What do you mean, there's nothing in the house to cook?

[elfs]

Omaha told me it was my night to cook. I had little to no idea what was in the house. Solution: Uh, kinda a stir-fry fried-rice mashup. I had about fifteen minutes until I had to go retrieve the girls from their extracurricular activities, so a shoved a pound of frozen shrimp under the cold water to thaw, started a cup and a half of rice (basmati, an experiment!) in the rice cooker, and diced some broccoli, a carrot, some ginger and some garlic. Just before I left the shrimp was thawed enough to pull the tails off.

After picking up the girls, I went on to stage two: I heated up the wok with some peanut oil, threw in the shrimp for one minute, then the garlic and ginger for a minute, and then a mix of 1/2 cup vegetable broth, 2 tsp cornstarch, 2 tsp sherry, and I think some soy sauce. I stirred until it was thick and then poured it all back into the bowl where I had mixed up the cornstarch blend.

I wiped out the wok, added two tbsp peanut oil, and stir-fried the veggies until they were almost crisp, then tossed in one cup of frozen peas until they were thawed, then threw in all the rice with one egg, mixed it up a lot, and then tossed in the shrimp mixture, and stir-fried for ten minutes. I tossed in two tablespoons of soy sauce at the end.

It was surprisingly yummy. The girls ate it all.

Unfortunately, my vinagrette for the salad (two tbsp olive oil, 1/2 tbsp sherry, 1/2 tbsp rice wine vinegar, 1 tbsp sugar, and a few drops of sesame oil) was ruined when I realized the sesame oil was rancid. It's been there a long time; they ought to sell it in 4oz bottles, I use so little of it.

This has been another episode of what to cook when there's "nothing" in the house.

Comments

[bldrnrpdx.livejournal.com]

One of my favorite "seriously, there's nothing in the house" recipes from when I was broke in college - cook up a bunch of rice. I usually have basmati around, but white works too. When the rice is mostly or all the way cooled down, heat up some vegetable oil in a large skillet. Once the oil is hot, put the rice in and mix it around with a touch of soy sauce and dried onion (I almost never use up fresh onions quickly enough to justify buying them). Flatten the rice down into a loose-ish pancake. Leave it there until the bottom is crispy. Then make a hole in the middle and pour a beaten egg or two into the center. While that's cooking, toss some cashews and dried dates onto the rest of the rice. When the egg is about done, toss is all with a can of tuna until the tuna is heated through.

I've also done it with leftover chicken and pork.

Sesame oil

[(Anonymous)]

store the sesame oil in the fridge