I'm kind of a huge pain to go to a sushi restaurant with.

This is in part because I have an inexplicable distaste for scallops, lobster, and crab, and there is a lot of crab in sushi rolls.

(Don't even get me started on imitation crab. Or, for that matter, cream cheese, which is a blight on the textural delight that sushi rolls are meant to be.)

I do, however, love tuna in my sushi in absolutely any incarnation. My friend Jeannie and I used to order hamachi nigiri as dessert at our favorite local sushi spot. Which happens to also be the place that I discovered the spicy tuna hand roll.

It might surprise some people to know that my Deep South hometown has a fair number of fair sushi counters, but I daresay Jinsei is the best. Unfortunately, these days I mostly drive by and stare at it longingly, because I can't afford to eat there on the regular.

The hand roll isn't on the menu, but if you ask for it they'll wrap it right up for you on the spot. Hand rolls aren't traditional log rolls of sushi; they are cones of nori wrapped around all imaginable kinds of goodness. They got their name because they were originally meant to be eaten immediately, passed from the sushi chef right into your hot little hands, and then promptly devoured.

Jinsei's spicy tuna hand roll is a soft sheet of seaweed curled up with a little bit of sticky rice, cucumber, avocado, daikon, and spicy tuna (generally a mix of the fish with some mayo and sriracha). Sometimes it was garnished with a little seaweed salad; sometimes a smattering of sesame seeds. This one is really at the chef's discretion.

Alas, sushi-grade tuna is simply not a realistic aspiration for a weeknight meal on the Woodside. It requires enough funds and enough of a commute to be a special occasion item. Instead, I tried to just grab at those flavors and textures that I love without aiming very closely at all to the original inspiration.

In an effort to lighten things up I omitted the rice here, but it would be a delicious addition. And I will admit that I purchased pre-made coleslaw mix at the store because I am only one lady and I can never, ever finish an entire head of cabbage.

Nor would anyone appreciate that, I'd wager.

Ahem.

Because I can't keep my grubby little hands off anything I see in the store that's new, I'd bought these seaweed snacks a few days before, and they turned out to be a nice little taste of the ocean to energize those store-bought shrimp. Nothing really says "sushi" more than nori, and these are very lightly salty and flavored with sesame. (When I grabbed that link I discovered that there is also a wasabi version, which my store sadly does not yet stock!)

These were medium shrimp. The larger ones in my market were head-on, and I just didn't have the wherewithal to tackle that task on a Tuesday night. These were only nominally medium shrimp, when they should have perhaps been labeled shrimpy shrimp. 


In other words, they were leetle guys. I poured the whole shebang into my grill pan, marinade and all, which let the soy sauce get syrupy and slightly sweet, a nice counterpoint to the BANG of wasabi.

I'm going to call for anywhere between 1 and 3 tablespoons of sriracha here—I went with three, and it was powerful hot. Just taste taste taste and see where your magic number is.

Enjoy!


Wasabi Shrimp Hand Roll Bowl

1 (14-ounce) bag coleslaw mix (cabbage and carrots)
3 green onions, chopped
¼ cup light mayonnaise
1 to 3 tablespoons sriracha
½ pound raw medium shrimp, peeled and deveined with tails on
2 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce
1 tablespoon wasabi paste
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
¼ teaspoon ground ginger
Sesame seeds
1 avocado, chopped
Garnish: sliced nori, chopped green onions

1. Combine first 4 ingredients in a medium bowl; set aside.

2. Whisk together soy sauce and next 3 ingredients in a medium bowl until well combined; add shrimp, tossing to coat. Marinate 10 minutes.

3. Grill shrimp in grill pan over medium-high heat, 1 to 2 minutes on each side. Pour marinade over shrimp during last minute of cooking. Place shrimp and marinade in a medium bowl, and toss with sesame seeds.

4. Divide reserved spicy coleslaw among 4 serving bowls. Top evenly with shrimp and avocado, Garnish, if desired. Makes 4 servings.

 

Remember those panko-crusted cutlets I made yesterday? There were five of them, and Mama don't waste. (Well, technically Mama does waste, but Mama feels really pretty guilty about it.)

So Chicken week continues!

I really love cabbage for its freshness and crunch and that impression it gives of bearing healthful goodness. I also like that it is really hardy and long-lasting in the refrigerator, which means you can add it to all manner of things—toss sautéed cabbage into egg noodles and serve with Swedish meatballs, tumble it into stir-fries, or make a delicious slaw to top any number of sandwiches, from hot dogs and hamburgers to Reubens and Cubans—even though it comes as a head the size of your ... well, head, which means you'll be eating it in things for a while.

