Sweet Pea Journey

Family, Friendship, Food, Fun and Everything in Between!

Tagged: one pot meal

Cooking

Singapore Noodle – Requested Dinner

Singapore noodles were requested to be on the dinner menu tonight. The reason is simple, it is super tasty. So I made it.

 

Ingredients:

1 green bell pepper, sliced

1 yellow onion,  sliced

1 red onion, sliced

1 lb shrimp, shells removed and deveined

1/2 lb bbq pork, thinly sliced into match sticks

7 eggs, or whatever amount you have

1 bag of dried rice sticks, softened in hot water

1/4 cup soy sauce

2 tbsp yellow curry powder

1 tbsp minced garlic

1 tbsp chili powder

1/2 tbsp cayenne pepper

1 cup water

 

Method:

Prepare all ingredients, wash, chop, soften, line them up. Drain water from noodles and roughly cut noodles with kitchen scissors, marinade shrimp in some salt, pepper, cayenne and garlic.

 

Large wok on medium high heat, go in with about 4 tbsp oil. Crack eggs into the wok and break up the yolk with your spatula or spoon. Stir eggs around until it is scrambled.

Push eggs to one side of the wok, add shrimp and cook until shrimps are 80% (ish) done.

Scoop out eggs and shrimp, you don’t want to over cook it. Add more oil into wok and add all vegetables into wok. Cook until vegetables are softened. Season with salt and pepper. Add bbq pork. Add eggs and shrimp back into wok. Add all noodles.

Add all seasoning and water. Use 2 spatulas or spoons to stir everything around. It will take a while to fully incorporate the seasoning and evenly distribute the flavor. Once it’s evenly distributed, and water absorbed by the noodles, taste for seasoning. Add any seasoning to entertain your taste buds.

If you don’t like spicy food, skip the cayenne, chili powder doesn’t add spiciness that much but it gives the noodles a warming pinkish color. Of course the main color will be light brown, due to yellow curry powder and soy sauce.

Seriously, make a bunch, these noodles hold their texture quite well, it will last a couple of days in the fridge, if it will ever survive that long.

 

 

 

Cooking

Yellow Curry Chicken and Vegetables

Finally, I tackled yellow curry – one of the favorite Thai food. It’s amazingly easy to make and tasty, you should try this at home too. Because I chose the cheat version, using store bought yellow curry paste, it’s actually a very easy one pot dish to make, and clean up is a breeze.

Ingredients:

3 skinless bone in chicken thighs, cut off most meat from bone, cut into bite size pieces, save bones to add flavor. I did not do anything for this step, only because I still don’t trust my left hand enough to handle cutting meats into smaller pieces.

1 white rose potato, this is highly recommended, just for the texture in the curry. You want the potato to thicken up the curry a bit but still want to be able to enjoy the potatoes, not mashed potatoes.

1 medium to large size red potato, totally optional but I like the color added to the dish

half of a large onion or a medium one, cut into chunks

half of a green bell pepper, only because I had a half in the fridge.

1 carrot, cut into bite size pieces

2 tbsp yellow curry paste, I used a store-bought canned paste.

1 can of coconut milk, not cream, not oil

2 tsp of sugar

1 tsp of fish sauce

salt to taste

 

Method:

Put a medium size sauce pan on high heat, pour in half a can of coconut milk, bring to a boil and reduce heat to medium and let coconut milk bubble away. If you are lucky, the coconut milk you bought may separate to have a layer of coconut oil on top. If it doesn’t no big deal, pretend you didn’t see this from me and move on.

When the coconut milk is reducing, cut all vegetables into bite size pieces except for potatoes, to prevent them from oxidizing. Add yellow curry paste into the pan, and use a spatula to stir constantly to let yellow curry paste get toasted and well combined with the reduced coconut milk.

Add chicken pieces into the pot, bone and all, and stir until chicken pieces are well coated with curry mixture. Pour in the rest of the coconut milk and bring it to a boil. Don’t throw away the can just yet. Reduce the heat to medium and cook chicken to tender. I also threw in a bay leaf. About 15 minutes. Use this time to cut up potatoes.

