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Drunken Noodles
It’s no secret that I love exploring the worlds of Asian cooking, especially Thai and Vietnamese. One of my favorite Thai dishes to make is Drunken Noodles. I’ve ordered it many times at different restaurants, and always found that the sauce was too thick, heavy, and gravy like, and this took away from the whole dish in general. After searching through some Thai cooking websites I was inspired to try and make the dish at home, minus the icky thickness of the sauce. I’m a regular reader of The Jungle Prince’s Desert Modernism website (though he generally focuses on Korean cooking, he delves into other countries as well.) He makes gorgeous looking food, but after following a few of his recipes, even the one he has for Drunken Noodles, I find that he likes his food about a zillion times spicier than I can handle, and believe me, I can handle pretty spicy food. Below is HIS recipe, minus a whole lot of the hot peppers, and plus a few hints that I found usefull when making this dish.
Ok, on to the cooking. First thing you should know about me, is I rarely measure ingredients. Actually, I usually only measure when baking, because I consider baking more of a science, and cooking more of an experience. When I say a “few” of something, think 3 or 4, a pinch fits in the crook of the palm of your hand. A dash of a liquid is a two second quick pour. Also know that in a star rating, I consider this particular recipe about a 2.5 star in heat. Meaning, it won’t make steam come out of your ears but your lips will have a nice tingle to them after a few bites. Adjust accordingly to your taste by reducing both the fresh and dried chili. Ok. Here we go. Most of these ingredients will be found at any respectable Asian market. Ask for help if you need it – most proprietors will be very very happy to see you. You will need:
1/2 block of extra firm tofu, pressed dry (till it no longer wets a paper towel) and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
About 3/4 pound of shrimp (or cubed chicken if you don’t like shrimp. Or just stick with tofu. It’s not a hard and fast recipe.
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 small white onion, minced
Rice vinegar
Fish sauce
Oyster sauce
Soy sauce
Palm Sugar
Juice of one small lime
Small bunch of coriander/cilantro leaves, roughly chopped
Small bunch of Thai basil leaves (no, you can not use Italian basil) roughly chopped
Small bunch of chopped green onion/scallions (green part only)
Ground pepper
Dried red chili flake
1 hot pepper (I like using the long hot orange/red ones) minced very very fine
One package of the wide rice stick noodles (1/2 inch across work best)
Step One: Prepare marinade:
In a bowl combine a few tablespoons of palm sugar, lime juice, two pinches of dried chili flake, a pinch of ground pepper, and about 1/4 cup each of fish sauce and rice vinegar.
Stir mixture together, and then add tofu.
Step Two: Start the noodles:
Put noodles (as they are out of the package, in a “block” do not separate) in big pot. Cover with cold water. Set aside for about 10-15 minutes, letting the noodles soak. Now is a good time to enjoy a cocktail and some appetizers. Really. You’ve got about 10 minutes or so. After your drink, and the noodle soak, put noodles on burner, and bring to a boil. Keep an eye on your noodles, tasting frequently. You want them very al dente, and not “done” or mushy. If you do not pay attention to your noodles, I guarantee that the mush will happen. When they are al dente, drain, and immediately rinse with cold water. Let them drain, sitting in the colander.
Step 3: Wok n Roll
Heat a small amount (barely coat the bottom) oil in a wok (I like chili oil, but feel free to use whatever light oil you like, if not chili, I’d probably go with safflower oil)
Start cooking the onion, garlic, and hot pepper. Do NOT let them brown.
Toss in shrimp, cooking until just starting to turn pink (should happen pretty quick)
Add tofu and marinade, as well as a few tablespoons of oyster sauce. Cook for just a minute or two, liquid will start to thicken a bit.
Add noodles, and carefully toss them about in the wok, coating them all. Now toss in your basil leaves and green onion. Remove from heat.
Serve with a generous amount of chopped coriander on top. I also top mine with some extra sliced hot pepper.
Voila. This recipe can be made kosher by removing the oyster sauce (add more fish sauce) and the shrimp. Enjoy!
Christmastime Baking
This Christmas I thought I’d try my hand at the classic French desert, Bouche de Noel. I’m not going to lie, it was sort of a pain to make. My first trials were with the genoise (cake part,) because I don’t exactly own a jelly roll pan. So I “made” one out of aluminum foil and parchment paper. It actually worked ok.
