I made sandwiches for lunch today. One of them’s a simple tomato, cucumber & edam cheese with red lettuce and chutney. The second is a sauteed mushroom with smoked turkey job. I haven’t eaten them yet. Off to do that now.
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Tag: Food Photography
(Since a couple of people asked for the recipe of this after I tweeted it yesterday, and I got tired of repeating the same in chat windows and comment boxes, and figured I might as well post it here.)
A couple of days ago, I tried to experiment with tofu. I’ve eaten it several times before in restaurants, but never cooked with it, and have always eyed the fairly inexpensive blocks sitting on supermarket shelves with some trepidation. But having seen enough cooking shows where tofu is used, I thought I’d give it a whirl.
I didn’t, however, have any oriental ingredients in the house, it being ages since I last cooked stir fry. So while I would have liked to come up with some kind of sweet and spicy dark soy glaze, perhaps some celery and cashews, that implementation would have to wait until next time. I did have my faithful stock of everyday ingredients though, and I craved smoky, charred flavours that day. Instead of stir-frying it I decided to oven-roast it.
First, I heated some extra virgin olive oil in an oven-proof skillet, and added in a couple of cloves of sliced garlic, as well as a dried red chilli for heat (you can use chilli flakes or powder later, but I like the garlic and chilli to infuse the oil a little). When they started to colour, in went one medium sliced onion, which I slowly browned.
Meanwhile, I cubed a pack of fresh mushrooms, a medium sized carrot and a zucchini of roughly the same size. These went into the pan when the onions were not-quite brown (they’ll be finished off in the oven) and tossed about (I think that here you can add in pretty-much anything that might roast well: red bell peppers spring to mind, eggplant might work too).
Now for the tofu: it’s fairly delicate — at least the one I got was — but a steady, light hand and a sharp knife will yield few uneven pieces. I cubed these to around the same size as the other vegetables, and a couple of minutes later they went into the pan with everything else. I didn’t stir or toss vigorously now, because I wanted to keep the tofu chunks as whole as possible. Some breaking and crumbling will occur, so just go with it. later you’ll be blessed with tiny charred nuggets of goodness every now and then.
Then I seasoned it with salt, pepper, dry Italian herbs, and a splash of balsamic vinegar. I tried to mix as best I could without destroying the tofu, and then took it off the heat and put it under a low grill
This gave me time to prepare the salad it was going into. I would have like to have something peppery in the house like rocket (arugula), but all I had was romaine lettuce, so that would have to do. I also had a can each of chick peas and sweet corn kernels. Since this was a hearty full-meal salad, I added those into the salad bowl too along with the chopped lettuce. I didn’t have tomatoes in the house, but one of those would be nice too (or something sweet and tart like green apple). For crunch and more flavour I tossed in some walnuts too.
(Now, I know this may sound like too many ingredients and flavours, but I like my meals complex. Feel free to omit anything you don’t like, or scale back accordingly.)
Every seven minutes or so, I checked on the tofu. It was grilling nicely, the edges going a nice brown colour. As they roast they get easier to handle, so I gently stirred them around to expose unroasted areas, then put them back under the grill. Since I was doing the salad meanwhile, time went by quickly, and by the time I thought the tofu was done around 25 minutes had passed under the grill. You can ramp up the heat and see what happens if you’re in a hurry.
The final step is to just place everything in a bowl. You can put the cold salad ingredients at the bottom and spoon the roasted tofu and veggies on top, but I jut put everything together. I don’t like heavy dressings, so just another splash of balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil on top for me.
And there you have it. I liked the way it turned out, and I’m definitely going to try tofu at home again. I also proved to myself that it’s versatile enough that you don’t need to use it only in oriental dishes. I’m vaguely curious as to what saag-tofu tastes like now!
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Burji is an Indian Railway Station institution. Throughout the country, stands with sizzling cast iron griddles serve up plate after plate of this stuff with soft, butter-seared pillows of pav bread late into the night. You shovel it off steel plates, sopping up every last bit with the spongy bread, and perhaps contemplating another serving (or even eyeing the tray of sheep’s brains which the stall also prepares in a similar way.).
It’s hard to say which came first; the silky, creamy Continental version of scrambled eggs, or this spicy Indian one (anda bhurji). It’s fair to say that both could have cropped up independently, and I’m certain that scrambled eggs were invented before the omelet (everyone tries to pass off a failed omelet as scrambled eggs when they’re learning).
I like both versions; they each have their purpose. The Indian, for instance, wouldn’t be the best match with buttered white toast and ketchup, and the Continental would not take to chapattis very well. They’re both easy and quick to make (though this one requires a few more ingredients), and are equally scrumptious.
