If you’re one of the millions of Americans that think making delicious Asian inspired meals at home is out of their reach, think again.  You only need to know Three things to create stunning restaurant quality dishes at home.  Cook it hot, cook it fast, and make sure the seasonings are right. With those three tips and a few simple tools you can have an exciting meal on the table in minutes.

I admit that I am no novice when it comes to Asian cooking.  If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time you’ve seen at least two dozen Stir Fry recipes and many more Asian dishes. It’s a passion of mine and it started with the same seasoning mixes that bring you this post.

Sun-Bird seasonings were my fist introduction to what great Asian food could be.  Even now that I can produce many Asian inspired dishes from memory, I still have a packet or two of Sun-Bird seasoning mixes in my pantry.  They’re awesome as marinades and as a quick base for something more complex.  They’re also pretty darned satisfying on their own, especially when I’m in a serious hurry or out of a key ingredient for a sauce. (Follow the link above for a great Stir Fry Recipe using Sun-Bird Stir Fry Seasoning Mix.)

On top of all that, If you hit your local grocer and check out the Sun-Bird lineup in the Asian foods aisle before October 31^st, you can enter to win one of 15 Blu-Ray™ Disk players. Good food, great movies and great recipes.  What more could you ask for?

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Fried rice is something I’ve covered on this blog on more than one occasion. Fried rice is a passion for both my wife and myself.  It’s a staple meal in our home for its versatility, ease of cooking and its ability to carry the flavors of almost any ingredient added to it, but this post is not about the rice.

Don’t get me wrong,  the rice was wonderful; but in this instance it was eclipsed by the accidental perfection of the marinade used on the pork.  It’s good folks.  Good enough to consider using as cologne.  Good enough to make a full batch on skewers and call it a snack for one person good. Good enough that I almost don’t want to share it with you good.

But I’m just not that cruel. This must be shared. All I ask is that if you put it on a restaurant menu, I get a handy little royalty check and credit for the recipe.  This recipe is a keeper.

The flavors in the marinade are more Middle-Eastern than Asian, but they pair very well with the rice and just a bit of soy sauce. The pork is savory, sweet and spicy at the same time, but so tender you can cut it with a glance.  No knife necessary.

I could rave on about this for hours, but I think I’ll end the suspense and just get to the recipe.

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Fried Rice is the perfect go-to meal.  As long as you have Rice, eggs and scallions you already have all the basics of fried rice on hand.  Anything and everything else that you happen to have lying about in the fridge or the pantry is fair game for this dish and there’s absolutely no reason not to throw just about anything including the kitchen sink, into the pan.

This particular fried rice incarnation is brought to you by my brand-spanking new smoker/grill. When I bought it I knew I wouldn’t use it all that often as a smoker, but I absolutely had to christen it as such.  To justify the expense of burning three bags of charcoal and two bags of wood chips, I offered up close to 15 pounds of proteins to the gods of the grill and they did not disappoint.

My larder now happily includes 6 pounds of smoked chicken, 5 pounds of smoked brisket, 6 pounds of smoked ribs and 4.5 pounds of smoked pork.  If you’ve got this amount of smoky goodness on hand, you use it.

I was debating between making spring rolls and a simple batch of fried rice.  My wife made up my mind for me and I was off to create something worthy of the time taken in preparing such a wonderful feat of wood infused goodness. I think I’ve managed to do so, but I’ll let you be the judge.

Of course, if you can’t smoke your own pork for 7 hours you can easily recreate the spirit of the dish by cooking a pork roast wrapped in foil with 3 tsp of liquid smoke in the oven at 250 degrees for about 4 hours.  The flavor isn’t exactly the same, but it’s a close second.

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I think at the end of the day I’d have to say with confidence that I’m a fusion cook.  No matter what the combinations or origins of my recipes may be, I have to toss in something out of somewhere else, just for fun. by far my favorite inspiration is Asian cuisine.  The mix of subtle flavors with bold accents is amazing, versatile and fast, all things which my busy schedule and I embrace.

This dish was simply a throw-together dinner.  I had chicken, i had salad greens and I had an orange, this is what came of those ingredients.  Totally unplanned, unfettered by preconception or planning, it’s a simple tasty meal that easily serves as a main course in its own right and honestly could only be made more perfect by sharing it with someone else.

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The year’s focus on eating healthier continues right along with a renewed focus on fusion cooking, my favorite means of taking flavors and textures to new heights.  Our weather has been unseasonably warm and the market had the most beautiful baby bok choy, so I had to find something that would go well with it and salmon just seemed to fit the bill.  Add some pan fried noodles and not only do you have yourself a wonderfully healthy and filling meal, but one you can feel good about eating.  no compromises here!

The inspiration for the salmon came from an episode of Gordon Ramsay’s F-Word, but only loosely, as I couldn’t remember exactly what he’d done to his salmon, just that he’d used soy to glaze the fish, which sounded wonderful.  The rest of the dish was whipped up on a whim with ingredients I had on hand, but the combination was perfect for a firly warm evening and a lovely meal with my wife.

The recipe may sound complicated, but in actuality it doesn’t get much simpler than this.  There are only three primary ingredients and a few accompaniments that can be found at nearly any supermarket in the Asian section, so even if all you have access to is a BigScaryMegaMart, you should be able to get everything needed for this recipe in a single trip and for just a few dollars.  It really is worth it, trust me.

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The Holiday Season is here.  That means that in the next day or so this blog is going to be full of baked goodies, cookies, candies and mounds of Holiday-style comfort food goodness.  But what will the food blogger himself be eating through all of this? Probably something a lot like the dish pictured above.

