Simple, fast, and clean

A thought occurred to me that I've been posting courageous foods on here, stuff that most people either don't buy the ingredients for, or methods that are a bit too out there. So last night I made a pretty modest dinner, but for everything to work out right, the timing had to be just so.

I'd like to take you through my process, step by step, so that you can see how even a three dish dinner can sometimes ramp up in frantic maneuvers, but if you have things ready to go, you can mitigate potential problems and wind up with a pretty decent meal, even if it's just tuna patties and sides.

I'll start with the prep work:

Tuna patties take a little while to set up, or combine and meld so that they don't fall apart. I make mine a little on the cake-ey side. If you want less cake and more crunch, use one egg. Two cans of tuna in water (I used the small cans, probably one big can would work), 1 small onion, 1 cup of seasoned breadcrumbs, ten saltines, salt, pepper, thyme, and cumin.

Start by whipping the crap out of your egg(s).

Add the tuna, break it up into tiny chunks. Big chunks will make the patties fall apart.

Add small minced onion. Again, small pieces so the patties keep their form.

Add the seasoned breadcrumbs and stir. Things should start firming up pretty quickly, but there will still be sogginess.

Add crushed saltines until the mix loses the wet soggy factor and starts to firm up. Add cumin, thyme, salt, and pepper to taste, then park it in the fridge while the rest of the meal gets prepped.

My first side dish is bok choy. It's a chinese leafy green with a celery-like stalk. Lots of good vitamins. Start the prep by chopping off the bottom of the head and rinsing everything completely in cold water.

The stalks like to hold sand and dirt, and the leaves sometimes get a little battered by shipping and harvesting. Look for bright green leaves and bright white veins.

To help everything cook fast, I slice my bok choy straight across and at 1cm or so. For a decent head you'll get a significant amount of stuff to cook, so make two batches. We'll cook it all tonight, but we'll need to let it simmer down before adding all of it to the pan. This will become clear soon.

Second side dish is nothing fancy: shells and cheese. I start the cooking process by boiling the water for the shells while melting some butter in a skillet with two cloves of garlic. Second skillet will be for the tuna patties, not turned on yet. Cover a plate with some paper towels (to drain the patties), and put your strainer in the sink for the shells.

Once the water is at full boil, add the shells and stir. Toss one half of the bok choy into the butter and cover tightly with a lid. Turn on the second skillet and add about a half inch of vegetable oil (something with a high smoke-point). Once the oil comes to temp (test by dropping a little bit of the patty mix in, if it bubbles, you're ready to go), make patties and drop them carefully. Stir shells, stir bok choy.

This is where the timing thing comes in. Every few seconds, check everything. The patties will need to be flipped once the outer edge starts to turn brown. I flip mine with a spatula-wooden spoon combo so that the oil doesn't splatter everywhere. The bok choy should be settling down into the butter, so the second half can be added to the pan. Stir the shells. Repeat this process for about six or seven minutes.

Drain the shells, stir the bok choy, flip the patties, move the pan for the shells off the hot burner, add cheese sauce stuff. Toss the shells onto the cheese to help melt it. Take cooked patties out and patty out more. Stir the bok choy. At this point, the leaves should start to disappear and the stalk should be more visible.

Once the patty situation is under control, stir the cheese sauce and bok choy more.

At this point, my meal was essentially complete after ten minutes of stove time. Just waiting for the last two patties to finish browning.

 Total time of everything was about twenty minutes. Would have probably been a little faster if I didn't stop to take pictures (some pics didn't make the cut), but not too bad for a quick filling meal for a Monday night.

I see some people read this blog, and some people ask me about techniques and so forth outside of the comments... Do any of you want me to do anything special or specific? Maybe a post about how I cut an onion? Maybe something about baking? Healthy? Paula Dean? Desserts? Hit me up, people, I aim to please.