Tossed Rice Noodles

Call me weird, but I have "staple food" in the restaurants/food outlets I frequent. If it were a new restaurant I'd be adventurous and try new things, but if it were McDonald's I'd have nuggets and fries; Sbarro--Spinach and Mushroom Pizza and Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce; TOSH--Pesto with Grilled Chicken on Spaghetti; Teriyaki Boy--Agedashi Tofu, Yasai Itame and Futo Maki; and at Luk Yuen--Seafood Roll, Beef with Kangkong, Deepfried Tofu and Tossed Rice Noodles.

The first time I was served Tossed Rice Noodles (at Luk Yuen Magallanes), I was intrigued. It looked like a pale, Chinese version of our Pancit Malabon. I was skeptical, thinking it'd taste the way it looked.

I was wrong. The dish was an interesting interplay of flavors of char siu (chinese barbecue), chinese mushroom, sesame oil, shrimp and celery. I was hooked.

Since then I've tried to replicate the dish in my kitchen. The problem however, was finding char siu. So I substituted -- with smoked octopus (for the smoked, roast flavor) and bacon.

The result isn't an exact replica of the real thing, but close nonetheless and something worth the effort. :)

TOSSED RICE NOODLES

What's In It?

200g. Rice Noodles (Q Pancit Palabok)
1 egg
100g. honeycured bacon
50g. smoked octopus (optional)
100g. medium prawns, shelled and deveined
5-6 pcs. dried chinese mushroom, soaked, softened and cut into thin strips
1 small carrot, peeled and julienned
1 chayote fruit, peeled and julienned
1 small bell pepper, julienned
2 stalks celery, diced
1 large red onion, peeled and sliced
5 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup cooking oil
a pinch each of salt and pepper
5 teaspoons fish sauce

Kitchen Conjugations:

1. Soak rice noodles in tap water for 15 minutes.
2. Meantime, make a thin omelette of the egg. Remove from fire and cut into strips. Set aside.
3. Fry bacon into crisps, then cut into 1/2" strips.
4. Cook rice noodles in boiling water for 8 to 10 minutes or until tender. Drain and set aside.
5. Heat cooking oil in a wok or deep pan. Saute onions and garlic.
6. Stir in carrots, bell pepper, mushroom, chayote and celery. Season with a pinch each of salt and pepper. Stir fry for 30 seconds.
7. Add in cooked rice noodles. Season with fish sauce and stir fry for another 30 seconds.
8. Toss in egg strips, bacon and smoked octopus. Add a dash of sesame oil then stir fry for half a minute.
9. Garnish with toasted sesame seeds and minced green onions if desired. Serve hot.

Happy Eating! :)

Shanghai Noodle Soup

For 3 days and 4 nights in Shanghai Mike and I were deaf-mute adventurers. Deaf-mutes because we can't understand or speak Chinese beyond the Suh (Yes), Poh (No), Shishi (Thank you") and Po Yung Shi (You're Welcome) that I learned from the meeting with our supplier; adventurers because we shied away from the big and better known restaurants and went out to the side streets of Nanjing to try quaint noodlehouses.

(Un)fortunately there was a dearth of English speakers among the waiters and shop owners; and only one shop had an English menu. I had to stand by the counter and look out at the trays the servers carried, pointing to the dishes that looked good, gesturing that I wanted to order them. (Can you picture how funny that was?)

In the end, since they were mostly noodle houses, we ended up eating a different kind of noodle soup each day. One of them is the dish pictured above. :)

***

Noodle-mania rubbed on us, so we were still hung up on Shanghai cuisine and had noodle soup the night following our return.

For this I just put together pre-soaked rice noodles, some siomai, bok choy, chayote, strips of smoked squid, a swig of light soy sauce and a dash of sesame oil.

Chow Mein and Pao

Mike's out working and there seems to be no special reason to slave in the kitchen so I whipped out my tamad (lazy) pass and opted to cook pancit guisado, a.k.a. Chow Mein.

To compensate for the ordinariness of the dish I used a little-above-ordinary ingredients -- sea cucumber, smoked squid, lots of leeks and a heaping of mushroom oyster sauce, and a mixture of noodles -- sotanghon (vermicelli), bihon (rice noodles) and canton (egg noodles) . For added interest I matched it with Ube Pao (Steamed Bun filled with sweet yam jam) by Ho-Tsa, bought as a try-out last Friday at the SaveMore Supermarket.

We had a great time.

The boys liked the Ube Pao and requested it for their baon this week. (That says a lot considering they're quite inclined towards sandwiches and pizza.) I liked it too, just-right sweetness and gooey-ness a perfect complement to the seafoodish-saltiness of the pancit.