Son of the Return of the Freezer Revenge: The Stir Fry

So then I made that Stir Fry.

I have a bottle of Chile de Arbol oil that was a byproduct of making an insanely spicy salsa (by my standards. Meaning, not very spicy at all). The oil itself can't be considered a culinary weapon, but it does add a zing to dishes that is more flavor than heat. I'll try to post a recipe of that salsa the next time I find myself making it. It's really good, actually.

This is the oil that I used to sear the stir fry beef. Set aside, add a bit more oil, saute the carrot/celery/onion blend.

Added a bag of stir fry veggies that I happened to have in The Freezer, cooked over medium-high heat for about 6 minutes, added the beef back to the pan. Gave it a couple of sprinkles of soy sauce and a good swirl of stir-fry sauce (thereby winning this entry a place in the "faking it" tag, but that sauce is pretty good!), cooked it for a minute or so longer, served over rice.

Not including prep time from earlier today (making the rice, sucker-punching vegetables, etcetera), this meal was put together in about 20 minutes. The 7 year-old ate a huge bowl of it, so I'm going to call it a success.



PS-You know what would have been awesome here and I didn't even think about? GINGER.

From the depths of my Freezer

At any given point in time I can usually dig around in my Freezer and find a bit of awesomeness.

Because I freeze EVERYTHING.

What I had in the fridge were some baby carrots, celery and onions, which by itself meant I could pretty much do anything I damn wanted.

Got some plain white rice to steam, sucker-punched my veggies in a tiny food processor, set everything aside for some stir fry I plan to whip up with some beef from... The Freezer. I usually buy a few extra packages of stir fry beef from the store, get home, wrap the entire package tight in a couple of layers of Saran wrap and forget all about them (in The Freezer) until they sound like a good idea again. They freeze well, and defrost remarkably quick.



But that's for dinner tonight. Later.
In the meantime, I could go for some soup.

Simmer some more of those chopped veggies with some chicken broth (I don't have any at the moment, so it was water and chicken bouillon), a good clove of minced garlic, some herbs (thyme, parsley, cilantro--my folks always say it's pointless to use those last two together, and I disagree), and added lime zest from The Freezer... I left that on the stove for a good 40 minutes or so, then dug around The Freezer for some more stuff.

Frozen corn.... what's this, a baggie of shredded beef? Alright... this kinda looks like an ice-cube shaped lump of blanched spinach... yeah, I think I remember doing that, okay... Sweet.

Bowl: beef, some of the cooked rice from earlier, broth. Sprinkle of lime juice. If I had avocado this would be perfection. Daughter's vs. mine: mine has the spinach and cayenne pepper. YUM.

Lunchbox

Every now and then the Daughter gets more than a sandwich to take to school for lunch. Some time last week she took some tuna sushi rolls, which I'm happy to report she loves. The thing with something like sushi is that you have to keep it cold, and those blue ice block things take up too much room in a little girl's lunch box.

That's when a snack like grapes comes in handy.

Place grapes in a single layer in the freezer until solid - you don't want one big block o'grape. Once they're frozen you can put them in a ziploc bag and they'll keep your food cold until lunch time arrives.

I cut her sushi rolls real thin, so they can go in a regular square sandwich container and leave plenty of room for the baggie of grapes in there, too (I use parchment paper as a divider).

Pozole

I should make it a point to ALWAYS have pozole in my freezer, ready to defrost at the earliest sign of a craving.

All I had was a salad mix instead of plain lettuce, and I had no radish, and the only lime juice I had was frozen (Mexican grocery store sells limes at 10/$1. Sometimes I use 10 limes in one DAY, sometimes they sit in my fridge a while. If they start looking like I need to use them up, I juice them and freeze the juice in handy, single use ice cubes). And no salsa, so I had to use chipotle powder.

Not bad, though.

Chicken and rice

I have a thing for roasted chicken, and it borders on "unhealthy obsession."
Roasted chicken is pretty much perfect. A whole chicken costs barely more than a sub, and you can get something like 3-4 meals out of it (more like 2 meals for me, because, seriously, I LOVE roasted chicken).
We went to Kroger tonight and they had this huge 16-piece chicken thing for 8 bucks. Add to this the recent acquisition of a toaster oven, and dinner was on its way.
Chicken was baked for about 23 minutes at 325F (so the package instructed), and while that was happening I made some white rice with frozen corn thrown in. Since both of these things sort of cook themselves, I busied myself with making an onion cream sauce.

There are things I keep in my freezer to make lazy meals even easier than they already are. For example, I love parsley with a passion, but I never use an entire bunch before it starts going bad. So I dry it up as much as possible using paper towels, then finely chop it, blot out more moisture, and then store it in an airtight container in the freezer. When I need some, I bang the container on the counter a few times, shake it up, and it goes straight into whatever I'm cooking. Better than dried parsley.
(I also do this with cilantro)

Another thing I keep in the freezer is cubes of chicken or beef broth. The chicken ones are usually a result of a roasted chicken binge, when I take all the meat off the bones for the 2 picky eaters in the household, throw the bones in a pot with whatever peels/stems/leaves I have leftover when cleaning up vegetables for storage, and simmer over low heat for about an hour. The beef ones happen as a side effect of shredded meat for flautas or salpicon (which I'll probably post about eventually, but tonight is not the night).
I have 2 ice trays specifically for the purpose of freezing broth.

So, this onion cream sauce.
(I may or may not also have a thing for cream of-'s)
Roux drill - melt about a tablespoon of butter over low heat, add equal amount of flour and whisk until it dissolves, allow to cook for a bit until thick.
Then I started playing with it--added some milk... a few beef broth ice cubes, about half an envelope of onion soup/dip mix, some parsley from the freezer, some thyme (chicken + thyme = OTP). I just messed with it until it was the consistency and amount that I wanted.


I wish the end result had looked as pretty as it was tasty. For a half-assed meal thrown together out of things in my pantry/freezer and an impulse buy at Kroger, it was much better than it had any right to be.

Unhealthy love for Ginger, brought to you by poor grammar

Powdered ginger has its place (the store's shelves), but nothing compares to the taste and smell of the fresh, grated, Real Thing.

That said, as much as I love the stuff, I just don't go through it quickly enough before it starts going South. And you know what I hate? The actual act of grating it, because my grater is tiny and lame, and more gets stuck in the little holes than what comes out through them.

Alas, not anymore.

I freeze my ginger. Shave the peel off, wrap it in a couple of layers of plastic wrap and a couple of layers of aluminum foil, and freeze those suckers. Then, when I need it, it's like shaving ice, and nothing gets stuck to the grater. In fact, I can even grate it with a butter knife.

This was one of the better epiphanies I've had while Not Spending Time In Barcelona.

And now, a picture of awesome ginger that does NOT belong in the freezer: