childhood memories – Our Zenaissance

“These are amazing. What did you put in here?” he mumbled through a mouthful.

“My childhood memories.“

There are certain things that you can’t get at Chinese restaurants. You gotta go to someone’s home, sit in their kitchen and watch as wheat noodles are boiled, drained, tossed in sesame oil and then stir fried with some simple vegetables.

THE BEST.

You gotta.

I don’t even like noodles! So go figure. Ok that is a huge generalisation – I like rice noodles, spaghetti and those glass noodles made of green beans. But when my mum cooks noodles this way, I can’t get enough.

超级简单清炒面 | Ultra Simple Stir Fried Noodles

Vocab:
超级 (chāo jí) Super/Ultra
简单 (jiǎn dān) Simple
清炒 (qīng chǎo) Stir Fry
面 (miàn) Noodles! (the character doesn’t include the exclamation point but I just get really excited talking about food)
Doesn’t matter how many times I read the instructions on the back of the packet, I’ll always cook noodles for a small group of 10. Come over for dinner?
Or do it yourself:
1. Cook appropriate amount of noodles (ahem)
2. Drain noodles and toss with sesame oil and let cool, lift the noodles to let the steam escape. You don’t want the noodles to stick together. THIS TAKES AGES. Alternate arms and repeat. ~~FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.~~

3. Stir fry veggies – heat the oil, then add in your crunchy veg, the less crunch stuff and then your flavourings.

(OIL, CRUNCHY, LEAFY, SAUCEY or OCLS which is not helpful at all, sounds like some kind of college and actually makes things worse?)

I like using coconut oil and then for flavouring I add chilli, white pepper, sea salt. I like my food light but you can add soy sauce of course. Also, I can’t eat too much soy products. IF you were to use soy sauce, get yourself a good quality ‘Light Soy Sauce’. Don’t just grab that bottle of soy sauce with the red pouring cap thingy, there is an entire world of soy sauce out there. I used to take people on tours of Asian supermarkets and we stood in the sauce aisle for ages discussing all the different flavours you can make. A world of soy sauce.

Tip: When stir frying veg, you want the pan to be HOT and you want to move FAST so the veg still says crunchy and the colours stay vibrant. Leafy greens can be thrown in last as they will cook so quickly.

I love when I get a bit of char on my veg. Just a little, not too much. It’s either a sign of a good hot wok OR a wok that needs washing. Let’s all agree it’s the first thing, ok?

Another tip: When adding your liquid flavourings, such as soy sauce, pour AROUND the sides not onto the stuff. And don’t go crazy, you can check later when the noodles go in if you need to add more to adjust the flavour. You want to be able to taste the strands of noodles that you just spent forever tossing with sesame oil. Not a mouthful of light soy sauce. The noodles are THE MAIN EVENT.

Oh, my mouth just filled up with saliva. Man, I love food!

4. Hurl everything together in the pan and toss somehow. You may want to add more sesame oil. The sesame oil just makes the noodles SO fragrant and helps with movement.

Oh, remember that sauce aisle? Get yourself a good quality sesame oil too. You should be able to SMELL the fragrance wafting from a sealed bottle. And it should smell like nothing on earth compared to the regular cheapo version.

I’m not asking you to sit down in the middle of the supermarket and taste test all the different varieties of sesame oil. Just have a sniff, don’t get the bottle too close to your snoz because that grosses people out. Once you get yourself one that smells amazing you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about and you will look back at the cheapo one you used to own and laugh and move on to bigger and better and brighter things.

Confession: My noodles were still a tad clumpy, I was too slow to get them out of the boiling water and I needed to let them cool a little longer but I was HUNGRY and my arms were bored with tossing. So it was go time! Hahaha. They were still AMAZINGLY tasty. This is meant to be an easy fool-proof recipe for hungry/lazy anyway, and turns out, IT IS! Trust! You WILL be triumphant, no matter what!

H-H-Ha-Happy days.

5. Eat and eat and eat (ABOUT TIME!)
🍜

If you have leftovers, they taste so good chilled!

Here’s another version that my mum did whilst she was in town to visit me. She used shredded omelette with shredded carrot and a little bit of spring onion. Again all done with the above steps and it was AMAZING. I want my Mommy now. And I want those noodles back in my life right now. Excuse me whilst my heart and stomach have a quick weep. Pretty much the best meal of my life. (I know, could I BE more dramatic?)

Those prawns were the size of my plate and they were so good and also they were about $10 each. I’ve never spent that much money on something that came wrapped up in A LEAF. But they were SO GOOD. Saving up my pennies to one day buy one more.

Look how shiny.

*DROOLS ALL OVER KEYBOARD AND SHORT CIRCUITS LAPTOP*

Ok, if you think shredded omelette is a great idea but who can be bothered, just fry an egg and slide it on top. I love when the yolk is still a little gooey and it MINGLES with the noodles.

Or just you know, whatever. They’re good any which way.

Plainish; with shredded chicken (or really just one shard because I got really lazy and really hungry); or with a fried egg.

It’s 9:30 in the morning and I must go get myself some noodles for breakfast. According to TCM it’s great to have warm meals.

