For some reason I have the want to “blog” in a what might be described as a more traditional sense. So I am not writing to keep a log of what I am doing in my research, instead I intend to write about my cullinary adventures.
I wanted to cook something Singaporean. Something inspired by Wok Fried Kway Teow, perhaps, but with less frying in pig fat. Certainly noodle based.
I had a look around and found this recipe for Singapore Noodle Curry Shrimp on allrecipes.com. Looked interesting, I thought!
Earlier today I had been shopping and had got some ingrediants I thought would be needed. I was right, but I was also missing a lot of stuff if I go by that recipe. So in normal Sam cooking fashion, I just winged it. Note: the noodles I had were egg noodles, not rice noodles.
I chopped up some ginger and garlic and chucked it in a frying pan (yes, I didn’t even bother with a wok). Got this cooking in some vegetable oil, then chucked the rest of my chopped veges in: red capsicum, 2 spring onions, and one small carrot, all chopped up into thin slices or small pieces. I let this cook for a while, stirring whenever I could, while I formulated a plan for the rest of the recipe. I referred back to the original recipe and found it wanted curry powder. Nope, don’t have any, but I found some Tandoori seasoning. In it goes. Oh look, seasame oil! I’ll chuck a bit of that in too, the veges are looking lonely in there. Just a couple of teaspoons of each.
I got some chicken breast meat and half a punnet of shrimps from the freezer and managed to thaw them out a bit. Also started making the sauce stuff mentioned in the above recipe. Hot water, chicken seasoning, way too much dark soy sauce, salt and sugar. Probably about a cup of water, a couple of teaspoons of chicken stock, about 6 teaspoons of soy sauce, two or three of sugar and a tiny amount of salt. I combined this in a seperate bowl and left it alone. Put the meat in with the veges, turned the heat up, and sauteed to me hearts content. Or did I stir fry? Anyway, once the meat was looking like it was pretty much cooked (doesn’t take long with small pieces of chicken and shrimp. Did I say I cut the chicken up into bits?) I dumped the sauce stuff in. It was supposed to have oyster sauce in it too, but I don’t have any of that.
Let this simmer for a minute or two while I looked at the noodles and wondered what to do with them. They require a bit of boiling in water to become tender, of course. I started getting another pot for them, then thought, “nah, they can go in with the stuff that is currently simmering in water”. I think the original recipe may have called for this. Anyway, I put the noodles in there and the pan was very full. It took a while, but the noodles ate up all the watery saucy stuff and eventually became nice and tender. I mixed it all together once the noodles were unstuck and gave it an extra minute cooking, mixing it about a lot. At some point during this process I also put a teaspoon of chilli powder in.
Then straight into a bowl and I ate it. The noodles absorbed a lot of flavour, which was good, but the soy sauce was too strong I think, they tasted a bit too much like that. Overall it was quite strong and slightly hot, I certainly felt like a drink afterwards, though it was far from hot enough to actually produce any burning sensation in the mouth. Quite enjoyable, less liberal use of soy sauce might make it rather nice.
See the finished product!