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Recipe
In a heavy bottom pan, heat a tablespoon of olive oil on a medium flame, and add in one clove of garlic, sliced or minced, and one thumb-sized green chilli slit down the middle (you may scrape away the seeds to reduce its heat, and remember, in India at least the smaller the chilli the hotter it is). Finely dice a medium onion and add it to the pan; sautee until translucent (I know some people who like it still crunchy, and some who prefer it brown and caramelised. It’s up to you).
Take a tomato that’s a little smaller than the onion and dice it large. If you’re using cherry tomatoes you can simply halve two or three of them. When the onion is cooked add the tomato and sautee further.
When the tomatoes are cooked, add a pinch of turmeric powder. Good turmeric is strong, so use sparingly, and use a spoon to dispense it if you don’t want your fingertips to turn yellow for a few days. The rich, deep yellow colour that results from adding it is something you’ll want to replicate in all egg dishes, and so turmeric may be used in omelet mixes as well (just dissolve it in a teaspoon of milk or water so that no lumps are fomed).
Along with the turmeric I also add a little chilli powder. The powdered red chilli adds a different kind of heat to the sharper fresh green chilli, and when used in tandem they give a more rounded spicy taste.
Note that adding in curry powder instead of turmeric may be okay but I wouldn’t advise it. Curry powder contains several other spices such as coriander and cumin that would interfere with the generally clean and simple taste of the eggs.
Sautee for a minute until the spices take to the onions and tomato. Turn the heat up to high and add in a quarter cup of water, bringing it up to a simmer.
(A Side Note: This mix you have in the pan right now — before you add the eggs — is a very versatile one, and is sort of like the ‘trinity’ they use in Cajun cuisine. From this point, you can pretty-much add anything to this and come out with a good dish. Green beans. Mushrooms. Strips of Chicken. Tuna. Spinach. Paneer. Boiled, diced Potatoes. Tofu. Broccoli. A drained can of beans. Seafood. The list is endless, and what you’ll end up with can be called a bhaji. Anyway, back to the burji…)
If you like, you can break all your eggs into a bowl beforehand and beat them as you would an omelet mix, seasoning that with salt and pepper. I just season the onions and tomato and break the eggs in whole, scrambling them in the pan one or two at a time with a wooden fork. Either way now is the time to add in 4-6 eggs, depending on their size (i.e. 2-3 per head).
Stir the mixture around until the eggs are cooked. That water we added earlier will make the burji crumbly and more like mincemeat rather than creamy scrambled eggs. You can keep it creamy by omitting the water, beating the eggs up with some milk beforehand and not cooking them as much, but in general this is how burji is prepared in India. Finally, plate up and garnish with finely chopped cilantro.
Serve immediately with either chapattis or spongy bread that has been buttered on one side and seared on a pan (soft baguettes work well).
Eggsplicitly Speaking… (and not)
I mentioned before that the basic preparation of onions, tomatoes, garlic and chilli with turmeric is a base for a lot of dishes — bhajis — in Indian cuisine. If you’re vegetarian in the Indian sense then you may substitute crumbled paneer for the eggs, and end up with a popular dish called paneer burji. It’ve also had a similar paneer dish where the tomatoes and onions were pureed instead of whole (blitz the raw ingredients seperately beforehand, then fry as above), and the dish was finished off with cream for a strangely italian-tasting dish that might have gone well with the right kind of pasta.
Indeed, even this kind of burji might make a nice variation on Chinese Egg Fried Rice, if made in a wok with cold cooked rice put in just before you add beaten eggs.
I’ve had proper scrambled eggs much fewer times than burji. Chalk it up to the more pungent taste and the fact that it is easier to get right; you can prepare it without obsessing over it. It also works as a good lunch or dinner for one, and it firmly fits in the category of Comfort Food for me.
Perhaps it’s the memory of late nights coming home in Bombay, hungry and tired, when the only things open are the hawkers outside the train stations; islands of enticing aromas lit by kerosene lamp beacons. In the pool of their turmeric light, many a truly great meal has been had.
Just before I went on vacation last January, I realised that there were still a couple of potatoes left in the house. They had already been around for a while and had started to sprout eyes. I decided on a whim to just leave them out and see what grew. When I came backthey were still there, shriveled, and the eyes had grown into weird clusters of purple and green tendrils. I could have probably taken pictures of them right then and there, but decided to wait.
Now, four whole months later, I took some pictures of them with the new camera. These are two of the best ones, and clicking on the second one leads to a 1024×768 version.
