Beef Lo Mein

I'm a huge fan of Chinese/Japanese food. There are a few good places around here to get good ethnic food, but they're limited. The main things to watch out for are whether the egg rolls are frozen (most are, but some are good and some are horrible) and if the sushi is fresh. There's a great little hole in the wall here in town that we really enjoy, but the place is almost empty 98% of the times we're there. It's in a run down strip mall and we are surprised it's lasted this long, but we're not questioning it.

Beef Lo Mein

Cook Time:10 min
Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients
12 ounces soba noodles
2 teaspoons sesame oil
2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic, minced
12 ounces grilled beef, cut into 1/4-inch pieces
8 grilled scallions, chopped
1 cup snap peas
1/3 cup shredded carrots
3/4 cup reduced-sodium beef broth
1/4 cup reduced-sodium soy sauce
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves


Cook soba noodles according to package directions.

Meanwhile, heat the sesame oil in a large skillet. Add ginger and garlic and sauté 1 minute. Add beef, scallions, snap peas and carrots and sauté 1 minute. Add broth and soy sauce and bring to a simmer and cook 5 minutes, until carrots are soft. Drain noodles and add to sauce. Toss together with cilantro.

*add some cornstarch and water to thicken the sauce, add more garlic and onion powder, add water chestnuts, do matchstick carrots

This is a really good, basic recipe for lo mein. If you're not up for beef, you can sub tofu, chicken or shrimp. And with the extra additions at the end, you can really make this dish your own by adding any extra veggie, spice or whatever you like.

If you can't get your hands on soba noodles, you can use spaghetti in a pinch. But soba noodles are going to be thicker and I think they have a more delicate texture than spaghetti noodles. Here's the package we were able to find locally:

And here's the final product! Please disregard the spills on the countertop:

The sauce is low sodium broth and soy sauce, so while you're still taking in a good bit of sodium it's not as much as if you went with the full on salt versions. The fresh cilantro is a nice addition at the end and you can always add more vegetables to the mix. And just because you're curious, we did use chopsticks to eat this, but from what I recall they were abandoned toward the end. It's just much easier to revert to our Western roots and employ a good old fork sometimes.

Fried Green Tomatoes

There are a few foods that are quintessentially Southern. Chief among those are sweet tea, grits with butter and salt (not sugar), chicken and waffles, pimento cheese, casseroles of any shape or form, and these little golden brown delicacies right here. You can't get green tomatoes just any time of the year, so anyone with a craving for them in, say, December, will have to find refuge in the freezer case of their local grocery store or try to satiate their desires with some suitable replacement. If you find out what that replacement is, please let me know.

Fried Green Tomatoes

Green tomatoes
Cornmeal
Buttermilk or regular milk
Oil, for frying
Salt and pepper, to taste

Slice green tomatoes to approximately ½ or ¾ inch thickness. Blot with paper towels to remove any excess juice. Dredge tomato slices in milk, letting excess drip off, then dredge in cornmeal to cover. Shake off excess cornmeal and set aside until the cornmeal has absorbed the milk. Fry in hot oil for two to three minutes on each side, or until golden brown. Drain on paper towels and season to taste. Serve hot.

There are some very important rules to follow in this recipe. First of all is the buttermilk versus regular milk debate. I've done both and the buttermilk holds the cornmeal much more effectively. Regular milk also does well, but there is a noticeable difference. If anything, the coating might be a little more crispy with the buttermilk since it will hold more cornmeal. Second is how thick to slice the tomatoes. I would definitely go with the 1/2 inch measurement at least. You don't want a floppy tomato slice. It should be firm. Additionally, blotting the tomatoes lets you control the amount of moisture in the slices. Too much moisture and they'll be soggy.

On that note, the other important thing to note is that when all of the slices are dredged and waiting to go into the fryer, make sure the cornmeal has been absorbed by the milk. This is important because if you were to dredge the slices and immediately drop them in the hot oil, the cornmeal would fall off in the oil and start to burn in the pan, thereby burning your tomatoes. Not good eats. But if you follow all of the directions, you should come up with something like this:

Then you can go one step better and add toasted bread and bacon:




Sorry, you'll have to give me just a minute to recover after seeing those pictures. They just look. So. Good.

Okay, I'm better. And yes, that's a pickle on the plate. We like our pickles fried in the South, too, but that's another recipe for another time.