That's where the leftover makeover comes in handy.



The only cure for leftovers, I find, is to turn them into something completely different whenever possible.

Monday's flavors were sort of (sort of) a Southern American homage, so I swung the pendulum all the way around last night and made a stir fry. You may think it is MORE THAN A LITTLE strange to put cole slaw in a stir fry, but it helps to know that I prefer my cole slaw super lightly dressed. It's not as though this ended up being a typical slaw with just a little soy sauce stirred in. (Because that might be weird. Or good. I don't know!)


I did some Internet research on the best way to reheat fried chicken, and the Internet said ... don't. Pretty universally, the prevailing wisdom seems to be that if it's easy to screw up reheating fried chicken, and fried chicken tastes delicious cold, then what would be the point?

Still, I assumed that this cold chicken would be best with cold noodles, and because I wasn't attempting that, I gambled with 20 minutes at 325, and it was just right—heated through and re-crisped on the outside, but not dry on the inside.

I plucked a couple of jalapeños out of the slaw before heating it in the pan, just so they'd retain their crunch and heat. I also stirred in some sriracha to amp up the flavor it might have lost by being, well, leftovers.

Et voilà! A hot, delicious weeknight meal that didn't require another trip to the store, or a stop for convenience food, that didn't taste anything like the previous night's weeknight meal.

Enjoy!


Spicy Cabbage Stir Fry with Panko-crusted Chicken

¼ small head green cabbage, thinly sliced
1 jalapeño, thinly sliced
2 green onions, chopped
3 tablespoons reduced-fat mayonnaise
2 teaspoons yellow mustard
2 teaspoons white wine vinegar
Salt, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
4 chicken cutlets or chicken breast fillets
All-purpose flour
2 eggs, beaten
Panko
1 cup jasmine rice
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons dried ginger or minced fresh ginger
¼ cup low-sodium soy sauce
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
Sriracha, to taste
Garnish: chopped green onions

1. Combine first 3 ingredients in a small bowl. Whisk together mayonnaise and next 4 ingredients; add to cabbage mixture, and stir to combine. Chill until ready to serve.

2. Heat butter and 2 tablespoons oil in a large, deep skillet over medium heat until butter melts. Meanwhile, sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper to taste. Dredge chicken in flour; dip in egg, and dredge in panko. Cook chicken in butter mixture 3 to 4 minutes on each side or until golden brown. Remove to paper towels to drain.

3. Bring 2 cups water to a boil in a saucepan; stir in rice. Cover, reduce heat to low, and cook 20 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, heat remaining 1 tablespoon oil in a large skillet over medium-low heat; add garlic and ginger and cook, stirring, 1 minute or until fragrant. Stir in cole slaw, and cook until cabbage is tender.

5. Combine soy sauce, fish sauce, vinegar, and sriracha in a small bowl. Stir cooked rice into cabbage mixture until rice is dry and toasted; stir in soy sauce mixture.

6. Top stir fry with chicken, and garnish, if desired. Makes 4 servings.


 

Sometimes I think my brain is a little like a front-load washing machine—thoughts just kind of tumble around in there, and I never know which one is going to slam into the door like a red sock.

Which is to say that this was inspired by a lot of little things, something of a stream-of-consciousness dinner-planning process. (Scattered and nonsensical! Who, me?)

I don't cook with meat all that much on the Woodside, mostly because it's hard to use it all up before it goes bad if you're a party of one, and I have unhealthy levels of freezer fear. But occasionally I do have a craving, and I like to indulge it when there's something I know I really want. (In this case, chicken; the package I found at the store had five pieces in it, so look for this to be the week o' the bird.) I cooked it my favorite way, which is to say cutlets crusted in panko and pan-fried, a procedure I return to a lot because I find it to be foolproof.

And SPEAKING OF foolproof, I landed on making biscuits because I am a terrible baker and I know that I need practice/confidence, and I found this recipe over at Tracey's Culinary Adventure, and her biscuits are beautiful. Seriously, go look at them. I'll wait. (It's important to the narrative.)

Anything strike you as unusual, when you compare her biscuits to mine?

Yeah, I don't know what happened. I did follow the recipe to the letter, although when my biscuits neither rose nor browned, I thought maybe I'd just leave them in the oven a little longer.

Which was a mistake when I subsequently forgot they were in there and murdered them.

BUT these were a fail for me before I baked them into little hockey pucks, which returns me to my earlier assertion that I am just really very bad at baking.

Still, I live alone and I'm not made of money, so I shrugged off their density and dryness and soldiered on, with a green slaw (cabbage + green onion + jalapeños) and a nice, ripe tomato slice in honor of the shoulder season for Alabama tomatoes.

