lo mein

With the abundance of fresh veggies and with the addition of noodles, lo mein was an easy choice, though prep would be essential to the recipe.

A slicing of the veggies was done using the rotary slicer of the kitchen aid attachment.

One of those recipes, the more you look the more variations you find , you settle as with most “authentic” recipes to the ingredients you have available to the village or are grown locally.

I didn’t  get to list all the sauce ingredients and amounts, but loosely followed several recipes that I researched by listing all the ingredients that compose the sauce to get an idea of the basics. I modified it by adding a bit more cornstarch and a good amount of stock as I prefer s saucy-er thick coating to the dish.

The sauce was a build up from the basic soy sauce/rice wine/sugar combo. Some of the associated components are: soy sauce, rice wine, fish sauce, shrimp paste, chili paste, ginger root, galangal root, garlic, sugar, honey, salt and pepper with sesame oil.

The sauce, less the stock.

The veggies are the same deal, use what you have. Pea pods and the baby bok choy were included as they were fresh and attractive from the market. The carrot was also crunchy as they were fresh, large diameter and not very tapered as the packaged carrots were.

Stir fry the veggies in oil.

 

While stir frying the veggies, prep the noodles, I used rice noodles instead of the wheat noodles, so just a brief toss in hot water is all that’s needed, drain and add to wok.

 

Mix well , then add the sauce… serve….

 

 

 

The result is as good or better result than restaurant  because you have control of the ingredients. So if you like salad with noodles with a sauce here it is.

I made this dish twice and this post is a compilation of the pictures from both.

shopping

recent prices / purchases

 Buy something you never had before : longan berries, galangal root and stingray.

The sweet yellow rice is more like couscous.

recent photos

Some out takes from the previous months, mostly re”pete” of recipes, some did not warrant a posting by themselves.

Hamburger Buns

Dough Wrapped Hotdogs

Dumpling Soup

Thai styled Grilled Chicken

Roasting Coffee Beans

Broth

Pesto

Eggplant, Smoke Roasted Tomato

Eggplant, Smoke Roasted Tomato, Flatbread

Fried Dumplings

Chicken Breast, Tomato Curry

Chicken Broth

Noodle Soup

Cold Noodle Soup

Grilled Cauliflower and Veggies

walnut biscuits

From Taste of Health.

Ground walnuts, flour and sugar make for a delicious cookie type biscuit that’s easy to make. (about 80 biscuits)

220 g ground walnuts

220 g flour

110 g sugar

220 g butter

2 egg yolks

icing sugar (10x) mixed with vanilla sugar for coating.

You can see by the ingredient measurements this is a easy ratio recipe to scale.

ready to make the dough

 

combine the dry ingredients then pulse in  the butter, then the egg yolks till combined.

 

Wrap and refrigerate for awhile

 

 

 

Use baking paper on baking sheets and with about a teaspoon of dough roll and form the dough into 1/2 moon shapes.

Bake at 350 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes.

Coat the biscuits with the powdered sugar, I put a few drops of vanilla extract into the sugar and mixed it. Maple sugar or maple sryup added to the icing sugar would be an alternative.

 

Store the finished cookie in an airtight container or cookie jar.

A nice addition to coffee, tea or a glass of milk.

Beef stew

It was time to put away all the spices and herbs and return to a simple beef stew.  Usually a fall seasonal  dish but any break in the high temps and the availability of beef and beef broth made this an easy choice.

Beef, carrot, onion, celery and potato,  common ingredients. Lucky to have some beef broth which I had made previously and froze.

After cutting the beef, brown in some oil, remove from pan

 

now in the same pan saute the veggies.

 

Add the broth, and simmer. …. add the beef back into the pan, but you knew that !🤣

I scrubbed and diced some white potato, and microwaved them slightly, then added to the stew.

Some reserved broth was mixed with rice powder and added to thicken stew. Simmer till the potatoes are done to your preference. Salt and pepper to balance. Nothing fancy here, beef flavor. Perhaps some bread to mop up gravy.

 

Oriental style chicken wings

I’ve eaten more than enough bbq and buffalo chicken wings . Now I’ve replicated the      Braised pork belly   Recipe with chicken wings.

Along the same technique, brown the wings in the sweet syrup sauce, add additional ingredients, simmer , reduce and serve, here with steamed green beans. I choose to include the wing tips, sometimes they are a chewy addition to the other segments of the wings.  Do you have a favourite sweet dessert to finish this meal ?

Processing…..

It’s one of those days, back from the market the fresh food laid out, recipes floating around what to do to capture the freshness of the purchase. Usually a simple salad is prepared or just tasting the produce with bread is a way to assess the flavors. It’s also a time to have a fresh fruit bowl as a meal.

Tomatoes, still coming  from the garden need to be processed. Some have been scalded, cooled and peeled for the freezer. A real easy way to process tomatoes is to juice them, a bowl filled with fresh picked cherry tomatoes yielded about 20 ounces of juice. The pulp was the chefs treat , good smeared on bread with salt and pepper. Having an attachment for juicing for the mixer makes this an easy task, a worthwhile purchase years ago. Just before bottling, strained with a filter type bag.

 

Processing tomato juice

Tomato juice

One of the other uses for tomato is salsa. Onion, shallot, chives, hot peppers are just some of the additions along with cilantro and various seeds.

tomato salsa over water spinach on flour tortilla, just one of the uses of the cherry tomato.

Other preparations are, water spinach pesto, and basil pesto although I use the term basil loosely, some of the labeling from the market, and my tasting disagree , but I’m not familiar with different type  of basil, none the less the green leaves were mixed with garlic, chives, oil, and salt and pepper via the food processor yielding a very concentrated paste. The home made pesto guarantees an easy way to incorporate the greens into your diet without cooking and as a bread lover a meal in itself when applied to fresh bread or crackers. Dressing pasta is also a favorite of the pesto.  Another leafy green with a lemony flavour was added to each pesto. Also as it was time to bottle Kombucha some of the lemony leaves were added to each bottle. Green beans were trimmed and frozen.

 

Processing water spinach

As a traditional pesto might include Parmesan cheese, none was available at the time. Also some pecans and toasted sesame seeds were added to some of the pesto.

I find a pleasant surprise when I unwrapped the pork belly, atop there were ribs, which I trimmed for an additional meal. 

Trimmed pork belly, ready for freezing or immediate meal.

Mango can be made into a chutney for a flavorful addition to a meal or a dessert.