Cool Rice Noodles with Sweet and Sour Sauce

Well, we've got a few new things today. The first is we're using leftovers. The second is that this is actually a dish for one. If you plan on sharing, better double or triple the recipe/ (Depending on how many people will be eating. I really liked the way this turned out, it could become more of a fusion food really easy by adding some avocado. Anyway, the recipe is coming from the wonderful folks over at Fine Cooking. Unfortunately, the recipe isn't available on their site.

The Menu:
Cool Rice Noodles with Chicken & Sweet & Sour Sauce
Fruit

Ingredients:
Salad:
1/3 c. Sweet & Sour sauce
2 Tbls. Fish Sauce
3 Tbls. Lime Juice
1/4 c. Finely grated carrot
1 leaf red lettuce (Tear it into bite-size pieces)
1/4 c. Thinly sliced, seeded cucumber
1/4 c. Thinly sliced sweet onion (Vidalias are good)
1 oz. Thin rice vermicelli (Cook according to the directions on the package and cooled)
1/4 c. Shredded cooked chicken
1 Tbls. Coarsely chopped fresh cilantro
5 mint leaves, lightly crushed and torn
2 Tbls. Unsalted, dry roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped

Sweet and Sour Sauce: (yields 1/2 c.)
1 Tbls. Crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 Tsp. Kosher salt
3/4 c. Sugar
1/4 c. + 2 Tbls. Rice Vinegar
7 cloves garlic, minced

How to:
Sweet and Sour:
1) Use a small, completely dry saucepan and toast the pepper flakes over high heat until fragrant. It should only take a minute or two.

Note: Do not, I repeat do not, pre-heat the saucepan. Otherwise, the pepper flakes will burn before you can blink. In a similar vein, when they say "Until fragrant", this does not mean to lean over the pan and inhale to determine fragrancy. Go for residual smell. The Little Birdie made a special visit to tell me that inhaling directly will cause your nasal cavities to burn like crazy. Pure capsicum smoke and my nose are not a good combination. That and the whole house will smell like burned peppers. Anyway, moving along.

2) Now add the salt, sugar and rice vinegar. Cook the whole concoction over medium-low heat just until the salt and sugar have dissolved.

3) Stir in the garlic and remove the sauce from heat to let it cool all the way.

Congratulations. Your very own Sweet and Sour sauce. And here I thought this was going to be hard.

Chicken Salad:
1) Combine your now cooled Sweet and Sour sauce, fish sauce, lime juice and grated carrot in a small bowl.

Note: Fish sauce, also known as Nam Pla, can usually be found in the Asian or ethnic foods section of your local grocer. Look for one that you recognize all of the ingredients in it. They should read something like: Fish Extract (blend of herring, sardines, skad and mackerel) Water, salt. The look on the face of the Asian checker was priceless when a white boy like me bought fish sauce. Apparently, not many Caucasians in Texas buy fish sauce. Oh well.

2) Line the bottom of your serving bowl(s) with the lettuce, cucumber and sweet onion slices. Now top it with the cooked and cooled rice noodles.

3) On top of that, put the shredded chicken, cilantro, mint, and peanuts. Lastly, drizzle your sweet and sour sauce over the whole salad and toss it to combine and coat.

Easy Peasy.

More Notes:
Remember that Basque Chicken Stew that was so full of flavor? I still had some lying around, so I pulled out one of the legs and used that for the chicken here. I used two forks to shred it. Just insert the tines in an interlocking manner and pull. It'll shred really easy. It really helped to have an essentially marinated piece of meat. It brought a lot of it's own flavor to the mix.

If you want to add some flair, try topping this with avocado or maybe mango. Turn it into a real fusion cuisine kind of dish. Yeah, really quick. It shouldn't take more than 15-30 minutes to put together. It all depends on your slicing and chopping speed.

Tools:
Small saucepan
Small mixing bowl

Health Info:
3 meat servings
2 Veggie servings
3 Starch servings

::Malloreth out::

Green Beans with Shallots

Here we go again. More Veggies for the palate. These tend to be on the sweeter side owing to the shallots and lemon. Shallots tend to be a very sweet onion of which I've grown rather fond. Once again, I'm pulling from, you guessed it, Simple French Cooking. Let's review the menu one more time.

Menu:
Steak Au Poivre
Farfalle in a Broth of Wild Mushrooms and Browned Shallots
Green Beans with Shallots
Navel Orange

Ingredients:
1 lb. young tender green beans, preferably uniform in length (4-5 inches)
Kosher Salt
1 Tbls. Unsalted butter
3-4 Shallots, thinly sliced crosswise
1/2 lemon + 4 wedges for garnish
Fresh Ground Pepper
4 Fresh mint sprigs


How to:
1) First we need to trim the ends off all the green beans. Rinse them then trim off the ends. We don't want to eat those anyway. Discard anything old or that just doesn't look good. Put the green beans in shallow dish so they all lie flat sand cover them with ice water. Let them sit for 10-15 minutes so they crisp up nicely.