“That’s it,” I said to myself,they’ve served their purpose, and I was all set to dump them in the trash can, but… well, I’m a bit of a softie, and even though I don’t like pets I had developed an odd fascination with the two potatoes, shifting them around to see which way the tendrils would turn to catch the sun, and just how long they might go fuelled by sunlight and their own body-mass.
I’ve decided to keep them, and as long as they don’t spoil I will do so indefinitely; maybe even look up a way to grow them some more.
I know they’re not the conventional idea of house plants, but they are cute in their own Cthulu-esque way.
Any ideas for names?
PS ‘Cthululu’ is a Duck Tales reference.
While scouring the pasta aisle at the hypermarket the other day, I came across a range of flavoured pastas. Now, these aren’t like instant ramen which are regular noodles with a flavour sachet of some kind, nor were they the usual coloured varieties of pasta (green and red, which are supposedly spinach and tomato or beetroot coloured).
This particular brand of pasta, Catelli Bistro (it’s made in Canada by Ronzoni Foods, Montreal) comes in flavours like ‘sundried tomato and basil spaghettini’ (which I’d tried before) and ‘lemon pepper linguine’ which is what I prepared today.
The recipe on the back of the pack was for a simple snow-pea and shrimp sauce, olive-oil based. I generally cook vegetarian at home. The relative lack of preparation — no marination or gutting and cleaning — and easier storage of vegetables gives me more flexibility (most meals are prepared last minute). Also my dad’s a vegetarian and I have no great craving for meat on a daily basis.
The flavours of the pasta are the main attraction here, so smothering it in a heavy tomato or cream sauce is not a good idea. I decided to stick to a light olive oil sauce and adapt it with whatever I thought might go well with lemon. To complement the tartness of lemons I went for red bell pepper (capsicum), olives, fresh basil and parsley, with onion and garlic to add crunch and sweetness.
The olives were pre-sliced stuff I got at the market. I know, I know, they’re not as nice as unpitted ones, but the last time I got some good Moroccan olives they were lovely but very salty and overpowered all other flavours (this was with the flavoured spaghettini). These cheap ones aren’t as intense so they go better with this dish.
I used one large red bell pepper, both for colour and because unlike their green and yellow cousins, these are pretty mild. I cut the pepper into strips as you can see here, to go better with the linguine. Since it’s a long, flat noodle-like pasta (but not as wide as fettucine) I kept the strips thin enough but not too thin. I wanted the vegetables to retain some crunch; if you cut them too fine they go limp.
The onion and garlic I cut up just like the peppers, long (the garlic was sliced along the length of the clove, and this turned out unexpectedly well. I’ll tell you why later).
The basil and parsley next. It’s a chore to get basil here. Parsley and coriander are readily available, as is rocket (arugula), but it’s alway hit and miss with the lemon-scented local basil. Even when it’s around you’re likely to find a half-wilted bunch, or worse, a good bunch that is all purple and nasty the very next day despite being properly stored in the fridge.
I had an unshakeable feeling in the back of my head these past few days that by the time I’d get a chance to cook at home it would be long past usable, but I lucked out this time. The bunch was not bad and despite a few wilted leaves it was actually okay. The basic rule for basil: buy it fresh, use it as soon as you can, or learn to make a lot of pesto.
The most time-consuming part of this entire recipe was picking and cleaning the basil and pasley leaves. Now, with coriander (and to a lesser extent, parsley) you can and should use the stalks as well. Good coriander stalks are sweet and crunchy like bean sprouts, and the mistake people make is to only use the leaves. You’re only getting half the flavour, a somewhat bitter, mint-like flavour that the leaves have. Chop up the stalks nice and small and watch the flavours balance out. Same goes for parsley, but sometimes the stalks can be unpalatably chewy, so make sure what you put into the dish is tender.
The local basil stalks are downright inedible, and the bunches are usually sandy (not as sandy as the rocket, which can take 20 minutes to clean properly). So, I spent a lot of time picking only the leaves of the basil, and the leaves and tender stalks of the parsley. Thankfully I have a salad spinner I got at IKEA (it’s a simple hand-crank centrifuge for your food) so cleaning and drying the leaves was a cinch. Lots of sand settled at the bottom after washing, though, so clean thoroughly. It may be wise to do this step ahead of time (when you buy the basil) and keep the leaves in an airtight bag. Still, as with all green leafy vegetables, use it quick.
I don’t think you can use Indian Holy Basil for this dish — it’s far too strong. Maybe a few leaves as a garnish, but nothing more.
One final touch: On an early episode of The Naked Chef Jamie Oliver made a spaghetti dish in a light wine, lemon and butter sauce with shrimp, and used a wicked garnish. Since this dish would be similar I employed the same garnish here.
