I was a bit nervous about making today's lunch because I've never eaten or seen mee goreng before, so I had only the recipe to work with. Fortunately the recipe was fairly straight forward, but the locals will have to tell me how I far off base I was with the presentation/preparation.
I enjoyed the recipe. Unlike yakisoba, no ginger was used. Instead, the shrimp paste and garlic were the stars of the flavor show here. And they were helped along with the use of some chili from my garden.
1. To start the show, I boiled egg noodles, drained them, and then set them aside.
2. I then fried fresh chillies, 1 tsp garlic, 1/2 tsp shrimp paste. Next I added the firm tofu. Once aromatic, I added half a cabbage and a handful of bean sprouts and fried briefly.
3. Next came the noodles themselves and soy sauce to taste. The whole mixture was then fried on high heat.
This was a good dish but it would be much improved with a more liberal use of fresh chillies. I used one jalapeno which is normally enough to set one dish completely on fire, which you'll know if you've ever eaten a jalapeno from my garden. (Sometimes I think my plant must have cross-bred with some firey ornamental, because they are damn hot.) However, in this dish I could barely recognize any spiciness... very strange!
By the way, I received another delivery of online groceries today and they brought me all the right vegetables this time, including a real Japanese daikon. (My description of it as aesthetically akin to a child's arm apparently did the trick, however much I regret ever thinking of that metaphor.) They only got one thing wrong: my 12-pack of Beck's beer is light beer, as in low-calorie. But I'm not phased -- I figure the univerise is probably just trying to tell me something.
Comments
Oh,I love Mee Goreng&Nasi Goreng.I've never cooked them though.I'm gonna have to try this myself...Looks delicious!
I usually use dried egg noodles for my mock yakisoba for convenience.Only when I get some fresh noodles from the Oriental supermarket,it tastes quite authentic:)
Posted by: KT | January 29, 2006 03:09 AM
Oh, wow!
That looks absolutely fabbo. You talking about the chiles from your garden makes me want to get chiles back in my garden again.
When I used to grow jalapenos in Arizona, I always found them to be blistering hot. I was told by someone (and I believe I also read this somewhere) that when the plants get "stressed" because of high heat, that they produce hotter fruit. Maybe that's what's going on in your garden!
Posted by: Rose | January 29, 2006 07:47 AM
KT: I liked this dish but it will be so much better with more chillies! Yeah, unfortunately I can't buy fresh noodles here so I had to resort to dried. They tasted pretty good, though.
Rose: You flatter me so! I wonder if you're right about the jalapenos... this sounds like a logical explanation to me. Of course, the hotness level is actually great for convenience sake too as normally one pepper is totally sufficient for any given dish, otherwise its too hot even for me to eat.
Posted by: Evil Jonny | January 29, 2006 09:17 AM
Hmm... Let's see...
A typical vegetarian mee goreng would have cubed boiled potato, green peas, tomato, cabbage, bean sprouts, red chillies, fried tofu/taupok, a teaspoon of tomato sauce, finely sliced onions and chye sim.
Blend 4-5 chillies, a small clove of garlic, 1/2 small onion together and use a 2-3 teaspoons of this 'sambal'when frying the onions etc. But remember to fry the sambal till the oil comes up and the sambal turns a darker shade.You can use this sambal for other dishes too.
You can try using some fresh shrimp and cook it along with the onions and sambal u fry.
PS. We dont use shrimp paste in mee goreng!
Posted by: Rathi | January 31, 2006 11:28 PM
Hi Rathi,
Your recipe sounds much more interesting and vibrant. This recipe I used came from my Malaysia/Singapore cookbook... guess they have a much blander idea of mee goreng, eh? Next time I make it, I think I'll go your route.
Posted by: Evil Jonny | February 1, 2006 06:58 AM
YEah try it and let me know how it tasted.
I for got to add that u have to use some soy sauce and some salt to flavour your dish according to taste. Also, a dash of small green lime juice (limau kasturi) will do wonders. Not too much of it though.
I think your recipe book was doctored to suit western tastebuds!
Posted by: Rathi | February 1, 2006 08:29 AM