45. Stir-Fried Broccoli with Hot-and-Sour Sauce

Date Cooked: November 30, 2008
Page: 141
Rating: D-

Not every recipe can be a winner and when I am cooking the odds are stacked even higher against them. This sounded good and lately I have been looking for simpler recipes for cooking. I thought this would be good to use up some vegetables in the fridge. I doomed this one from the start.

The recipe calls for steamed broccoli to be stir-fried. I had some leftover plain steamed broccoli from the previous night and thought this would be a good use for it. Strike one. The recipe also called for jalapeno peppers and I didn’t have fresh so I used some from a jar. Strike two. Let’s step back a bit and talk about how this monstrosity came together.

The broccoli was tossed in a pan and fried briefly until tender. In this case it was just heated through. Then some garlic, ginger and jalapeno get added and fried up until fragrant before the whole dish gets tossed with a sauce to complete. It really did sound good to me. But all of these things together added up to… strike three. The problem to me was mostly the use of jalapenos from a jar and the use of three tablespoons of vinegar. This made the whole dish rather… well, vinegary.

I served this on pasta with pan-seared shrimp. I feel sorry for the delicious shrimp that had to be paired with this.

Rating: D- This recipe blew. I was trying to rationalize it to my wife but she told me never to make it again, and not to bother trying to fix it. She had two bites and gave up. I finished half a plate before I abandoned it. I didn’t fail it because I feel I contributed greatly to the disaster but it definitely will not be attempted again, I don’t need to know the exact causes of failure.