Pork and Mango Stir Fry

I love Asian food, mostly Thai, but I get the occasional craving for Chinese as well.  I also love stir fry, but every time I try to wing it, it comes out disastrous.  When I saw this Pork and Mango Stir Fry recipe in So Easy, I had to try it.  When I saw that one of the ingredients was Chinese five spice powder, I was even more intrigued.  I had first heard of it when my next door neighbor used it in her cookies for my mom's annual holiday cookie exchange, and I hadn't heard of it since.  I was curious to see how an ingredient in cookies would work as an ingredient in stir fry.

The first bite was interesting.  I tasted a lot of spice and a lot of flavor.  I wasn't sure how I felt about it.  A few bites later, though, I was really enjoying it.  The recommended portion size of 2 cups was HUGE and filled me to the brim.  When I ate the leftovers I had less to save some calories.  (You can also save a bunch of calories if you skip the rice altogether.)  I thought the leftovers were actually better!  The flavors kind of mellowed out, particularly the spice.

This was really delicious, and I will definitely make it again.  I might try it with pineapple instead of mango sometime too.

Pepper and Broccoli Stir Fry

On Saturday I had some friends over and cut up a bunch of peppers to dip in this ginger miso dressing I discovered on my first adventure to Whole Foods. The dressing was a huge success, but the peppers weren't that big of a hit so I had a lot of them left over. So last night I decided to make a stir fry. I had some broccoli so I threw that in as well. I used boil-in-a-bag brown rice and precooked frozen grilled chicken breast strips. As a sauce I used Kikkoman toasted sesame marinade. My goal was to make it taste like the Contessa Sesame Chicken frozen meal, but with better vegetables (they don't have broccoli, or at least they don't have enough broccoli).

The picture doesn't really show it well, but the veggies were bright and delicious looking. Overall I believe it was a success. The grilled taste of the chicken wasn't great but it sure was convenient. I also should have started the stir fry later, since waiting for the rice held me up. I am having leftovers for lunch today!