Sunday, July 27, 2014

Easy Peasy Lettuce Wraps

Lettuce Wraps - a quick, easy, and delicious dinner option.



Ingredients:

1 lb lean ground beef (can substitute other meat or tofu, if preferred)
1/4 cup zucchini
1/4 cup onion
1/4 cup mushrooms
1/4 cup orange peppers
1/4 cup water
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp brown sugar
1 tbsp Chinese 5-spice powder (**see excerpt below):
to taste: chili powder, salt, and pepper
1 head lettuce (the crisper, the better!)

**Used extensively in Chinese cooking, this pungent mixture of five ground spices usually consists of equal parts of cinnamon, cloves, fennel seed, star anise and Szechuan peppercorns. Prepackaged five-spice powder is available in Asian markets and most supermarkets.

Read more at: 
http://www.foodterms.com/encyclopedia/chinese-five-spice-powder/index.html

How to cook:
1. Dice all vegetables into small pieces.
2. Take your raw meat or tofu and vegetables in a bowl, add water, soy sauce, brown sugar, and spices. Marinate for twenty minutes in the fridge.
3. Cook mixture on the stove until meat is cooked and any excess sauce has cooked off.
4. While the mixture is cooking, take the head of lettuce and rip off the pieces as carefully as possible, in order to make little lettuce boats to fill with yummy meat mixture.
5. Once the mixture is cooked, serve with lettuce and side (e.g. rice, quinoa, couscous, etc).




I made quinoa, rather than rice, as a side dish. To be honest, however, my quinoa failed rather spectacularly. It was a soggy disaster. If you have ever experienced a similar issue, there are some handy tips to be found here:

The wraps were delicious, and the meat mixture was even better the next day.
Because you cook the meat after marinating, however, it might be a good idea to use extra lean ground beef for this recipe. I did find the mixture I made was a little greasy (not that it tasted bad, mind you!).

Saturday, July 12, 2014

Death By Chocolate

Another dessert post! It's not all we have been cooking around here, but life has been busy so most of our meals have been pretty quick'n'dirty, not exactly blog-worthy.
However, recently my husband got another year older and I made him my famous lasagna and his favourite indulgent dessert - "Death By Chocolate". It seemed like a good opportunity to get back on the ol' blog bandwagon.
Recipe:
1 chocolate cake from mix 
(although you could probably substitute a homemade one, if you want to do the extra work! I didn't)

1 cup Kahlua 
(and a small snifter for sampling!)

1 lg container Cool Whip OR 2 cups whipped cream

4 boxes Dr. Oetker Chocolate Mousse 
(again, you probably could substitute for homemade, but I just used the delicious easy-make variety, and it works great!)

6 Skor Bars
 (no substitutions here!)





Bake the cake the day before you wish to serve the dessert.
While the cake is still warm, poke holes in it (see above) and drench in Kahlua. Feel free to sample from snifter as you do this.

The next day, you are going to create a layer dish in a large bowl (a punch bowl works well, although as you can tell from the pictures I didn't have anything that fancy at the time I made this).

Crumble the cake. Break Skor bars into small pieces and crumble into whipped topping. Layer in bowl as follows:
Cake---Mousse---Whipped Topping
Repeat until all ingredients are used up, ending with the Whipped Topping layer. 
If you managed not to eat them all, you can crumble any extra Skor bar bits onto the top for a little extra sweet fanciness. Chill, then serve to the delight of all who are there to enjoy it.


This recipe was included in a book of family recipes given to me by my mother-in-law. I'm pretty sure you'll be seeing other dishes from her collection in future blog posts.