I had an old piece of baguette laying around. The good thing about old baguettes is that they don’t ever seem to spoil. The bad thing is they go rock hard and can only be used as breadcrumbs, croutons, soup sticks (if you somehow manage to cut them evenly) or in french toast. I just started slicing my bread the same thickness as the onions and peppers, pressing down on it with a regular chef’s knife (as opposed to sawing away at it with a serrated bread knife). I did this on purpose since I didn’t want clean slices. The trick paid off — with every cut the bread shattered as the knife came down. As you can see I ended up with a bunch of uneven chunks and crumbs.
Onto the cooking!
I cooked the pasta as per the instructions on the packet. The minute they hit the water a strong aroma of lemon filled the kitchen. At least the name on the box wasn’t just for show (unlike some red and green pastas I’ve had).
Once done, put them aside with a little olive oil to keep them loose. When I was growing up every pasta cooking lesson (even from TV chefs) was the same: boil water, add salt and oil, cook until al dente, then drain in a colander and rinse with cold water. Nowadays everyone seems to have done an about face, and from my experience the pasta tastes better.
So, the only thing that goes into the water should be salt, the heat should always be high and the water briskly boiling (except for the minute or so when you first put in the pasta, when you should stir continuously until it comes back to a boil so that nothing clumps up), and before you drain it keep a cupful of the water aside for later.
Once you do drain it don’t put any water on it, cold or otherwise. Transfer it straightaway to a covered bowl or pot and put some olive oil into it to keep it loose.
You shouldn’t keep the pasta for too long, as any pasta will get dry and clump up a bit and need to be loosened later (this is why the cup of pasta water was kept aside). You can time it so that the sauce is ready just as the pasta is. It usually takes 20 minutes from a cold pot of water to finished pasta, which, if you’re ready with all the ingredients, is more than enough time to make the sauce.
First, into a cold pan, put in a bit of olive oil and half the garlic. Get the heat up to high, by which time the garlic will have started frying well. Add the bread in and stir it around. You can put in dry herbs like oregano or thyme here. They help. Fry the bread until golden brown.
Remember what I said earlier about cutting the garlic long? The slices not only fried, after the bread was added in and it soaked up the olive oil the garlic also roasted and went all sweet and crackly, which I loved.
Unfortunately a total meltdown in timing occurred, and my pasta was overcooked while I kept watch on the bread. By the time I’d drained it and kept it aside the breadcrumbs had burnt. They weren’t charred so it was still usable. The lesson is that you should keep an eye on things or they can get out of hand very quickly.
Keep the fried bread aside (don’t cover it or it may go soft) and after cleaning away most of the stray breadcrumbs return the pan to the fire. Add in a good amount of olive oil. This will form the base of your sauce and has to further coat the noodles, but I’ll leave the definition of how much a ‘good amount’ is to you. Experiment and see what you like. You can always drizzle a little more over the top at serving time.
The actual sauce is simplicity itself. When the oil is hot put in the onions and the rest of the garlic, then fry them on medium-high heat until they’re cooked to your liking (I kept everything a little crunchy so the onion wasn’t browned before adding the rest of the ingredients). The garlic you add here won’t crackle like the one in the garnish, and adds a softer garlic flavour to the oil/sauce.
Put in the pepper and the olives, and toss.
You can chop up the basil and parsley, but I chose to keep the leaves and sprigs whole (not many stalks, so nothing to chop). Toss these in and they’ll start to wilt. You can add salt and pepper here.
I don’t cook the leaves too much. They should still have some crunch left in them. Add in the pasta and toss again. You probably will have to put in some of the pasta water here to unclump it and give a little liquid to the sauce.
Toss until it’s all well mixed up, then put some in a bowl, sprinkle a good handful of the garnish on top, some grated Parmesan cheese, and serve with a wedge of lime or lemon on the side.
(click on this image for a 1600×1200 wallpaper)
The fresh lime juice, I find, adds that final touch to the sauce. All in all it tasted good. The flavour of the linguine itself is lemony and peppery, though it’s not as strong as the aroma I got when it went into the water. This stuff definitely will not work with a heavy sauce.
The sauce itself was tasty; the ingredients worked well together and I didn’t have to use as much oil as I thought I would (a quarter cup is fine, though some extra goes into the fried bread). The fried bread topping is fantastic enough to be considered more than just a garnish, and the smoky flavours are a perfect counterpoint to the fresh, zesty and tart taste of the rest of the dish.
A couple of weeks ago, as I mentioned earlier, I had also tried their flavoured spaghettini (basil and sundried tomato, which was served in a sauce of Moroccan olives and green beans) and was generally impressed by it. The flavours weren’t by any means overwhelming but they were significant enough to warrant the extra price, once in a while.
