Pad Thai

 I have a confession to make. I've only ever eaten Pad Thai once, and that was at Thai Express. I don't often consider fast food restaurants to be a really good indicator of what a food should authentically be like so...yeah.

I decided today, when at the grocery store trying to figure out what to make for supper, to try my hand at Pad Thai.

I think I did a pretty good job. So does Alex. He wanted to eat the entire pan, but he was good and stopped himself. He told me to make it again whenever I wanted to. I'd say that's a win.

Here's the crazy thing. The jar of VH Pad Thai sauce I bought didn't have an actual recipe. It just gave a list of ingredients. So...I had to wing it. I added one ingredient (some green onion) and omitted two (the coriander leaves and the lime wedges).

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1 lb boneless skinless chicken breast, diced

1 large white onion, chopped

1 cup bean sprouts

1/2 red onion, thinly sliced

1/2 package (8 oz) rice noodles, cooked and drained

1 jar VH Pad Thai stir-fry sauce

1/4 cup fresh coriander leaves, chopped

1/3 cup chopped peanuts

4 lime wedges

Heat vegetable oil in a wok or large frying pan. Saute chicken until white on all sides and almost all cooked. Remove from pan and place on a plate.

Add the white onion, red onion (and half the green onion if you use any) and the bean sprouts to the pan and fry for about 5 minutes or until tender. Add the rice noodles (and for the love of god cut them or break them apart before you cook them because it's darned near impossible to do it once they're cooked) and mix, cooking for 2-3 minutes. Add the VH sauce, and the chicken and mix well. Continue to cook for about another 5-10 minutes, until chicken is fully cooked.

Garnish with the remainder of the green onion and some chopped peanuts. Serve immediately. Makes 4 servings. 

Alex's Bread Rolls

I'm not going to say much about this, because it's not my recipe, it is Alex's. He wrote it out and I'm going to copy and paste and put it here, with his humor and all. But this is a fantastic recipe for rolls/bread and I know a lot of you want it, so here we go!

OK, disclosure, I have pop-eye forearms and no mixer so I actually hand kneaded this. I’m going to try and optimize for a Kitchen-Aid Mixer with a dough hook.

You will need!

1 cup of 85 Fahrenheit water.

2 ½ teaspoons of quick rising yeast

2 and ½ cups of flour. All purpose or bread if you can find it.

¼ cup of milk powder. Whey works. Muscle powder also works if you have unflavored or maybe vanilla however I did not try this, it “should” work.

1 tsp salt

¼ cup of sugar, you can omit if you want to cut down on it.

¼ cup of shortening or lard. I love grease and fat and look it, you can cut this in half if you want to limit. Three to five tablespoons of vegetable oil can work also.

As you can see, these are all basics we should have.

Mix your water, yeast and sugar together and set aside.

In your mixing bowl, put your shortening, flour and milk powder. You can sift it if you want to, I don’t.

OK your yeast mix should have a beery smell by now, pour that in and mix on low for about ten minutes.

Keep an eye on it, add flour if it’s sticking to the sides, but let it go for a couple of minutes first. Add warm water if it’s too stiff.

What you are going for is slightly softer than play dough. However if it’s stiff that’s OK too, as long as it’s uniformly mixed. It will just take longer to proof.

For those without a mixer, mix by hand and knead for ten to eight minutes.

Right, now for your primary fermentation.

Take the ball of dough out of the mixer, clean and lightly oil the bowl. Put the ball of dough back in and cover with plastic wrap. What I like to do is boil a liter of water, pour that into a separate bowl and put the dough in with it into a TURNED OFF oven. This is a makeshift proofer. Or just cover in plastic and put it somewhere warm.

Wait about an hour or until the dough is doubled and a bit in size. This takes longer the colder it is.

Now for forming and secondary fermentation. This makes one dozen rolls.

I flatten the dough out and divide it into twelve equal pieces with a knife on a lightly floured counter.  Sorry I don’t have the weights.

Hand roll them and put them on a parchment papered or lightly greased cookie sheet with about an inch or so between them. Myself, I actually like it when they rise into each other.

Cover with plastic or put them into your makeshift proofer oven for about another hour.

TAKE OUT OF OVEN. PUT RACKS INTO MIDDLE. Not yelling, this is just for emphasis.

Preheat oven to 350 Farenheit.

Bake in oven for about 18-20 minutes. If you have a good kitchen thermometer, check for 195 Fahrenheit on a sacrificial roll. Make sure it’s in the middle. Old schoolers will thump or check to see if anything sticks to the probe.

Brush the tops with butter or margarine.

Cool on a wire rack.

You can omit the lard and milk powder then add five tablespoons of Olive Oil. You’ve got yourself my favorite pizza dough! Just do the primary fermentation and it should be good to go.  Makes about an 18” pizza or Twoish 12”.

Salsa

Salsa is a big deal in my house. We eat tacos, nachos, chicken fajitas and salsa chicken with a lot of regularity, so having salsa on hand is really important.

I usually just buy jars of salsa. But last summer when I had a huge abundance of green peppers and cherry tomatoes from our garden, I decided to try making some. I found a fantastic recipe online and it was awesome.

But I didn't write it down.

Fast forward to last week when I had a bunch of tomatoes and wanted to make salsa. And no recipe. But luckily, it's not a hard recipe so I was able to recreate it. Although now, I'm writing it down for other people to use too! :)

2 cups tomatoes (I use cherry tomatoes or grape tomatoes)
1 onion
1 green pepper
1 1/2 jalapeno pepper (use more if you like it spicier)
3 garlic cloves
2 tbsp lime juice
Salt and pepper

I literally throw everything in my Tupperware Power Chef and dice it until it's the consistency I want. Use a food processor if you don't have a Power Chef. Store in the refrigerator for a few days. It might last longer if you store it in an airtight jar but it doesn't usually last that long in this house so I don't know. Haha.