Don’t quote me, I WILL manipulate random pieces of information to suit my wants. (I call these my convenient theories, of which I have many)

And right now noodles: I WANTS IT.

Enjoy and chat later! If you tried making these, lemme know! xx

JOE (V.O.)
I am in Vancouver.

He stops… Hits the delete button and erases the message.
He starts typing again:

JOE (V.O.)
I was stuck in a meeting, which I
couldn’t get out of it, and there was
no phone.

He backspaces to erase “there was no phone.”

Screen now reads: I was stuck in a meeting, which I couldn’t
get out of it. Joe sits there thinking for a moment. Then he
starts typing.

JOE (V.O., cont’d)
The electricity went out in the building
and we were trapped on the 18th floor and
the telephone system blew too.

He stops and looks at it. Then he types:

JOE (V.O., cont’d)
Amazingly enough.

He sits looking at it.

Then he deletes the whole thing.

Sits looking at the blank screen.

Excerpt from

You’ve Got Mail

by Nora Ephron & Delia Ephron

Based on:
The Shop Around The corner

by Nikolaus Laszlo
2nd Final White revised
February 2, 1998

I have lost count the number of times I have watched You’ve Got Mail. And the number of times I think of that scene with Tom Hanks trying to explain himself. Deleting the keys (two finger typing style) and then making a mawkish expression at his dog who is very much #judgingyourightnow. I have been Joe for the last, oh, however long it has been. I had drafted a whole bunch of things but stopped short of posting until now. I won’t go on much further in case I delete everything and am back to staring at a blank screen. But this is where I am today. Here I am, enjoying the familiar.

Catching up on laundry. Staring at these printable daily organisation template thingys on Pinterest. Wondering who prints all this out? And then uses them everyday? Wondering how people have it so together they can organise their Pinterest boards so neatly. Getting up every hour or so to stretch my back out on my yoga mat. In my bathrobe. Trying to remember if I took my vitamins this morning or if that was yesterday morning. Scratching my head over a Sudoku puzzle that just has me stumped. Scooping minestrone-ish rice soup into a bowl. Ah, the soup. Now, that’s good stuff. When my youngest brother was in preschool, I would pick him up after school and walk him home. He told me on one of these walks that his favourite morning tea snack was tomato sauce and rice, all for 40 cents from the tuck shop. I remember being his age and loving tomato sauce with rice as well. Tomato flavoured anything. I still remember the look of bemusement that flitted across my father’s face as he watched me merrily dousing my fried rice in tomato sauce. There was an Italian restaurant that my family frequented when I was little. An entire wall was covered with hooks and resting on each hook was a two handled stoneware soup bowl. My memory leads me to remember that each bowl had a name emblazoned across it, or perhaps just under the hook, only for the most regular of customers although my mind stops short of deluding me into thinking that I had one with my own name on it. Although considering I drank enough minestrone in that place…

I still love minestrone but perhaps times have changed. It never tastes quite the same as when I used to scoop it out from that scratchy stoneware bowl, always trying not to scrape the bottom, but unable not to, whilst my parents exchange greetings with the owner as he brings out the chianti.

Minestrone-ish Rice Soup to eat in your bathrobe

You need (the quantities are guessed, I will tell you now that I am absolutely terrible at estimating):

Passata, say 500ml or a tin or two of tomatoes, whatever you have

Knob of butter (or not)

Splash of cooking oil (I use coconut oil but olive oil is good too)

Spring onion, a stem, chopped, or an onion, chopped

Carrot, one or two, chopped

Potato, one or two, chopped, if you have any (or none at all)

One cup of rice, rinsed

Your choice of greens, rinsed to hurl in at the end

Basil, oregano, parsley – fresh or dried

black pepper

teaspoon of sugar (only as needed to counter the acidity of the tomatoes, I used coconut sugar)

Vegetable stock cube + 500ml or vegetable stock, 500ml

Method:

Hurl butter into a hot saucepan with the oil so the butter does not burn.

Add the chopped carrots and onion in. If you wish you can sprinkle a little salt on the onion so that it does not burn but if you stir diligently you will be safe.

Sauté for 5 minutes or so then add the potato if you have any.

A few more minutes and then in with the passata/tomato situation that is available to you. Be prepared for splattering. Add the water or stock (lucky you!). I had a half bottle of passata so I just filled it with water to get the last dregs of red pulp out into the pan. Bring to a boil. Throw in stock cube, pepper, sprinkle in dried herbs if using them. In with the rice.

In the end the sugar was needed so that went in as well. You may or may not need salt, I didn’t. Then simmer until the rice is soft. I like my greens just, just done so I turned off the heat and then stirred in English spinach.

Chuck on the fresh herbs if you have any and black pepper. Dash of butter or olive oil on top if you’re feeling fancy/indulgent.

Eat in bathrobe. Scrape the bottom of the bowl to hearts content. Avoid staining fuzzy socks.

Hours later, discover bathrobe needs to be soaked.

Our Zenaissance

we are changing

Tag: childhood memories

Easy Recipe: I don’t even like noodles but I can’t stop eating these. Plus Chinese Vocab!