Tuesday, January 09, 2007

"Curse you Ming Tsai!!!"

Yesterday another foray into uncharted food waters. Water was the dominant theme here last night, both figuratively and literally. Figuratively because this dish was a take on the island nation of Singapore's famous street cart noodles, made with chicken and shrimp and fresh veggies. Literally, because the rice noodles that soaked in water for two hours, per the instructions of tonight's culinary muse, Ming Tsai, were nowhere near soft enough which involved the quick boiling of more water. Now I don't know if our man Ming actually tried these noodles before he wrote up his instructions, but he did call them "Pop's Noodles". Maybe his dad was a shitty cook...I don't know. But after a few well placed invectives hurled his way, considering our unfortunate discovery came at a critical juncture of the whole dinner process, we regrouped and pulled it together. Luckily, after a hasty and very annoying dumping of those first noodles, w went all David Copperfield and made an extra pack of noodles appear from the depths of her pantry.
But I have to say in the course of my cooking career, sometimes you wonder if these people really ever tried the dishes they recommend, and if they did and assuming the recipe worked, did they leave something out of the recipe...maybe something like "cook the fucking noodles after soaking"?
Anyway, as I said, we hustled and the finished product was actually quite satisfying. Would probably do it again with a few adjustments besides the noodley one...a little more curry, and wait a bit before tossing the shrimp into the wok. The best part was it reintroduced us to w's wok, which is sure to get a regular workout in the future. Here's some food porn photos of the operation....
A few of the rather attractive ingredients awaiting their turn in the wok.











The dish....it actually tasted better than it photographed, but you get the idea......

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