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Foodie In Training

Monday, May 12, 2008

Vegetable Orzo creation

One night last week Ryan and I were throwing dinner together and it didn't seem like we had much food in our pantry.  We had some pork chops and Ryan was in charge of those (that can be a separate post) and I took the challenge of figuring out the side dishes.  We had a few bags of frozen veggies and I found some orzo in the pantry and an idea was born!! It was a very quick and easy meal.  While the orzo was cooking according to the package instructions I roughly chopped a shallot and some fresh mint.   When the orzo was almost finished I put the veggies in the microwave (it was the Steamfresh veggies bag, Asian medley).  Once the orzo was done, I drained the orzo and the added the veggies and orzo back in to the sauce pan along with some olive oil.  I added the shallots, lots of garlic and mint and stirred everything together.  After I drained the orzo, I turned the burner down to low heat so all of the ingredients could warm together.  Then I just started playing around with flavors, I added about a 1/2 cup of white wine, salt and pepper, crushed red pepper, and parsley.  After I added all of that and stirred everything around it tasted pretty good, but it definitely was missing something.  Next time I might try adding lemon juice and maybe some lemon zest, but we were fresh out of lemons, so instead I added some white wine vinegar and it brightened up the entire dish.  The dish turned out really great and it has been really good for leftovers!  The mint was a nice addition, it really added a nice fresh flavor to the dish and the white wine vinegar is a must.  Next time I want to use fresh veggies, but the frozen veggies made this a quick and easy weeknight meal. 

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