Noodling

I have resolved to cook more often, now that we're on our own. I jump at the chance whenever we have no plans for dinner and The Husband is usually up for it ( I don't make him do the dishes, by the way). It's great fun to cook and I want to do it as often as possible so that I can be Super Chef! Recently I have been very enthusiastically searching online for recipes of Asian cuisine. I think Asian food is so much more complicated. Too many steps and too many sauces/spices/ingredients. It's relatively easy to whip up a western fare, especially Italian with sauces readily available in supermarkets. I prefer to take that extra step and use tinned tomatoes with tomato puree, but we'll leave that for another time.

Last night I surprised The Husband with an Asian flavor - Minced Meat Noodles aka Zha Jiang Mian. I found a couple of recipes and decided to combine them and improvised along the way.


Simple ingredients of minced garlic and ginger (surprise!), sliced chinese mushrooms, minced pork and shredded cucumber and sliced spring onions to garnish. Also, a little something extra: sliced eggplant.


No man or animal was harmed in the making of this meal.


Heat up garlic and ginger until fragrant. Add mushrooms, eggplant and marinated mince pork and stir fry until the meat loses most of its pinkness. Add Shao Hsing wine, hoisin sauce (I sustituted with oyster sauce) and bean sauce (I used a spicy version so I skip the step of adding chilli).

Top with a bunch of shredded cucumber and sliced spring onions. Woohoo! Dinner is served.


The Husband aproves of it. Yay!

I had to make some substitutions like using oyster sauce over hoisin sauce. I used a type of Japanese noodles (which turned out to taste like 'mee sua') because I couldn't find 'la mian' in the supermarket. But all turned out well anyway. We were so starving by the time I finished cooking that we slurped up the extra portion! I couldn't achieve the consistency and texture of those found in restaurants because it wasn't saucy enough. But it was definitely healthier with the lean pork and low sodium content. Maybe there should be more Shao Hsing next time! :P