Once chicken is cooked till tender, add all vegetables and the can of water to the pot, as usual, I threw in a chicken bouillon cube. Or you can add chicken broth instead. Make sure you have enough liquid to cover everything in the pot. Once it comes to a boil, reduce heat to medium to medium low and let it cook for another 10-15 minutes, lid off. That way extra liquid can evaporate and you don’t end up with super watery curry.

Stir occasionally and make sure all potatoes are submerged. Use this time to wash cutting board, knife, clean up the kitchen, or drink some coffee.

Once the potatoes are tender but not melted away yet, kill the heat, taste for seasoning. This step is crucial, this will fundamentally transform your yellow curry. I added quite a bit salt, a couple of tsp of sugar an a couple of dashes of fish sauce to achieve the final amazing taste, please don’t be fooled by the whole house of exciting curry smell when you cook it.

Serve over steamed rice, with loads and loads of potatoes and juices, you will definitely come back for more, a couple of times!

Cooking

Best Sausage Arugula Shell Pasta

After a whole week of recovering from my arm surgery, I took baby steps easing myself back into simple tasks, such as opening tea bags and folding laundry. Today, I attempted making a simple yet hearty meal for lunch, also testing recipes for when my babies return. I haven’t seen them for a long time, miss them so very much.

I have to say, this meal is the highlight of my past few days, and I was super excited, and of course, I over ate for lunch, again.

 

Did I mention this is super easy, one pot healthy, tasty and kid friendly meal? Here is how I made it. My apologies first, my left hand / arm still have very limited mobility, so I was nowhere near as fast or detail oriented as I would like to be, so I took the shortcuts where I could and did not take any pictures till the very end.

 

Ingredients:

1/2 large onion, or 1 small one, diced. The half onion left in the fridge since who knows when has been bugging me royally, so of course I seized the first available opportunity to use it. It took me a while to dice it carefully, simply because I don’t have the firm grip from my left hand yet, so, slowly and carefully, I tackled the onion.

2 cloves of garlic, minced. You guessed it, I didn’t bother mincing garlic, I used about 1 tsp of garlic powder.

8 oz bulk sweet Italian sausage, or 2 links of Italian sweet sausage, casing removed.

About 4 cups of stock, as usual, I swapped with water and bouillon combo. I used 1 chicken cube and 1 beef cube to test the flavor, it worked beautifully.

8 oz of baby arugula, I bought a bag of baby arugula salad, which came with a bag of surprised corn kernels, of course I threw that in the pasta

1 squash, it was also bugging me, sitting in the fridge for a while, withering away, I couldn’t stand wasting fresh vegetables..so I diced it up, quarter inch thick, half moon or quartered to achieve roughly same size. Of course, broccoli, zucchini, mushrooms, cabbage, eggplant, leeks…any vegetables would be fantastic option!

1 generous cup of dried small shell pasta. You can use any bite size pasta in your pantry. I would recommend something that has some curves, holes, ridges of some sort to grab on the delicious sauces and sausage meat in each bite, you would be pleasantly surprised how amazing this meal is.

Optional: shavings of Parmesan cheese.

 

Method:

I heated up about 1 tsp vegetable oil in a high sided pan. The reason is simple, I will be cooking the pasta in this pot, I want the least amount of liquid added possible to achieve maximum taste. Throw diced onions into the pot and soften for a couple of minutes. Then add fresh garlic, or garlic powder and cook for another 30 seconds or so.

Add sausages to onion mixture, use the spoon or spatula to break the sausages to smaller sizes, or to your liking. Lower the heat to medium, stir occasionally to brown the sausages well. The kitchen smells amazing at this point.

Once the sausages are browned, add the vegetables except for the arugula and half of the stock or water. I threw in the bouillon to let the cubes dissolve, raise the heat and bring the liquid to a boil. Dump in the pasta and stir.

