spring roll pizza

I guess pizza toppings are unlimited……….

spring roll, less casing, from Sunshine Express

mushrooms, sliced

sauce, a combination of soy, hoisin ,fish, seasonings, a drop of hot sauce and shrimp paste.

Pizza shell is ready… brush with some of the sauce

add the spring roll contents (that’s not cheese)

add the mushrooms and more sauce

Into the oven…..

after baking sprinkle with black and white sesame seeds, cut and serve

Soba beef noodle slurp

Over the top here , a quick dish, the spicyness and the noodle gives way to slurping this dish. Perhaps I gave a bit too much shrimp paste, but it didn’t bother me. If you didn’t  have the fish sauce soy and hoisin sauce ingredients it could have been south of the border flair. The fish flavor and the spicyness gave way to the texture of the beef. I could have bumped up the cabbage, it disappeared into the dish, and maybe left out the beef. But no doubt a very concentrated fish and spicy flavor with the beef in the background. The more I look at Asian recipes, the less I follow them! Loosey followed from https://therealcookingmaggie.com/2017/12/05/on-take-out-noodles-at-home/  who credited Bon appetite for the recipe.

We are prepped up for this dish, cabbage, green onion,sauce, beef, ginger root, garlic and a spot of haberno paste.

About 7 ounces of the soba noodles boiled , it only took  a few minutes, drain and put in cold water.

Sauté the cabbage , in this case some Napa cabbage, several minutes till it picks up some color.

Reserve the cabbage and mix in with drained cold noodles.

Turn in the beef to the fry pan now, undisturbed, till it picks up brown color …..

Add in the onion ginger , garlic and hot pepper. Cook several minutes, till onion wilts…

 Add in the noodle, cabbage mixture to pan.. Stir…

Add the sauce…..

Heat through, to meld ingredients …

Plate and garnish with some additional scallions, getting close to the bowl with fork or chopsticks and slurping up the noodle to me adds to the flavor. The color of the soba noodle , with it’s buckwheat component, gives this dish an eyefull for a savoury appeal. Though I might tone  down the fishy-ness, I enjoy the result of this dish.

Noodle with shrimp

A simple dish maybe complicated by the fact that I made my own noodle. But a quick and easy meal none the less.

Boil the required amount of noodle, here I used an semolina and egg recipe.

The frozen shrimps were defrosted in water, a bit of chopped lettuce, mushroom and broccoli prepped. the sauce was a throw together compilation of minced garlic, ginger hoi sin , soy , and fish sauce, water, oil, shrimp sauce, sugar and rice vinegar in amounts to balance out the flavor and viscosity to your preference. A spot of habernao paste for heat.

Start by panning the noodle with a bit of oil over high heat, add the veggies, stir fry several minutes. now add the sauce to coat and cook and stir, adding a bit  shrimp water to keep things liquid without burning. Add  the shrimp and continue cooking, adding small amounts of water if necessary, keep things moving. Flame off let sit a couple of minutes and plate.

I leave the shells and tails on the shrimp for texture of the crunch.

First attempt at spring rolls

With some rice paper wrappers from the Chinese/American Market, it was time to get rolling!

Any ingredient(s) will  do so I have some chicken, mushroom and corn salsa type mix that I had prepared previously. A quick lookup of recipes indicated that chopped crunchy vegetables would be a good addition. Carrots, onions and celery with lettuce was added.

I merely rinsed the rice paper under warm water for several seconds and rolled.

Done! an easy wrapper to do , not shown was a dipping sauce of hoisin sauce, thinned with double black soy sauce and a bit of chili paste added in. This type of wrapper versus tortilla type bread, lets you showcase the ingredients.

Oriental Beef Ribs

Why I decided  to go oriental style ?  Don’t know ,  possibly I read a recipe using 5 spice powder. Not having any 5 spice powder would require me to make some. 

Scavenging together the ingredients. Just approximated the ratio of ingredients from other recipes.

   
 
The more you look the more variations of 5 spice powder recipes you find. Since their was no fennel seed in the closet, I settled for dried fennel.

All into the fry pan in a slow oven to toast the herb and spices. 

Hand ground. 

   

 

 

Reserve enough for the ribs, any left overs to a spice bottle.
  

 

Ahhhhhhh… The aroma !

Now onto the ribs……

   

 A good massage with the 5 spice with an addition of salt and dried hot red pepper.

Over night to the fridge.Next day ready  for roasting,  a braver soul would have slow cooked them over charcoals out in the  cold.

Racked up to the oven.

  
Slow oven 250 to 275 for several hours gauging by the pull back of the meat from the bone.

  
Drain the fat and sauté onions,  deglaze with hard cider, add additional 5 spice powder and some hoisin sauce.

  
Plate it up over a bed of rice. Could have made some moo sho pancakes, (flour and water rolled dough) and wrapped the meat with fresh onion and sauce similar to a Peking duck. Another alternative would be rolled up in some big ass greens, bok choi etc. 

As it stands it didn’t take me long to be full, l suppose it’s beneficial that I’m more conscious  of my weight !

  
They were not, as it usually described, falling off the bone. There is enough chew and caveman teeth work to get the bones clean , the meat being tender with just enough fat and a bit of gristle to make it a authentic beefy rib, not something that has been trimmed of all fat and cartilage. Good Eats!