Aromatic vegetables over rice

[redbird]

The basic ideas here were that onions are good, and that we had a significant amount of leftover chicken. I'll omit the random "should I add X? No" and "Do we have any Y? No" thoughts.

I sliced one large and one smaller yellow onion, and cut them into largish chunks (some as much as an inch long, I'd guess, but nothing was measured). Took a break while the kitchen air cleared.

I heated a large frying pan. When it was properly hot, I put in some olive oil, then the onions. The onions now cooked over a fairly low light for quite a while--the goal is for them to come out soft and sweet--while I chopped other things:

One stalk of celery
A hunk of fresh ginger root
What turned out to be quite a bit of leftover chicken

Stir the onions periodically. When they're nice and soft and starting to brown, I added the chicken. A few minutes after that, the celery and ginger went in. For further seasoning--these are, after all, aromatic vegetables--and to spread the flavors around, I put in a little hot water (from a recently boiled kettle) and some soy sauce.

Then I threw in a handful of frozen peas, and a little more hot water. Near the end, I put in some lemon juice.

I served this over basmati rice, which I started cooking after I added the onions to the frying pan. I like it. cattitude likes it. julian_tiger likes the bits we gave him (cats shouldn't have onions).

I suspect this would work just fine with almost any protein (though maybe not beans). If I were using tofu I would probably put it in a bit later in the cooking, but I wanted to make sure the chicken was nice and warm, not refrigerator-cold. It would be interesting to try with something like walnuts in place of the chicken.

[posted to my own journal and off_recipe.]

Comments

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I am married to a man who does not believe that "onions are good." This has been a major source of conflict in our 26 years together.

[lisajulie.livejournal.com]

jonsinger is _allergic_ to onions and many of the other members of the allium family. I adore them. We have ways of dealing with this.

First off, our favorite local restaurant knows to omit onions from any dish when we dine there together. When I dine there on my own or with other people, they give me double amount of onions.

Other places, if the dish contains large chunks of onion, I get to eat them all. Yum. If the dish contains a slurry of onions (like some curries), we just don't order them.

He has been known to order a side of the vinegar onions at our local pho place when I've had a particularly grueling day.

So, it all works out for us. But then we don't share the majority of our meals together as we don't share housing and have significantly dissimilar wake/sleep/eating schedules.

I feel your pain. If you should come to this area, we could run around and eat lots of wonderful ethnic food all loaded with onions. Promise!

[quility.livejournal.com]

Yum! I shouldn't read LJ when I'm this hungry!! :)