The slaw was delicious; I chopped up a second chicken breast and another tomato slice and stirred into the cabbage mixture for an at-work lunch today.


And this morning, before work, I layered a biscuit with Cheddar and tomato and fried egg and sopped up the yolk with the butter bomb and took a slightly strange-looking photo in the slightly strange-looking light of the Woodside kitchen. If you are a better baker than I (and you are, trust), give this one a go, and maybe tell me where you think I went wrong.

Enjoy!


Buttermilk Biscuit Chicken Sliders with Green Slaw

¼ small head green cabbage, thinly sliced
1 jalapeño, thinly sliced
2 green onions, chopped
3 tablespoons reduced-fat mayonnaise
2 teaspoons yellow mustard
2 teaspoons white wine vinegar
Salt, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
9 oz (about 2 cups) all-purpose flour
2½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
¾ cup cold buttermilk
3 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
5 chicken cutlets or chicken breast fillets
All-purpose flour
2 eggs, beaten
Panko
1 tomato, sliced

1. Combine first 3 ingredients in a small bowl. Whisk together mayonnaise and next 4 ingredients; add to cabbage mixture, and stir to combine. Chill until ready to serve. 

2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

3. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add butter cubes, and use a pastry cutter (or your fingertips) to cut in the butter until the pieces are no bigger than peas. (The mixture should resemble coarse meal.) Place bowl in refrigerator; chill 10 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, whisk together the buttermilk and honey in a measuring cup. Add to flour mixture, and stir gently just until  dry ingredients are moistened.

5. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead gently 3 to 4 times to bring it together. (The dough may still be a little crumbly.) Roll dough into a 9- x 5-inch rectangle about ½ inch thick. Fold dough into thirds like a business letter. Roll dough again into a 9- x 5-inch rectangle about ½ inch thick, and again fold it into thirds like a letter. Roll dough out a third time to ¾ inch thick. Using a 1¾-inch round cutter, cut biscuits from dough, and place about 1 inch apart on prepared baking sheet.

6. Bake 11 to 12 minutes, or until biscuits rise and tops are golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

7. Heat butter and oil in a large, deep skillet over medium heat until butter melts. Meanwhile, sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper to taste. Dredge chicken in flour; dip in egg, and dredge in panko. Cook chicken in butter mixture 3 to 4 minutes on each side or until golden brown. Remove to paper towels to drain.

8. Cut chicken cutlets in half crosswise. Slice biscuits in half horizontally, and layer with chicken, slaw, and tomato slices. Makes 6 to 8 servings. 

 

My friends, I am tired.

Have I mentioned how much I love a sandwich?

As a personality, I tend to get attached very quickly, fervently, and loyally to things—people, places, pets, situational comedies about three post-menopausal women living together in Miami with a wise-cracking octogenarian—and when I first tasted this pizza, I knew I was a goner.

The recipe is the brainchild of one Foodimentary Guy, née JBSH, who has a habit of throwing ingredients against a wall and seeing what sticks that I often admire. (Less so when he does whackadoodle things like putting mayonnaise in the mashed potatoes. Gack! Sorry, Foodimentary Guy ... )

Picture it: a late-summer afternoon. A day spent treading water in a fruitless effort to mitigate the 12,000 calories of Lake-A-Ritas (TM) consumed since lunch. Happily tired muscles and lightly pink skin. Time screams by, as it does on Sundays, racing toward return to the mainland, and the work week, and the grind. The dogs can barely muster the energy to wag their tails or lift their heads as you pass by, and the shadow cast by the boat's awning says it's almost time to hit the road. Half-hearted packing, some hurried but ultimately disappointing calculations (is there any way to stay another day?), and it's time to face the truth: The weekend at the lake is over.

That's when this came out of the kitchen. We huddled around it like delighted starving people—eating fast at first, because we didn't realize how hungry we were, and then faster still long after we'd become full, because we didn't want to lose a single bite to any of the other grabby hands in the room.

Since then I've wanted to attempt to re-create it, knowing that it really lives only in the Foodimentary Guy's brain and even then maybe only vaguely—it's the sort of meal that just happened organically, putting a little of this delicious with a little of that amazing until you end up with a pizza that haunts your dreams.

OK, enough hyperbole.



The "recipe," such as it is, relies pretty heavily on a local chain—Zoë's Kitchen—and its signature feta cole slaw. Unfortunately, my neighborhood Zoë's was fresh out of slaw, so I relied pretty heavily on some Internet research and some hope for the best, and tried to whip up my own. It was a passable substitute, but improved overnight, as the cabbage had time to soften a bit more under the weight of the vinaigrette.

