Shrimp and snap pea curry with noodles

After the success of my kung pao chicken last week, I almost made it again with this week's batch of snap peas, but I figured I should mix things up a bit. I wanted to use the garlic chile sauce I'd bought though, so I found a curry that looked like it'd be good with a kick to it. I followed this recipe for shrimp bean curry. I used garlic scapes and spring onions in place of shallots, snap peas in place of green beans, fresh lime instead of lime leaves, and added some garlic-chile sauce until it was as spicy as I like. At the end, I added a bag of cellophane noodles, which ended up soaking up all the sauce, but added some nice substance to the dish.

Kung Pao Chicken

Kung Pao Chicken with snap peas, garlic scape, peppers, spring onions. Loosely based on this recipe. I found a chili-garlic sauce at the grocery store that ended up lending lots of spice to my sauce. Here's my version:

-Marinate chunks of boneless chicken breast in mixture of chili-garlic sauce, soy sauce, sherry, and sesame oil. I didn't measure these things, but had well over a cup of marinade total, which became my sauce. Only marinated for the time it took me to chop everything else.
-Start rice cooking.
-Chop garlic, ginger, garlic scape, tops and bottoms of spring onions, 2 fresh chili peppers, 1 red pepper, snap peas.
-Heat up sesame oil in pan. Add garlic and ginger until starting to brown, the add chicken and all the marinade. Cook chicken. Add spring onion bottoms, chili, garlic scape, snap peas, and red pepper. Cook 5-10 minutes, until peppers and snap peas are softening. Add cashews and spring onion tops and turn heat to low.
-Make sauce with: 3 tbsp soy sauce, 1/2 tbsp sesame oil, 1/2 tbsp sugar, 1/2 tbsp cornstarch, 1/2 cup water. Mix until cornstarch is dissolved, then add to chicken and vegetables. Simmer for 5-10 minutes.
-Serve over rice.

Mushroom phyllo cups

I like cooked mushrooms much better than raw ones. So I sauteed my mushrooms with some garlic and spring onions, put into premade phyllo cups, sprinkled cheese on top (Gruyere was what I had on hand), and baked for 10-15 minutes. Voila!

Spring Onion-Chorizo Frittata

This barely uses any of my CSA food-- just a handful of spring onions-- so I hesitate to blog it. But today I had a track workout with my running group and was needing some good protein afterward. Plus, I'm surprisingly out of most of my CSA veggies from last Wednesday. Anyway, I'd bought some chorizo earlier in the week, thinking of making caldo verde with my kale, but the kale got all used up in my turnovers. And what better way to get a good mix of post-run protein (eggs and chorizo) and carbs (potatoes) than a quick and easy frittata. I originally learned how to make these from Salva, a Spanish post-doc who worked in a lab at the same time as me. He used the "flip" technique of getting the whole frittata cooked through, but with my new oven-proof cast iron pan I've been wanting to try cooking the frittata through in the oven. So I fried up some spring onions and chorizo, added potatoes that had been boiled for 15 minutes or so, and then mixed the whole thing with egg. I cooked the bottom on the stove, then put the pan in the oven for 10 minutes-- the last few minutes let cheese melt on top. I definitely prefer the oven to Salva's technique of flipping the frittata-- I never really got that down!

Spinach-mint chicken penne

It's so great having all these vegetables in my fridge-- not needing to go to the grocery store with a whole list of ingredients to buy, but instead basing my dinner around what I already have. I wanted to use up some spinach and mint tonight, since it already looked a little wilty, but didn't want something too complex, time-consuming, or needing too many ingredients I didn't have. So I started browsing Epicurious for spinach recipes, and got inspired by a simple spinach pasta salad with some chicken for protein. I figured I'd use mint instead of rosemary, and both the tops and bottoms of my spring onions. I was a little hesitant about the mint-spring onion-spinach combination, but it turned out great-- garlicky with a little extra kick and very fresh and green tasting.

What I did: Sauteed the spring onions and a few cloves of garlic in olive oil, then added chicken-- one breast cut into fairly small chunks. Once the chicken was cooked, I added my whole batch of spinach, mint, and some chopped greens from the spring onions. Everything smelled incredibly fresh. Meanwhile, I was cooking half a pound of penne, and dumped it straight into the pan of greens when it was al dente. I added a little chicken broth and let the whole thing simmer for five minutes, then covered liberally with parmesan. Served it still steaming hot-- made about 3 servings, I'd say, so will last for me for lunch and dinner tomorrow.