Asian pork with soba noddles, carrots, and cabbage

I briefly mentioned in an earlier post that a) there would be some holiday posts throughout January and b) in the few weeks before we left for visiting family we were utilizing items in our freezer and pantry.

Even though this is not a "holiday" dish you'll know we made it December by our Christmas dinnerware. Hopefully we'll be back to our regular dinnerware by February (but no promises)! I'll have to get Patrick to blog some...

Like I said in the introduction everything I used for this dish we already had on hand. The ground pork and cabbage were both hanging around from our CSA. The carrots were from Thanksgiving and the soba noodles were originally purchased for this dish. Soba noodles come packaged in sets of 3. Each set is a good portion for both Patrick and myself so that typically means I can get three meals from a package of soba noodles. If the noodles are the main ingredient and we know we want leftovers I may use two sets.

This dish with ground pork, carrots, cabbage, and soba noodles morphed into somewhat of an Asian stirfry. Originally I was going to make a porkloaf and have couscous with steamed cabbage as a side. But then Patrick texted me at the end of the day that he was hungry and wanted supper soon after he got home so that nixed the porkloaf which would've taken over an hour and a half to prep and cook. This dish came together in less than 30 minutes and I actually had it ready from the time Patrick texted me to when he got home!

Here's what I did
In a large pan brown ground pork. Once browned, remove grease from pork and set aside.
While pork is browning, warm olive oil in a medium pan and add sliced carrots. Meanwhile boil water and cook soba noodles according to directions. After the carrots have softened (5-7 minutes) I added 2 tablespoons honey ginger vinegar to the pan (white wine vinegar would work fine) and 3-4 tablespoons soy sauce. Then I added the chopped cabbage and put a lid on the pan so that the vinegar and soy sauce would steam the cabbage. After the cabbage has steamed add this veggie mixture and the drained soba noodles to the pork. Stir everything together and keep over low heat to let the flavors come together for a few minutes.

Do you have a go-to pantry meal??