17 January 2012

New year, new ideas

Well I thought this would be a place for me to journal about my random life musings and other such interesting bits. But apparently even fulfilling one of my life's most outlandish dreams - getting married in Disney World - wasn't enough to encourage me to blog regularly. Oh well. New year, new ideas and a new take on blogging.

In the past few months, I've become quite hooked on a new (-ish) site called Pinterest. Those of you net-savvy folks (assuming anyone is still reading this thing) will know what I'm talking about. It's a great site where you create your own virtual pin boards. You can pin any website with an image thereby keeping a little reminder for yourself to go back and look at something cool you saw before. I have found it particularly useful in my quest for quick, delicious and nutritious meals to feed myself and T. I also think it will be useful to get me back into blogging. When all else fails (basically when I have nothing interesting going on) I will be making food. So in between gems of genius brilliance (do I still have any?), you'll be introduced to the variety of recipes I'm trying.

To start things off, we have a heavily modified Indian recipe. I originally had something like this at work. One of the perks of working in a place where someone lives is that you sometimes get to try their food. :) Turning to Google for some variations on this dish, I found that it is called by a wide variety of names in addition to being prepared very differently depending on the origins of the cook.

The noodles used are very similar to the Chinese feng-si or bean floss noodles. They are also sometimes called bean or rice vermicelli. So we'll call this dish

Veggie Vermicelli



Ingredients:
1T butter or ghee (you can use canola oil too)
1t mustard seeds
1.5t cumin seeds
1t ground ginger
1t minced garlic
1/4t turmeric
2t salt
1.5c roasted vermicelli noodles (the Indian variety which are cut to 1" lengths)
2.5 c hot water
1c finely chopped veggies (I used sweet baby peas and baby carrots)

To Make:
1) Heat the butter in a medium saucepan. Add the mustard seeds, cumin seeds, ginger and garlic.
2) When the mustard seeds begin to pop, add in the turmeric and salt. Saute for about a minute, stirring to make sure the turmeric is evenly distributed.
3) Add in the roasted vermicelli noodles (if you have the non-roasted type, you will need to add in a separate step of roasting them here - basically you will just stir them around in the pot until they turn golden before adding water)
4) Pour in the hot water. Some recipes insisted that the water be boiling, but I haven't found that it makes much of a difference except that it takes a little longer.
5) Stirring occasionally, cook over high or medium high heat until the noodles absorb all the water. When just over half the water is absorbed, add in the veggies - this prevents them getting too soggy and releasing too many of their sugars into the noodles.

Serve at whatever temperature you like. The flavours come together most after the noodles have cooled down, but you could heat them up again if you prefer. I have thought about adding some dry toasted tofu bits or peanuts just for some protein. I'll let you know if I try either.