Colorful, ain’t it?

So I’m sitting at work, at my desk, banging out Java code, when I realize, I don’t feel much like cooking tonight. Now I get that feeling from time to time and I simply just don’t cook. Beck will usually fend for herself by eating some cake or a piece of pie. The only problem this time was that I was actually hungry and didn’t feel like cooking. Sure, a quick stop somewhere to get something fast could work, but I had something more dastardly in mind. I remembered the pork shoulder I had in the fridge that had only been partially used for pot stickers a couple of days earlier and then the halogen above my head fully illuminated, “twice cooked pork!", yeah, that’s the ticket! Only, since I really didn’t feel like cooking, I damn sure didn’t feel like cooking something TWICE!

So on the ride home from the grind, I ventured into my favorite cash depository, Whole Foods Paychex, and rounded up the usual suspects for a quick stir-fry. This particular fry was to have some noodles in it though. I haven’t worked to much with noodles in my pseudo, quasi, trying-hard to taste authentic, Asian inspired dishes, but I’d seen one blog (do remind me which one someone, please) with “slurpy udon noodles” and my wife had just gotten some when we ordered in. So having noodle on the brain, more so than usual, I wanted to experiment a bit; ever so slightly expanding my culinary bounds, if you will. Or even if you won’t.

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Remember, the whole point of this was to eat something tasty with minimal prep and cooking. So get home with the vegetables and I go right to work on the pork; getting it into a quick marinade. And I mean quick, because I was all about the the recliner and the Chardonnay at this point and I wanted the pork to get at least 2 hours of soak time.

I got the pork shoulder and cut off approximately a 1 pound, maybe a bit less. I was eyeballing it and there was what appeared to be 1/4 of the original size left and I had used approximately 1/2 of the whole 4 pound shoulder for the dumplings. Got that? Let x = 4, If y = 2 and z = 1 with a remainder of 1 then solve for…never mind! It was one pound, I have a scale.

I had the wife put the pork in the freezer so it would be ready for me to slice thinly. So I sliced the pork into 1 by 2 by 1/16 inch strips and got them into the marinade. This would endure for 2 hours.

The rest is really easy and quite welcoming on a lazy I-can’t-believe-it-ain’t-Friday type of weeknight. I cooked the udon in water til chewy, about 11 minutes, then drained and rinsed them. Into a colander they went waiting for the rest of the party. After slicing some green onion, about 5, peanut oil went into a hot wok along with the pork. The veg followed suit for a quick toss until they were crisp tender. Then the noodles tossed to warm through and get fat from the sauce. The marinade made the perfect sauce. This concoction was topped with green onion and spicy hot peanuts I found at WF.

Can we come up with a better name for this dish? I would make it a give-away for the best name, but alas, I have nothing to give…

Marinade:

1/4 cup fresh orange juice
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 1/2 tbsp sesame oil
1 1/2 tsp five-spice powder
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme crumbled
3 garlic cloves minced
~2 tsp fresh ginger grated
~2 tsp red pepper flakes

Stir-Fry:

1 lb pork shoulder sliced thin
1 cup broccoli florets
1 cup snow peas
1 red pepper sliced almost a julienne
4-5 green onions sliced
hot peanuts for garnish