J and I love to imitate our favorite restaurant meals at home. Wait, I love to recreate them. He loves to EAT them. :) It's something I had never thought of doing until my cyber-friend, KV, suggested it.
When you're working hard to stay out of the restaurants, making yummy restaurant-style food is a MUST!
This past Valentine's Day, we had a P.F. Chang's inspired dinner.
As much as I'd like to take credit for coming up with all the recipes, I can't. I'm a great researcher and just borrow others' ideas. :) Hey, why re-create the wheel? I'm busy enough just trying to keep our greased enough to keep them from squeaking.
So, for our fabulous four-course dinner we had (links to recipes I used are the title unless I type out the recipe):
Soup Course:
Egg Drop Soup I liked it better with half chicken broth, half beef broth. I also add a tiny bit of soy sauce (La Choy is Gluten Free), and some ginger.
Appetizer:
Lettuce Wraps I found this recipe via Pinterest. :) I like this recipe, but it's not exactly like P.F. Chang's. I'm still looking for a copycat that I'm in love with. If I were to do this one again, I'd do all the chopping ahead of time (while kids are sleeping) and then cook it up right before dinner. It tastes better hot and is pretty quick if you have everything chopped.
Main course: Choice of
Sesame Chicken Honestly, I only pay attention to the Sauce portion of the recipe. The rest, to me, is too much work. :) I just grill my chicken and then drop it into the sauce. I normally only cut it into bite-size pieces for the toddlers. J and I get full tenderloins. Yup, I'm that lazy.
Fried Rice:
This is entirely my recipe. I *never* make it the same way twice...so these are general guidelines.
1 lb breakfast sausage (Tennessee Pride is reliably Gluten Free) (or you can substitute chicken or beef, but will need more spices)
1 Tbs Olive or other cooking oil
4 cups rice, cooked (I generally make an entire pound of rice in our huge rice cooker and use leftovers.)
Soy Sauce, to taste (once again, we use La Choy)
Ginger (I use powder)
variety of vegetables. We typically use frozen peas and carrots. You could also use onions (I'm not a big onion eater)
1 egg, beaten well
Steps:
1. Brown sausage (or other meat), drain.
2. Add Oil to hot pan
3. I add my seasonings now, so that it's easier to incorporate into the entire mixture later
4. Slowly add rice, stirring well but not too much. If you stir too much, it makes mushy rice.
5. Let rice cook until hot...about 2-3 minutes
6. Add sausage, stirring well
7. While stirring, add beaten egg by slowly drizzling over rice mixture.
8. Add frozen veggies (if adding fresh, add before or after sausage depending on how crisp you like them)
Allow to cook just long enough to get the egg thoroughly incorporated and done.
Dessert Course:
Flourless Chocolate Cake I didn't have the right tools to make it, so it didn't turn out well. I'm not sure it was worth the time, effort, and expense to try again. I got the recipe out of a Gluten Free Cookbook (but I can't seem to find it right now. )
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