He Cooks, She Cooks

I’m not sure where my head was when I made this meal. Luckily it turned out tasty, but I did so many silly things along the way, like forget several ingredients I bought specifically for the dish. Seriously, I didn’t remember to put ginger in until I went up for seconds. Who makes anything Asian-inspired without ginger?

But let me explain the little bit of thinking that did go into this dinner. I wanted to improvise another soup, this time with light Asian flavors. I started with Trader Joe’s all-natural vegetable broth, which I brought to a boil with some frozen shrimp shells I had the presence of mind to save last week. I just finished reading Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat, and she talks about keeping bones and shells and other normally disposed items to use later in stock.

After a bit, I removed the shells and added chicken, carrots and green onions. Then came the hard part: figuring out how to make it taste like something. I added a good amount of soy sauce and some Singapore seasoning I brought from my parents’ house. I think it’s a blend of curry, pepper and lemon that is meant to go on fish or chicken. Then I remembered to add a few garlic cloves (you know, that ingredient that goes in pretty much everything. My mind was clearly somewhere else.)

It was starting to taste all right, but it took on new complexity when I gave it a glug of white wine. I figured I’d apply the same idea I learned a week earlier when I saw sherry listed in a stir-fry recipe. I’m not sure the soup would have been worth anything without it.

I added bok choy and peas. (Not snap peas, even though I had them in the fridge. No, that would have been the smart thing to do.) Then I put the shrimp in, followed soon by thin glass noodles.

We served it with bean sprouts, cilantro and spicy sriracha sauce.

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I’m generally skeptical of eating fish in Missouri, a landlocked state more than 1,000 miles from a coast in either direction. But when I saw some perfectly pink tuna behind the glass of Hy-Vee, I remembered the tangy marinade I made when I was in Sydney last year. Michael wasn’t thrilled about the idea of fish for dinner, but I was already dreaming of the ginger, soy, citrus combination.

When we got back to the house, Michael suggested serving it with raw carrots and cucumbers on top of warm rice. I wasn’t immediately sold, but I didn’t put up a fight.

Well, wouldn’t you know it…I loved the tuna in the deconstructed sushi style, and Michael loved the meaty tuna steak. His exact words were, “My mouth is very happy.”

This dinner is quick and easy, which isn’t always the case in my kitchen, I admit. It’s also not as expensive as you’d think. We get a lot of questions from people asking, “How do you guys eat like you do? You’re college students!”

People forget that you can get a lot more food for your money when you eat at home. These tuna steaks were about $6 each, and they were huge…almost too big. One small cucumber was 20 cents. A carrot about 10 cents. The portions of rice? Maybe 40 cents. Ginger, 10 cents. 25 cents for half an orange. And we’ll overestimate and say it was a dollar for the small amounts of other ingredients.

Total, this meal was $8 a person, and we were stuffed. Try getting full at a sushi restaurant for that cheap and not being sick afterward.

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