Thai Street Noodles -aka Drunken Noodles

First, work has been insane, as usual. So, I haven't been a good blogger. 

However, I have still been cooking. I'm always reading magazines, flipping through cookbooks, and browsing Pinterest for inspiration.  I made these "drunken noodles" based on a Pinterest find from popsugar (http://www.fitsugar.com/Healthy-Stir-Fry-Thai-Noodle-Recipe-16072881). 

Ingredients

112 g whole grain vermicelli (2 servings)

10 oz ground turkey

1 head broccoli, chopped

Baby carrots, chopped

Onions and peppers to taste, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tbl olive oil

1 jalapeño minced

2tbl Shredded basil 

Sauce Ingredients

1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce

3 tbl Sriracha Sauce

Juice, 1 lime

1/2 tsp brown sugar

1 tsp fish sauce

Directions

1. Start with sauteeing the garlic and jalapeño in 1/2 tbl of olive oil.  Add the ground turkey and cook until no longer pink.  Add the basil at the very end.

2. Meanwhile, boil water and cook noodles in another pot.

3.  In a third pot, take the leftover olive oil and saute the remaining produce.  If your home is not adverse to produce you can just take the turkey out of the pot and use that same pot for the remaining produce.  Alas, that isn't our house.

4.  Combine the sauce ingredients and add to the meat and produce pan.  Cook on low for 2-5 minutes until warmed through.  

5. To serve, mix all the ingedients and serve with extra lime wedges.

Verdict:  This was a winner.  I was able to get three servins out of this for us, 2 for dinner and one for leftovers for lunch the following day.  It somewhat filled my current Thai craving, although I still want to go over to the Thai Spoon for dinner one night soon.  The noodles had plenty of limeyness and saltiness from the fish sauce.  I expected it to be a different type of hot - the heat was hiding underneath the layers of flavor.  David seemed to like his boring version without produce too.  I bet it is even better with rice noodles in the traditional style. 

Honey Sesame Chicken

I've been trying to expand our culinary horizons lately.  Last summer I introduced David to Sriracha sauce. It was love at first sight. Lately I've been feeling a little Asian, so I was quite interested in this Honey Sesame Crock Pot Chicken from skinnytaste.com; however, I was not digging the four hours in the crockpot.  Hello, I work outside my home, 4 hours isn't going to work for us.  I refuse to use frozen chicken breasts directly into the crock pot to extend the cook time the way people suggested in the comments - that is just asking for a bacterial disaster that I don't want to induce.  So I changed this up a little based on our likes and dislikes and this is what we ate.  it was a definite win as far as dinner go.  We ate the shredded chicken with pasta - I used orzo to simulate the brown rice that I was really jonesing. I added broccoli slaw to mine with a side of fresh pineapple.  We both really liked this one and I've since made it again.  It had a slight sweetness from the honey, and the Sriracha gives it kick, but its a kick that you don't taste initially.

I even enjoyed the leftovers the next day.  In order to make it a little easier, I've thought about chopping up the chicken prior to cooking and serving the chicken pieces over pasta/rice with plenty of yummy sauce.  I used tomato paste the first time, but didn't feel it was lacking when I didn't have any in the house the second time.  This makes 3 good sized servings for David and I given the typical chicken breast size.

Ingredients:
pepper to taste
2 boneless chicken breasts
3 tbl honey
2 tbl soy sauce
1 tbl tomato paste
2 cloves garlic, minced
1-1.5 tsp Sriracha sauce
1 tbl rice vinegar
2 tsp sesame oil
1 tbl cornstarch

Instructions:
Mix the honey, soy, tomato paste, garlic, Sriracha, vinegar, about half a cup of water, and sesame oil in a small bowl.

Place the chicken breasts in the bottom of a small dutch oven or pot. Pepper to taste and cover with the honey-soy-sesame mix.  Cover tightly and cook on the lowest setting for about an hour.  Check periodically and add water as needed.  Remove the chicken from the dutch oven and shred.  Meanwhile add cornstartch to the pot and mix well.  Keep on low and cook until thickened slightly.  Return chicken to the dutch oven and mix well.  Enjoy! 

025 -- Peanut Thai Noodle Salad

My friend Lulu had a few of us over for dinner a few weeks ago. She had recently introduced me to this awesome food blog, Our Best Bites, which always has yummy looking recipes. To intensify my love for OBB, Lulu made their Thai Peanut Noodle Salad. I have seriously had dreams, ok well really daydreams, about that salad. It was way too yummy for its own good. Obviously (a) I have major issues, and (b) I had to give it a try of my own.

Plus, this gave me an opportunity to use my *new* blender. My parents gave me a blender/food processor combo about 3.5 years ago (I think) for Christmas. They share a base, but have different tops. Since then I have used the food processor tons of times, my general favorite thing to make being hummus. However, I had never actually pulled the blender portion out. Now I feel a lot better about it. I swear I usually don't wait that long to use gifts... the week the infamous pasta roller shows up I plan to make something special :)

In other conversational news... this was the first time I actually used raw ginger in a recipe. I usually sub ground ginger, skip it, or just skip the recipe in the first place. I think am closing in towards having cooked with most of the veggies at our little Kroger save the greens.

Materials
Dressing
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 lime
2 1/2 tsp sesame oil
1 tbl rice vinegar
2 tbl soy sauce
3 tbl honey
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tbl minced ginger
1/4-1/2 cup copped cilantro
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 tsp salt (or to taste)
1-3 tsp siracha chili sauce
2-4 tbl water (as needed to make dressing-y)

Salad
6 cups chopped Nappa Cabbage/Savoy Cabbage, or some other greens
1 red pepper, sliced
1 yellow pepper, sliced
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
1 cucumber, sliced or chopped
Handful of baby carrots, julienned
1 box whole wheat linguine

Method
Combine all dressing ingredients in blender and mix. Set to side and chill


Cook linguine until al dente. Rinse in col water. While linguine is cooking chop vegetables.

Toss dressing, pasta, and veggies and serve!

Verdict
Awesome! It doesn't taste like I remember Lulu's tasting, but i could still have dreams about this. I'm sold on OBB! About the only problem i see is that it feeds a bunch! I knew it would be more than a meal or two when I looked at it, but I was dumb enough to think I didn't need to halve (or quarter) it. Really, since the dressing is the super star of this meal, you could make a pretty good meal out of just the veggies and the dressing without the noodles, but what fun would that be? So, anyone want to come over for dinner tomorrow or Tuesday? You can see the super awesome yellow kitchen in person!!