Chondrosarcoma – ah shit, bob's sick

I felt like cooking this evening, besides wanting to give Sher a break (she’s been doing a lot of the cooking lately), I felt like something different, what I call “adult” food. Sometimes after cooking and eating simple meals (especially when Alberic is around), I tend to crave something different. Besides, we all too often fall into the habit of cooking and eating the same few dishes. Same can be said for eating out. But every now and then I’ve got to have that “something different” taste. Tonight was one of those nights.

I ran down to our local butcher shop and bought two boneless pork chops, stopped at the farm stand and grabbed some wonderfully fresh picked sweet corn. That is one thing I have to say about Vermont, during the season when fresh corn is available, Vermont has some of the best sweetest corn money can buy.

I picked up a few more things and made my way back to the house.

Prep in the afternoon: Now this may sound like a complex recipe but actually it’s rather simple and doesn’t require much time to prepare and almost no time to cook. Of course that’s one of the great things about most Asian cooking styles, they cook quickly … which in turn, if your food is fresh and healthy, you end up with a fresh, delicious, healthy meal with limited effort.
So prior to cooking anything, I took the time to prepare all the veggies for stir-frying. The prep, is key for this type of cooking.

First thing I did was to put a pot of water on the stove for cooking the noodles, basically blanching them ahead of time and then finishing them in the stir-fry at the last minute. After blanching them, I cooled them off, mixed in a little oil so they didn’t stick and put them in the refrigerator for later. I simply wanted to have them ready to go.

Then I cut all the veggies (except the bok choy) a little larger then match stick size and placed them in a bowl and placed them back in the refrigerator. The bok choy I cut into larger pieces, similar to those in a Chinese restaurant and put them in cold water, back in the frig to crisp up prior to cooking.

As for amounts, I was only cooking for Sher and I, and we have a lot of ingredients so I used only a little of each item. Besides, I never measure anything. Good food, is good food and if you use the freshest ingredients you can … your dish will be great!

Next I peeled the sweet corn and prepared it for cooking too. My plan was to have a big pot of boiling water ready to go when I started the stir fry, so I only had to drop the corn in at the last moment. The corn (actually all this stuff) was grown by a local farmer that’s right down the block from us. Well, not the bok choy …. but everything else. A friend stopped by with some fresh garden yellow squash and zucchini so I decided to add a little bit of that too.

Then I prepped the meat for cooking. I took two boneless pork chops and trimmed all the fat from them. Sliced the meat in small match stick like shapes, added the paper thin slices of garlic, good shake of celery seed (you know that stuff you never know what to do with) and covered it with some Szechuan stir fry sauce and placed it too in the frig to marinate.

Now my prep was ready. My guess is that it took about twenty minutes to do this. I had all my ingredients ready to go including the blanched noodles (I used flat Lo mein style), aqll the veggies cut up, marinated meat, and the corn was ready to cook.

The idea of this dish was to have a lightly spicy stir-fry with steamed sweet corn on the side.
Now let’s talk about the cooking method. Like all stir-frys there are two methods that can be used. One is Chao and one is Bao. The difference is all about the temperature and the speed in which the food is cooked. For this dish I’m using the Bao method … which is an extremely hot pan (yep, smoking oil), and very fast cookery. You can probably google those terms and get specific differences … but that’s gist of it.

To start I put the corn in the boiling water and let it start to cook.
With the pan very hot (pre-heated), I used a roundo (french saute pan, but a wok or any pan that can handle high heat will do), a good amount of wok oil in it, I added the red and green peppers, onions, yellow squash and zucchini. I let them acquire a light brownness on the edges (about one minute), gave them a stir and removed them to a side dish. With the pan empty again I added the marinated meat … same process (on a side dish), then I added the bok choy and let that cook a minute.

At this point I added the meat and veggies back to the pan and a good handful of the pre-cooked noodles. A good splash of the szechuan sauce, tossed it with a fork to mix it and removed it from the heat. The whole cooking process was less than five minutes.
The spicy-ness of the szechuan sauce and the sweetness of fresh corn are perfect together. Even though we served the corn as a side dish. Could’ve cut it off the cob and added it … but it was some of the first fresh corn of the season and deserved to be enjoyed with all it’s natural sweetness by itself. Almost sweet enough for a dessert.

Yeah, I know, I should be spending my time working and taking care of clients and business … but sometimes it’s nice just to take a break and do something different. Besides, what else would I be doing on a Saturday night?

Ingredient List:
2 boneless pork chops (or chicken, shrimp, beef … whatever)
Bok Choy (washed, sliced and put in a bowl of ice cold water and refrigerated)
Yellow Squash (slightly larger than match stick size)
Zucchini (same size)
Red Pepper (same size)
Green Pepper (same size)
Onion (match stick size)
garlic (sliced paper thin

Flat Lo Mein Noodles
Fresh Sweet Corn – simply steamed

The finished dish! Enjoy the weekend!