Bison Stir Fry

Meat.  Veggies.  Spices.  Cooked in some kind of fat.  It's either a stir-fry, or perhaps a saute, or a soup, or a curry, depending on which spices and amount/type of liquid.  I almost didn't post this, but then I remembered that one of the reasons I started the blog was to keep track of some of the veggie-spices-meat combos and ideas I try.  Anyway, here it is: a stir-fry that almost became a soup.  Then didn't.

Chop up an onion.  Saute it in a combo of sesame oil and mongolian fire oil.
After 5 minutes add a chopped red bell pepper and some yellow squash.
Look in the spice cabinet and decide where this recipe is going.  Add several hefty shakes dried garlic, a good amount of chili powder, and some paprika.
After 5 minutes add 1 lb. ground bison (or beef, or ....)
In the middle of all this, decide that you want to make this more soup-like.  Add about 4 frozen ice cubes of homemade chicken broth.
While you are filling a container of water to also dump in, decide you don't want it to be soup-like.  Make hot tea with the water instead.
When the meat is cooked, add a chopped half head of red cabbage.
After 5 minutes, add the torn leaves off a bunch of kale.  Cook until wilted.

Serve with hot tea!

Put cheesy "taste the rainbow" comment here.

The spice level is fairly mild, doesn't hit you instantly, but has a nice follow through.  And now I feel like I'm emulating someone trying to give a review of wine.  Huh.  But there are no blackberry overtones.  Yet?

Scooter

Bok Choy Recipe-Off Competition. It's ON!!!!

Triangle Girl and I are going to have a recipe-off with bok choy.  We'll both submit a recipe, and Flash (the requester) gets to judge.

Bok Choy:  It looks like a combo of cabbage and chard.  The stalks are edible without cooking, with a celery-like aspect (crunchy and refreshing), sans the stringiness.  I heard it's good with almond butter (or pb), but I haven't tried that yet.  It comes in the baby version (1/3 the size, 4x the price), but I went with the big boy version.  If you're buying it, make sure to shake out all the water before it gets weighed - these things can store some water in them.

I'm calling this thing: Bok FIRE.

Aesthetic note: I like to slice or julienne (cut into longer, thinner strips) veggies for stir frys.

Slice an onion, chop up a bunch of garlic and ginger, to taste.  My taste runs to a LOT of garlic and ginger.

Get some sesame oil down from the cupboard.  Realize that the measly couple teaspoons-ish left in the container will hardly suffice.  Ponder the other oils you have that could go in combination with the sesame.  Olive oil, definitely not.  Almond Oil, hmmmm.  Mongolian Fire Oil, winner winner bok fire dinner!

Heat up oils in a large frying pan (wish I had a wok)!   I used the high side of medium.  Toss in the onion, garlic, and ginger when the oil is hot.  I then pondered the order to add the rest of the ingredients using some sort of logic about the relative cooking times of the vegetables, and as I sliced everything, I just added it in.

Slice a handful of baby carrots.  Add.  De-leaf the bok choy (save the greens!) and slice the white stalks.  Add.  Since the bunch of bok choy I had picked up was pretty substantial, I used about half of it.

Add 1 lb. ground beef.  Strips of beef would also work swimmingly.  Let the meat and veggies cook for a little bit (5ish minutes), stirring occasionally.

Slice a red pepper.  Add when the ground beef is no longer pinkish.  Realize that once again, you're putting in way too much food for the pan size.  Oh, well.  Slice up 0.5 of a zucchini.  Add.  Saute everything until the newest vegetable entrants are tender-crisp.  Then add the bok choy greens, cook until they are wilted.  Broccoli was on deck, but I left it riding the pine due to lack of field space.  It looked like:

Action shot of the crowded pan.

Garnish the whole thing with some sesame seeds for serving.  If you're going to get sesame seeds, go to one of the Asian markets to get them - it's an unbelievably better deal there.

I considered sprinkling some red pepper flakes on top, but decided that the mongolian fire oil had probably spiced it enough for me.  I was right.

Prep-start to food-in-mouth time: 25 minutes.  This has definitely made enough to share with Flash and TG at lunch tomorrow, plus some extra for leftovers for me alone!

Random note: Favorite knife for chopping things like garlic and ginger:

Well, favorite knife all around.  A gift from TG.

You just semi-rotate your wrist back and forth quickly, and chop-chop-chop.  V. fun.  If chopping things can be considered fun.

Although I dislike it when the news does this, I'll go ahead and do it on the blog.  Coming-up-soon recipes: Paleo Pizza; soup involving cranberries and the leftovers from the chicken; and something-kale-something.

Scooter