Sweet and Sour Pork

Posted on 05/31/2012 by Walter Blevins

Remember “back in the day” when you could buy frozen “Chinese” meals—I want to say by Chun King, but I’m not sure my memory is that good.  You could get a variety of “cooking bags” that you just tossed into a pot.  One bag had rice and the other had the “entree”.

In my younger days I devoured more than a few of these “gourmet” offerings.  (For those of you too young to remember, boiling bags are what we used “BM”—“Before Microwaves”).

How many times have so many of us gone to a “Chinese” restaurant and ordered Sweet and Sour Pork with it’s sweet, vinegary sauce glopped over stir fried pieces of pork and vegetables?  Yeah, I still like to grab a double entrée at Panda Express of orange chicken and sweet and sour pork.

I’ve been using a wok for a long time and one of the recipes I’ve made frequently over the years is my version of Sweet and Sour Pork.  It’s pretty simple, and it’s cheap.  One of the other things I’ve liked about this and other oriental recipes is that you can take one good size pork chop—say ¾ pound and feed a family of four.  That makes it inexpensive.  And with sweet and sour, you’re also cooking vegetables but coating them in a sauce that will entice even finicky kids into eating it. Continue reading →

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Cheap Bastid’s Brat Burgers

Posted on 05/28/2012 by Walter Blevins

It’s Memorial Day weekend.  Time to stoke up the grill.  Foodie sites on the internet are full of recipes for a whole variety of burgers.  Emeril was on “Good Morning America” extolling the virtues of his burger offerings.  Yep, it’s time to stoke up the grill and cook up some burgers.

When did burgers have to take on such gargantuan proportions?  You see it all the time on “Triple D” (that’s Guy Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives”) and on Adam Richman’s “Man vs. Food”.

I’ve gotten to the point where the “optimal” burger is about 6 ounces.  Combine that with bun, condiments and cheese and you’ve got plenty of food.  We eat too much and aren’t physically active enough and a well-cooked 6 ounce burger is a treat.  I’m old enough to remember when a “quarter pounder” either at MickeyD’s or off the grill was a big burger—and snarfing down two of them was a belly buster.

But I have a new “passion” for a burger that’s just a bit different.  Brat burgers!  Their secret is that they get a fantastic crust on the outside and stay incredibly juicy on the inside.

Continue reading →

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Summertime Corn Salad

Posted on 05/25/2012 by Walter Blevins

During our weekly vegetable safari at Fraiser’s Farms grocery store Saturday, I came across the first sweet corn of the season.  And it was pretty reasonable at 6 ears for $1, plus it was nice and big and fat.  So I just had to get some.

I’ll put up with the aftereffects of corn the morning after for that sweet, roasted crunchiness the night before.  And this was some tasty stuff.  But then I got the bright idea of making one of my favorite warm weather salads to go with grilled chicken yesterday, and I even remembered to take a few photos (kind of after the fact but I still got some good pictures to share).

Now, this isn’t the cheapest of Cheap Bastid recipes, but it’s a good one.  The reason it’s not real cheap is that you’ve got to buy some mozzarella cheese which runs about $5 a pound but that’s OK because tomorrow night we’re going to make my favorite grilled cheese sandwich for supper—grilled mozzarella and tomato with basil on sourdough bread. Continue reading →

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Steamed Rice Madame Wong’s Way

Posted on 05/24/2012 by Walter Blevins

Sometimes it’s the simplest foods, cooked in the simplest ways that are the best.  Over the years I’ve enjoyed cooking oriental-style food (I won’t try to claim to being able to cook “Chinese” or “Japanese” food just oriental-style food in a wok).

Way back when, my first wok was a free-standing electric one and it was pretty good except that it never generated the kind of high heat that works best with oriental cooking in a wok.  And I’ve long been of the opinion that if I could only have one utensil for cooking it would have to be a wok because it’s the most versatile.

But anyway, that first red enameled wok came with a cookbook, “Madame Wong’s Long-Life Chinese Cookbook” which has been my resource guide for decades.  This cookbook contains an incredibly easy and foolproof recipe for basic steamed rice that I have been using since the mid 1970’s.  No need for “Minute Rice” or “Uncle Ben’s” or whatever.  Just use plain old long grain rice that you get in a bag at the grocery store.

Sorry about the picture. This is all that was left after we gobbled up all the Swai Vera Cruz and you can see where we "double dipped " the serving spoon.

You don’t need a rice steamer.  All you need is a simple 2 quart sauce pan with a lid and we’ve all got at least one of those don’t we?  One of the things I’ve always liked about this recipe is I’ll do all my prep work for the oriental meal I’m going to cook and then prep my rice which takes maybe 2 minutes.  I’ll put it on the stove and when it’s ready to be covered then I start up my burner to heat the wok.  When the food is ready in the wok, the rice is done. Continue reading →

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Swai Vera Cruz

Posted on 05/23/2012 by Walter Blevins

There’s a new fish on the block that’s really starting to catch on (yes, “catch” is my lame effort at a pun).  It’s “Swai”.   Now that doesn’t sound as exotic as some other fish like salmon or halibut or tuna like you see the big time TV chefs cooking.  I can live with that because swai fish is not only versatile and tasty it’s also affordable compared to the budget busting per pound price of many other fish.

I first came across swai in an ad flyer from my grocer which had it on special.  So I did just a bit of research (if you count typing the 4-letter name into Google as research).  According to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, “Swai is a white-flesh fish (typically available in fillet form) with a sweet mild, taste and light flaky texture that can be broiled, grilled, or coated with bread crumbs and fried…”

That was good enough for me because I can buy this tasty fish for about a dollar a pound more than hamburger—which in the fish world is pretty inexpensive.

Most of the time I’ve purchased swai from my grocer’s fish case—but I to quit doing that because the little tag in the case says “previously frozen”.  Swai is a “farmed fish” and is frozen before being shipped to the U.S. and then thawed for sale.  That’s OK if you’re going to cook it right away, but I often don’t and end up freezing and thawing it again.

I found a better option though.  You can buy it flash-frozen with the individual filets vacuum packed—and it was actually cheaper than the thawed filets that were in the display case.  It came out to $3.60 a pound for a 2.5 lb bag with 5 individually packaged filets.  Continue reading →

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