It should be noted, however, that the flavoured pastas aren’t a substitute for actual sundried tomatoes, basil and lemon.
In fact, if you’re using regular pasta, I would suggest getting some (unwaxed) lemons and slicing them fine or zesting them and adding that and the lemon’s juice into the sauce. It should make a fine enough — and probably superior — alternative to this dish. You can also use other kinds of pastas. Fusilli and penne will also work, just dice the vegetables instead of cutting into strips.
You can serve the pasta as a side to grilled fish or other meats. You could even turn the whole thing into a warm salad by reducing the amount of pasta and not adding the parsley and basil to the sauce. Put it in a bowl with assorted salad leaves (or rocket) and pour the hot pepper and olive sauce/dressing and the fried bread over it.
Either way, mission accomplished!
I made a quick fritatta for lunch today. I say quick because I used potato crisps instead of fresh potatoes (that version requires slicing them thin and soaking them in the egg mix). I’ve been having and making omelets this way (with crisps) ever since I can remember (my dad read it in a novel once), but now that I cleaned the oven out and got it working I can be lazy, um, stylish and just finish them off under the grill without trying (usually unsuccessfully) to fold them. It is because of this unfolded nature that I can use the word frittata instead of omelet and thereby sound even more l33t.
“What did you make for lunch today?’
“Frittata.”
“Ooh.”
The recipe is basic and very flexible. Get your egg mix ready (I did 4 eggs, or around 2 per person), so drop some milk in a bowl or a milk-shaker with salt, pepper, turmeric powder and chilli powder and add in your eggs. I like to whisk it as close to cooking time as possible so that it doesn’t sit around and lose air (if you have to beat it again it can reach a point where the resulting omelet is hard and not fluffy, which is bad).
Meanwhile chop up some garlic, onion, olives and mushrooms as I did here. You can get creative and add in all sorts of fresh and cooked vegetables, leftover meats and any stuff you have around. This is also the reason Anthony Bourdain says you should never order Seafood frittata at a restaurant’s Sunday brunch — it’s all the stuff you wouldn’t want on your plate. I like to fry the fillings in olive oil first, blacken the garlic so that it has a smoky flavour, but you can just keep it all fresh — the resulting frittata has a different flavour depending on which way you go. Once they were fried to my satisfaction I took ’em out and put some butter in the pan. Now, I’m one of the few people I know who enjoys the flavour of browned butter more than the regular stuff, so I let it get much darker than most people would. Swish it around in the (oven-safe) skillet so that it coats the side. It should get to a smoking point, BUT(!):
At this point you must have everything else ready, because now you only have a few seconds between the butter smoking and it burning, which we don’t want. Your eggs should be beaten and the filling you fried and kept aside, as well as the potato crisps (one handful per person, or one handful for every two eggs) should be at hand. Also, your grill should be started up and heating. I have done this with a ‘cold’ grill too, but the extra minute of heating-up does help and keeps a continuous cooking time for the frittata.
Place the potato crisps in the pan, spreading them out more or less evenly. Take care not to get super-hot butter on you, because it can sputter and splash. The fillings go on top of that. Try to get these evenly spread too. Finally, pour over the egg mixture (it should make a satisfyingly loud “sssshhhhh”). Now go in with a spatula and even out the thing, pull egg mix away from the sides of the pan so that runny egg mix can flow into its place. Jab at the centre bits a little to get the mixture and crisps mixed up with the egg and that uncooked egg mix is introduced to the bottom of the pan and the stuff that was frying there doesn’t burn. Cook on the stove until it looks mostly ‘scrambled’ but still has a little runny egg in there.
Sprinkle some parsley or cilantro over it. Basil’s fine too. Oregano is nice. Anything except lettuce, basically.
Place it close under a slow grill. It usually takes between 7-10 minutes until it’s done. Basically when it looks set and the bits of crisps and filling that are sticking out brown a little, it’s ready.
Remove (use an oven-mitt, that skillet handle gets hot). Place it on the stove and let it cool for a bit. That egg is still cooking and needs a minute or two to rest. Cut into wedges. Serve.
I had some leftover rice and beans and served it with that today. They actually went well together.
Previously I had served it as a sandwich filling, and that was pretty-good too.
Well, there you go. Good, old-fashioned one-pan bachelor chow. If you try it out, send me a picture.
If you’re Indian and you’re more than 20 years old, chances are your family didn’t have an oven at home growing up, and all baked goods were bought from the local Irani or — on a special occasion — Monginis.
