Haphazard Veggie Stir-Fry

This was my lunch today (no kid-rating for this one). I had just returned from grocery shopping, was running late, and was sooo hungry. I often grab take-out food after shopping (ironic, I know) but am really trying to reduce how often I eat out, so I grabbed my pacer food and set out to prepare something to wow my taste buds. I did get a "wow" but not in a good way. I managed to fix it and got the "wow" I was looking for.


There's no plan, and it's not pretty, except for being pretty rushed before picking up my kids from school. I took a few last-minute pictures, nonetheless.


Ingredients: veggies I had on hand, lo mein noodles, mystery sauce


Veggies:
-carrot stick- shredded, julienned, sliced, whatever - I had bits of all today
-celery stalk-cut (I discovered it isn't easy to julienne celery)
-onion-a wedge chopped
-small garlic clove pressed
-two bok choy leaves
-6 sugar snap peas, cut up
-interesting chive-like sprout-thing growing from a sprouted onion I took too long to use and planted it instead - minced

Mystery Sauce:

2/3 cup of chicken stock

4 T tamari sauce (type of soy sauce)

2 T white wine (the cooking variety)

2 T corn starch

Stir.

Cook lo-mein as directed (or rice, or favorite pasta or nada). Set aside.


While the noodles are cooking, heat butter oil in pan. Add the harder, denser veggies. Saute for 4-5 min. Then add the remaining veggies for a couple more minutes. Set aside.







Heat some of the mystery sauce in pan. Quickly add the noodles and heat through. Set aside.


(I wouldn't do this next step, again). Heat more sauce and add veggies. Heat through. Put all on plate. Take a bite and say, "Wow! Too much sauce!" Dump noodles and veggies into a sieve and rinse while thinking, "I hope this works." Reheat. Serve. Taste. Much better.

"Is rinsing your food allowed?"
"It is now."

Washed clean like a baptized soul.

The sauce, although good, was salty and strong.


Next time:
If I use the sauce, I'll only use a little on the noodles and leave the veggies in their crispy, savory glory. The veggies were crispy and flavorful all on their own. I may play around with the sauce and experiment with diffferent ingredients.

I think simply adding some tamari or teriaki sauce to the concoction is fine and quicker. I don't need to get all saucy.

Tomato Soup and Maybe Tomato Sauce

For a simpler recipe, click HERE -- it's based on the final results from this series of experiments (9-3-11).


Welcome to my laboratory! What started out to be a simple soup recipe morphed into a fun lab experiment.


Kid Rating on Final Product (strained with butter and flour): 2.5 out of 3 kids liked it
Do Again: Yes


I started with a recipe from Roni's Green Lite Bites and modified it. I noticed one of Roni's commentators, RG, mentioned using flour and butter, so I made half of the batch with flour and butter. And, either my blender isn't very good or I didn't blend long enough, but the puree's consistency wasn't as fine looking as Roni's, so I strained half of the batch.


What we tested tasted:


Unstrained/No Butter/No Flour
Unstrained with Butter & Flour


Strained/No Butter/No Flour
Strained with Butter & Flour


Confused, yet? Here we go!


UNSTRAINED, NO BUTTER, NO FLOUR
15 Tomatoes (from farmers' market and friends garden -- thanks, Becky!)
1 small onion coarsely chopped
2-3 cloves of garlic crushed
1 tsp kosher salt
2 T dried basil
1/2 tsp of sugar

Tomatoes, salt, garlic, onion, basil, sugar
(ignore flour and butter, I shifted gears after taking the picture)

Cut away stems and blemishes
Puree in blender (I did it in batches)
Add onion, garlic, and basil in blender (I added it to tomato batches) and blend until smooth

Bring to boiling
Add salt and sugar
Lower and simmer 1/2 hour

Pink and foamy before cooking

Red after cooking

Family Review of Unstrained/No Butter/No Flour
5 y.o. - (I didn't bother testing him until we all chose our favorite version).
9 y.o. - "I like the texture, but it's a little sour like a tomato."
10 y.o. - Flavor is good but wishes it was smoother.
Hubby - (Unexcited) "Yeah, I guess."
Me - Wonderful flavor. I'd be happy with it as-is. It would be a good pasta sauce if it was thicker. --Which brings me to turning this recipe into a lab experiment.




UNSTRAINED WITH BUTTER AND FLOUR
To half of the above recipe/batch I added:
1/2 - 1 T Butter
1 T Flour
1/2 tsp sugar (to help that tomatoee taste my daughter spoke of)


Add the butter to the batch
Transfer some soup to a bowl and mix in the flour (to prevent lumps)

1 T flour with some of the soup before mixing

Flour and soup after mixing. Now slowly stir this
back into the soup pot.

Slowly stir the flour mixture back into the soup pot.
Add the sugar.


Family Review of Unstrained With Butter and Flour:
9 y.o. - "It's a little better. Still a little sour."
10 y.o. - (Not available to test; playing at a friend's house).
Hubby - (Same look) "Yeah, OK."
Me - I like it.




To the other half of the Unstrained/No Butter/No Flour batch:
STRAINED, NO BUTTER, NO FLOUR
Using my grandmother's strainer that's probably at least 50 years old, I tried to press the soup's liquid through.

Very thin.

I just reheated it.
Family Review of Strained, No Butter, No Flour:
9 y.o. - "It's good." She liked the texture and flavor
Hubby - Seems thin.
Me - Great flavor. Very thin.




To half of the strained batch:
STRAINED WITH BUTTER AND FLOUR
1/2 - 1 T Butter - add to pot
1 T Flour - do as above (transfer a small amount of soup to a bowl, stir in flour, stir back into soup pot).
1/2 tsp sugar


Heat to boiling, stir occasionally

The final result: smooth and thicker -- The Family Winner

Family Review of Strained with Butter and Flour:
5 y.o. - "I love it!" And he did. He licked his bowl clean and finished Marie's after she changed her mind.
9 y.o. - At first: "It's good." Then after eating it a bit: "Still too bitter." (Skye, the 5 y.o. finished it).
10 y.o. - "I like it, but there's a little weird taste to it." Yeah, whatever. He went to town on it and gobbled it up.
Hubby - (with enthusiasm this time) "I like that one. Yeah. Thicker but smooth. I love it."
Me - It's good. I'm disappointed that I'm missing out on all the pulp and fiber that was strained away, and the yield wasn't much. The procedure had more steps in it than I was initially hoping for. I'll try Roni's again but try to blend it longer to see if I can make it smoother and keep the pulp.


We're not finished, yet. Do you remember the pulp in the strainer and the remaining batch of "Unstrained with Butter and Flour?" TOMATO SAUCE!


Add pulp to lonely, rejected batch of wannabe soup.
Add 1 tsp of sugar.
Heat and stir.

Yum! I look forward to trying it with another meal.

I'm storing it in the fridge. I'll let you know how the family likes it during another meal.

Update - On a different date, I tried pureeing the tomatoes in a blender for a longer duration -- much better. I used the puree for a chili recipe when I was out of canned tomato soup. I'll try the soup recipe again. I'm encouraged that my blender will do the job.