Takeout with the Tos #22

We had a conglomerate of food this week. It was a little bit of hodgepodge.  

Green Beans and Pork: $14.99

Steak (2 8oz ribeyes) : $39.99

Mashed Potatoes: $8.99

Green Onion Pancake with Shrimp: $24.99

Tortilla Kebabs: $12.99

Total: $101.95

Tax: $8.41

Grand Total:  $110.36

 

 Green Beans and Pork

I make this dish a lot. It's easy, we have ground pork in the freezer on hand, and it's tasty. These beans were from a friend's garden. I seasoned with salt, sugar, cooking wine, soy sauce, and oyster sauce. I blanch the beans first in salt water to get a softer texture without being fibrous. The salt helps to keep the vibrant green color and actually cooks the beans faster than in unsalted water. 

 

Steak 

These steaks have been in our freezer for almost a year. I got them on sale last year when I spotted them and vacuum sealed for the freezer. It wasn't our intention to save them for a year, but when I vacuum seal my meats, I'm more at ease about "forgetting" them for long periods of time. My husband cooked these and seasoned with salt, pepper, and garlic. I'm typically not a fan of steak, but when he does it, I'll eat it. This makes me wonder if all the steaks I've ever ordered at restaurants have not been cooked properly. 

Mashed Potatoes 

 

Mashed potatoes go with steak and we had a lot of potatoes leftover to use. Nothing fancy here - no box mashed potatoes though. An important thing to note is when boiling potatoes, use low heat. Boiling too high will overcook the outside faster, resulting in crumbling outsides. To keep the potato intact, add the potatoes into cold water and bring to a boil, then lower the heat to continue cooking the potato evenly to prevent it from falling apart. Once the potatoes are cooked, we drain the water, add milk, butter, and seasoning. 

Green Onion Pancakes with Shrimp

I bought a giant pack of green onions from Costco a few days prior to making this. I can use up a lot of green onions if I want to, but boy does Costco sell a lot at once in their bag. I ended up using about half the bag of green onions to make these pancakes alone. I've made these many times so I no longer reference a recipe, but the one I started out with was by Maangchi. I've done it many times so I just wing the batter now and look for consistency. I still mess it up every now and then, but that's the errors of being human. These are so good fresh off the pan when they're nice and crispy. 

Tortilla Kebabs 

This recipe popped up on my social media one day. It seemed interesting and was mesmerizing to watch him make. I filed it away in the back of my head. One weekday morning when I was home, we started running low on food options. I had leftover tortillas in the refrigerator from before and decided I was going to make this recipe. 

*Note: I followed the recipe very loosely. I don't have half these ingredients on a whim and I wasn't going out to buy them. So my kebabs are not Lao style. They're simply...Lao inspired.*

My meat filling consisted of: one pound of ground pork, Kewpie onion dressing, lemon pepper seasoning (to replace the lemongrass), salt, sugar, oyster sauce, garlic, cilantro, and green onion. Then I followed the recipe to layer the tortillas and the meat. 

I didn't end up with perfectly flat tortilla squares. Once I filled my meat layers, it did start to sag on the ends. Maybe this goes away with more experience, but I clearly don't have the experience. This came out really delicious for a first try. It definitely took some time to assemble and cook the skewers and they were consumed in a fraction of the time. These types of recipes make me sad, but good food is good food....