Every house I’ve been in since 1991 has had a full featured cooking range with oven in it, yet I haven’t tried to bake anything in them since perhaps the late nineties. Ovens around the house have been used to store various extra pots and pans and other things. The microwave has an overhead grill element so I’ve used that sometimes, but it’s quite a pain since it takes forever to reach a good heat and has no temperature settings of its own. There is this small electric oven my mother bought ten years ago, but since that sucks up so much power it’s carefully packed away awaiting some future time when it will be put to good use as a towel warmer or something. Both the electric oven and the microwave also suffer from a small size, meaning that if I have to make pizza I need to cook each one individually (that’s 40 minutes gone right there).
The current apartment came with its own cooker but while I’ve put the stove-tops to good use I didn’t even bother — like, it seems, the previous tenant — to even turn on the oven. This is a bit of a sacreligious thing for someone who could probably live only on raw, grilled and baked goods forever, but I’ve never been much of a home baker other than the odd cake-from-a-box and the twice-yearly or so attempt at pizza (so far in the microwave grill).
Yesterday I figured I might as well clean out the oven and see if, after all these years, it actually works. Turned out to be in good shape, was relatively easy to light and use (the first oven I ever used had no light and its match-hole was waaaay at the back in one corner, which made lighting it a game of Russian Roulette with exploding LPG). It has its own rotary grill attachment with self-turning kebab skewers for even cooking (a nice touch), and an easy to light overhead gas grill.
In order to test the thing I whipped up some pizza using store-bought sauce (I found a brand that doesn’t taste like tin), cheese, zucchini, mushrooms and spicy sausage. For the bases I used Egyptian flat bread. I’ve even tried pitta bread and chapattis and they work fine as long as you don’t overcook them.
Which brings me to the only problem I encountered. Unfortunately in the hot oven, by the time the toppings were all cooked the edges of the (already cooked) flatbread had turned rock hard. It wasn’t too bad, seeing as everything that was under the toppings was soft, but not something I would like in a pizza. I tried another batch, and this time instead of the oven I just put the tray higher and lit the grill without a pre-heat. I tried the much thinner pitta bread with that, and it worked like a charm.
I finally have a working oven I can just chuck a bunch of stuff into. Thank God, all that cooking was cutting into my pr0n work time!
I made noodles. They were good. Click on ‘Read More’ for a long story about noodles in general, and a recipe on how to make the ones pictured.
Everybody loves Ramen
Ah, the stir fry. Hallowed quick meal weapon of chefs everywhere, and what better exemplifies the style than stir fried noodles? I’ve been a noodle fan since I can remember, and have developed a taste for every kind I have ever tried, from the good old red-plate ‘Indian Chinese’ stalls around Mumbai with their volcanic Szechuan Noodles (pronounced ‘Sizwon’ of course) to proper ‘Chinese Chinese’ chopsueys and smooth, lemony Pad Thai.
When I was growing up in India, stir-fired noodles were a restaurant only dish, and the home equivalent was Maggi Masala flavour 2 Minute Noodles (I distinctly remember arguing with my grandmother that we didn’t have to cook it for 15 minutes ‘like dal’ — as the noodles continued to bubble away into an inedible paste), which always looked nice and appealing in the commercials with oodles of vegetables and generally stir-fried appearance, but at home what you got was a bunch of limp white noodles in a yellow-brown spicy sauce that was more soup than stir-fry.
(Maggi in fact tried to capitalise on this mishap in the early nineties by introducing ‘Soup Noodles’ — which was the same thing, only the instruction on the back said to add three cups of water instead of two, and it came in a particularly disappointing ‘new’ tomato flavour that they had simply shanghaied from their soup line.)
In the Middle East we had no Maggi back then, but there were a bunch of the oriental intant noodle brands like Nissin (who invented them) and Koka — more on them later.
The was the added novelty of styrofoam pot noodles which did away with the washing up entirely — some even came with tiny foldable plastic forks! — but it was still the same old soupy stuff, and usually the curry flavour was the only decent tasting one. Man can’t live on curry noodles alone, you know.
So, the restaurants still held sway over stir-fried noodles, and while Martin Yan showed up every week with his rapid fire knife and all sorts of exotic chinese dishes, never once did I see a humble stir-fry noodle.
Later, of course, with the internet I found the recipes I wanted, but they usually just called for soy sauce as flavour, so as to make the noodles a base for keeping some other meat or veg stir-fry dish on. I’m a big fan of the one dish meal — there are three bachelors in the house and I’m the only one who cooks — so an elaborate banquet is out of the question. Plus there’s something immensely relaxing about making one thing in one pot, serving it up and having less washing up to do. So I did make stir-fry noodles, and for the most part they were good. It took me a while to get some balance to the ingredients, the sauces, so as to make them moist but still retain the smoky fried flavour, how much vegetable to put in, what kind of vegetables work best. I won’t say I’ve got it down to a science, but I’m confident enough to make it well 99.9% of the time, because now I have a killer app on my side.
