Cashew Pork - Five Spice Powder - Recipe

 

Cashew Pork with Five Spice Powder

I've been making stir-fry recipes for eons. I love them. My kids grew up on them - well, except for one who hardly ever ate real food. I think he's so well preserved that his corpse will never rot.  But that's another story.

There are a few tricks to successful stir-fries. They are:

• Keeping fresh vegetables on hand
• Keeping a variety of meats on hand
• Planning 24 hours ahead, which means either
• Taking meat out of the freezer the night before (to partially thaw in the refrig) or
• Using meat fresh from the market if you don't mind cutting squishy meat. Ew.
• Keeping sauce ingredients on hand

So here we go.

Cashew Pork with Five Spice Powder - Recipe

Lean pork loin sliced in small, thin strips

1 hefty clove of garlic, minced or sliced

Olive oil, 1-2 T. in a large skillet

Heat oil over med-medhi heat and add meat and garlic. Stir-fry til meat is browned. Remove from heat.

In a second skillet, also with a bit of olive oil, stir-fry the following:

4 stalks of celery, sliced on the diagonal (more surface area to stir-fry, and it looks prettier)

1 onion, halved and sliced

Red sweet peppers, seeded and sliced (I use my Carmen peppers)
1 small jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced

Whatever other vegetables you have on hand, e.g. broccoli, carrots, snow peas

Throw in drained water chestnuts if you have them.

After onions and peppers are translucent, remove that skillet from heat. Combine contents of both skillets into one. Actually, I start with both skillets going at the same time (one with meat, one with veggies) to make this getting-dinner process go faster.

In a small bowl, mix sauce ingredients:

1/2 c. GF Organic chicken broth (I find that Pacific is the one brand that doesn't give me a headache!)

2 T. white wine

1 scant t. honey

1 T. corn starch

Stir to dissolve honey and corn starch. Drizzle over stir-fry and re-heat stir-fry (stirring constantly - I use two pancake turners to do this) over med. heat until sauce is a clear glaze.

Sprinkle on 1/2 t. (or to taste) Chinese Five Spice Powder, a little salt, and a healthy dose of cayenne.

Serve.

Have a bowl of cashews on the table. I don't stir cashews into the recipe itself, for I don't want to ruin any possible leftovers with soggy cashews.

Some people like to serve rice with a stir-fry. If you want to do that, have your rice cooking while you're putting together this recipe. If it's basmati rice, it should be ready about the same time that your stirfry is ready. That's always handy! And over the past two years, I've made the shift from a bed of rice with stirfry on top - to just a sprinkling of rice on top of the stirfry.

This whole thing, from start to finish, takes no more than a half hour.

Be sure to let me know if you make this recipe, okay? And don't forget about that cayenne! :-)

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