Moo Shu Jujitsu

No, this isn’t about the martial arts but rather improvising in the kitchen (though feel free to do a butterfly kick if the need arises). If you’re like me, you often find yourself looking to make something tasty in the kitchen but find that you’re missing at least one ingredient for every recipe you own. Instead of being frustrated by such a thing, I often improvise.

Recently, I made a variation on a Weight Watchers moo shu chicken recipe. I didn’t have cabbage or any sort of wrapper like a tortilla, but I did have some other key recipe ingredients such as chicken, carrots, fresh ginger, garlic, onions, hoisin sauce, and mushrooms, and some tasty non-recipe ingredients such as red bell pepper and zucchini. So, I turned this recipe into a stir fry. Along with the pepper and zucchini, I added other non-recipe ingredients such as soy sauce, to give it more of a stir fry feel, and water chestnuts, to provide some crunch. Rice on the side is always a great accompaniment to stir fry.

The end result was great tasting, and it was made without a lot of fuss beyond slicing. I’ll contend that just about anything tasty can be made when you have fresh ginger and red bell peppers, particularly anything you might want to label as stir fry. Hoisin sauce provides spice at a modest level that, if you’re a spice wimp like me, is just the right level of enjoyment.

I know some people find improvising easy and others are stymied unless they have an exact recipe and all of the required ingredients. But I say give it a shot. You might hear a lot about “knowing” your ingredients—what they add to a dish, what other ingredients they go well with. It’s a good thing, though not essential. The best place to start improvising, I think, is with a stir fry. It’s the kind of dish that lends itself to adding different things, substituting for others, and not compromising taste.

And if you decide to do that butterfly kick in the kitchen, make sure the stove is off.

Writing about Food, Creating Delicious Burgers

As you can probably tell from some of my stories, and as anyone who knows me can attest, I love food. I’ve written an entire collection of 78 flash fiction pieces with food/drink titles. Ratatouille is one of my favorite films. The Food Network is popular at my house. My wife Kathy and I, and even the kids, know the names Alton Brown, Bobby Flay, Guy Fieri, Ina Garten, and Gina and Pat Neely.

Besides how much I may enjoy consuming, I love making food. For Father’s Day this year, I received Bobby Flay’s great new book, Burgers, Fries, and Shakes, as a gift. I got a bit of a preview of some of this book’s recipe offerings from a recent issue of Food Network magazine. The Cheyenne Burger is the first burger recipe I tried, finding it first in the magazine and now having it in the book. It was an instant classic with the grown-ups in the house, and I recommend giving it a shot this holiday weekend for a different take on the hamburger.

For this recipe, I’ve used 80% lean ground beef rather than ground turkey, and I also used an inexpensive, conventional bottled BBQ sauce (Kraft’s Honey Hickory Smoke, I believe) rather than making Bobby Flay’s concoction. Smoked cheddar is great stuff, but it’s kind of expensive for this middle-class cook so I’ve used Cabot’s Seriously Sharp Cheddar as well as mozzarella (I think any cheese that’s not your standard individually packaged slice will work well).

If you make this recipe, the components you have to stick with are the bacon and the onion rings (Bobby Flay’s recipe for them, not any pre-made variety). Both of these things make this burger. I’ve made the onion rings using canola oil and they tasted great, though I’m eager to try them in peanut oil.

These burgers can become a bit work intensive when you’re trying to grill the beef patties, cook the bacon, and also make the onion rings. The work is well worth it, though, as the burgers are beyond the standard patty on a bun, which is pretty much what the burger recipes in the new book are all about.

So, I’m not just writing stories about food—I’m doing the work in the kitchen. Can a recipe book be far behind? Maybe I’ll make a few more of these delicious burgers first.