Enter Koka. I mentioned them before; they’re a Korean company I think (mostly because their name starts with ‘Ko’ and as anyone who has seen
‘Mongjunggi‘ will attest, their products are, um, used in interesting ways by horny Korean adolescents), and they make the most fabulous variety of instant noodles I’ve found. While their regular two minute stuff is pretty standard, they have some real gems in their arsenal like their Laksa flavour bowl noodles (hot, spicy, coconut-creamy shrimp soup with fiery dots of chilli oil) and their range of Pho rice noodles.
A recent addition to some supermarkets here, however, has been their range of fried noodles. Now, I’ve seen fried noodles before from other companies, and tried them, and they’re pretty good on their own, but somehow they’ve always lacked a certain… balance that is key to good fried noodles. Either they’re too sugary, or too salty, or the onion oil overpowers everything.
(If you haven’t tried fried noodles, then basically they’re the same as instant noodles, only after you boil them for two minutes you drain out the water, toss it in a plate and add in the flavour satchet powder and a small satchet of oil — usually sesame, sometimes with bits of onion, mix well until everything is coated.)
Maggi in India even tried to make a variety a few years ago (they called it ‘Chinese Noodles’ — what were the rest of the range, Indian?) but it was so awful I still have an unopened packet in the back of the cupboard saved for when my enemies come calling.
Koka, meanwhile has managed to make the best variety of fired noodles. They taste excellent on their own, and one packet makes enough for a light snack. They even come in two flavours; a mild, traditional stir-fried noodles variety, and a spicy Singaporean one, which I used in the following recipe.
Recipe
Look, this isn’t going to be one of those things you see in pro cook books (especially by the French) which give measurements down to the millilitre and accentuate every instruction with loud, all-caps words like SLOWLY, GENTLY and YOU STUPID COW YOU WILL NEVER GET A MICHELIN STAR BUT I’M MAKING MILLIONS OFF THIS BOOK HAHAHAHA. I’m assuming you know your way round a kitchen, and understand that moderation is usually the best way forward, especially in stir-fry.
So, first up, get your vegetables sorted. I like to use any and sometimes all of the following:
Bean Sprouts — Downright essential. You can get them in most supermarkets, or try to sprout them at home, but either way you need to get them when each shoot is at least a couple of inches long. Buy them as close to cooking time as possible, as they don’t store very well in the fridge. A medium-sized handful per person is what I use.
Carrots — Julienne these, again two inches long is fine.
Snow peas — stack them, cut in half across the length. Or leave ’em whole if they’re small enough.
French Beans — slit the big ones down the length, leave the little ones alone.
Capsicum/Bell Peppers — long strips, half a centimetre in width. Red ones are sweet, Green ones are a little bitter, yellow ones are in-between. If you can get all of them, great!
Bok Choi/Cabbage — any robust leaf will do. I’ve even got away with iceberg lettuce once (it didn’t taste like anything). Haven’t tried spinach yet, but it may wilt too easily. Soya greens may also work. Should try those out. Fine strips, same size as the peppers.
Mushrooms — do not use tinned ones (the horror!), but a few finely sliced button mushrooms are fine. Shitake is the best. Anything that can stand being tossed around.
Brocolli/cauliflower — I suggest brocolli since it’s more robust than cauliflower, which tends to crumble. Cut them up into long, little floret ‘trees’ and blanche them for a minute, refresh in cold water and set aside (you can even save time by dunking them in with the noodles when you’re cooking them rather than separately).
Celery — loads of flavour, very nice surprise to get its sweet and peppermint spice in the middle of tangy noodles. Slice the stick fine on a 60 degree angle, and don’t use too much of it. Around an inch per person.
Spring Onion Greens — as fine as you like, but usually one half of an inch is a good balance of size vs flavour.
Onions, garlic and ginger — these are more Indian touches than Chinese, and if you don’t want them you can omit them, but I think they add great background flavours for the rest of the stuff to play with. Slice the onion as fine as you can, the garlic can either be sliced or you can just crush it and throw it in if you don’t mind large pieces of it, and the ginger should be julienned a little finer than the carrot (if you’re using Indian ginger then it’s stronger, so either learn to cut it to translucent sticks or just grate it).
