http://www.mit.edu:8001/afs/athena.mit.edu/user/r/e/rei/WWW/Recipe.html (World Wide Web Directory, ~04/1995)

Random Recipes

As far as I know, the following recipes are originals, the result of culinary experimentation and imitation. There's probably rather similar stuff out there somewhere.... Hey, but we happen to like these:

Spicy Three-Pepper Sesame Beef
Spinach-chicken salad
Honey-Worcestershire Chicken
Tea-o-Death (good for colds, I think)

Spicy Three-Pepper Sesame Beef

You'll need:

Some brand of Szechuan sauce, available in large grocery stores and Asian food stores.
Nice quality *thin* sliced meat, maybe 0.5 to 1 pound's worth.
Three bell peppers --- preferably one green, one yellow, one red.
Soy sauce.
Sesame oil. Lots of sesame oil.
Rice.
Rice vinegar, or some other sweet Asian-style vinegar.
(Optional: roasted sesame seeds and black bean sauce (available in Asian food stores))

Preparation: Start the rice (I hope you know how to make rice --- put 1.5 fluid cups of water in for each dry cup of rice in a lidded pot, heat to a spitting boil, and then immediately reduce to lowest heat setting for 15 - 20 minutes). Cut up the thin sliced meat into bite-size strips. Cut up the peppers into bite-size pieces. Take a bowl. Put into said bowl a couple tablespoonfuls of Szechuan sauce, with a dash of soy sauce and black bean sauce (note: Szechuan sauce is rather hot; go easy if you think you can't handle it). Throw in about a 1/2 teaspoonful of vinegar. Take the meat and mix it with the stuff in the bowl, until the meat is coated. Throw on a handful of sesame seeds.

Cooking: In a wok or fry pan, heat several tablespoons' worth of sesame oil til hot. Throw in the meat. Cook (stir-fry) until meat is mostly cooked (a couple minutes). Add the peppers and stir-fry for a little while (a couple more minutes at most); cover, reduce heat, and let sit a bit longer (how crunchy you want your peppers is up to you, but we like ours rather crunchy).

Serve hot meat and pepper stuff over nice hot rice. Yum. 2 or 3 servings.

Spinach-chicken salad

You'll need:

boneless, skinless chicken breast
red wine and vinegar dressing (Pfeiffer's works)
fresh spinach
cooking oil

Preparation: Wash spinach carefully; set aside. Cut up the chicken into bite-size pieces.

Cooking: Heat some cooking oil in a fry pan, and throw on the chicken when it's hot. As it cooks, splash on the salad dressing onto the chicken until it's colored pink. When chicken is cooked thoroughly, place it on the clean spinach and pour more dressing over top to taste. Makes 2 or more servings.

Honey-Worcestershire Chicken

You'll need:

boneless, skinless chicken breast
honey (or sugar)
Worcestershire sauce
cooking oil
Optional: garlic

Preparation:

Cooking: Heat oil in pan til hot. (Optional: throw in slices of garlic). Throw on the chicken; immediately sprinkle some sauce on it. As it cooks, spoon some honey over it too. Yes, it's messy, and yes, it burns to the pan, but the more honey or sugar you can get on, the tastier. Add more Worcestershire sauce, too, until the chicken looks like it's coated in barbeque sauce. Once chicken is thoroughly cooked (make sure it's no longer pink on the inside), serve immediately. Steamed veggies and maybe mashed potatoes go nicely.

Tea-o-Death

Actually, given the ingredients, this tea is probably quite good for your health. Drink it when you're sick (if you're sick, you won't be able to smell the garlic, and you likely won't have to meet people who'll mind the garlic smell, either). You'll need:

fresh ginger, 1 knob (ginger is good for nausea, headaches, sickness).
garlic, 1 small clove (garlic is an all-around wonder herb)
cinnamon, powdered (good, they say, for digestion)
black pepper, freshly ground
lemon juice (bottled is OK) (supposedly helps garlic do its thing)
honey (if desired)
hot water
1 stick of astragalus root (optional. The Chinese say astragalus is a good tonic for health)
LARGE mug (16 oz. or so)

Warning: don't drink this on a completely empty stomach. Though ginger and garlic are good for you, they do irritate the stomach lining.

Start the water on its way to boiling. Grind/grate up the knob (small knob; more or less depending on how much fresh ginger you can tolerate). Grind/grate up the small clove (less if you aren't used to fresh garlic). Put both in a mug. Add about a 1/2 teaspoonful of lemon juice to the mush. Shake liberal quantities of the cinnamon into the mug. Grind some black pepper over the mush, to taste. Add a spoonful or two of honey. Drop in the astragalus stick, if you have one. Then fill the mug with hot water. Let cool just a bit, and sip, stirring frequently. Feel your nasal passages open up....!

If the ingredients look deadly to you, you probably don't want to try this tea full strength. Though garlic powder is supposedly worthless medicinally, you may substitute for the fresh garlic a dash of garlic powder (the flavor helps balance the ginger). Also, reduce the fresh ginger to whatever quantity looks the least deadly to you. And remember, this recipe is assuming a large mug, not a small one!

All recipes, as random and non-specific as they are, are copyright 1994 by Eri Izawa (rei@mit.edu) and Michael J. Bauer (mjbauer@lcs.mit.edu). Feel free to distribute as long as this notice is retained.

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