Supper success

Every Friday night I work to make a meal that is restaurant quality. I have mastered Carrino's Spicy Chicken and Shrimp. I have mastered Spaghetti and garlic bread. I have mastered chicken nuggets. My goal is to get 30 days of solid awesome dinners so we never desire to eat out.
 
San Angelo is a lovely place and I do love living here. Well not in town but out here where I can go to town if I must. The biggest thing we lack though is a good Chinese or Thai restaurant. We have several Chinese but none of them are any good. There is no Thai at all.

So last night I set out to master a Chinese buffet in my own kitchen. According to the others that live here I nailed it. We did simple, but solidly good food. Judy helped because I wanted to make 4 dishes. I have pictures and will explain each dish we made.

The menu was
Broccoli Beef as made by Kai
Boneless chicken wings inspired by Kai's Sweet Thai chicken wings
Chicken Low Mein our own creation
Coconut shrimp yes I know this is not a Chinese dish but  I was really craving it!

If you have never watched Kai cook on youtube, you must check him out. His food is simple and I have never had a bad meal following his recipes!

OK now for explanations and pictures. I got my recipe for coconut shrimp from cooks.com. The link is to the basic recipe I used. things i did differently I dredged the shrimp in flour then in egg. I also added black pepper to give it a bit of a kick. I made 3 lbs of this. I buy my shrimp at Sam's in 2 lb bags, already cooked and deveined and all nice and pretty. I LOVE shrimp so I always get the jumbo stuff. I did not make any sauce, we never use it anyway.

Pretty Jumbo Shrimp

Dredged in Flour

Dipped in Egg

Putting on the Coconut

Fried Shrimp

Next  We worked on the chicken. Kai prefries his wings. Though we were doing boneless breast we prefried them too, and cut some into smaller pieces fro the lowmein. Cut your chicken breast into strips for the boneless bites. For the lowmein, we used an Asian veggie bag with a sauce mix in it. I use plain old spaghetti for my noodles. I bring my water to a boil, put in the noodles and turn off the water. Let sit about 15 minutes stirring once or twice. Perfect noodles every time this way! Rinse in cold water to get any starch out.

Finished noodles

Cut chicken breast

Fried chicken

cooking with veggies and sauce

.

Finished Lowmein

Next was the broccoli beef. This is my all time fave dish and no one out here makes it very well! I used top round and had the butcher tenderize it for me.

Went to small local grocer for beef.

Beef cut in bite size pieces. 

Cooking in Kai"s mix.

You are done. 

Like my fancy buffet table??

My plate.

No we did not do egg rolls. We thought about it but decided we were testing enough new dishes this time. Next time since these dishes are tried and true, we will add the egg rolls. Judy is Mong and plans to teach me to make them from scratch! Should be fun!

The point is for about $30 I made enough to feed 6 people  twice, because we will munch on this today too instead of cooking again. The cheapest Chinese buffet in town is $11.99 a person. They have more items but these are the ones we usually eat most. Some sort of shrimp dish, beef broccoli, and chicken.  Plus this food was fresh, we knew what was in it and we had fun  making it. The big plus, we got to eat in peace at home and enjoy time with each other (Watching some funny AFV clips)

So today Beloved, Chris, Judy and I are double dating to go see The Expendables. Not really my kind of flick but after hearing Sylvester Stallone is being hassled for his "pro American" movie and hearing him on O"Reilly, I figure he can have my money. 

Please enjoy your home and your family making a feast in your own kitchen! It does not have to happen only at Thanksgiving, Christmas  and some times on Easter!

Hugs y'all