This week's selection was Pepper Steak from a Betty Crocker Recipe.
Shopping was no problem at all this week. I guess I'm getting used to the whole "medium onion" thing. On the other hand, the pepper I picked up were huge. They're kind of hidden in the picture, but they were the two smallest ones I could find in the stack at the supermarket.
I chose to pick up a package of rice noodles instead of the called for rice. That created a small problem later; I'll get to that. Also in that photo is the great big hunk of top round that I bought. It was over two pounds, so I cut and weighed the 1 1/4 pounds called for and put the rest in the freezer.
Prep work was fairly simple, just a lot of slicing. The steak was supposed to be in 1" by 2" by 1/4" strips. Do not be surprised when I tell you that I didn't get out my ruler. Neither did I measure the 1/4" slices of onion. I cut the stems off the peppers, sliced them in half, got rid of the seeds and sliced them into strips, 1/4" yet again. In the end I only used about one and a half of those giants.
I went ahead and browned the steak in the oil, then added the sliced onions, ginger, garlic, salt and water. (as noted in the selection post I don't have garlic salt, so I used garlic powder and salt). After quickly bringing it to a boil, I covered it and simmered for ten minutes. While the simmering was going on, I took that time to cut the tomatoes into eighths.
Here is where the rice noodles became an issue. I'd only read the package briefly, so I didn't notice that in addition to cooking them for five minutes, I was supposed to soak them in cold water for half an hour before hand. That was going to throw off my timing. Ah well.
Anyway, the peppers were to be tossed into the simmering mixture for the last five minutes. I did that on schedule, and in order to get a bit more spiciness into the mix, I threw in a couple whole cayennes. Then I mixed the soy sauce and corn starch together. After the end of the scheduled simmer, I added the sauce mix and stirred till everything thickened up a bit. Raised the heat to get it all to boil for a minute, then dropped it down to a low simmer while I waited out the noodle soaking.
Once I tossed the noodles into boiling water, I dropped the tomatoes on top of the pepper steak mixture, and five minutes later, everything was ready.
How was it? In a word, bad. Even with all the extra simmering time, it was like none of the flavors combined - not even my ad libbed cayennes. In retrospect, I do question the relatively small amounts of ginger and garlic. My only hope is that something magical will happen to the leftovers in the fridge.
I also completely forgot about the frozen egg rolls I'd picked up at Trader Joe's, so I tossed them in them microwave. Just a soggy as you'd expect. The wine was suggested by the wine guy at TJs, a chianti. It didn't thrill me either.
Lessons Learned - read and reread any and all instructions, in the recipe as well as on any packaged foods
Tools needed - nothing new this week, although I have noticed that several of the recipes I've done call for smaller amounts than my set of measuring spoons offer. I think I can eyeball 1/4 of a teaspoon well enough.
Skills needed - nothing special this week
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