"Lasagna" Redux...

On Friday night, the polish casserole made its way from the refrigerator to the oven. I baked it at 350 for an hour, then pulled the tinfoil off, raised the heat to 375 degrees, sprinkled the top with panko-style bread crumbs, and baked it uncovered for another 30 minutes until browned and crispy on top (pictured).

In the meantime, I wanted to use the Swiss chard and one of the onions, so I decided to make some fried rice with chard because I had some leftover cooked brown rice, some mushrooms, and some thin-sliced beef round I could use. I prefer to use pork for this sort of thing, but Safeway was a little bit lacking in a lot of things this week...

To add a little bit of flavor, I decided to pseudo-smoke the slices of beef first. I seasoned them with some soy sauce, garlic powder and a touch of sesame oil and let them sit for a few minutes while I rigged up the smoker. I have a cheap old wok - really thin metal that isn't much use for anything, especially over electric burners - but it works pretty good for quick smoking items like fish, vegetables, and thin cuts of meat. I line the wok with some heavy-duty foil, and throw in a handful of brown rice, sugar, loose black tea, and some hickory wood shavings. I mist all of the kindling with some water to get it a little damp, and then turn the heat on medium. I rigged a mesh-style pizza screen to fit into the wok above the kindling, and waited until the rice and sugar started to smoke. When this happened, I dried off the meat as much as posisble (dripping fat/liquid would inhibit the smoldering), placed it on the mesh grid, and covered the whole thing tightly with foil.

While this was going on, I sliced one sweet white onion, rough-chopped about 4 ounces of white mushrooms, washed, dried, and cross cut the head of Swiss chard, minced some ginger and a large clove of garlic, and whisked up two eggs. When the meat was done smoking, I cooled and cubed it, and heated up some vegetable oil and a touch of sesame oil in a cast-iron pan that was brought to as much heat as possible.

I sauteed up the onion and the mushroom with a touch of salt. After a while, I tossed in the beef, adding oil as needed. At this point, I added in the garlic and ginger, a touch of crushed red pepper, and the chard with a touch of soy sauce. When this wilted down, I added two cups of cooked brown rice, and stir-fried until heated through. At this point, I pushed everything to one side of the pan, added a touch more oil, and added the eggs, letting them firm up before scrambling. While this was done, I added in some oyster sauce and some sweet chili sauce and tossed everything together. I tossed in some of the green onion tops and some of the sliced basil to garnish before serving/packing...