Lower heat to medium, stir occasionally to cook pasta gently. Add more liquid as needed, keep stirring, don’t walk away. After about 15 minutes, try pasta for doneness and seasoning. Mine was awesome, you can tell the shells grew in sizes and appear to be soft. Seasoning was spot on! After all, the sausages and bouillon are both quite salty. That’s why I never added any salt, can it be any easier?

Once pasta is done, kill the heat and fold in the arugula. It will look overwhelmingly much, but arugula will wilt to almost nothing, but add this subtle peppery yet sweet flavor to this dish. To me it is a must have ingredient.

Dish up, top with parm and enjoy!

Cooking

Best Pad Kee Mao Ever

I have perfected this dish. I have not met a single person that didn’t like it, that’s including kids, and not just my own…Everyone has way over eaten when this dish is served. So, if I can make a suggestion, pack up the rest of the dish and put away, before eating, otherwise you will go back to serve more.

Of course, I tweak the recipe with what I have on hand all the time. As long I have the delicious fat rice noodles on hand, I am golden!

Disclaimer, if you are not familiar with some of these sauces or seasoning, they are all very common sauces in Asian cooking, they are available at pretty much all Asian markets.

Here is how I made today’s version:

Ingredients:

1 package of fat rice noodles, left on the counter for a couple of hours to bring up to room temperature, then taken out of the packaging and microwaved on high for 5 minutes to completely soften.

4 large eggs

1 chicken breast, thinly sliced

4 Swiss chard, hard stem removed (I saved the stem for juicing later, no waste!) and thinly sliced

2 carrots, cut length wise in quarters and cut into match sticks

1 yellow onion, thinly sliced

4 cabbage leaves (I had Taiwan cabbage, so much softer than regular American cabbage), thinly sliced

4 cloves of large garlic, minced

1 knob of ginger, about 1/2 inch long, minced

2 green onions, thinly sliced

1 handful of fresh basil, thinly sliced

 

Marinade for chicken:

2 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp cooking wine (I used Shaoxing wine, available at any Asian market)

1 tsp mushroom bouillon

1 tbsp rice vinegar

 

Seasoning for Pad Kee Mao:

4 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbsp sweet soy sauce

1 tbsp of Maggie sauce

1 tbsp fish sauce

1 tbsp oyster sauce

1 tbsp mushroom bouillon

 

Method:

Marinade chicken with the chicken marinade above, mix well and set aside. Let the chicken soak up the flavor. Wash hands well.

Prepare vegetables as mentioned in ingredient list.

The noodles come in a package, stuck to each other. If you throw the whole clunk into the wok, they will never separate. So, heat them up in the microwave, and separate them with your fingers. Try not to break the noodles, because you don’t want to end up with a bowl or 1 inch long pieces. Be very careful, it can be hot. This is by far, the most time-consuming process.

Wok on high heat, go in with one table spoon of cooking oil. Once oil is hot, go in with chicken slices. Stir fry until chicken is cooked and pull out chicken and set aside.

In the same wok, add 2 tbsp cooking oil, crack all 4 eggs directly into the wok. Use spatula to break up the yokes and scramble the eggs.

Once eggs are set, go in with minced garlic and ginger. Stir around until fragrant. Dump the whole plate of prepared vegetables into the egg mixture and stir fry as if you are making a vegetable dish (hint, this could be a main dish itself, if you add the chicken back in after the vegetables are cooked).

Just look at the color of the vegetables! It’s such a colorful and healthy dish! Stir fry for about 3 minutes until the vegetables are softened. Go in with the separated noodles.

Add all sauces on top of noodles. At this time, you will need 2 spatulas to move the noodles and vegetables around and evenly distribute the flavor. Go in with the cooked chicken.

A very important trick to have amazing tasting Pad Kee Mao is to leave it alone at this point, with heat on. Yes you read it right, heat on, and leave it alone. The bottom layer will be slightly charred, the edges of the noodles will be slightly crispy and browned a bit. That, my friend, is priceless flavor! That is what makes an amazing Pad Kee Mao rather than regular stir fried noodle dish.

Kill the heat, go in with sliced fresh basil and green onions, stir up and dish up. You can garnish with the best looking piece of basil to impress!