Pork Fried Rice

Back to it after getting the dog threw off both my cooking and my noting of it...

Pork Chops
Soy Sauce
Fish Sauce
Oyster Sauce
1 TB Sesame Oil
Ground Ginger
Brown Sugar
Red pepper flakes
Instant Brown Rice
1/4 cup Chopped Scallions
1 Tsp grated Ginger
2 cloves minced Garlic
2 cups chopped Pineapple
2 Eggs, lightly beaten
1 Red Pepper, diced
3 TB Peanut Oil

I cobbled this together from a couple of different recipes I looked at, with the basic formula coming from Bittman's How to Cook Everything. I made a marinade with 2 TB soy sauce, a dash of fish sauce, 1 TB sesame oil, some red pepper flakes, and about a TB of ground ginger, and let the pork sit for a little while. I roasted it at 375 for 45 min to an hour, checking it periodically to flip and baste, while it got good and crisped. When it cooled, I shredded it.

Prepare the rice according to the packaging. Mix a sauce with 2 TB soy, 1 TB oyster sauce, dash fish sauce, red pepper flakes, and about 1 TB brown sugar. Heat the oil in a wok on high (though you may need to put the heat down a bit - it started spitting all over the kitchen), then sautee the garlic, ginger, and scallion for a couple of minutes. Add the pepper and sautee for a minute. Put the heat to medium high, add pork and rice, and stir fry for a couple of minutes. Add the pineapple and stir for a minute. Make a hole in the middle and add the egg, scrambling it until cooked and then mixing it into the rice. Cook for a minute, stir in sauce, and serve.

We ate tons, and only had 2 leftover servings, but probably could have gotten 3 out of it if we'd not been so hungry...

Note: The rice had way too much moisture content - everything I looked at recommended using day old rice, but I tried to go the instant route. I'd do the day old route next time, or try to cook the rice with less water.

Tuna with Tomatoes, Parsnips, Spinach, and Chickpeas

This is one of those "clean out the pantry because I don't want to go to the store" kind of recipes, but it's pretty good, easy, and made almost entirely of stuff that I typically have on hand. A. was initially suspicious of this, but seemed to like it.

2 cans Tuna
2 cans diced Tomatoes
2 cans Chickpeas
2 Parsnips
Spinach
Onion
Garlic
Rice

Steam parsnips. Sautee onion and garlic for about4-5 minutes. Add tomatoes, parsnips, and chickpeas and bring just to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 5-7 minutes. Add tomatoes and a couple handfuls of spinach and simmer, covered, for another 5 minutes or so. Serve over rice.

We had 3 good-sized servings leftover; could probably have stretched it into four. The parsnips were the one thing that I added that weren't standard on-hand ingredients, and I didn't actually steam them beforehand. I would steam them the next time, though, as they didn't get as tender as I would have hoped.