Spicy Chicken Noodles

I normally prefer rice to noodles, but when I saw Sharwood's ready-to-wok Pad Thai noodles at half-price, I couldn't resist buying a couple of packs, hehe. I was initially planning to make one of my previous udon-based dishes, but when I looked through the Sharwood's site, I thought I might as well try one of the recipes from there. I found a couple of promising ones (including a Pad Thai recipe, hehe) but decided to make this instead, since I wasn't quite sure about the ingredients of the rest of the recipes I earmarked. Here we go!

PS This recipe is adapted from the original recipe. If you want to have a look at the original, click here. Also, as a reminder, all the recipes for this year would most likely be scaled to serve one, unlike last year's three. (:()

What you need:
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1/2 boneless chicken thighs, cut into chunks and seasoned with 1 teaspoon of dark soy sauce
1 shallot, sliced
100g mixed vegetables (I used a prepared pack of beansprouts, carrots, savoy cabbage, red cabbage and white onion)
1 tablespoon tomato puree, sundried if you can manage to find it
1 tablespoon tomato ketchup
200g cooked ribbon noodles (I used Pad Thai noodles)
2-4 tablespoons Thai sweet chilli sauce (or to taste)
1 tablespoon each of dark and light soy sauces
1 spring onion - white and green parts separated
- chop the white part and add with the vegetables
- shred the green parts finely and soak briefly in cold water to make them curl up prettily :D
Crushed chilli flakes, to taste

What you do:

1. Heat the oil in a deep-sided frying pan or wok.
2. Add the chicken and stir-fry for 3 minutes.
3. Add the shallots and continue frying for a further 2 minutes.
   
4. Add the mixed vegetables and stir-fry for 4-5 minutes, or until softened to your liking.
   
5. Add tomato puree and ketchup, noodles and chilli sauce, stir-fry for a further 2 minutes until the ingredients are heated through.
6. Sprinkle over some of the crushed chilli flakes if you want it more spicy.
   
7. Serve immediately garnished with green parts of the spring onion.

There were two things I didn't know before making this. One was how to make spring onions curl up! Haha. Apparently, you just cut them into fine strips and soak them in cold water. So cool! :D Second was that I actually have a lower spicy-food tolerance than I thought.

I found this way too spicy for my taste, but that was because Hadi and Justin once claimed that Thai Sweet Chilli is not spicy at all. Since I've used it before, I thought it must be true and just squirted about 3 tablespoons worth, maybe. I even sprinkled some chilli flakes, haha, since I thought that wouldn't be enough. Sigh. That was a mistake... my mouth was burning with every bite I took of this, and I needed to finish each bite with a gulp of water. Meh.

One good thing about the extreme spiciness was that I couldn't actually taste the veggies. Haha! So I actually ate each and every bit of the vegetables. Surprised? I definitely am. :o So that's one portion of my fruits and vegetables for the day done! :D I'm sure you all know, of course, that we're apparently supposed to eat five portions of fruits or vegetables each day. I usually can't manage it though, since fruit here is stupidly expensive. Its almost as if they don't want people to buy them. :o But I'm doing much better this year, I think. :D Been having lots and lots of vitamin C. Is there such thing as vitamin C toxicity? :o Let's hope not...

Anyways, getting back to the point of the dinner, I was actually a bit worried while this was cooking after I added the veggies because ... it looked like a LOT of veggies. But they eventually shriveled and it turned out not to be as much as I expected. Because of all the water I was drinking though, I actually got full about 2/3 of the way through, which was a pity. If it was half-way, I might have been able to save it for breakfast, but there looked like there was so little left, so I decided to finish it then and there. :P Took me awhile, but I finally managed! Whoo! Not sure if I should be proud of that or not. Babah is always telling me to "Eat before you're hungry, stop before you're full". But he also says not to waste food, and indeed, is the one who tries to finish the food if there happens to be leftovers, so yeah... there's a bit of a confusion there. ;)

Anyway, taste-wise, this was actually pretty good. I'm quite surprised. That was after I added the soy sauces though. The original recipe didn't actually have it in, but when I had a sample of that, it just tasted... wrong. Not like how fried noodles should be. :P So I decided to add the soy sauce, hehe. Just a little bit. Enough to give a bit of colour and a hint of taste. The resulting noodles were spicy and sticky and yummy! There was a bit of liquid at the bottom of the wok, probably because I had to wash the noodles to separate the strands before using them, but it all boiled away soon enough, resulting in a small amount of sticky flavoursome liquid. :D Very spicy though. This liquid also coated the noodles well, so the noodles were nice and flavoursome. Slightly different from udon noodles though. I think I would prefer those, but I have yet to go to an Oriental supermarket here in London.

Oh well. :) I still have some packs of the noodles, hehe, so look forward to some noodle dishes over the next few weeks. :D

Quote of the day: Eating highly seasoned food is unhealthful, because it stimulates too much, provokes the appetite too much, and often is indigestible.

Tomato Chicken with a Touch of Honey

Back in Bristol last year, cooking dinner was a lovely time. All three of us would usually gather in the kitchen and chat our hearts away, keeping the cook company (whoever it happened to be that night). Sigh... how I miss those times. Now, in Brunei Hall's dark, dreary and not-so-clean-kitchen-with-not-enough-washing-liquid-must-get-some-soon kitchen, all I want to do is cook my food and get out of there as soon as possible.

As a result, my "dinners" have gotten much much simpler than last year's. It is also partly due to the fact that I don't have much space to store any fancy ingredients anyway. Today's dinner, therefore, is a really easy one. So easy, that I wasn't really planning to write about it. But it was surprisingly good, so I thought I might as well. ;)

What you need:
1 piece boneless skinless chicken, cut into thick slices - I used drumstick
Tomato ketchup
Honey, to taste
Salt, to taste
Onion and garlic powder, to taste
Plenty of black pepper

What you do:

1. Marinate the chicken in the rest of the ingredients for about 10 minutes.
2. When ready, stir fry the chicken pieces until cooked through.
3. Add a bit more tomato ketchup and sprinkle over some black pepper. Stir to mix thoroughly and eat immediately.

Easy, no? Everything is "to taste", haha. Makes everything much simpler really, though some people find the lack of numbers unnerving. :P But really, how hard can it be?

Anyways, I originally wanted to panfry one big piece of chicken for this one, but it wasn't cooking as quickly as I would have liked it to (and I was getting bored... :P) so I decided to cut the chicken up into smaller pieces and make it into a kind of stir-fry instead.

This is a rather similar dish to my previous Ayam Tomato, I guess, in that both of them are cooked with tomato as the main flavouring. But I personally like this better, because it has no gravy. Hehe. As I've mentioned before, I like "dry" dishes. The honey also adds a little something. Deepens the flavour, somewhat. Which is great! Plus, it makes the tomatoey sauce slightly sticky and clingy to the chicken. Which is even better, and improves the flavour even more! :D

Of course, with anything tomatoey, I am tempted to add cheese on it. Make it even awesomer. But sadly, I decided against it this time, since I wanted to taste the "pure" version first, hahaha. Since it was really good, I might just try it with cheese next time! ;)

Quote of the day: A cooked tomato is like a cooked oyster - ruined.