Black Tie Bok Choy

Our friends who attended Sugar Coma have been begging us for our bok choy recipe. We catered the lunch for this wonderful event and bok choy was one of our side dishes! We have not been holding out on you. We've just been really busy - tweeting, catering, planning our next  Secret Supper, watching Jersey Shore.
We are so glad that you enjoyed the bok choy and we would love for you to be able to enjoy it at home.
So let's get started.

Ingredients:
8 oz Bok Choy (1 bunch if you get a nice healthy one from the farmer's market - the grocery store bok choy can be a little anemic)
2 Tablespoons Sunflower oil  or Peanut Oil (good for high heat)
2 Tablespoons of white wine (any white wine will do - water will work if you don't want the alcohol) 2 Tablespoons of Sesame Oil
1 Tablespoon of sugar
1 Tablespoon of soy sauce
Crushed Red pepper flakesSesame Seeds

 Steps
1. Heat your wok or frying pan.  The best stir fry is on the highest heat you can manage on your home stove. Just set the wok on the stove and turn up the gas.

2. Wash your bok choy. It's one of those vegetables that is usually visibly dirty when you buy it.

3. Add  your sunflower oil or peanut oil to the wok and let it heat up.

3.  Chop up your bok choy.  Discard the white part.  We're only using the leaves.
How finely should you chop it?  Chop it however you chop your collard greens.  You can chop it really fine or you can just rip the leaves into a few pieces.  I like to roll a bunch into a cylinder and slice. Here's one of my bunches chopped.

 4. Put your bok choy in your hot oil.  You should hear a big swoosh and it should sizzle because your pan and your oil are nice and hot. The noise will be loud.  Don't be startled and drop your leaves.  And be careful. Cook the bok choy for five minutes, stirring occasionally.

5. In a small sauce pan, heat the sesame oil, water/wine, and soy sauce.  When it starts to bubble, stir in the sugar.  Then turn off the heat and let it sit.

6. Check on your bok choy.  If it's starting to stick to the pan, add a tablespoon or two of water.

7. After cooking the bok choy for five minutes, pour your sweet sauce over the bok choy.

 

8. Cook the sauced up bok choy for one more minute.

9. Turn off the heat on the stove and the heat to the pan, i.e. sprinkle in a few crushed red pepper flakes according to taste.

10. Sprinkle on some sesame seeds for garnish.

11. Enjoy!
 

Recipe Notes

• Bok choy cooks down.  Way down. My final "Enjoy!" picture actually triples the recipe. The original recipe only serves 2.  Why did I do that?  To make it easy for you to adjust the recipe to cook as much as you need.  For every two people, add an additional bunch of bok choy, add 2 more tablespoons of sesame oil and wine, and  add 1 more tablespoon of sugar and soy sauce.

• To vary the recipe with more color or just to vary the taste if you want this bok choy often, add red cabbage or red onions or both. Add to the How much cabbage? A third of a head of cabbage per bunch of bok choy.  Three bunches=whole cabbage.  How much onion? Depends on how much you like onions. The onions in my picture are raw and are only a garnish.  Add your red onions to the hot oil 5 minutes before you add the bok choy.  If using cabbage, add your red cabbage to the oil 2-3 minutes before you add the bok choy.

•  To vary the texture, add roasted cashews!  Roast your cashews first. Preheat oven to 250 degrees.  Spread raw cashews on a baking pan. Add cooking oil spray and just a little salt. Roast 15 minutes.  Stir well and roast another 10 minutes. Allow to cool while you prepare the bok choy. Sprinkle over the cooked bok choy.  Yum!

• To get more bang for your buck out of those sesame seeds, toast them and add a wonderful flavor.  Put sesame seeds in a medium frying pan on medium low heat.  Shake them around in the pan until they darken and become fragrant.  Allow to cool and add to your cooked bok choy.

 Try our Black Tie Bok Choy and let us know what you think.  It's easy to make!

A Few Words Of Encouragement

As we mentioned earlier, in addition to food, we'd like to use this blog to share our experiences as entrepreneurs as well.

