Showing posts with label noodles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label noodles. Show all posts

Monday, 7 October 2013

Meal planning Monday: have you seen my kitchen?



It's the first Monday since we've moved that I've felt like I could legitimately meal plan. We've eaten a lot of pasta so far. An awful lot. However, amid the boxes (nearly all of which are unpacked), the painting (outside only at the moment in a bid to weatherproof) and of course the migraine inducing kitchen and bathrooms something akin to order has started to descend. As with all new homebuyers, money is going to be tight for a while, not least as the house is taking great pleasure in waiting for us to sit down, one of us to say "well we're really starting to get somewhere" before flinging something which needs immediate and serious attention right in the middle of our path. Epic.

What else is one to do when surrounded by chaos but make some kind of order out of it. Not necessarily any conventional kind of order, but order nonetheless.

Breakfasts - I've come over all conventional on my breakfasts and have been having weetabix with a banana.

Lunches - The temperature dropped and like that *snaps fingers* I switched back to soup. I've got one portion of lentil left and then I'll need to make some more.

Dinners

Monday - Pantry pasta

Tuesday - Chicken chow mein. Loosely based on this recipe from Chinese cooking made simple, but with added veg to make it go further and do 4 portions

Wednesday - Leftovers

Thursday - Omlettes with mushroom, cheese, bacon and any veggies I can find lurking in the fridge

Friday - Either lentil ragu, which I batch cooked and froze last week, or hopefully it's out of my hands as we're going to pop over to my sister's to talk weddings.

Next weekend will herald pot roasted brisket - photos and recipe too with any luck. 

So that's it - nothing much exciting, but it is a meal plan.  Now I just remember to have to join and link up over at At home with Mrs M.


Friday, 14 September 2012

Take me or leave me? Thai spiced turkey burger weirdness




I love to cook, really I do. Part of that is about choosing new recipes, tweaking old and generally finding my way in the sea of available ingredients. That said, since I came into my own cooking wise in what? 2007 or so, I've changed both the way I cook and eat. For the better, I hope. In 2007 as my old flatmate will testify, I ate a lot of stir fries, made up of salmon or chicken and a shedload of veggies mainly. So this weekend I decided to retro, back to 2007 – the year of the stir fry. Instead of salmon or chicken and dousing the veg in honey and soy I decided to experiment with my protein and make something akin to a spiced turkey burger – equally you could make this in any shape and find a better name for it. I would if I could think of one. Really I would.

It all sounds good so far doesn’t it? But it wasn’t, and it’s not often I blog about something I cook that is a disaster, however, this fits that bill. There are so many things I would do differently about this meal. Oh so many. Here’s the list in fact:


·        The turkey burgers were epically dry – I chose to make these out of turkey for two reasons 1) It’s so much  cheaper than chicken and Asda were out of free range chicken and 2) It’s low fat, and thus good for the diet – but dear lord it was dry. I’ve been wracking my brains to try and find ways to make them less dry but not less diet friendly. I’m failing.

·        Freeze dried noodles do not last for ever. I brought these over from M’s house when he moved. They were off.

·        M doesn’t like coriander. To be fair he didn’t know this, so I didn’t know this but it’s never complimentary when your partner asks why their dinner tastes of Fairy liquid. Epic.

But apparently I’m still blogging it. No, I’m not sure why either.

Unlike most things I cook, you really do need a food processor for this. Or use turkey mince and chop stuff like your life depended on it

Weird turkey burger things: consider this a challenge to make them non disastrous if you will.



3 Turkey breast fillets

Bunch spring onions

3 cloves garlic

Lemongrass, bruised and chopped

1 red chilli, de-seeded and chopped

Thumb sized piece of ginger, grated

Bunch coriander chopped (or not as the case may be)

3 dessert spoons fish sauce

Veg for a stir fry – I used cabbage, carrots, mushrooms, courgettes, edamame beans and beansprouts

2 portions noodles (I usually use rice as they’re my favourite but was being thrifty and using up the ones in the cupboard)

Soy sauce and a splash of honey

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C and put a baking tray in there to heat up too

Whizz the garlic, chilli, ginger, lemongrass and spring onions up in the food processor. Add the turkey and fish sauce and pulse until the mixture starts to come together (you don’t want it too chunky but neither do you want it to look like baby food)

Make these into meatball/ burger/ sausage* (delete as appropriate) shapes using wet or (and I just thought of this) lightly oiled hands.

Take the baking tray out of the oven and put the burger-y things on it, spacing them a little way apart. I made about 12 mini burger sized ones. Return back to the oven and cook for 30 minutes

While they’re cooking, stir fry your veg in a little oil with added garlic, chilli and ginger.

Cook the noodles and stir through the vegetables. Add honey and soy while the pan is on the heat and stir everything through.



Serve with the turkey burger-y things, in bowls. Try to ignore your boyfriend desperately trying to eat them. Also try to ignore the fact that the noodles taste weird and the turkey is dry.

To be fair, if M hadn’t discovered that he hated coriander and the noodles weren’t past their best it would have been really tasty. If a little dry. I would definitely do it again for me. In fact I might make up a batch for the freezer and have them with sweet chilli sauce when M’s away. Oooh! Plan!





