Morphing Meals

My family left me to my own devices yet again last evening. So what did I do? I ran to the kitchen (well, walked actually) and began pulling ingredients out of the fridge and the pantry for a meal I knew I would like.

I gathered ingredients for a sweet, but tangy Asian-inspired sauce. I mixed together soy sauce, white wine, sweet chili paste rice vinegar and brown sugar to taste.

Then I practiced my julienning skills on the carrot and I chopped some red bell pepper, green onion, celery and sugar snap peas.

Earlier in the week I had made a pork loin roast in the slow cooker since I had an evening meeting. I diced some of the left-over pork (morph #1) and marinated it briefly in the sauce I had made before-hand. I also added a couple of drops of dark sesame oil and then some cornstarch.

On with the cooking. Heat a pan over fairly high heat and add canola oil. Once the pan is hot, add the carrot and onion. Saute for a bit before adding the remaining veggies.

Add the pork and the sauce and simmer until the sauce has thickened. Remember, the pork was already cooked, so at this point I just needed to heat the meat through.

And this is the finished dish. While I was working on prepping the sauce and the veggies, I had a pot of rice cooking on the back burner.

Today I decided to use the left-overs from last evening's dinner in a slightly different way (morph #2).

Today's mise en place. I decided to chop all the veggies into roughly the same size pieces. I finely sliced some of the green scallion for a garnish for the finished dish. I also have the left-over rice, the rest of the slow-cooked pork loin, an egg and some teriyaki sauce I made. Can you guess what I'm making yet?

I heated some canola oil in a pan over medium-high heat. Then I cooked a scrambled egg until it was almost cooked through. Remove to a dish and add more oil. Turn the heat up a bit. Unfortunately, the non-stick coating on the pan isn't quite so non-stick any more. Don't you just hate when that happens?

I once again begin by sauteeing the onion and carrot. After a few minutes add the celery, sugar snap peas and then the red bell pepper.

Add in the rice and turn the heat down a bit.

Since the non-non-stick issue has once again reared its ugly head, I quickly added the pork and the teriyaki sauce I had made earlier.

The most important thing to remember about cooking a dish such as this is to have all the prep work done before even turning on the stove. The cooking process goes very quickly and there is no time to cut, chop or measure at this point.

I folded in the scrambled egg, scattered the thinly-sliced green scallion over the top and turn off the heat. And yes, you are right: this is my version of pork-fried rice. You are so very clever.