Random Food Snaps part 2: Chinese 5-spice Beef Stew, Sun-Dried Tomato Ground Turkey Pan Fried Noodle

[tuftears]

I had been pondering what new cooking experiment to make for a bit. Browsing around a few menus for ideas, I came across the clay pot recipes. Then I looked up clay pot cooking and found it was basically like braising, and saw a link to... Chinese "red-braised beef". I looked at the recipes. Hm. Tasty looking!

Here's the recipe I used as a source: Chinese braised beef with carrots.

I made some changes; no star anise for one, I didn't feel like going by a Chinese market for the specialty ingredients. Overall though, it came out excellent, and was a great way to break in my stainless steel pot, which I had gotten a long time ago with the intention of using it to brown stuff on the stove, then braise in the oven for a few hours.



I'd been reading about how drying vegetables was supposed to add to their savoriness, so I wanted to give it a try with sundried tomatoes, in my usual ground-turkey with tomato, celery, and carrots stirfry on pan-fried (actually oven-baked) noodles. These were the kind that came soaked in olive oil, so I had to drain them.

Verdict: sun-dried tomatoes don't do well in this stirfry because they remain fairly solid even after cooking. It's not a great texture. They might do better in a dish with a longer cooking time, like stew or chili.



I hadn't had pancakes in a while... This is the same sauteed kale and oven-roasted bacon mix I use in my omelettes, just as a pancake, with more egg in it.

It was okay, but not something I'd jump at repeating. I'll stick with my typical omelette and English muffins breakfast for Saturday brunches. Since I've been at home the last couple weeks, I just felt the need to change things up.

And that's it for my roundup! Tomorrow I'll be making another oyako-don like the one I made the other while, but I don't plan to make any changes to the recipe, so don't expect a picture of that. :)