Singapore noodles

In addition to the cornbread cookbook (The Cornbread Gospels) I picked up on the visit to Connecticut, we also purchased a cookbook called Asian from the bargain table. Usually bargain table cookbooks are there for a reason, but this one stood out for the selection of Asian dishes we'd been meaning to try at home (like our favorites from the Banana Leaf, the best Malaysian restaurant in Vancouver.) We took a trip to T&T this weekend to pick up a few things we were missing, and dove into the book.

P - since he was the one who found the book - had the honor of choosing the first recipe we made. He selected Singapore noodles. When P and I started ordering Chinese food together, he introduced me to the wonderful world of this noodle dish. Chinese BBQ pork, shrimp, and tasty curry-flavored noodles. In the right hands, this is delicious; just spicy enough, with large pieces of pork and shrimp and lots of flavor. In the case of more disappointing Chinese delivery, it's greasy and sort of tasteless, with tiny bits of the added meats.

The result? Delicious. We're making our not-so-great Chinese delivery place obsolete. (Also a nice way to use the green beans from last week's box!)

Garlic-chili paste (or how to make veggies more exciting)

In a valiant attempt to use a great deal of the CSA vegetables before the next crop arrives tomorrow, last night I threw together a vegetable stir-fry with whatever seemed appropriate in the fridge for a stir-fry:

- green beans
- a red pepper (no, not from the CSA, but in the fridge nonetheless)
- green onions
- spinach
- garlic scapes
- ginger

What made this dinner delicious - and worth making again - was the addition of Lee Kum Kee Chili Garlic Sauce. After sauteeing everything up to a suitable tenderness, I just added some soy sauce and a generous spoonful of the chili garlic sauce, and you'd have thought I slaved over the sauce on the stir fry for ages.

The sauce isn't really hot - honest. If it were, I would not be singing its praises. It had just enough heat to make the dish interesting, and was simultaneously sweet and garlicky and vinegary. Which makes sense when you look at the ingredients. Sure, it's not that low in sodium, but a small spoonful in a large pan of veggies can't add up to that much salt per serving. I seem to remember a version of it being offered as a topping for some onion pancakes P and I had at a Chinese restaurant in Edmonton, and when I make the pancakes again, this will definitely be on the table with them.

As an encore use, tonight I sauteed the zucchini from last week's CSA, and at the last minute added a bit of the chili garlic sauce. Delicious! The only danger now is that I'll use this condiment so much we'll get sick of it...though that doesn't seem likely that soon.

Thai red curry and sichuan green beans

We mixed up our Asian cuisines tonight, going for a Thai red curry and Sichuan green beans. Both would be great vehicles for some of this week's veggies, so why not have them together?

When P and I were in Thailand, our most favorite day of the entire month was a hands-on cooking class in Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand. We still have the cookbook from that day - it's fallen apart, but we keep jamming the pages back in and hoping we can find our favorite recipes the next time we pull it out. Two of our favorites? Pad thai - definitely not the ketchup-flavored garbage you see in most restaurants in Canada - and curry. But while we've made the pad thai and curry recipes again and again, I believe we tried to make actual green curry paste only once, and red curry paste not at all - it's very involved, and requires many, many ingredients. Instead, we've found a high-quality curry and skip the most laborious step.

Not all Thai curry pastes found in the grocery store are of equal tastiness, however. The best we found is Namjai brand, which is made in Thailand. A nice dollop of curry paste is sauteed in a small amount of oil; then add your meat (or shrimp, or tofu), then the veggies, and then stir in some coconut milk. Add brown sugar, fish sauce, and basil to taste. Tonight, we put in some chicken, a sliced zucchini and white onion. One thing to remember, which we forgot tonight, is that it's necessary to stir constantly and not cover the pan. Otherwise, the fat can separate from the liquid in the coconut milk, and cause the curry to appear somewhat curdled. The taste, however, is still delicious - but you can see some of the curdling in the photo.

My recommendation? Find some of this curry paste (red or green) and keep it in your fridge. We got ours on our last trip to Vancouver, but it must be able to be found in Toronto, too. It keeps for a very long time, and makes a delicious weeknight dinner that you can throw nearly any assortment of veggies into.

Now, these green beans are probably a little less authentic than we'd wanted - but after a day at work, finding a Asian grocery store wasn't on the agenda. This recipe includes things that you're likely to have in your pantry. It approximates it well enough, and maintains the freshness of the green beans while giving them a background of salty (soy sauce) and sweet (the green onions just melt, and the small bit of sugar helps, too). Like the fried rice, bok choy, and green onion pancakes, I'd have these any day of the week as a substitute for lackluster Chinese takeout.