Friday, 10 February 2012

Souper Dooper: Tom yum soup

Tom yum soup


It's actually a take on Tom yum soup. Without the coconut milk, and with a dash of fridge-bottom ness about it, making it slightly more frugal than either the name or this post would suggest.

I really have no appetite right now, my inclination is oddly, not towards traditional comfort foods, but to the clearing spice and cleanness of thai (or at the very least, thai influences). That said, this was a cobbled together lunch that made use of the last of my veg box, and a jar of tom yum paste left over from the Fusionfood challenges late last year.

1 glug oil
3 tablespoons tom yum paste (I used FusionFoods)
1 clove garlic crushed
3 pieces of galangal (I use Waitrose's dried galangal)
1/2 tsp lazy chilli
250g prawns (it's amazing what you find when you dig through your freezer)
Spring greens, leaves finely shredded
1 stick celery shredded
1 red pepper, chopped into matchsticks
Handful rice noodles
Boiling water

Heat the oil gently in a wok or frying pan and add the paste, cook until you can smell the aromatics
Add the garlic, chilli and galangal and continue to fry gently
Add the prawns and cook through until hot
Meanwhile, pour a kettle full of boiling water over the noodles and the shredded greens, and leave for about 4 minutes
Drain, the greens & noodles and add to the wok/ pan, stirring briefly
Add 150ml(ish) of boiling water into the wok/ pan and stir so that everything is combined
Serve in a bowl, and eat, alone and away from a mirror

The original recipe asked for coconut milk to be added at the end of cooking, and then coriander. I didn't add these as I didn't have them in and I didn't want the cooling sweetness of the coconut milk. That said this was particularly fiery and the sourness really came through, so it could probably do with the balance of the coconut milk. Something about it's clearing heat really appeals to me, with the lightly cooked vegetables and freshness of the broth says healing to me. And after all, that is what I'm after at the moment.

What appeals to me about this is that it could be prettied up into a lovely dinner, or if pushed for time and fresh food (like myself) a quick and easy lunch for one.

Monday, 10 October 2011

Doorbells, and sleighbells and schnitzel with noodles (ish): Worldfoods Challenge no 2 - Pad Thai



I'm now happily singing My favourite things while I type this out, sadly I'm not in my nighty, nor am I surrounded by many small children harmonising beautifully with me. Still, you take what you can get.

Last week I was visited by my friend Louise, this week it's Lauren's turn, and last night I made us the second of my Worldfood fusion taste team challenge meals. Pad Thai. I was slightly concerned again as to the sweetness of the sauce, and the inauthenticity (it's a word) of my recipe, but without blowing my own trumpet it was fab. And made whilst exhausted, so doubly impressive when you think about it.

I should add a disclaimer here. I love Pad Thai. A lot. It's my favourite thing to order in Thai restaurants, and I never make it because I just think it won't live up to my expectations. Plus the ingredient list to make it from scratch is more offputting than sugar syrup ever was.



I really didn't want to have to shop specially for this, but have to recommend Waitrose's Thai section. Bearing in mind that the Whetstone Waitrose is tiny, I managed to pick up rice noodles, dried galangal, fish sauce and palm sugar. I then failed to use any of them save for the rice noodles. Fail. But I was pleased I picked those up, as the need for beansprouts, limes and peanuts escaped my tiny brain entirely, so as you will notice this recipe is utterly without them.



Pantry Pad Thai

2 cloves garlic
1 red chilli chopped
4 spring onions, whites finely chopped, greens sliced up like you would green beans
1 red pepper sliced
1 sweetcorn
300g mushrooms sliced
3 chicken thighs thinly sliced
flat leaf parsley
1 head brocolli
1 bottle Worldfood Pad Thai sauce
Juice of 1 lime
2 eggs, beaten
200g rice noodles cooked as per pack instructions

Stir fry the garlic, chilli, and spring onion whites in a flavourless oil until you can start to smell them
Add the chicken to the pan and cook until browned
Add the vegetables and cook lightly, stirring all the while
Shift the contents of your pan to one side and pour the eggs in and cook, then stir through
Add the cooked noodles, and stir through
Add the sauce, parsley and lime and serve. I kept the fish sauce and palm sugar on the side meaning to add them if I felt it needed a bit extra but it really didn't, the sauce had enough tang from the tamarind to mean that I didn't need to adjust the seasoning.

Quick and easy, and as I used the end of my veg box as well as some chicken in the freezer, a really well priced meal. What I made served three of us generously with a large tupperware of leftovers for Mark's lunch today. Perfect.

Despite loving this (and I actually hesitated to offer Mark the leftovers as I would have quite happily demolished them) I would like to try it again with prawns, coriander, beansprouts and peanuts as it was so tasty that I think the additions would really set it off. It's rare you'll see me say this, but I would happily go out and buy this again purely to the ends of adding Pad Thai this way to my simple suppers, as even with a bought sauce it's cheaper and healthier than my local Thai takeaway.


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