In Search of Delicious Asian Dishes

My husband and I love Thai! There was this little place we used to go to that I introduced him to shortly after we started dating. We hadn't been in a while, and about three years ago we started going again, and about a year later got hooked. It was so good! I tried making something similar at home, but I just couldn't recreate the flavors. I know how to build great flavors for Italian, Mexican, American, etc., but Asian flavors are a whole other type of cooking that I just was not used to. In general I'm not an Asian food fan, too many veggies, and I'm more of a country girl eater... and my eating habits are the only thing country about me!... but I can't seem to get enough of Thai. I think it's the sweet/spicy flavor that keeps me coming back for more. Anyway, so Thai is the one thing you can count on my husband and I eating out for. We cook a lot at home, but about once a week, we would go to our restaurant. One of my favorite memories of Thai Raja was that during our 15 months of wedding planning, even though we were on Weight Watchers, we ate Thai almost every Wedding Wednesday Night. The girls knew our order and when we strayed from our usual, they were confused. When we skipped a week, which was rare, they asked if we were OK. Sad, I know. It was one of the few things that got my husband through those long nights. Even after the wedding stress had ended and we came back from two weeks of Italian food, we went right back to our Thai food once a week. Sadly, our restaurant, the staple of our Wednesday nights for the last 2 years was closing. This forced us to finally learn the art of Asian cooking. I still don't have it, but with the help of great recipes, I'm leaning my way to building complex Asian flavors.

After my husband was able to get me to eat our last Stir-Fry creation, Stir-Fried Shrimp and Asparagus with Lemon Sauce, he talked me into making something new that had the word "spciy" in it. I was game.

Stir-Fried Chicken and Green Beans with Spicy Orange Sauce:

We did our usual grocery shopping on Saturday and were unable to find shiitake mushrooms and other good looking veggies at our usual source, so we went to the new Natural Grocers and picked up a whopping 12 oz of shiitake mushrooms, 12 oz of green beans, and some other veggies for my husband to snack on. I wasn't too excited about this recipe after looking at how much 12 oz of mushrooms were. I'm just now starting to come around on them, and this was a first for me with shiitake mushrooms.

We started by slicing the chicken thin and marinating it in a mixture of toasted sesame oil, cornstarch, flour, low-sodium soy sauce and Chinese rice cooking wine (we used dry sherry again instead since we still couldn't find Chinese rice cooking wine). Then we did the notorious vegetable prep of stir-fries and I played with my macro lens a bit.

I still wasn't feeling it for this recipe after everything was prepped and ready. But cooking out of the Healthy Family Cookbook by America's Test Kitchen, I had hope. We cooked our wonderful organic green beans and they looked awesome! Now came time for the mushrooms. We added them to the pan, and it was full! I wasn't too sure about this. The recipe said they would cook down, then I began to worry about slimy mushrooms. I was entertained with the contrast in colors in the pan and played with my macro lens some more while the hubby cooked.

Sure enough a few minutes later the mushrooms had cooked down. I made the Spicy Orange Sauce as my husband added the scallions, garlic, and ginger to the stir-fry. The Spicy Orange Sauce was very simple with orange juice, Chinese rice cooking wine (we used dry sherry here too), low-sodium soy sauce, Asian chili-garlic sauce (and we added extra since we like things hot), sugar, cornstarch, toasted sesame oil, and orange zest. It was added to the pan, and now I was getting excited about dinner!

During our prep we had toasted some sesame seeds before hand. We served this over a bed of brown basmati rice and sprinkled the sesame seeds over it. The mushrooms were not too slimy, not too mushy, and were actually quite good. The dish wasn't too spicy, but I think it was just right. Any spicier and it would have overpowered the mild orange flavor. I would not, however, recommend serving this on brown basmati rice. It has an aromatic nutty flavor that competed with the toasted sesame oil in the dish. I think plain brown rice would be better, and definitely jasmin rice.

UPDATE: This keeps really well in the fridge. The mushrooms get a little "slimy", but I'm not a mushroom fan and I was able to handle it fine.

This is another stir-fry that we will be adding our our rotation of dishes!

Yet another fun Saturday evening in the kitchen with my husband! I'm really loving all the free time we have on the weekends lately to experiment with new recipes.