This noodle salad was perfect to take to a party this evening. Inspired by Thai cuisine, this dish used Korean mung bean cellophane noodles. These are usually used in the Korean dish called chop chae but instead I made a Thai style salad. I cooked the noodles until tender and cooled them under running cold water. The salad contained grated carrot, cucumber and green onions. The Thai peanut dressing was made from 3 tbsp natural creamy peanut butter, 2 tbsp rice vinegar, 1 tbsp fish sauce, 4 cloves garlic, and 1 Thai chili pepper. The sauce was pureed in the blender until good and smooth. This was tossed with the noodles and vegetables. It was quite a hit at the party!
Archives for March 2009
Cellophane noodle salad with Thai peanut sauce
March 22, 2009 by 6 Comments
Capitol Eats
March 18, 2009 by Leave a Comment
Today I spent on Capitol Hill. Yes, I’m in Washington, DC this week. Hence the slowdown in my cooking posts. My wonderful Congressman Pomeroy’s office arranged for special tours of the Capitol and the spectacularly beautiful Library of Congress for us. It was a great day. The photo shown below was taken from Pomeroy’s office window in the Longforth House Office Building. But I digress. This is a blog about food and cooking. For lunch we made our way underground to the maze of tunnels between the office buildings and the Capitol to the cafeteria where the nation’s leaders often take a break to dine. I had a really good (and cheap) Asian Beef Wrap. It was chock full of thinly sliced meat, napa cabbage slaw, mangos, roasted red peppers and a ginger dressing. It really hit the spot. Oh, it’s a gorgeous sunny and warm day today in DC!
More Pizza
March 15, 2009 by Leave a Comment
What pizza did we have last Friday? A darn good one. The pie shown above has a standard pizza sauce base topped with diced summer sausage, chopped garlic-stuffed green olives, and sliced pepperoncini peppers. On top of the cheese was some pepperoni slices.
How about something completely different? How about a cheeseless Asian-style pizza. I used hoisin sauce as the base along with some sriracha hot sauce. This proved a sweet and spicy underlay for the ingredients on top. A layer of fresh mung bean sprouts, some sliced leftover Asian meatballs, and fresh pineapple finished off this healthy lowfat pizza.
See how nice it cooked up? The only drawback was the amount of moisture in the pizza. I think that comes largely from the bean sprouts and maybe the pineapple. It was a little bit drippy and hard to eat. But it tasted really good.
Meatballs with an Asian influence
March 15, 2009 by 1 Comment
No, it’s not spaghetti and meatballs with a tomato sauce. It’s better! This dish has flavors of Vietnam and Thailand. The noodles are Japanese udon noodles. I love their silky texture. The meatballs were made using sirloin roast and pork loin ground together with garlic and green onions. The meat was seasoned with some soy sauce as well and bound together with an egg and bread crumbs. The meatballs were cooked on a sheet pan in a 375 oven just until cooked through. I had plenty leftover that I used for a pizza. I’ll post more on that tomorrow.
To create the sauce, I started with garlic and ginger in a hot wok and stir fried some finely julienned carrots. To the pan I added a teaspoon of Vietnamese sour soup paste. This is a blend of spices that gives a tangy kick to the dish. More soy sauce went in along with some milk that had a little bit of corn starch stirred in for thickening. To give it a bit of Thai nuance, I added a tablespoon of creamy peanut butter. Yes, this is a spicy, tangy peanut sauce. I added enough water to keep it liquid as it cooked. I added the cooked meatballs to the sauce and simmered them for a few minutes. Meanwhile my udon was boiling. Once it was cooked to almost done I threw the noodles into the sauce and cooked them for another minute or two and coated everything with the sauce. I finished it off with some lemon juice at the last minute to give it even more tang.
Empanadas Argentinas
March 14, 2009 by 12 Comments
I’m heading out to a wine tasting this evening where we will be sampling some torrontés and malbec wines from Argentina. So I threw together this appetizer to take along. Searching the web I found a really nice recipe from the Cooking with Teresita blog for empanadas. I pretty much followed the recipe on her web page so I won’t repeat it here.
I started by cooking the onions and meat together. Then cooked the spices in. I allowed that to cool and added chopped green onion, chopped boiled egg and chopped green olives.
I didn’t have the time to make a dough so I went to my freezer and pulled out a package of pot sticker wraps. These were perfect for making appetizer sized empanadas.
Here they are all stuffed and sealed. I brushed them liberally with olive oil and baked them in a 350 °F oven for 35 minutes, until the turned golden brown.
Ah, the smell is heavenly. I can’t wait to bite into them.