2) While the beans ice, fill a large saute pan 2-3 inches deep with water. The pan should be big enough for all of the green beans to lie flat. Boil the water over high heat. Once the water is at a vigorous boil, drop in the green beans. Add 2 Tsp. of salt. Ideally, the water never loses it's boil. If it does, bring it back to a boil and cook the beans until they're crisp. It will only be 4-5 minutes once the water is boiling again.

3) Drain the beans immediately and drop them back into the ice water. We want to stop the cooking as fast as possible to keep that crisp tender texture. It will also help us keep the bright green of the bean rather the grayish tint that they get if cooked too long. Drain them and set the beans aside.

4) Put the saute pan on medium-low heat and add the butter. While it's still foaming, add all of your shallots. Saute them for 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly. They should be translucent, but not brown.

5) Add the green beans to the shallots and squeeze some juice from the lemon half. Anywhere from just a few drops to all the juice you can get out of it. Depends on your preferences. Add salt and pepper to suit your tastes. Toss the whole bunch until the beans are hot and evenly seasoned.

6) Transfer to a warmed serving dish and arrange the mint and lemon wedges on the plate as garnish.

That's it. Simple and easy. I use the wedges on the platter to add still more lemon juice if I want it. Depends who else is around though. Don't underestimate the effect of the mint sprigs. We may not be eating them this time, but the smell adds a whole new dimension to the dish. We eat with our eyes and our noses at least as much as with our taste buds. The smell of the mint will likely fool your taste buds into thinking there is a hint of mint in the dish itself. It's a nice effect. The whole dish makes about 4 servings and really only takes about 30 minutes if you can trim the beans quickly.

Tools:
Large Saute Pan
Dish large enough for beans to lay flat
Tongs (for transferring beans)
Mandoline (Makes slicing the shallots easier)

Health info:
2 Veggie servings
1 Fat serving

::Malloreth out::

Farfalle in a Broth of Wild Mushrooms and Browned Shallots

Sorry I've been out of commission here for awhile. I've been...... distracted......... by Final Fantasy XII. Anyway, moving on. We're back for more pasta out of Fine Cooking. I hope you like mushrooms. We're working with shiitakes and oyster mushrooms. As, always, remember to brush the mushrooms off rather than rinsing them in water.

The Menu,:
Steak au Poivre
Farfalle in a Broth of Wild Mushrooms and Browned Shallots
Green Beans with Shallots
Navel Orange

Ingredients:
6 oz. Fresh Shiitake mushrooms
1/4 lb. Fresh oyster mushrooms
1/4 c. Extra Virgin Olive oil (EVOO)
Kosher Salt
Freshly Ground Black Pepper
3/4 lb. dried Farfalle (Bow tie pasta)
4 Shallots, sliced crosswise into 1/4-1/8 inch rings
1/4 c. dry sherry
3 c. chicken broth (preferably low salt)
2 tsp. fresh thyme leaves, chopped
1/4 Tsp. Tabasco (or however much suits your taste)
1/4 c. grated Parmesan

How to:
1)Get a pot of water started boiling and salt it fairly heavily. Water for pasta should taste almost like the ocean.

2) Stem all the mushrooms and slice the caps thinly. Once that's done, start heating 2 Tbls. of EVOO in a large skillet. It should be over medium-high heat. This should only take a minute. Add all the mushrooms and some salt and pepper to the oil. Cook them while tossing for 2 or 3 minutes. Remove from heat and transfer to a plate.

3) Go ahead and add the pasta to the water. For the best results, the water should not lose it's boil when the pasta is added. This means a using a lot more water than the pasta on hand. It's a mistake I've made on more than one occasion.

4) Return the skillet to medium-high heat and add the last 2 Tbls. EVOO with the shallots. Season these with salt as well and cook for 2 minutes. Make sure to stir them occasionally. Now reduce the heat to medium-low and continue to cook the shallots. We want them softened and brown. It shouldn't take more than 4 minutes. Maybe as few as 2. Keep an eye on them since we don't want them to burn.

5) Bring the heat up to high and add your sherry to the shallots. Scrape the bottom of the pan while cooking the sherry and shallots until the sherry has boiled off almost completely. It shouldn't take more than a minute, but keep an eye on it and let it go longer if it needs to.

6) Add the chicken broth to the party and continue to cook for another 2 minutes.

7) Put the mushrooms back in the pan and drop the heat to medium. Cook it for another two minutes. Sprinkle the thyme over the the mixture and season it with the tabasco, salt and pepper until you like the flavor.

8) Once the farfalle is done drain it and put it back into the pot it cooked it. Pour the broth and mushrooms over the pasta and stir until well mixed. Serve immediately. Top with Parmesan.

Serves 4

Not really much to say here. You really want to make sure the sauce reduces as much as possible here. It's really easy to end up with something closer to soup and then the pasta stays kind of flavorless. Other than that, it's pretty good.

Health Info:
3 Starch servings
1 Fat serving
1/2 Veggie serving

::Malloreth out::