Kitchen Fire

Well for the second time in one week I have succeeded to set my kitchen on fire. Of course I'm being a bit dramatic, but there were large flames each time licking the air above my stove. Last Saturday, I found out the hard way that a small but very significant piece of food from the night before had melted onto the coils. Next thing I knew, large flames were crawling their way around the pot. I removed it and tried to recall my knowledge of how to put out different types of fires, but for the life of me I had no idea if I should douse the stove with water or smother it with something like flour. Luckily for me, I keep calm in these situations. I blew hard on the flames and after about 10 seconds (which seems an eternity when you remember that you have no renter's insurance) and the flames died down.

Today, I decided to heat up my wok before I put my onions in to cook. Since onions take the longest to cook I assumed it would speed the process along if the wok was already hot. So I put olive oil in the wok and turned around. Again, with my back turned and oblivious to everything, I turned around and saw a billowy column of smoke arising from large flames- this time coming from inside my wok instead of the actual coils. So once again keeping my cool, I picked the wok up from the stove (and imagined myself as a chef in the Japanese steakhouses) as I tried again to pull my knowledge of how to put out an oil fire. The smoke detector's alerting song pulled me from my thoughts and I hurried to the front door to let out the smoke and have my fire doused by the cold for lack of a better idea.

So I continued preparing my vegetables, all the time considering myself an even better chef for having fire-grilled my wok! I cut 3 onions, 1 full garlic bulb, some pieces of ginger and chopped them in my chopper (a treasure I snagged from Ikea a few weeks ago). I tossed them in with the olive oil while I chopped 4 chicken breasts. Those went in the wok too, and I added soy sauce, sriracha sauce, and worcestershire sauce (just a dash of the latter). I let that cook and suck in the flavors of the sauces while I chopped 3 squash, 1 head of broccoli, 2 green bell peppers, and 4 peeled and boiled potatoes. (Yes potatoes are a bizarre addition to a stir fry, and it is missing many options such as mushrooms or something else that is not green or yellow.) I cooked each ingredient separately and added them all together in the wok to mix together at the end. After putting the heat on low, I spooned some white rice (that had been prepared in my rice maker) onto a plate and spooned my delicious stir fry onto the top. A glass of sweet tea would have been the icing on the cake, had I thought to prepare it.

This is my perfected recipe for stir fry. The veggies can be swapped out for different options, but either way this makes for a good filling meal on a Saturday night.

Bon appetite!