The filling is chocolate mousse, which I’ve made a zillion times before, but this recipe was different than what I’m used too, and the results were not as “stiff” as I would have liked, and some of the filling oozed out of the roll. Chilling it for a long time was the solution, and really, once I iced it no one saw any of the cracks in the genoise or the mousse leaking through said cracks.
It’s iced with a plain chocolate ganache that I added some rum into for something a bit extra.
Making the meringue mushrooms was the easiest and most fun part, and they looked really convincing.
The bark was created by just melting down some semisweet chocolate and spreading it on a piece of parchment, letting it cool, and then rolling it – it flaked off very nicely
I also made an assortment of cookies this year. They look (to me) pretty impressive. These are mini black and white cookies, which TOTALLY rocked and tasted exactly like NYC black and whites, a soft vanilla cookie filled with raspberry filling, and harder chocolate cookies filled with a white chocolate cream and topped with a little bit of dark chocolate. All of them were really good, and didn’t stick around too long.
All of the cookie recipes came from Martha Stewart’s holiday cookie book, and the bouche recipe came from her website. I fully feel, after doing all of these recipes that Martha Stewart is crazy, AND her cookie yield isn’t quite accurate – if you make some of her recipes plan on having about 10 less cookies than she says you will.
Overall-I’m pretty impressed with myself! Happy New Year everyone!
Stained Glass Sugar Cookies
I made these cookies on our wonderful snow day! They looked fantastic but the taste…...well, honestly the cookies were salty.
The recipe is from Martha Stewart’s holiday cookie recipe book, and called for “coarse salt.” I interpreted this as “sea salt” because, well, sea salt is coarse, and it was either that or regular table salt. I think she more meant like..kosher salt or something but whatever it was, I didn’t have it handy in my house and used what I thought would be a proper substitute. Not so the case, and they were salty cookies.
But they were fun (if somewhat a pain) to make. I will also say that my chopped up Jolly Ranchers looked NOTHING like what she had in beautiful little bowls in the magazine. I went from big honking chunks achieved by whacking them in a ziploc baggie wrapped inside a kitchen towel with a rolling pin, or putting them in my mini “Queeeze” and decimating them into a fine powder. Actually, either method melted fine, but I think the powder melted too quickly during the baking, and the window pane was slightly bubblier than I’d hoped for.
It should also be noted that I think that something kind of funky happens to the candy during the baking process – they don’t taste quite as good after baking. I don’t know why and it could just be me, but….they tasted off.
But they sure are pretty.
Heeeerree Fishy Fishy...
As my wife and I continue along on our journey to eating healthier, I’ve been learning to disassociate myself from the healthy = boring/yucky equation. We’ve been trying to have a fish meal at least twice weekly, and have been succeeding at this! Luckily, we live in a fishing community, where great fresh seafood is available year round. For this dinner I steamed some brussels sprouts, which I then sliced and sprinkled with sea salt and pepper. I sautéed some sugar snap peas (frozen, but what can you do. They weren’t bad) in some olive oil with garlic, red pepper flake, and salt/pepper.
The Haddock was broiled. I rubbed a tiny amont of olive oil and then topped with some black pepper, salt, cayenne, paprika, and garlic powder. When broiling fish I find it REALLY helpful if you layer thin slices of lemon on the broiling pan before laying the fish down atop it. This does a great job of keeping the fish from getting stuck to the pan, and infuses the fish with a really nice flavor that I find to be less acidic than just squirting the fish after it’s cooked. Also, Haddock is one of those easy cook fishes – when the meat starts “flaking,” it’s done perfectly.
Some nice plating, an edible tomato garnish and this meal looked and tasted great!
Fruit Salad as Art
I made this with one of the last of the “good” watermelons available this season.
Interestingly, there’s not much different between carving a watermelon then there is carving linoleum or wood. I’ve been working on ways to make more “attractive” displays, and this was one of my first attempts.
The salad is made up of watermelon pieces, strawberry slices, blackberries, Maine blueberries, chiffonade of lemon peel, a small bit of orange juice, and fresh mint leaves. The mint left a great flavor and I was pretty pleased with the outcome.
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