Feeding Umi » noodles

Tom Ka Soup with Crinkly Noodles

umi — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 14:13:40 +0000

Ryan cooked up some delicious soup with red curry paste the other night. We couldn’t find any egg noodles in Whole Foods, so as requested by Ryan, I got “crinkly noodles.” This was after a little spat on, “Why can’t I just get rice noodles? Or thicker bean noodles? WHY DO THEY HAVE TO BE CRINKLY?!” Seriously. However, I deferred to the cook and just rolled my eyes and went with it… because well, hey, he’s cookin’.

I mean here’s the thing. He was cooking, but I was the one grocery shopping after work. He was at home. And he was dictating to me what he needed, and it’s like… so they don’t have egg noodles, and I call him while I am waiting on line to pay. “I WANT CRINKLY NOODLES,” he says to me. ANYWAY.

Ingredients

6 cups of chicken broth
red curry paste
1 Can coconut milk
Fish sauce to taste
Palm sugar
1 Lime
Chicken breast
1 Can water chestnut
1 Can bamboo shoots
Cilantro
Crinkly Noodles

This is an example of a dish that I absolutely love. I love curry, heartiness, soups, and noodles. Everything I love in the world is in this noodle soup. The end. The broth was delicious. You basically mix in the chicken broth, coconut milk, and red curry paste (to taste). You let that sit, add in the chicken, water chestnut, and bamboo and let it cook together until the chicken is done. Then you add some fish sauce, palm sugar and lime, both to taste. Cook in the noodles in the broth and serve. Garnish with cilantro. It takes a little bit of time, but it is pretty easy to serve up. This makes a lot of curry, so feel free to go with less chicken broth.

Last week’s dinner – South East Asian Cold Udon Noodles and Crimini and Port Risotto

umi — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:06:14 +0000

Last week was a pretty busy week without much cooking. We just wrapped things up with our usual cold Udon noodles in a Southeast Asian garlic lime sauce, with a pinch of dashi. I just topped that with shiitake mushrooms and boiled vegetables (sansai) blanched in thick dashi, soy sauce and mirin. All in all, it took less than an hour to prepare, I would say.

The one thing I LOVE and have been craving even before going to Cambodia is risotto. The thing is, I never really had much risotto before. When Ryan and I first met, Ryan made me some risotto and it blew my mind. It was soft, warm, savory, and comforting. It encompassed everything I loved about soups and curries.

Then, he introduced me to mascarpone cheese. DO YOU KNOW ABOUT MASCARPONE?! Why did you not come into my life sooner, oh delicious cheese. It can be sweet or savory, coupled with soups and in this case, risotto, or desert. After meeting this life changing dairy, I FREAKIN’ PUT IT ON EVERYTHING! I put it on toast w/ jam, on Eggo Waffles, on soups, on breakfast, on any desert, and anything that can use an extra “Oomf!” of creaminess… which is always. I had to ease up on it and go cold turkey for a while… because it got really out of hand. I would love to just take spoonfuls of the stuff and shovel it in my mouth. (Then again, I also liked to eat bits of butter as a child – butter is one of the top words in my twitter cloud for a reason!)< / This concludes my praises and this whole paragraph dedicated to one of my favorite buttery cheeses/creams >

So, Ryan made me a whole box of risotto, cooked in 2 boxes of chicken stock, port, and crimini mushrooms. It was decadent. He put a bit too much of port, I thought, but once I put some freshly cracked peppers and truffle oil on top, it was PERFECT. It was a decadent treat that I enjoyed the next day for lunch!

Road Trip Food

umi — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:00:35 +0000

Overall, I think the thing that I enjoyed the most is the food they made for us in Pursat. There were also these egg noodles that they got from a restaurant, which was delicious. Mmm! The duck eggs that they fried for our last day in Pursat, were also delicious. Unlike the eggs here, the yolk were all creamy, runny, and orange. I also enjoyed the longon fruit and baby bananas (and the shakes!) that I had along the way.

