Yellow Snap Beans with Ginger and Shallots

July 9th, 2012

Jenn Egatz

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Reel Chow Original Recipe! I have been craving only vegetables and fruit lately, probably because we are in the middle of a humid heatwave. I saw these beautiful yellow snap beans at the Farmer’s Market so I decided to buy some. It inspired me to create Yellow Snap Beans with Ginger and Shallots.

Yellow Snap Beans with Ginger and Shallots has a bit of Asian flair, mostly because I love fresh ginger. It’s also because the beans were steamed in low-sodium soy sauce. The dish is topped with fresh basil. This helps make the dish beautiful to look at and yummy to eat!

Yellow Snap Beans with fresh ginger and shallots. ©Reel Chow

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Failure and Southeast Asian Chicken, Twisted

June 22nd, 2012

Ron Egatz

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Jenn’s been spending a lot of time with our new puppy, on top of her busy work schedule, and it’s been harder and harder for her to get to the Reel Chow kitchen for extended periods in order to create her original recipes. I wanted to do something to show my thanks for all her hard work, so I started looking at old and new recipes I’d done over the years.

Nothing was grabbing me. None of the old standards got me excited. Eventually, while going through The Essential New York Times Cookbook, I found “Southeast Asian Chicken, Two Ways,” on page 489. This particular recipe is attributed to Mark Bittman. I knew it was a great jumping-off point.

As we often encourage on this blog, the way to learn is to be bold and experiment in order to create your own. A way to help get this process started, especially if you’re new to the kitchen, is to deconstruct what others have done, and add your own twist to them.

Southeast Asian Chicken with cilantro sauce and fresh greens. ©Reel Chow

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The Chop Chae Foundation

March 14th, 2012

Jenn Egatz

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While we were in California visiting my family and friends, I asked my mom to be a guest contributor. She offered to demonstrate making chop chae, which is one of my favorite Korean noodle and vegetable dishes. It’s flavorful, light, and rich in vitamins.

My mother’s chop chae can be personalized to your own likes many different ways. Ron calls it “the chop chae foundation,” because the following recipe is a great place to start and add what you want. My mom used fresh spinach, carrots, button mushrooms, and onion. She added thinly-sliced sirloin (which was marinated in the traditional Korean bulgogi marinade overnight) with thin rice noodles. Of course, you can add seafood or poultry, broccoli, shitake or matsutake mushrooms, glass noodles, or many other foods. Think of it as the foundation upon which to make a great fish, meat, chicken, or vegetarian version.