 minutes.

They will continue to cook later, so just let them go until they’re starting to get tender and browned. Remove them and reserve them for later.

See? “Reserve them for later.” I totally avoided using “set aside” again–I’m tricky like that. So if you want that garbanzo bean, you’d better watch your back.

Heat another 1 TBS oil in the same skillet. When the skillet is very hot, add half the pork. It’s best to fry the pork in two batches, because an overcrowded pan will cause the pork to steam-cook instead of truly frying. Stirfry the first batch for 3 minutes, then remove it to a plate. FYI, you want the skillet to be so hot that the pork browns pretty much immediately, on first contact with the pan, like so:

Heat the remaining oil, and when it’s très, très hottée, add the rest of the pork. Stirfry for 3 minutes, then add the set aside pork and garlic.

Fry for another minute, stirring frequently. Confession: I did all the pork at one go, and you can see in the bubbles of the picture above that my pork did not fry correctly. Thankfully it was still delicious, though mark my words friends: it could have been deliciouser.

Okay, time to add the vegetables back in . . .

. . . and the sauce.

Give it a good stir.

Now believe me–it will seem like waaay too much sauce. But it’s not. It’s all going to turn out alright in the end. In fact, it will turn out more than alright: it will send you on a rocket to the moon.

Bring it all to a boil, and cook over high heat for about 5 minutes.

The sauce should thicken during this time and start sticking to the pork and veggies. If it’s not thick enough, mix 2-3 tsp of cornstarch with some water, stir, and add the slurry to the sauce.

I added a slurry and the consistency was great.

Stir in the green onions right before serving.

Lookin’ glorious.

Serve over rice.

You can dig into it with a spoon . . .

. . . or with chopsticks. Whatever gets it into contact with your taste buds the fastest.

One of the best parts is simply eating the sauce-soaked rice.

I’m in heaven.

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Cooking Class–you're invited!

First of all, happy Valentine’s Day to one and all! For us here in the Windy City it’s business as usual–work for me, school for my husband, yoga in the evening, leftovers for dinner–but Friday we had a little date to see “The King’s Speech” and indulge in some burgers and fries from Five Guys, so I consider our duty to Mr. Valentine as completed. Phew. He’s a demanding guy, this Valentine fellow, and with a little instigation from him, the presence or absence of flowers, chocolates, and/or pink-and-red falderal can become a subject of much stress to many individuals. So. All that to say, I hope this Monday morning finds you all pleased with your plans, your lack of plans, your whirlwind celebrations, or your abstinence from the festivities.

But enough about lovey-dovey stuff, and onto a subject of great general interest: food. The unthinkable has happened–this Friday February 18th at 6:30pm, I will be co-teaching a cooking class with my friend and blogging foodie Cassia.

We were asked by our lovely friend Traci, who also happens to be our pastor’s wife. She works at HGTV and has the most fabulous kitchen (which she designed herself). When she first proposed the idea of having me co-teach a class in her home, I briefly choked on my own tongue. And then my left knee starting jerking back and forth uncontrollably. But when I regained control of my faculties, I squeaked out an excited ‘yes!’ See, I just can’t wait to splatter her gorgeous kitchen with olive oil and crank up both ovens at the same time! Plus it will be such fun to hang out with the lovely ladies who are coming–many of them excellent cooks themselves. Traci also has two of the cutest girls the world has ever seen, and I had the privilege of photographing them last year.

Oh man, Bronagh’s freckles and Ashling’s mop of curls get me every time.

If any of you lovely people are in Chicago and want to come, just shoot me an email and I’ll send you the details. Oh, and you do have to be a girl–because this is part of our church’s Women’s Ministry series.

While I don’t feel qualified to teach anyone anything, it should be a fun time and there will be–hopefully, barring disaster, knock on wood, say a prayer for me–good food to feast on. We’re so excited about the menu! It’s a Mediterranean theme, with citrus and herbs tying it all together. Here’s what we’re looking at:

Roasted Red Pepper Soup with Broiled Corn and Lime Cilantro Sour Cream

Butterflied Mediterranean Roasted Chicken with Olive Tapenade

Butterflied Roasted Chicken with Lemon, Garlic, and Rosemary

Polenta with Goat Cheese and Rosemary

Shredded Brussel Sprouts with Nutmeg and Bacon

Fruit Pizza

Cassia and I got together on Saturday to cook through the whole menu and work out any kinks. After 3 hot and busy and sweaty and utterly delightful hours of work, we served up our creations to the boys (our patiently enduring husbands). For anyone inclined against brussel sprouts, I’ll have you know that was my husband’s favorite dish of the evening.

Here’s a peak at the little green guys . . . I could devour them at any time of the day or night.

I also learned an important lesson about serving the polenta as soon as it’s done. Preparing it in advance and then abandoning it on a back burner for 30 minutes resulted in a clumpy, lumpy, and a very unattractive texture.

Lesson learned! (just in time)

Cassia worked at a winery in California for years, so she’ll also be sharing her wisdom regarding wine pairings, which to me is a complete mystery. My shamefully backwards attitude has been: if the bottle says ‘wine,’ it will somehow go with whatever is making an appearance on the table. So I’m excited to expand my knowledge and get some sophistication up in here, after failing to learn a thing at Cassia’s wine tasting party last fall. I love second chances.

We’ll also be talking about the importance of good knives, and going over how to butterfly a chicken. Wish me luck as I grapple with its knobby old backbone and wrestle it from the pink carcass–I wish to do this unscathed. No severed thumbs, or flying chicken pieces.

Of course, every recipe we make will also be making an appearance here with step by step pictures and printable versions and all that fun stuff.

I love you guys! And I wish you could all come, if only to laugh at me as I pretend to know how to do stuff! I mean laugh with me. Laugh with me. Right.