Fresh Pasta

The pasta was delicious! It also didn't take as much effort as I thought. (Perhaps I'm only saying that cuz I wasn't the responsible party in charge of making pasta - Bhumi and Nelly were.) It was especially easy due to Trang's pasta roller/cutter attachment that she purchased for her KitchenAid stand mixer. All we had to do was roll out the dough with a rolling pin, and then run it through the stand mixer attachment a couple of times to get it to the desired thinness. Then we ran it through the cutter attachment to create fettuccine noodles. These fresh noodles cook a lot faster than the store bought ones, so you'll want to keep an eye on them as they're boiling away on the stove. You won't be sorry you tried this though - fresh pasta is far superior than that store bought stuff. I guarantee it! :) The below recipe serves six.

Ingredients:

1 lb white flour

2 tsp salt

4 eggs, beaten

2 tbsp olive oil

Method:

1. Sift the flour into a large bowl and stir in the salt.

2. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and add the eggs and 2 tbsp of oil. Using a wooden spoon, stir in the eggs, gradually drawing in the flour. After a few minutes, the dough will be too stiff to use a spoon, and you will need to use your fingers.

3. Once all the flour has been incorporated, turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead for about 5 minutes until smooth and elastic. If you find the dough to be too wet, add a little more flour and continue to knead. Cover with cling film and leave to rest for at least 15 minutes.

4. The basic dough is now ready. Roll out the pasta thinly and create the pasta shapes required.

** For us, we used Trang's handy KitchenAid stand mixer's pasta roller and cutter set. This made the process much, much, MUCH easier. Totally worth a buy if you like fresh pasta, and you have a stand mixer.

Garlic Noodles with Roasted Crab

Never again! Never again will I pay an exorbitant amount of money at a restaurant to have delicious garlic noodles and roasted crab. What inspired me to find this recipe in the first place is because of all the rave reviews I'd read of the infamous garlic noodles and roasted crab from Thanh Long in SF. I googled that and stumbled upon this recipe. What was difficult about the recipe the first time I attempted it wasn't the recipe itself - it was the crab killing part. Dear lord, what a traumatic experience! I reviewed this tutorial on YouTube and thought I had it covered, but... yeah. Traumatic. This time around, I got smart and visited my local 99 Ranch supermarket and asked them to chop up the crabs for me. That seafood butcher was cool and efficient. Thus, the dish was made, and it was easy and delicious. Give it a try! By the way, I got the recipe from this site . I followed the recipe almost to the letter; I've added my comments in brackets below.

Ingredients:
1 lb fresh noodles
4 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic (pounded)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons garlic powder
2 1/2 teaspoons chicken bouillon powder
2 1/2 teaspoons oyster sauce
5 teaspoons grated parmesan cheese

Method:
1. Rince the noodles with cold water and set aside. Heat up a pot of water and let it boil. Boil the noodles in the hot water until they are done, drain the water, and set aside to cool down the noodles. [Just for a little though! I like having the noodles warm.]
2. In a pan, sauté the garlic with the olive oil in medium heat. The purpose is to infuse the olive oil with garlicky flavor. Discard the garlic and then add in 4 tablespoons of butter and turn the heat to low. [I actually prefer to keep the garlic in; the taste of the garlic after it's been cooked in the butter is super delicious. You could also choose to mince the garlic and leave it in instead.]
3. Add in the chicken bouillon powder, garlic powder, oyster sauce and blend well. Set aside to let it cool. [I don't actually let it cool that much because I like the noodles warm.]
4. Once the garlic mixture is cool and the noodles are cool at room temperature, pour the garlic mixture over the noodles and toss them together to blend well. Add in the grated parmesan cheese, toss well, and serve immediately. [Again, ignore the first part if you prefer warm noodles.]

Note: Sometimes, I need to reheat the noodles a bit because the crab's not ready yet. In that case, I put the noodles in an oven-safe dish and put it in the oven at about 150-200 degrees F.

Crustacean-inspired Roasted Crab Recipe
Ingredients:
1 Dungeness Crab (about 2 lbs) [I bought 2 crabs totaling a bit over 3 lbs. The rest of the ingredients is enough to cook this much crab.]
1 stick unsalted butter/8 tablespoons
3-4 cloves garlic (chopped coarsely)
2 teaspoons chicken bouillon powder
2 teaspoons black pepper (cracked using a mortar and pestle)
1/4 teaspoon sugar

Method:
1. Clean and chop the crab into small pieces.
2. Heat up the butter in a wok (between medium to low heat) and saute the garlic until aromatic, but not brown.
3. Add in the black peppers, chicken bouillon powder, and then add in the crab and stir well.
4. Add in the sugar and cook the crab until half done.
5. Dish out and bake it in the oven at 350 degrees F for 25-30 minutes. Serve hot with garlic noodles.

