Category: <span>Cooking</span>

Sometimes you just want egg rolls, or spring rolls, or the delights from the local takeout place that doesn’t deliver and usually has a line out the door. And here’s the alternative that satisfied my craving. Feel free to serve this with lettuce leaves, Thai basil, slivered cucumbers or daikon-carrot salad.

It took me about 30 minutes; my protein was not frozen, but my mushrooms and bean sprouts were. I used my Alligator chopper with the fine dice plate to chop the onions, mushrooms, and jalapeños. I grated about 7 baby carrots with my rotary grater. It’s very flexible on vegetables other than the onions, carrot and mushrooms. You will want more seasonings the more vegetables you use. I based this recipe on The Woks of Life’s Cha gio recipe and adjusted it for both deconstruction and to suit ingredients I had on hand.

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Having mastered basic soup, the next step is milk soup.

Cream soups divide into a couple of varieties. There are milk soups which share some lineage with chowders, and there are cream soups, which are smooth, processed soups made mostly of vegetables.

Let’s make soup. These are the Euro-western water-based soups, not cream soups and not blended vegetable soups. Bean soups, several Asian type soups, and fish/shellfish chowders are their own categories. 

Recreating a dead recipe from a long-lost local fast food vendor. With a vegan variant!

When I first moved to Boulder in 2000, we had a great fast food restaurant called Wok n Roll that served teriyaki and yakitori, mostly chicken. It was definitely a sodiYUM experience but still healthier than burgers or anything fried. 

I have no idea how this specific version ended up being the best fried rice I’ve ever made. It’s literally just cleaning out the bits and bobs of vegetables I collect in my freezer. 

I wrote it down because I might be lucky again and get it right, but if you choose to make this, my estimates of liquids especially could be wildly off. Adjust to your taste. I have cute little bottles for cooking oils and squeeze bottles for liquid seasonings, and I just make squiggles in the pan so it looks attractive to me for the two seconds it exists before meeting other food.

Simplest version 

• 2 tubes of ready to use polenta
• 2ish cups cooked chicken, shredded/diced
• 2 3 oz cans chopped green chiles (Hatch are best, to your heat tastes — start with mild)
• 1 small onion, chopped fine
• 1 12 oz bag frozen corn
• 8 oz shredded cheese (colby, jack, Muenster, or “mexican blend” are fine) (or more)
• 2-3 oz cream cheese or sour cream (or more, if you want it creamier)
• 1 tsp cumin (or to taste)
• 2 cloves garlic, smashed
• 2 tsp chili powder (to taste and tolerance)