“Oriental” is a word you don’t hear often anymore (for good reason)–this would probably be referred to as an Asian dish in a modern cookbook. 7-11: Oriental Stir-Fried Pork is a pretty standard Asian stir-fry starter recipe which could also work with chicken, beef, or shrimp.
The teaser line on the front reads “tantalizing flavor”. Not so much, at least in my opinion. This is a basic bare-bones stir-fry–if you want something that’s going to have some kick to it, you’re gonna have to do it yourself.
My mom always winged it on stir-fry–I doubt she would have used this recipe. I tend to do the same, so it’s new to me as well.
Ingredients. I cheated and bought stir-fry-ready pork at the market, so I didn’t go through the whole freezing/slicing procedure outlined in Step 1. It probably would have tasted much better if I had used pork tenderloin than whatever cut I have here, though. I also used the wrong type of parsley, but I did compensate with a bit of dried cilantro (not shown).
I also added in some chow-mein noodles to the dish. You could add rice, some other type of noodle, or omit it completely.
I also cheated and bought pre-sliced water chestnuts. It’s like the difference of 20 cents, I’ll splurge.
Chopped up the water chestnuts even further–I’m not a big fan of them, so if they’re hidden in the rest of the stir-fry, I’m more likely to eat them and not pick around.
Same deal with the mushrooms–the smaller the better.
Boiling noodles to add in. Whatever you want to add to it (if you want to add to it), you can–I grabbed these from the regular market when I got the water chestnuts and teriyaki sauce.
CSA box carrots…sometimes it’s just easier to cut them off the bunch rather than undo and redo the bands each time.
Pork, already cut up. While it saved me time and effort, it’s definitely not equivalent in flavor to the method in the recipe. It’s up to you…which do you value more?
Pork after I browned it. Could have gone better, but again, I was working with cheap materials.
Everything into the wok for the final fry up. My stove in this particular kitchen kind of sucks, and it’s REALLY hard to get things hot enough to actually sear them, and not just steam them.
In my last kitchen, I had the opposite problem–the burner was either at BLAZING INFERNO or nothing. I can’t win.
Finishing it up & adding sesame seeds. If I was doing just a random stir-fry and not following a recipe, I would have added more at this point–sauce, seasonings, whatever. But I’m a bit of a flavor nut–I have a spice collection that takes up almost an entire kitchen cabinet and a sauce collection that makes the refrigerator door sag. 🙂 If this works for you as is, then that’s all that matters.
Final product. A passable stir-fry, but a bit bland for my tastes. Noodles are underneath–mixed it up after I took the shot. 🙂
Grade: B