This lunch, like many I find myself eating lately, is the result of having very little time to focus on myself while either getting things ready for one of my blogs, trying to find something in the freelance market that I’m willing to do for what they aren’t willing to pay, or dealing with the thousand little things I have to learn that goes along with my son’s therapy. It’s something I can throw together in just a few minutes, tastes good either hot or room temp and can be snacked on for hours while I’m in the middle of other things.

The ingredients are simple, the result is satisfying, and there’s very little effort involved in making this one.  Consider it my way of sharing a little secret with all of you.  I’m not always eating what you’re seeing.  Sometimes those dishes are made just for my wife.

Besides.  I really love this stuff!

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I love Stir Fry.  I love it because it’s fast.  I love it because it’s simple, and I love it because it’s the easiest way I know of to use up anything you happen to have in your fridge or pantry.  You can stir fry just about anything and it’s gonna be good.  Add the right flavorings and whatever it is, it’s gonna be great.  This dish was absolutely fabulous.

Lunch needed to be quick yesterday.  All I knew was that it was going to involve two pork shoulder blade steaks I had in the fridge.  These guys were just begging to be used up before they went bad. I’m ot sure what inspired me to use this particular combination of marinade ingredients, but I’m very glad that I did.  The ork was tender, with a zing of ginger and more than enough flavor to induce a perfectly fed food coma after eating it.

The recipe easily makes enough for 4 to 6 people, especially if you pare it with a few extra sides, like pot stickers or dim sum.  Add in a bit of garlic chicken and you’d have a complete take out feast.

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Seafood and noodles is something that I just love together. The combination is simple, tasty, filling and has more than enough flavor to satisfy any seafood lover. Add in some lime, a bit of cilantro and a touch of heat and you have what I consider to be one of the best summertime lunch dishes I can think up, especially when the thermometer reads over 100 degrees.

I usually make shrimp when my wife is going to have to stay at the office during lunch, since it’s not her idea of a mid afternoon meal on most occasions.  The plus side is that I can have the shrimp working in the marinade while I’m feeding our son and getting him down for his nap.  That way Dad gets to eat as soon as clean up is completed and we’ve finished the ritual of “I just want a cookie!”.  A little peace, a little Bourdain and a great bowl of flavor makes for a much nicer afternoon.  Don’t you think?
(Note: When mom is home for lunch, we all eat together.)

If you’re not a huge fan of ramen noodles (though I don’t know why you wouldn’t be!), somen or soba noodles work just fine for this as well.  If you’re not fond of cilantro, use parsley, mint or Thai basil.  You won’t break my heart.  Not a fan of chili paste?  A good roasted pepper puree with a bit of garlic added would work just as well.  Have fun with it!

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A new Cooking by the seat of my Pants classic!  This is one of those times that I’m glad I sometimes just grab what I have handy and create something. As far as simple glazes go, this one is simply delicious, not only on the night it’s made, but even a few days later.  As a matter of fact, it was better a few days later.

Thee inspiration for this came from a combination of things I’d been watching on the idiot box.  Bits of things I’d seen on No Reservations and some Food Network chaff, I think.  In the end, the result was a subtly sweet and rather sublime glaze that brought out the flavors in the chicken while elevating the humble bird to a level it could never possibly attain on its own.

This is not the moment for me to sing my own praises.  This sauce/glaze worked perfectly because the ingredients were perfect and went perfectly with each other.  The tomato was beautifully ripe, the onion fresh and new, the garlic sweet and pungent at the same time.  It wasn’t me that made this the perfect glaze.  Nature did that for me.  All I did was introduce a few different ingredients to each other and let them sing together in a harmony that I could never create myself.  I’ll leave that to nature.

As for the tomatoes on the side…  Well, that’s the next food post.  You’ll just have to wait.  They deserve their own spotlight.

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I couldn’t exactly throw up a recipe on Independence Day without that dish being grilled, now could I?  So here you have it, my prerequisite grilled Fourth of July dish and my entry for the fourth Frugal Fridays Food Event, Korean-Style Short Ribs.

Korean style ribs are also called flanken style ribs, and are cut in thin strips across the bone rather than along the bone as in your “Standard American” beef rib. I’ve been itchin’ to cook something with these ribs since the first time I saw them, but it wasn’t until this week that I finally grabbed a package and gave it a go. Let me tell you folks, I’m extremely glad that I did!

The Marinade recipe is adapted from one I found on epicurious, with modifications to suit my tastes and the amount of ribs I was using. (Their recipe called for 5 pounds of ribs and I was feeding 2 people, so I halved everything.)

If you’re wondering why there are only four ribs in this photo, it has nothing to do with portioning. The carnage at the scene of the grill was something any horror film director would have been proud of.  The ribs never stood a chance.  I almost feel sorry for them, or I would have if I hadn’t fallen fairly quickly into a food induced coma.

I can’t recommend this marinade highly enough. The ribs were moist, packed with flavor and succulent beyond belief. The slight char (seen above) that was caused by a hot-spot flare up on the grill only served to make the few ribs that got singed even better than they were before…  I swear, I HAVE to make these again…  Often.

Now, as for how this qualifies as Frugal Fridays material..  A quick breakdown goes like this …

Most ingredients were left over portions from other FF meals. Total cost… $0.00 for this round. The ribs totalled in at $4.50.  The rice we had on the side, maybe 40 cents, including the green onions. So in reality, I could have fed close to eight people for just a dollar or two more and one more inexpensive side dish, all for well under $10.00.

Now go make these ribs…  Right now…  Yes, YOU!  Go.  You’ll thank me for it.

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