…right, that’s a general checklist of the vegetables. You can add in whatever you like as long as it cooks in time and doesn’t disintegrate. You can add in meats too, just make sure they’re cooked or will cook in time, and that they’re generally chunky stuff. So strips of leftover grilled chicken breast are good, while mincemeat may not be. Go for dry, delicately flavoured stuff if using leftovers. You don’t want to be tasting yesterday’s mutton vindaloo in today’s noodles!
Now the important bit: Quantities. I use a medium-sized bowl as a measure, and use one packet of noodles per person. I always use one medium handful of beansprouts, and small quantities of onion, celery, ginger and garic as these should not be overdosed on. 1-2 cloves of garlic, half inch of strong ginger, half a small Indian onion (a quarter Spanish white or brown onion is more than enough). Then I fill up the rest of the bowl with equal parts of the rest of the veggies.
It’s important to note that only the raw vegetables meats should fill up the bowl now. A full to the brim bowl of veggies/meats after frying adding noodles will result in a full bowl of stir-fry that’s a full meal. Another way of measuring might be that the veggies should be twice/thrice the volume of the brick of uncooked noodles.
Let’s get to work. Have all your stuff ready to go, all cut up, all unwrapped, and get two cups of water boiling, and on the other start heating up a wok. Timing is an asset here, as you want the water to be boiling vigorously just as the wok reaches a good heat — it should be really hot.
Drop the noodles into the water and make a note of the time. Depending on how firm you like your noodles you have between 1.5-3 minutes to stir-fry the veggies, so splash some sunflower oil into the wok and drop all your veggies except bean sprouts and spring onion greens in. Stir like mad, toss, toss, let it fry a bit, toss again. After two minutes of vigorous cooking add in the bean sprouts and green onion, then a dash of soy sauce and toss again.
Good smell, huh?
I like my noodles firm, so I take them out at 1:30, into a colander, shake off a little of the water, then promptly plonk them in the wok over the vegetables. Open up the seasoning and oil satchets that were in the noodle pack and shake/squeeze each onto the noodles. Now you need to make sure that the flavour powder coats all the noodles and does that nice semi-syrupy thing the food engineers at Koka designed it to do, so if you have an extra cooking fork around use it to toss the stir-fry around like a salad. You should be able to tell when it’s all done; all the noodles should have stopped being white and taken on a nice brown colour. Drop the forks and toss the wok a few times to integrate the vegtables into the noodles more.
Note that you’re never going to get a perfectly uniform integration of noodles and veg, so do the best you can in the wok and put it in the bowl, where you can fiddle to your heart’s content with a fork, getting all the vegetables tucked in between those noodles.
Serve immediately. That’s it.
Um, turn the stove off!
Well, how was it? Good? Good.
Afterthoughts
In case you can’t find the fried noodle varieties, then you can still make it. Just make sure you buy some sesame oil and Chinese sauces from the supermarket — sweet and sour, hot chilli, whatever you like — and don’t use the flavour packet from the noodles. Follow the recipe as above but once you add in the noodles toss a little, then add in the sauces and sesame oil and toss some more until it all caramelises a bit. If you’re using a non-stick wok then do use the largest flame you can on the highest temperature. Stir fry needs to be very quick and very hot, and as the name suggests you have to keep stirring or tossing (which, once you get the hang of it, is loads of fun). If the temperature’s too low then you’ll end up with soggy noodles, and if you use the store-bought sauces you’re almost guaranteed to have a less intense flavour. It just won’t taste very exciting no matter how much of the sauce you add in.
If you’ve looked around the noodle aisle in the supermarket you may have come across these large packs of yellow noodles with the label ‘Pancit Canton’ — these are a Philipino variety that are made with coconut oil and do not need to be boiled beforehand. Just break off a chunk and put it into the stir fried veggies, and they tend to soften after all the sauces have been added in. Pancit Canton can also be directly put into soups at serving time, or you can make a chopsuey sauce and just pour it over them. As a fan of extra-crispy noodles too, these are great and do away with the tedium of making deep fried crispy noodles yourself. The coconut-oil flavour is usually mild enought to disappear at serving time, but this depends on the manufacturer. Some are stronger than others.
Rice noodles are more delicate, and usually they only need to be soaked in hot water beforehand, not boiled (the pack usually comes with instructions). Pad Thai sauce is becoming available more readily, and it’s a great dish if done properly. You can — and should — use more delicate veggies with rice noodles (seafood is great too), but accent them at the end with some crunchy stuff like bean sprouts (tossed in after you shut off the flame), crushed roasted peanuts and spring onions. It’s an entirely different flavour set as compared to smoky, intense stir-fry noodles, but it’s just as awesome.
Hope you enjoyed this. It’s long, I know, but I trust you learned how to make a good dish. If you try it out do take a picture and send it to me (or a link to it).
V