Curry Pork Tenderloin

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For this month’s Secret Recipe Club, I was paired up with Sally from Bewitching Kitchen. Sally is a super smart and fit biochemist transplant from Brazil by way of  California, Paris, and now Manhattan. There are many recipes on Sally’s site, including Carrot Orzo, Farfalle with Kale Pesto, Biscoff Oatmeal Cookies, Speculaas, Pumpkin Espresso Loaf, Nutella Drop Cookies, Snickerdoodles with a Twist, Butterscotch Brownies, Pumpkin Shrimp Curry, Sabu’s Spicy Coconut Chicken, Lemony Chicken Curry, Bon Bon Chicken, and Clay Pot Pork. I could tell through my recipe selection that I was really in the mood for curry, so I chose Green Curry Pork Tenderloin. Instead of buying green curry paste for this recipe I used the yellow curry paste I had in the pantry.

This was a very good recipe that tasted great. It did take a little while to get all of the recipe components prepared and we still needed to make a supplemental side to go with the protein. The pork was cooked perfectly and went great with the sauce. The marinade was easy to make, though we substituted the reduced sodium soy sauce with regular soy sauce diluted with water. We don’t have a grill in our building so we roasted it in the oven and finished with the broiler. I must admit that I was intimidated when it came time to make our own curry sauce, but it came together pretty easily. The sauce was quite mild so we would up the heat next time, especially since this recipe made tons of extra sauce.

The best thing about this dish were the candied nuts on top. We couldn’t find pumpkin seeds so replaced them with shelled pistachios. The nuts were quite addictive and we used the leftovers to top a salad the next day.

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Thai Cabbage Salad

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For this month’s Secret Recipe Club, I was paired up with Karen from Karen’s Kitchen Stories. It was incredibly hard to decide what to pick from her wonderful assortment of recipes. I had “narrowed” it down to sixteen finalists and had to tap my fiance to help decide.

Karen has some beautiful bread recipes, including Danish Apricot BraidDemerara Sugar & Honey Challah, Gruyere Cheese Bread, Hokkaido Milk Bread, Kimmelweck Rolls, and Whole Wheat Challah. I have never made bread before (unless you count banana bread or zucchini bread!), so I was excited to try one of her recipes, but in the end I chickened out.

I wanted something pretty easy and quick since I wanted to make the recipe as soon as possible when SRC buddies were announced. We had just put an accepted offer on our first home and the thought of packing and baking at the same time was overwhelming. Plus, we recently discovered a Lao/Thai restaurant nearby that makes amazing salads and thought this might be a close re-creation.

If you have a food processor, this salad is easy peasy. If not, you might want to buy pre-shredded ingredients. I like the color that the purple cabbage adds, but it is noticeably tougher in texture than the green cabbage. In the future, I’d use 3/4 green and 1/4 purple cabbage, or all green cabbage.

I made extra dressing because that’s the best part. I plan to have it tomorrow with some spinach, broccoli/carrot slaw, and baked tofu.

Checkout the other recipes in this month’s Secret Recipe Club round-up, or head over to Karen’s Kitchen Stories and check out other amazing recipes such as Spicy Parmesan & Herb Grissini, Biscoff Cheesecake (!!), Boca Negra Cake, Boston Cream Pie (my all time favorite dessert), Chocolate Hazelnut Madeleines, Ovaltine Macarons, Asian Take-Out Style Spareribs, General Tso’s Chicken, and Mini Chocolate Espresso Pots de Creme.

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Char Siu Chow Fun 叉燒河粉

Today is the Lunar New Year and marks the beginning of the year of the Horse (my mother and sister are both horses!).

Every year my family gathers at my paternal Grandmother’s house to eat a delicious new year’s feast. The new year menu always kicks off with multiple roast ducks, chop suey-style vegetables, rice, sin choy,  roast pork, duck liver potato stuffing, chow fun, all followed by guava chiffon pie. This year my grandmother was thinking about not making chow fun since the noodles are hard to procure where she lives. The thought of a new year celebration without chow fun kicked my butt into gear and I set about testing some chow fun recipes.

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This recipe is a result of a few different recipes that I tried out, including Viet World KitchenHawaii’s Best Local Dishes by Jean Watanabe HeeClara Tom’s Old Fashioned Method of Cantonese Chinese Cooking, and 50th Anniversary Best of Our Favorite Recipes 1946-1996 (Maui Cookbook). With, of course, some suggestions from my dad.

I found the noodles in the refrigerated section of my local Chinese supermarket, Great Wall. The noodles I prefer are made by China Boy in Washington, DC. Usually the noodles are steamed or baked for a little to help loosen them up, but I found I didn’t need to do this and it was quite easy to separate them when I got the hang of it.

I am the most happy with the version pictured above. Since I made so many versions during recipe testing, I’m hesitant to provide exact measurements on the sauce. It’s really up to you and your preference on spiciness, saltiness, and oil content. This is a lot less greasy than when I order it out in restaurants, which means it’s easier to enjoy a larger portion.