Did the original Lake Martin version have bacon on it? I don't remember, but I assumed that with JBSH as its creator, that was a pretty safe bet. I ate the finished product by my lonesome, but shared the leftovers. I don't know how faithful anyone thought it was to that warm, peaceful, lakeside day, but I hope it was a reasonable enough facsimile.

I know it made me want a Lake-A-Rita (TM).



Chicken-Bacon-Cole Slaw Pizza
¼ cup red wine vinegar
¼ to ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
Salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste
1 small head green cabbage, thinly sliced
8 ounces crumbled feta
8 green onions, chopped
1 (11-ounce) can Pillsbury thin-crust pizza dough
2 chicken breasts from a prepared rotisserie chicken, chopped
Ranch dressing, to taste
Provolone cheese slices
8 bacon strips, cooked and crumbled

1. Whisk together first 5 ingredients. Combine cabbage, feta, and green onions, and toss with vinaigrette. Chill cole slaw at least 1 hour.
2. Preheat oven to 400. Unroll pizza dough onto a lightly greased or foil-covered baking sheet; bake 5 minutes.
3. Toss chicken with 1 tablespoon ranch dressing. Remove dough from oven, and top with chicken mixture and provolone cheese slices; bake 5 to 7 more minutes or until edges of crust are golden brown and cheese is melted and bubbling.
4. Toss cole slaw with a little more ranch dressing, to taste, and top pizza with slaw and crumbled bacon. Makes 6 to 8 servings.

I'm finding, as I attempt to make meals that clean out the refrigerator and/or use ingredients I have on hand that are heading toward their death, that I'm extraordinarily inefficient at it. Two days ago, for example, when I was all, "I'm using up the collard greens!" I a) had to discard two separate browning half heads of iceberg and four (!) almost-finished bags of what used to be shredded lettuce but had become an unrecognizable science experiment, and b) I bought more ingredients to supplement the greens in the first place.

Math is hard.

Last night I had similarly noble intentions, and managed to find a perfectly good use for ... three eggs. Oops.

In my defense, I wanted to make something sort of one-pot and easy, something that would fill my belly but not sap my brain. My brain needed a break yesterday, time to reflect and go for a freezing run and laugh and curl up with the dog and hug other people's babies.

(Seriously, people, it's February in the Deep South and it's been gray for days. It's currently sleeting, and every third e-mail in my inbox is a screeching reminder from TurboTax. I'm going to need to be borrowing your babies.)

I just pulled this recipe out of the air, in an attempt to accomplish the aforementioned not-thinking. I'd use Napa cabbage if you can get it. (I couldn't.) My dear friend sriracha features prominently here; I'm forever indebted to JFro for making our introduction. If runny yolks are not your friend, you could easily stir fry eggs into the rice as it finishes cooking, but all that luscious richness helps emulsify these flavors into something they aren't on their own. I did not have just one serving.

And thanks to my inimitable coworker, M, who gifted me with the sake that made this meal, and my evening, just that much warmer. (She will wince at the presence of butter in the rice-making equation, but I've found it indispensible—it makes it impossible for those who tend to forget the rice is even cooking to end up with it glued to the bottom of the pan. Forgive me, father, for I have lazied.)



Pork-and-Cabbage Rice Bowl with Fried Egg
¼ cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon fish sauce
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 (2-inch) piece ginger, peeled and minced
Sriracha, to taste
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups basmati rice
1 pound ground pork
½ head green or Napa cabbage, shredded
3 to 4 green onions, chopped
2 tablespoons cornstarch
4 eggs
Garnishes: sriracha, green onions

1. Whisk together first 7 ingredients in a small bowl; set aside.

2. Bring butter, salt, and 4 cups water to a boil over high heat. Stir in rice; cover, reduce heat to low, and cook 20 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, add pork to a large, dry skillet over medium-high heat; sauté until browned. Stir in cabbage, and cook 2 to 3 minutes or until lightly wilted. Stir in reserved soy sauce mixture and green onions.

4. Whisk together cornstarch and 2 tablespoons water in a small bowl. Add to skillet with pork, cabbage, and sauce, and stir to combine. Reduce heat to low, and let simmer until sauce thickens slightly.

5. In a small skillet, fry eggs until whites are cooked but yolks are still runny. Spoon rice and pork mixture into individual serving bowls; top each with a fried egg. Garnish, if desired. Makes 4 servings.

And guess what? This happened to me yesterday.



I'm OBSESSED with foodgawker, so to me this is the equivalent of being asked to sit at the cool kids' table. I promise to well and truly embarrass myself.