Low carb dieting is not for me.

I do try to be reasonable, I eat whole wheat bread, I don’t allow a big carbo load every night of the week. But there are some things I am not willing to compromise on. I love Asian food, and while I realize you can have the protein and vegetables sans rice and noodles, I can’t get into that. Once in awhile, you just have to have a meal the way God intended, and sometimes that means a bunch of rice and noodles. My apologies to the diabetics of the world.

I have learned, of late, to cook fast. No longer do I have time to dirty seven cooking vessels and make a leisurely dinner to be consumed at 8:30 pm. Someone has other plans for my time. I have to be able to get a meal on in under an hour, preferably without dirtying every dish in the house. And cooking Asian food is a big part of that. I can whip up a stir fry in no time, with little planning ahead necessary. If you stock your pantry and fridge with a few key ingredients, a good Asian meal is not far away.

You’ll notice that I repeat basically the same ingredients in both of these dishes. That is because I keep a pretty standard repertoire of Asian ingredients on hand. Buy too many, they go bad before you finish them. But these staples tend to stick around just long enough to get used up in our house: sesame oil, Thai fish sauce, Sriracha, garlic, soy sauce, and ginger. Fresh ginger lasts a long time, but if you don’t have it, the spice aisle stuff will work just fine.

There were these two huge “marinating” steaks on sale at Dillon’s the other day, and I can’t resist a hunk of meat on sale. However, when it says proudly on the wrapping of a steak that it is for “marinating,” I am always wary. That is code for shoe leather.

Still, they were SO large, and SO cheap, I brought them home anyway. It was a challenge. I would cook those steaks, and THEY WOULD BE GOOD, because I would use them in a stir fry.

I knew I had a bag of frozen “Asian-style” vegetables languishing in the freezer, almost past-the-point. I’d bought them some time ago but Mr. Meat and Potatoes really wouldn’t appreciate them just as a side dish by themselves, so they sat in the freezer longer than they should have. I was so stoked to have a reason to use them up. It really doesn’t take much these days to make me happy.

I wanted the steak to have a chance to marinate since, you know, it said so on the package. So right after work I cut the fatty edges off of it and sliced it into narrow strips. Then I plopped the strips into a round Pyrex dish with a lid, and mixed up the sauce.

Wednesday Night Beef Stir Fry

Ingredients:
2.5 lb marinating steak
2 C rice, uncooked
1 bag frozen Asian style vegetables

1 small can water chestnuts

For the sauce:
2 T corn starch
1/2 C low sodium soy sauce
2 tsp Thai fish sauce
2 T rice vinegar
1 T Sriracha (I used 2 T but we like it spicy)
2 tsp ground ginger
1 T rice wine vinegar
3 T balsamic vinegar

Stir that up and pour it over the meat. I covered that and let it sit for about an hour, because I was home early that day, but if you don’t have that long, it’s really okay.

Cook your rice. I made 2 cups of Jasmine rice but I wouldn’t have needed so much.

After you put your rice on the stove, start the meat. I used a skillet with high sides – it’s almost shaped like a wok. I heated 3 T olive oil in the bottom of the pan and when it was good and warm, I loaded the meat into the bowl, reserving some of the liquid in the Pyrex dish. I put the meat up around the sides, not down “in” the oil at first. The meat slowly begins to warm this way. After about 4 minutes over medium heat, I slowly moved the meat down into the bottom of the pan to finish cooking, and I dumped in my frozen vegetables (which cooled off the whole process), some water chestnuts, and the remaining sauce.

My other favorite go-to Asian dish these days is sesame noodles. Sesame noodles is a loose term for a noodle dish with some sort of sesame in the dressing. You can use whatever noodles you have around – spaghetti, linguini, rice, cellophane, udon… it’s all good. Last night, I used linguini. You can add meat to the noodles, or use them as a side dish, or just slurp them right out of bowl while standing with the fridge door open as a snack. Not that I’ve ever done that.

Quick Sesame Noodles

1 pkg linguini (or any noodle you have around)
2 T sesame oil
2 T rice vinegar
2 T other oil (peanut is best, but canola or olive works too)
1/2 C soy sauce (I like the low-sodium kind)
2 T Thai fish sauce
2 T Sriracha
2 T sugar
1 T sesame seeds
2 tsp ginger
1 T minced garlic
2 T chopped green onions

Just cook the pasta in salted water, and whisk the rest of the ingredients, except the green onions, together. Pour the dressing over the noodles only after they are cool. Then sprinkle green onions over the top for color. I promise, you will want to eat these every night for a week. You can play with the dressing and add your favorite ingredients. Some people cook the sauce with a little peanut butter, and some people like to add lime juice or large flakes of red pepper. I prefer a simpler sauce because the point, for me, is not to have a ‘salad’, but a straight-forward, flavorful noodle. This one is all about the pasta.

And, friends, if pasta is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.