CSA basket #2 and stir-fry

A week has come and gone already, and it's time for a new CSA basket! I'm really impressed with what the CSA is doing so far this year. The produce is so fresh, and they've managed to keep the bugs at bay. I can't imagine how difficult that is for an organic garden - I have a hard enough time keeping the bugs out of my food when I garden INDOORS. Anyways... today we received huge leaves of lettuce, monstrous spinach, spring onions and there were a few radishes hiding in the corner of the bag. Plus, we got another dozen eggs. I'm still not finished with the eggs from last week!

Though I haven't made anything from our garden loot yet, I do plan on making a big salad and/or frittata tomorrow.

I've been spending the last few days reading food blogs. I discovered this week that if you take a muscle relaxant, no work will happen for at least 12 hours. If you take more than one of them in a day, no work happens for about 30 hours. It's not a linear function... so, despite the fact that I was awake and should have been working, I browsed food blogs and added a about a dozen blogs to my blog roll!

One of the many things I came across on Cookin' Canuck was a chicken stir fry that looked unbelievably delicious. I asked Rob if he wanted broccoli in his stir fry or if I should go for something like snap peas. He picked snap peas, so I ended up modifying her recipe quite a bit in the process of changing veggies and scaling it down to a meal for two. Here goes...

Chicken, Snap Pea and Red Bell Pepper stir-fry
Modified from this recipe by Cookin' Canuck

The Sauce:
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup hoisin
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1/2 Tbsp sesame oil

The Stir-Fry:
2 Tbsp olive oil, divided
2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 Tbsp fresh ginger, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 red bell pepper, cut into 1/2-inch squares
12 oz (by weight) snap peas, ends trimmed
1 Tbsp black sesame seeds

Stir-fry is all about the prep work, so be sure to take the time to get everything ready before you start cooking!

In a 2-cup measuring cup, measure out the orange juice. Because I'm too lazy to get a measuring cup dirty for the hoisin, I measured that by displacement. Simply add hoisin sauce until the total volume reaches 1/2 cup. Add in the rest of the sauce ingredients and whisk together. Set aside.

Heat a 10-inch skillet (or a 12-inch skillet if you have one) over high heat. Add 1 Tbsp of the olive oil and saute the chicken strips. Add cracked black pepper to taste, about 15-20 grinds from a pepper grinder. Stir the chicken until it is just cooked through. Remove the chicken from the skillet and set aside.

Add the remaining olive oil to the skillet and add the chopped ginger and garlic. Stir about 30 seconds until fragrant, being careful not to burn the garlic, and then add the vegetables. Stir the vegetables for a minute. Then add about 2 Tbsp of water to the skillet and put the lid on to steam the snap peas for a couple of minutes.

When the peas are vibrant green, but still crisp, return the chicken to the pan with the sauce mixture. Stir until the sauce is thoroughly heated. Plate individual portions, sprinkle with sesame seeds, and serve.

This recipe was a fairly large meal, but Rob and I were able to finish the pan of veggie and chicken goodness. If you were to serve this with rice or noodles, you could easily stretch it to serve 3, maybe 4. If I were to make this again, I would add a little corn starch to the sauce. It's delicious the way it is, but I was sad to have "wasted" the sauce that remained in the pan. It would be even more delicious clinging to the veggies. Oh, and because I love spicy food, I would probably replace part of the sesame oil in the sauce with some chili oil. Just some thoughts...