Mongolian Beef Lo Mein

A few months ago, I stumbled upon a recipe for Mongolian Beef on Pinterest. It turned out to be delicious, and easy, served over rice. I then began adding extra vegetables to make it a bit more of a balanced meal. Today, however, when we hit the grocery store for supplies, I realized that I could substitute noodles for the rice, and oh my goodness did that realization pay off.

So, today Mongolian Beef Lo Mein was born.

Ingredients:
1 lb steak, 1/4" slices
¼ cup cornstarch
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon ginger (microplaned, or minced)
2-3 cloves of garlic (microplaned, or minced)
½ cup soy sauce
½ cup water
½ cup dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 bunches green onions (sliced into 1-2 inch sections)
1 medium onion (sliced)
2 cups matchstick carrots
1 package flat, wide, lo mein noodles
Vegetable oil for frying

Instructions:

Slice the beef into thin 1/4" slices and toss in cornstarch. Set aside for 10 minutes DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP.

Set a medium saucepan of salted water over medium-high heat to boil for the lo mein noodles. Once the water boils, add noodles and cook according to package directions (mine cooked for 5 minutes). Drain and set aside.

In a small sauce pan over medium heat, add 2 teaspoons vegetable oil and cook ginger, garlic, and red pepper flakes for 10-20 seconds, be careful not to burn it. Stir in soy sauce, water and vinegar and bring to a simmer. Stir in brown sugar and return to a simmer. Continue to simmer for 3 minutes and then remove from heat and set aside.

Heat about 1/2" of oil in the bottom of your wok over medium high heat. Add beef in batches so as not to crowd the pan and fry until brown, about 4 minutes. Remove from pan and drain on paper towels.

Once all the beef is cooked and set aside add onions, green onions, and carrots. Stir fry until onions are translucent. Add beef and noodles and toss. Add sauce into the pan and cook until sauce begins to simmer.

         

    

Finally, enjoy!

Vacation, a New Year, and Some Delicious Beer Bread

My goodness, I wrote this post well over a month ago and never got around to putting it up. Here it is, in all its neglected glory.

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Well, it's been a while, hasn't it? It seems like between the holidays, final exams and trying to stay sane, the last month or so has flown by.

We had a pretty relaxing holiday. We flew to Arizona to visit my Dad and had a lovely Christmas dinner with my Aunt and Uncle and all their kids and beautiful grandkids. We, of course, drove to the Grand Canyon to look down into it for 10-15 minutes and take some pictures and then the last two days we spent at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas and relaxed. The view from room's our terrace overlooked the famous (and beautiful) Belagio fountains, when we managed to pull ourselves away from relaxing in the beautiful hotel room we spent our time exploring the shops, other casinos, and of course the Ferrari dealership right on the strip (we also had the best Thai food EVER in a sketchy looking strip mall). All in all it was a wonderful trip, but one red eye flight and a train ride later, we're home and back to real life, cleaning, laundry and falling alseep watching TV on the couch.

Real Life:

So, I've been wanting to try this recipe for Honey Beer Bread for a few months and I didn't get around to it until just now. We went to a friend's house for low key New Years Eve (some nibbles, some Trivia and then we headed home at 10:30) and they happened to serve a version of the bread there, and man was it fantastic.

So here are some photos from my own attempt.

Yummmmm