Chow Mein Chow Down!

Every Sunday growing up, we'd have a light breakfast, and my mom would make a giant platter of noodles for lunch.  You'd think she were serving an army, but it was usually just the 3 of us; mom, dad & me.  She'd rotate between chicken chow mein, Singapore style noodles (my and Justin's favorite), and tomato beef chow mein.  In an effort to continue the tradition, we whipped up some tomato beef chow mein, albeit for dinner rather than lunch, on a recent rainy Sunday.

Start by slicing your flank steak into bite size pieces.  Season it with some white pepper, and make a marinade of soy sauce, sesame oil, and Chinese five spice.  You'll also want to toss in some cornstarch; just enough to coat the meat.  This will help give the meat a nice crust when you cook it, and help thicken the sauce.

While your meat is marinating, you can get to work on your sauce.  Start by slicing up some onion and bell pepper.  It's up to you how you want to slice 'em.  Mom always cut them into chunks, which makes it easier to pick up with chopsticks, but it's totally up to you.  Toss them into your wok with some oil so they start to cook and soften.  You'll also want to slice up some celery.  I like my celery to still have some bite to it, so I add these in towards the end.

Once your peppers and onions have softened, add in your tomatoes.  We happened to have some fresh tomatoes on hand that needed to be used, so we diced those up and added them to the wok.  It wasn't quite enough, so we also added in about half a large can of tomatoes.  As they start to cook down you can just use a wooden spoon to break them up into more manageable chunks.  You'll also want to add in curry powder.

Once the tomatoes start to break down, add in your meat.  I just dump the whole bowl in, including any extra cornstarch that's in there.  Again, this will help thicken your sauce so you have a thicker, gravy-like consistency.  Just before the meat is cooked through, I add in the celery.

While all this is going on, you should boil some water for your noodles.  You'll first want to cook them in the boiling water, like you would pasta, but pull them out while they're still slightly underdone.  Transfer them to a baking sheet that you've sprayed with cooking spray, and pop them in the oven so they can crisp up.  Once they're golden brown, flip the noodles, and pop 'em back in the oven so the other side can get crisp.  The easiest way to flip your noodles is to place another baking sheet on top of the pan with the noodles, and flip 'em over.

Once the noodles are done, pull 'em out of the oven, and you're ready to serve!  If you're serving it up family style, place your noodles on a platter and top with your sauce.  The warm sauce will help soften your crisp noodles, and make it easier to break them apart and eat.  Since it was just Justin and I, we put noodles in each of our bowls, and spooned on the sauce.

It was a great, comfort meal on a rainy day.  Almost as good as mom's!

I'm Dreaming of a Blaaack Fungus...

...with every Chinese dish I cook...

Ok...enough of the modified Christmas carols.  One of the many things I found so interesting about Kara were her stories about her Chinese side of the family, and all the great foods she grew up with and fun times shared over traditional meals.  Our first Chinese feast was amazing, featuring my personal favorite Cantonese dish - Honey Walnut Prawns, as well as a whole red snapper, gai lan (Chinese broccoli), and pea shoots.

How would we possibly follow that up you might ask?  Well, with hot and sour soup and tomato beef chow mein, of course! Our quest for this meal began with a trek out to Super H-Mart in Fairfax.  Kara called her mom on the way there with some clarification about the ingredients.  She mentioned dried mushrooms...lily root...and a black fungus.  She wasn't sure of the name, but described it as looking kind of like seaweed, and black. So we set out through the aisles of the store in search of the ingredients and much to our surprise we found a package of wood ear mushrooms with some writing, presumably in Korean, and in big bold letters in English, "BLACK FUNGUS".  Who would've thought the mystery black fungus would simply be called, black fungus?

Seeing  as how tonight was a rainy dreary night it was perfect for some delicious soup and satisfying noodles. We started with the ingredients we picked up at H-Mart and added some ground pork, some sirloin and of course some killer tofu.  Our first step was to rehydrate our dried ingredients in water-the aforementioned black fungus, the lily root, and dried mushrooms .

The next step was to get everything into the hot tub with some chicken broth. We seasoned our soup with some black pepper, vinegar, and a little Sriracha sauce.  

While our soup was cooking, I got to work on seasoning the beef.  Just a quick dredge in some flour and a toss with some soy and sesame oil.  The beef then got stir-fried in a wok with some green peppers and onions.  Some tomato sauce, curry, and hoisin sauce was then added to the wok.

 

While our beef was frying the next step was to get our noodles were boiled, like pasta, then put under the broiler to give the dish a nice crunchy texture.  The beef and sauce then gets poured over the noodles.

 The meal came together and we had a quick, tasty, authentic Asian feast whipped up on a Monday night.

 With plenty of leftovers, since we still can't cook in small portions.