This weekend, I had the opportunity to discuss the differences between entrepreneurship and what I like to call the "W-2 lifestyle" with a few friends. There are some definite perks to having a W-2 job, but I'd like to encourage our fellow entreprenuers to stay the course. One of the things I noticed in my conversations this week is that, for the most part, we entrepreneurs struggle through the first few years of the start-up phase, watching our friends get promotion after promotion, while we struggle to establish some stability in our businesses. Yes, it is a little depressing at times, but once we get to our late 30's we begin to see things change. Our W-2 friends usually plateau at some point - finding it harder to get the next promotion and really set themselves apart from their peers in making the type of money they'd like to make, and living the way they'd like to live. Entrepreneurs on the other hand, having struggled through the early phases, begin to see the money and stability that we so longed for early on, finally match that of our peers. Now here's the really exciting part.... As the years progress, our opportunities for wealth and work-life balance increase dramatically. While our conterparts are required to work much harder to keep the stability and income they've grown accustomed to, we entrepreneurs should find it easier to grow our wealth and relish in the stability we've created, despite the chaos we lived through years ago. With those odds, I for one am encouraged to stay the course...I hope you are too.

Stop Serving that $2 Trader Joe's Wine

Yes, it is a recession. Yes, times are hard. Yes, money is tight. Yes, we're all on a budget. Yes, as the host providing drinks it is your choice to serve your guests whatever you'd like without going broke in the process. But does that mean you should not use creativity when entertaining your guests? We have noticed a trend lately at various events we have been invited to. The well intentioned host has served Trader Joe's two-buck chuck as an inexpensive way to entertain, only to have his party never get lively and to find himself at the end of the night with the same amount of wine he started with. I have actually been forced to bring home several bottles of the unconsumed Trader Joe's.

We are not against using two-buck chuck, but we are against pouring it straight out of the glass and serving it to your guests. We recommend that you try the following recipes and challenge yourself to come up with a few of your own. Please share your recipes with wine as an ingredient.

Absolute Ruby Riviera

Ingredients

1 part(s) Absolut Ruby Red Vodka
1 splash(es) Club Soda
1 part(s) Orange Juice
1 part(s) Wine Red

Instructions

Build equal amounts of Absolut Ruby Red, wine and orange juice over ice in a wine glass. Add a splash of club soda. Garnish with a ruby red grapefruit wedge.

Cranberry Spice

2 oz. Cranberry Juice
1 oz. Domaine de Canton Ginger Liqueur
1/2 oz. Chambord Raspberry Liqueur
1/2 oz. Wine Cabernet Sauvignon

Instructions

Shake well with ice and strain into a martini glass. Use 3 cranberries for garnish on the rim of the glass.

A Perfectly Seasoned Holiday Turkey Technique

The holiday season is now upon us, and I know we've all been confronted with the inevitable Holiday Turkey. You usually can't escape it on Thanksgiving, but I bet you try to squirm out of the grand ole bird for Christmas. Well, this year try out the BlackTie Barbecue approach to seasoning Turkey and put all of your dry, underseasoned and unimaginitive holiday Turkey experiences behind you.



Step 1
Make a rub with all of your favorite ingredients in a small bowl. Unfortunatly we can't give away the Black Tie Barbecue rub, but I'm sure you can come up with something on your own. I suggest that you combine all of your seasonings and taste the combination together prior to applying them to your meat to prevent over-seasoning, regardless of the cooking technique.

Step 2
With your fingers, carefully separate the skin from the meat of the turkey without ripping it. This will create a pocket to lock in flavor. Using your hands, scoop up some of the rub and begin massaging the meat under the skin. Continue this step until the whole turkey is seasoned under the skin. The legs and thighs may be difficult, but do your best not to rip the skin.

Step 3
Using a boning knife or the sharpest knife you have, make incisions along the breast and the bone as well as along the rear cavity between the thighs. Using your fingers, place the rub in the slits that you've created. This will create pockets on both the top and bottom of the meat - ensuring maximum flavor.

Step 4
Now we're going to oil up the bird. Use a mixture of olive oil and butter and rub it all over the bird. Next,take the remaining rub in the bowl, and begin rubbing it on top of the skin so the whole bird is well seasoned.

Step 5
Filling the cavity. Whether you're going for a traditional bird or an exotic flavor, putting onions, garlic, oranges, apples, celery, carrots, etc...into the cavity of the bird will create additional moisture and flavor during the cooking process.

Step 6
Follow directions for roasting your turkey. A good rule of thumb is 15 minutes for every pound at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Step 7
Enjoy and let us know how it turns out!