Rice Pilaf

I grew up eating the boxed rice pilaf and I had a craving for it the other day. The boxed stuff has a lot of sodium so I was curious about making it at home from scratch. This was so easy and I don't know why people use the boxed mix.

I will give you a warning...red onion turns green so you should use the white onion.

Rice Pilaf

Adapted from All Recipes 

Serves 4

2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup orzo pasta
1/2 cup diced white onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup uncooked white rice
2 cups chicken broth or veg broth

1/2 cup slivered almonds (optional)

Melt the butter in a lidded pot over medium-low heat. Stir in almond and orzo pasta until golden brown. Add onion and cook until onion becomes translucent, then add garlic and cook for 1 minute. Mix in the rice and chicken broth. Increase heat to high and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until the rice is tender, and the liquid has been absorbed, 20 to 25 minutes. Remove from heat and let stand for 5 minutes, then fluff with a fork.

Steamed Fish with Soy Sauce, Ginger, and Scallion

Happy Lunar New Year! I used the Steamed Fish with Scallion-Ginger-Soy Sauce recipe from Nomnomcat. What a taste of home! My mom and my grandmother used to make this for the family.

The only change from the recipe is that I omitted the sugar.

At banquets this is an entire steamed fish, not just the fillet. But you can make this with fish fillets and it can be microwaved! I used the individually frozen tilapia fish fillets.

A fresh healthy dinner in less than 10 minutes! And another perk? This recipe pretty much creates NO dishes. Seriously, for dishes I had: a rice pot and lid, a pie plate, a plate, scissors (from the scallion, cilantro, and opening the fish packets), a knife from cutting the ginger, and chop sticks.

If you don't have a rice cooker, here are straight forward white rice directions that I wrote up a while back!

Fish in the soy sauce with ginger on top

yum!

Noonk! This is the rice at the bottom of the rice pot that gets crispy.
Take the rest of the rice out of the pot and leave a thin layer.
While you are eating put the rice pot on low and let the bottom cook.
Pry it out of the pot and put some butter and salt on it and enjoy!

Steamed Fish with Soy Sauce, Ginger, and Scallion
serves 1-2 people

White rice, cooked
2 fish fillets, tilapia, defrosted
2 green onion stems, sliced
3 stems of cilantro, chopped
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
2 tbsp cold water
1/2 tsp fresh ginger or 1/4 inch of fresh ginger in chunks

In a glass Pyrex pie plate combine soy sauce, sesame oil, cold water. Mix to combine.
Toss the fish in the mix to coat.
Put the ginger on top of the fish.
Cover with saran wrap tightly.
Cook for 5 minutes, until fish is opaque and flaking.
Carefully remove the saran wrap.
Put rice on the plate, top with fish and garnish with green onion and cilantro. Then pour the sauce from the pan onto the fish and rice.

Dad's Pulled Pork

My dad makes a great slow cooker pulled pork so I decided to give it a shot! This is a spicy and sweet BBQ sauce pulled pork.

I did a half batch, 2.5 lbs of boneless roast pork. You can use pork shoulder too.

Combine everything into the crock pot. 8-9 hours on low, 4-5 hours on high. I did about 6-7 hours of some variation of low and high.

Spices

Cover the pork with the soupy mixture

Pork is tender and starting to break apart when you jab it with a fork

Take it out and use forks to pull it apart/shred it

Put it back into the broth

Garlic butter grilled Kaiser rolls!

I melted a pat of butter with a little less than a 1/4 tsp of garlic powder in a frying pan. Raise the heat to about 7 and then put the buns in the pan for about 3-4 minutes, until they are golden and crunchy.

Look at that!!!

Normally we serve it burrito style on a tortilla with white rice and Mexican style shredded cheese and then grilled. And this is wonderful. However, when N. and I went to lunch at Woodstock Inn in Woodstock NH, we had pulled pork served on garlic butter grilled rolls.

So, for burritos I would keep the beans and corn. If I want to serve it on rolls, I would omit the beans and corn.

UPDATE 3/9/13: Used boneless pork loin pieces, very tender.

Dad's Pulled Pork

makes enough for 8-10 sandwiches

½ cup brown sugar

2 tbsp Red pepper flakes

1 tbsp Cayenne

1 tbsp Black pepper

12 oz Coke
1 cup BBQ sauce

1 cup ketchup

4 ½ lbs roast pork, pork shoulder...
28 oz of black beans (drained)
1 can corn (drained)

Combine all ingredients and marinate overnight in the fridge.

10 h on low

Pull it apart

Put it back in and make make sandwiches or burritos!