Chicken potstickers

As part of a new healthier eating lifestyle for 2010, I've been wracking my recipe books and websites for healthy, lower cal, lower fat recipes that still have high flavor and still leave you feeling full.  I did some research and discovered that we could each have a plateful of chicken potstickers with some snap peas for less than 425 calories.

First, the potsticker filling:  ground chicken, green onion, low sodium soy sauce (which is still terribly salty as it turns out), sesame oil, garlic, honey, worcestershire, and an egg yolk (would had ginger if not for the vociferous objection of the husband).  Mix.  Chill.

Meanwhile, I made a dipping sauce - soy sauce, garlic, red pepper flakes, honey, a squirt of ketchup, and white wine vinegar.  This ultimately turned out to be way too salty, even for a salt lover such as myself.  Will consider modifications.

Next, I laid out all the happy won ton wrappers, ready to be filled

There we go...a nice little blobette of filling

I promise, I made a very bad one the first time, and I did take a pic, but it got lost somehow.  This one, while not perfect, is much better and actually sealed:

And here we have a plate of 16 - 8 for each of us

Time to cook them - about 2 tsp of veg oil into a very hot pan - 2 minutes of sauteeing to brown the bottoms (or nuclearize them if you have my stove)

Then add a half cup of chicken stock and pop a lid on for 3-5 min to cook the filling

The liquid will be all gone by this point

Plate it up with your sauce and slam it.  You can see some of the crusty bottomed ones there too.  Which I like, but may be too crusty for some.

As I said, the dipping sauce was out of control salty.  The filling was a bit bland.  So what I may do is just toss a bit of the sauce into the remaining filling and lose the sauce.  It was a very filling and tasty dinner and will DEF be riffing on this idea in the weeks and months of weight loss to come!

Leftover stir fry

Ok, apparently R and I can't handle a 3 lb roast so there was a lot of leftover beef. I decided to make a stir fry with it, as I heart the vegetables, I do.

First, the sauce - soy, chicken broth, hoisin sauce, sesame oil, garlic (obviously), black pepper, red pepper flakes, a tiny bit of pineapple juice, and some brown sugar.


I wanted to use mushrooms, but sometimes their flavor gets a bit lost in the stir fry, so I roasted them first - single layer on a sheet pan, 15-20 minutes at 400 degrees.


Chopped up the meat...


And got 2 small onions and a bell pepper sizzling in the pan...


Jumping ahead, adding in the meat, about 1/2 c of pineapple tidbits, frozen snap peas, frozen green beans, and for me, broccoli


Sorry about this pan - must add the color changing sauce...

Served with rice - it was really tasty! I liked the cheesy additional of pineapple - not v. classy, but tasty! I did not add an insane amount of broccoli, it just all hung out on the top of my dish for some reason.


A lovely new year meal.

Thai-ish stir fry(ish)

Another monthly menu item, a chicken stir fry. I decided to add some flair, so I made it a peanut butter based sauce (hence, the Thai reference). Here are the original set of ingredients: soy sauce, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, pepper, red pepper flakes, garlic, and of course peanut butter.

Hmm. It didn't taste quite right - the proportions were off. I added some brown sugar. And more vinegar. Then it was too sweet. More soy. Etc. Etc. so I ended up with a large batch of sauce. I ended up freezing half of it.

Later on, I got the chicken cooked and chopped.
And cooked up a skillet o' vegetables - onions, red bell pepper, mushrooms, green beans, snap peas, water chestnuts, regular peas....
Then, I forgot to take more pics...I added the chicken back in, added about 3/4 c of the sauce I made, served over rice...blah blah blah. My mom arrived and I got distracted from my culinary blogging work. We ate it. It was good. The end.