Curried Pork Noodles

One of the main reasons I use Google Reader is because I get to consolidate a whole bunch of food blogs to read at my leisure. I happened across this recipe as I was browsing from one linked blog to another. You should check out this blog sometime; I like the blogger's writing style, and the recipes are tasty. I've adapted the recipe to what you see below. This serves 4.

Ingredients:

1 package of dried rice noodles (I used thin rice sticks, but you should try using pad thai noodles if you find them.)

Vegetable/olive oil

1 pound ground pork

3 cloves of garlic, minced

2 small fresh green chilis, deseeded and minced

1 small onion, chopped in long slices

1 large red bell pepper, cut into thin strips

2 tablespoons curry powder

3 tablespoons Asian fish sauce

¾ cup coarsely chopped cilantro

¾ cup coarsely chopped basil (optional)

Instructions:

1. Cover the rice noodles in boiling water and soak until soft but not mushy for 7-10 minutes. Reserve ¼ cup of the soaking water. Drain the noodles, flush with cold water, and transfer to a bowl.

2. In the meantime, cook the pork, garlic, and chili in 1 tablespoon of the oil over medium-high heat in a wok or large skillet, breaking up any chunks, until just cooked through (a little pink is okay as it will cook through later). Remove with a slotted spoon to a small bowl.

3. Add the remaining oil in the skillet or wok over medium-high heat and add the pepper strips. Cook for 1 minute, then add the onion. Continue cooking until the pepper is almost tender but with a little crunch and the onion is golden, an additional 2 to 3 minutes.

4. Add the reserved pork along with the curry powder. Cook, stirring often, for 1 minute then stir in the reserve noodle-soaking water. Add the drained noodles along with the fish sauce and herbs. Toss well to combine and serve with more fish sauce, if desired.

Beef Chow Fun with Bean Sprouts or Chinese Broccoli

This is a really easy dish to make at home, especially using the recipe I'm going to share with you below. As a working parent supporting two kids on her own, my mom did not have time for fancy recipes. If it weren't a dish she could cook in less than an hour, it wasn't going on the dinner table. This was one of those dishes that showed up regularly for dinner since it was a favorite of me and my brother, and it was super quick to make. Here's the recipe below for four.

Ingredients:

2 lbs. wide, flat rice noodles

1 lb. beef flank steak, sliced (or more, if you want more meat in the dish)

1 yellow onion, sliced

1 lb. bean sprouts

Canola oil (for stir fry)

Oyster sauce

Soy sauce

Sugar

Black pepper (optional)

2 green onions, sliced into 1-inch segments (optional)

Instructions:

1. Marinade the sliced beef in some oyster sauce, about 2 tbsp. If you like it a bit peppery, add some ground black pepper to the marinade as well. Make sure to mix the sauce with the meat. Let it sit for at least 10 minutes.

2. Loosen the noodles. If they aren’t fresh, they’ll be a bit tough to unravel. Take care not to break the noodle; eating small pieces of broken noodle is not as yummy as long strands! Once the noodle has been loosened from its packaged state, mix in about 4 tbsp. of oyster sauce by hand until the noodles are coated and have a light brown color to them. Heat in microwave for 1 minute if the noodles are too hard, but if they're fresh, you can by-pass the microwaving.

3. Add some oil to the wok. Stir-fry long slices of one yellow onion until it starts to become translucent. Add the beef slices, and stir around until the meat is cooked through. Slight pinkness is acceptable, since you'll be cooking the meat for a bit more before serving. Remove the meat from the wok and set aside.

4. Add a bit more oil to the wok and stir fry the bean sprouts (and the green onion if you have some) until the bean sprouts turn yellow. Alternatively, if you're making beef chow fun with Chinese broccoli instead, this is the point that you would add the Chinese broccoli and stir it around til the leaves are wilted.

5. Add the noodles to the wok and mix well with the bean sprouts. If needed, add a bit more oil to the sides to keep the noodles from burning. Add some soy sauce and sugar to taste. (Approximately 2 tsp. of soy sauce and ½ tsp. of sugar.) Once the taste of the noodles and bean sprouts has been adjusted, add the beef and onion back in. Mix all the ingredients and serve hot.