Cooking with Emily-Kung Pao Chicken & Shanghai Noodles

Another week has flown by.  I was working at the polls yesterday so this week's Cooking with Emily post is a day late.  Working at an election is certainly an interesting way to pass a day, especially for a people watcher like me.  I ran into a few old friends, and lots of newer ones.  I listened to parents with children in tow explain the voting process to their kids, and its inherent importance, explained to first time voters how the process works and made a few dollars for my trouble.  And for the first time in my memory we have a new party leading our fair province.  I'm not entirely sure I am going to like what the NDP will do to us, but the people have spoken.  Now we wait and see.
Anyway, before I get off on a political rant, and I am not very politically minded, and my views and opinions are all over the map, I should get to the subject at hand.

Sunday afternoon, before the arrival of extra kids (a sleepover so my friend could go to a concert with her husband) I sent Emily to choose what she wanted to make for supper come Monday.  It didn't take her long to choose a recipe for a honey sesame glazed pork tenderloin.  I admit it looked delicious.  But I did not want to go to the store and buy a pork tenderloin.  It took some arguing, but I convinced her to reconsider.  (Some day that stubbornness will serve her well.  Or it will be her downfall) It took her minutes to declare she wanted to make Chinese food.  I confess I cringed.  We both love Chinese, but it is not an easy cuisine for a beginner chef.  She went on line and found a plethora of recipes....if you ever want to vanish down the rabbit hole try googling the recipe for anything.  I glanced at her list and suggested she find my cookbook, a notebook I keep to transcribe recipes I have found, and tried, so I know they are good, and how time-consuming and difficult they are.  I showed her a couple of options; Kung Pao Chicken and Shanghai noodles.  She decided to make them both.  I thought that was a fair compromise, except for cabbage and green onions we had all the ingredients on hand.
Emily's night to cook was almost cancelled when she had a meltdown when the time came to start cooking.  She was eating an apple, a fine snack, but when I asked why so close to supper I was informed I hadn't put any "good" snacks (pudding & chips) in her lunch that morning.  These things are meant to be treats, not every day additions and I told her so.  And then came the waterworks.  Oh, 14 is going to be FUN.  I told her she needed to stop crying, you cannot cook with tears in your eyes.  It makes the food too salty and you can't see what your are doing, you might cut yourself.  Needless to say my sense of humour was not particularly appreciated.
She did calm down and I set her to cubing a couple of chicken breasts while I ran out to do a quick errand.  Once this was done she tossed the chicken pieces with cornstarch while I chopped a couple cloves of garlic and some green onions for her.  While she browned the chicken I had her start a pot of water boiling to cook the noodles.  She took the cooked chicken out of the pan and added the onion and garlic with some red pepper flakes while she stirred together rice vinegar, soy sauce, ginger and sugar.  This she added to the pan along with the chicken.
Next, in another pan, she heated a mixture of sesame and vegetable oil and sautéed chopped cabbage (I cheated and used coleslaw mix) and more green onions.  To this she added cooked angel hair pasta, which I helped her toss together as she measured in some soy sauce.  And dinner was done.

Everything was delicious.  Emily balked at using the coleslaw mixture, since she doesn't like coleslaw.  Actually she won't eat cabbage either, if I serve it as such.  But we have to almost wrestle over the chow mein when we order take out, and she loved the noodle dish.  It's all about presentation.
We still need to work on timing everything, but two fast dishes like this would take real spot on leg work.  The chicken didn't suffer for simmering while we cooked the second dish though.

Kung Pao Chicken

1lb chicken, cut into 1" pieces         1 tablespoon cornstarch

2 teaspoons veg. oil                          3 tablespoons chopped green onion

2 cloves garlic, minced                     1/4-1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger         2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar

1/3 cup dry roasted peanuts *            2 teaspoons sugar

Toss chicken with cornstarch and fry in hot oil until cooked through, remove chicken from pan & set aside.  Add onion, garlic and red pepper flakes, stir fry about 15 seconds.  Combine vinegar, soy sauce, sugar & ginger.  Add to pan with chicken & peanuts. Toss to coat. Serve over rice

*I added the peanuts to my plate, but left them out of the actual recipe, because Emily doesn't like them.  They do add a nice crunch though

We didn't make rice on Monday, I thought the pasta was enough.

Shanghai Noodles

3 tablespoons oil                      1-2 tablespoons sesame oil

2 cups shredded cabbage          1/2 cup chopped green onion

8 oz angel hair pasta                2-4 tablespoons soy sauce

Optional: 4 oz sliced cooked chicken & 1 cup drained bean sprouts

Cook pasta & drain.  Heat vegetable and sesame oil, sauté cabbage & onion, about 5 minutes.  Add pasta, soy sauce, chicken & sprouts.

*Adding chicken takes this from a side dish to a meal.  Bagged coleslaw mix is a handy substitute for shredding cabbage, but we used about 3 cups of the mix because it is so finely chopped.