Happy Thursday!! It’s been a great food week and I’m excited to share our menu from last week. Hope you all find something you want to make (if I were to recommend 1 thing if I HAD to choose - it’d be the sesame noodles). So easy, so good, and a subscriber told me it was his favorite thing to DATE!
1. Braised Pistachio Chicken with Rice Pilaf, Charred Green Beans, and Plantains.
Braised pistachio chicken recipe and step by step photos are on my website here.
Video tutorial here if you want a refresher (also in the recipe link above).
For the rice pilaf, I threw in chard leaves, onions, garlic, and Mexican oregano. When I forgot to make a portion for our finish it fresh customers, I redid the smaller portion of rice with onions, garlic, and celery. Both were super yum, and both recipes are below.
Charred green bean recipe is the Chinese dry fried garlic green beans on my website. You might think the soy sauce is an odd combo with this more hispanic flavored meal, but the flavors work!!
For plantains, there’s no formal recipe for this. Just get really ripe plantains (the ones that are almost black!) and pan sear on medium heat in a cast iron or pan until nice and caramelized on each side, about 3-4 minutes.
2. My vegetarian version of this - braised pistachio and tomatillo sauce with chickpeas, sweet potatoes, and mushrooms
Wow this was so good - I was worried it would miss depth of flavor without the chicken broth, but it was still delicious. Here are my recipe modifications to the braised chicken recipe above to make this veg.
Instead of chicken thighs and chicken broth, I used:
1 sweet potato, sliced into 1/2” thick pieces and roasted with EVOO + salt and pepper at 400F for 15-20 minutes.
1 can of chickpeas
6 ounces of brown button mushrooms, roasted (this can also be browned on the stovetop) I roast mushrooms when cooking for large quantities.
2-3 cups of water
Make the tomatillo sauce, then blend with the pistachios and lettuce. Only add the roasted sweet potato, chickpeas, or roasted mushrooms to the sauce until after you’ve blended and strained it. You can add the chickpeas first and cook for 15 minutes in the sauce before adding the mushrooms and sweet potatoes for a softer chickpea, or you can just simmer everything together for ~5 minutes and serve.
3. Salmon Burgers with Roasted fingerling potatoes, green garlic aioli, and celery radish slaw.
Recipe for the salmon burgers with celery and radish slaw is coming this weekend. It is made with very few ingredients, and tastes really simple and delicious - Shiping really loved this one and it will definitely be on the menu again!
Recipe for the roasted fingerling potatoes is below. I’ll be adding this to my website soon as well. This is SUCH an easy and elegant side that takes minimal prep time, it should be in your recipe repertoire asap!
4. Chipotle black bean burgers with roasted fingerling potatoes, green garlic aioli, and celery radish slaw
My vegetarian version replaces the salmon with a chipotle black bean burger, and it’s smokey, flavor packed, and delish.
I used the base recipe for the chipotle black bean burger from this blog.
These were a bit fragile (ugh aren’t all vegetarian burgers?!), but were still ok if handled very gently. My only cooking note is to chill them before cooking and add more panko if it’s too runny to form into a patty.
5. Sesame noodles with minced pork or chicken with spring woodear mushroom salad
Sesame noodle recipe here.
We swapped out the noodles for rice and quinoa for our gluten free friends. Also delish.
Spring woodear mushroom salad below
6. Sesame noodles with mushrooms and Yuba. Served with spring woodear mushroom salad
Used the same recipe as above, but swapped in Yuba (bean curd) instead of the minced meat. Soak the dried yuba overnight, then simmer in boiling water for 20 minutes before adding to the noodles. The sauce should be flavorful enough to give the Yuba flavor, but you can taste a piece after tossing with the sauce and noodles and
7. Salad of the week:
Recipe for Taco salad
Reminder that this will stay fresh in your fridge for 4 days and it’s so worth the meal prep time to have salads prepped and ready for you ALL WEEK!!! <3
8. Soup of the week: Hot and Sour Soup
Recipe for the hot and sour soup is below.
That’s all for this week - lots of delicious options, so I hope you find something yummy to make! Quick tip - if you have leftover soup or are looking for a way to repurpose the soup into a new meal, I love taking this and making a noodle soup. Just heat up the soup, cook some asian noodles (I love the trader joe’s squiggles noodles), then add the cooked noodles to the soup and serve. SO good, and it feels like a whole new meal.
