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Kung Pao Chicken

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For October’s Secret Recipe Club, I was paired up with Nora from Natural Noshing. Nora is about the same age as me and has “a passion for nutrition and eating natural, real food — nothing too fussy, over-processed or complicated.” The fact that she avoids gluten and limits her sugar intake seemed a bit daunting at first (I am, after all, a carb-avore that loves sweets), but my worries went away when I started perusing her recipes.

Between Almond Joy / Mounds Pancakes, Chicken Vindaloo, Fire Roasted Chicken Enchiladas with Squash and Red Peppers, Kickin Cashew Chicken, Red Thai Tofu Curry, Pineapple Upside Down Cake for One, and Spicy Kabocha Soup, I’ve bookmarked quite a few recipes to try out later.

One of our comfort foods during while were were dating was Kung Pao Tofu from a local Chinese restaurant. Because of this, it wasn’t hard for my husband to decide on this dish as his SRC pick. Not only did he pick this dish, but he also made it for us one day while we were working from home together.

This recipe won’t solve your craving for Chinese take-out style because it is much lighter and less greasy. It tastes fresher, especially with the crunch of the red bell peppers. Since the dish is relatively easy and quick to make, next time I’d like to try boosting up the spice as well as swapping the chicken for tofu.
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Singaporean Curried Vegetable Noodles

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For this month’s Secret Recipe Club I got to take a mini trip around the world with Tara’s Multicultural Table. Tara actually has a similar background to me, including Filipino, Japanese, German, and the Southern United States. Her passion for different cultures through food is apparent through her delicious blog. Looking through her recipe index was painful — there were so many things that I wanted to make, how could I choose between Northern Thai Curry, Mango Cinnamon Basil Smoothie, Afghani Kebab with Gravy, Macarons with Vanilla Cream Cheese Filling, Yaki Udon, Cong You Bing (Scallion Pancakes), or Sichuan Wontons in Chili Sauce.

My decision was made instantly easier when I spotted her recipe for Curried Vegetable Noodles.

One of our favorite dishes to get when we order takeout or visit the local dim sum restaurant is Singaporean Curry Noodles. It has the perfect level of spiciness (flavor, not heat) and the little nuggets of meat and vegetables break up the monotony of the noodles. I was a bit lazy and used some stir fry vegetables and packaged sauce from Trader Joe’s, but I counter-acted that laziness by topping the noodles with some home-grown Thai Basil.

To make it closer to the takeout version, throw some chicken, pork, or shrimp in with the noodles. Or, as my fiancé suggested, the addition of some egg would add a nice amount of protein.

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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 Braid, Demerara 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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Family at Dim Sum
Chow Fun at Dim Sum
Duck
Vegetables
Here are some pictures of Scott Drewno, of Wolfgang Puck’s Source in DC, cutting some noodles from China Boy for his version of Chow Fun.
Here are some pictures of Scott Drewno, of Wolfgang Puck’s Source in DC, cutting some noodles from China Boy for his version of Chow Fun.

This recipe is a result of a few different recipes that I tried out, including Viet World Kitchen, Hawaii’s Best Local Dishes by Jean Watanabe Hee, Clara 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.

Chinese Roast Pork Integrale Risotto

A few weeks ago I entered to be part of Marx Food‘s The Integrale Gauntlet. At first I was very intimidated by the title, but that’s probably because I’ve been watching a bit too much medieval-themed TV shows recently. The more I read about the “Gauntlet”, the more excited I became. This challenge is “all about rice”, one of my favorite foods!

After I entered the gauntlet, I was sent one kilo package of Italian Organic Integrale Rice — my mission was to make an original savory risotto.

Though rice is one of my favorite foods, I’ve only made brown rice a few times and risotto only once. Ashamedly, the one time I did make risotto was from one of those instant risotto packets back when I was in college. I’ve always been intimidated of risotto–the care and attention it takes, as well as the reputation it has for being so easy to “do poorly” or “just wrong.”

Luckily, Marx Foods has a good framework that broke down the process into general steps, noting when embellishments could be added. Using their steps as a guide, I formulated a recipe using some of my favorite flavors and inspired by a recent trip to a new dim sum restaurant nearby.

I chose to make a risotto with shiitake mushrooms, ginger, water chesnuts, pickled cucumbers, cilantro, scallions, and char siu (chinese roast pork). The end result was something that was creamy and rich with the taste of good memories though balanced with acidity and crunch from the vegetables.

For my first time making risotto from scratch, I was quite proud of myself. This is a great healthier version of risotto with it being organic and brown, and it has the added bonus of being a one pot meal!

This dish paired well with a deep red wine we picked up at the local store; the flavor of the wine helped cleanse between bites of the risotto since the char siu was quite fatty. I used about 2 cups (my rice cup measures 180ml) and had generous dinner and lunch portions the next day for two people.

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