Sophear had an Aunt that was the “Soup Lady,” and owned a large restaurant. (That was where the wedding originally was going to be) She chastised us that we didn’t get to try her soup (Danny, Sopeark, Carlos, and I), and wanted us to swing on by again on our way to Penom Penh. (We couldn’t. Sigh.)

Unfortunately, the time in Siem Reap was really lackluster in terms of food. Thin meatless chicken, tons of rice, we went to a Vietnamese shop with lackluster food (I had the pancake/omelet), some weird pork pineapple dish that seemed much better than it was on paper.

Sophear ordered french fries at the Vietnamese place. Now, each dish was less tham $3, and most were around $2 or less. For a plate of fries that would be considered a side dish here in the states, they charged us almost $3. And they were greasy and disgusting. Man.

On the right is some pan fried noodles in Siem Reap that were all right. Not bad. This was breakfast. The coffee in cambodia was delicious. They have a dark espresso topped off with condensed milk, which makes it luxurious, milky, and sweet. I’m sold on that.

During the time we were on the road, we stopped at various places for quick bites. The first night we were driving, though, we left after noon (after we ate a delicious lunch of noodles and fried duck eggs, followed by fruits), and were planning to get to Siem Reap for dinner. However, we ended up being stranded in a small village car repair shop and the gang went across the street to find some food. They came upon a small outside restaurant that pan fried excellent instant noodles topped with a creamy duck egg and beef. And what Carlos described as the best coffee ever. The whole meal was less than $2.

The cons were that there were mosquitoes and other flying insects around them the whole time. (I opted to wait at the car with Sopeark and Daniel) Mmm, lots of protein! But the restaurant people were accommodating and cooked in the dark for them, apparently.

Otherwise, we would also pick things up along the way. We had a bunch of bananas, longon fruit (sort of like a lychee, but meatier and less sweet), and various asian pears that we picked up at the market. We also bought bun dumplings filled with meat, chinese sausage, onions, and other savory things. I love them here and they were really good there, also. We got around 5-6 for a $1. Usually you might find some egg in there too. We also had tons of rice cake, mostly wrapped with banana leaves, but other times we found some packed into some bamboo husks.

Next up: Lounging in a hammock with a coconut & Cambodian barbecue!

Chinatown Dinner

umi — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:04:21 +0000

Last week, we went to the Excellent Dumpling House for dinner. Afterwards, we headed to see a scary movie, Paranormal Activity. It was delicious and we tried the beef soup and fried cheese dumplings for the first time. Of course, we had our favorite fried pork dumplings x2 and we both had a cold Ting Gao. Ryan liked the beef broth soup, but it was a little too sweet for my taste. It was spicy, but not too hot. Although it hit the spot, since we always seem to be there on a rainy day, we probably won’t order that again. Our go to noodle is the pan sizzling type, and they are excellent there. The dumplings are always a hit.

Mock Sesame Noodles

umi — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:16:17 +0000

Ryan put together this cold noodle dish, demanded by me. He makes awesome mock sesame noodles, more correctly, peanut noodles. They taste like sesame noodles, but he makes them out of peanut butter.

We just get the chewy lomein from the Asian store and mix it in a peanut and balsamic vinegar mix. Sometimes we toss in minced garlic for some extra oomf!

As a side I made my usual spinach oshitachi and arugala salad, accompanied by a nice sparkling rose.

Last night’s dinner – yakisoba

umi — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:49:10 +0000

An easy dinner is to pan fry some yakisoba noodles with seasoning packets.

I like to start any noodle stir-fry with minced 3 cloves of garlic in olive oil, then spray some fish sauce. This time I added in onions, butter, and shiitake mushrooms. After the onions become translucent, I add in the noodles and loosen the strands. Add some flavor, salt, pepper, and soy sauce to taste, and flash some mirin in. Done! In the last few minutes I added some sliced fluffy eggs/omelets and scallions.

I made some basil arugula salad with tomatoes, olives, red peppers, and mozzarella. I also made some spinach gomaae by boiling some spinach in salt and adding rayu, tsuyu, and a small bit of soy sauce. I added some sesame seasoning I got at the Japanese store, along with some bonito flakes.