Spicy Ginger-Lime Udon Stir-Fry

A few weeks ago, I made a lovely udon noodle stir-fry. It was very tasty, but it needed a side of protein to make a full meal. I was in the mood for a stir-fry, but I really wanted a one-bowl meal. I was also craving the intricate blend of spicy, hot, sweet and salty flavors that good Thai food never fails to deliver. In such circumstances, what's a girl to do but dig out a whole pile of ingredients from her pantry and throw it all together in a wok?

That's what I did!

There was a bag of shrimps in the freezer, just waiting to be turned into something tasty, so that's what I used, but chicken or pork, cut into thin strips would work very well here, as would some pre-fried extra-firm tofu, for those who swing that way. If you are going to use shrimps, you can definitely use pre-cooked shrimps. They won't need to be in the wok as long; just make sure they are nice and heated through. Mushrooms and bell peppers are some of my favorite veggies to use in stir-fries because they cook quickly. They are also wonderful immune boosters, which I really needed as I have been nursing a cold for the past few days (in June!! what the fuck?!), but if you have snow peas, baby corn or broccoli florets, they are all wonderful with stir-fried noodles.

I basically used the same technique I had used with the previous udon recipe, but with the sort of flavors I usually see in McDermott's "Real Vegetarian Thai". For the sauce, you have to taste and adjust: not everyone handles Sri Racha as stoically as my boyfriend (as I realized when I served my brother some General Tao tofu and he spent most of the meal blowing his nose... he loved it, but it was obviously too spicy for normal people), and since I am used to cooking for him, I can go a little overboard with it without even noticing. Just be careful!

Sauce:
1 1/2 lime, juiced
2 tablespoons fresh ginger, finely chopped
1 to 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 1/2 tablespoon sesame oil
1 1/2 tablespoon soy sauce
1 1/2 tablespoon fish sauce (or more soy sauce and a pinch of sea salt)
2 teaspoons Sri Racha sauce
1 teaspoon cane sugar

1 (8 ounce) package udon noodles
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1 small yellow onion, finely minced
1 pound medium shrimps, peeled, deveined
1 small red bell pepper, julienned
1 container cremini mushrooms, thinly sliced

Sesame seeds, for garnish
Fresh cilantro, chopped, for garnish

Lime wedges, for garnish

Mix all the sauce ingredients together in a small bowl. Taste and adjust.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and cook the noodles according to the package instruction. While the noodles are boiling, preheat the peanut oil in a large wok, over medium heat. Stir-fry the onion until it just begins to soften. Add the shrimps, and stir-fry until cooked and pink.

Add the bell pepper and mushroom and cook until the mushrooms have released their moisture and are shiny.

Remove the vegetables and shrimps from the wok and set aside. Remove the wok from the heat, add the sauce and let it get warmed up, stirring it for a couple of minutes until it thickens.

Add the noodles, vegetables and shrimps pan to the wok, put back on the heat and cook for a few more minutes, mixing it all up, until the flavors have blended well.

Serve sprinkled with sesame seeds and cilantro leaves, with lime wedges.

Oh boy, did this ever kick ass! Hot, tangy, slurpy noodles with crunchy veggies and chewy shrimps. On a dull week night, what else could you want? I love this sauce so much that I just can't wait to try it with different veggies and protein. I bet it will be insane with chicken, red onion and baby corn, or with some tofu, sugar snap peas, grated carrots and scallions... Omnomnom!

This recipe would be perfect for those who want healthy lunches that can be eaten on the go. It tastes wonderfully fresh and light, so it's ideal even with hot summer weather, and can be played around easily depending on what you have in the fridge! Enjoy experimenting with it!

My World-Famous Spicy Thai Peanut Butter Chicken

This is another one of my home-made Chinese take-outs! I've been making this one for years, because I am a peanut butter fiend. And honestly, what's more awesome than a creamy, spicy, rich Hunan sauce on a stir-fry or on some dumplings?

I may have a severe addiction to that spicy peanut-buttery taste, so I began to experiment with the flavors until I got the following stir-fry sauce. It's probably highly inauthentic, but it's a universal hit: my boyfriend loves it, coworkers have been known to beg for the recipe and my brother requests it constantly.

This is one of those cases where one can say: "authentic - shmauthentic"! This dish is a lovely comfort-food, rich, creamy and spicy. The sauce can be as thick or as liquid as you want; just add more broth or water. If it separates, as peanut butter tends to do, just stir until it gets nice and smooth again. Lime is not mandatory, but it gives the sauce a fruity zing that I just can't resist.

2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into finger-sized strips
2 small yellow onions, diced
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
8 tablespoons creamy peanut butter
Shriracha sauce, to taste
1 to 2 cups vegetable stock or water
1 or 2 limes, juiced (optional)
Peanut oil
2 tablespoon chili flakes
1 tablespoon ground cardamom
Sea salt and ground pepper
Toasted peanuts

In a large bowl, put the peanut butter and slowly pour the broth or water, gradually mixing it with the peanut butter. Add the lime juice, if using. Blend well until the mixture is creamy. Add more water if needed, until you get a thick, smooth sauce that pours easily from a wooden spoon. Add the Shriracha 1 tablespoon at a time, mix well and taste to make sure it doesn’t get too spicy. Preheat a casserole-type pan over medium heat. Add a glug of oil to the pan and sauté the garlic for a few minutes, until it is golden. Add the onions and fry for 5 to 6 minutes, until they are soft. Add the chicken to the pan and cook another 10 minutes, until the chicken is cooked and slightly golden. Pour the sauce over the chicken and blend well to coat everything. Mix in the chili flakes, cardamom and add salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat, cover the pan and let simmer for 10 to 15 minutes. When the chicken is tender and cooked through, remove from the heat and add a handful of toasted peanuts to the pan. Mix well and serve with jasmine rice and steamed vegetables.

 
I sometimes mix it up by adding some shitake mushrooms along with the chicken (regular button or cremini mushrooms work well, too). You can add any veggies you like in a stir-fry: bell peppers, baby corn... You can also substitute the chicken for some tofu! Use 1 block of extra-firm tofu, diced, and stir-fry it until crispy and voila! The chewy texture of the tofu goes so well with the thick sauce.

As the rich texture of the sauce hints, this isn't a low-fat dish, whether you use chicken or tofu, so keep it for those days when you need to give yourself a finger-lickin' good treat!

Scrumptious Sweet and Sour Chicken

I am a total city-girl, so it goes without saying that I lurve my Chinese food. That's right; not love, LURVE. But I confess that lately, my favorite places to get Asian food fixes have been very disappointing. Like this sweet and sour chicken that was rubbery and way too sweet. Not to mention the overabundance of mushy bok choi. Everywhere. And may I ask why dishes like General Tao chicken need to be fried twice? Once wasn't enough? Granted, the Chinese food that is very popular here is considered street food over there, which is never a very healthy kind of sustenance. But there must be a way to improve on the quality of the dish without sacrificing the bold flavors I love so much!

Such deep philosophical thoughts have led to me to experiment with making classic take-out dishes at home, where I can control the frying and the bok choi. And the first wrong I decided to make right was the aforementioned sweet and sour chicken.

As much as I love pineapple, I am usually not a fan of their presence in savory dishes. Maybe it's the Italian blood in me, but pineapple on pizza gives me nightmares about people in grass-skirts invading Rome. So, so wrong. However, when you want some pucker-your-lips sweet and sour-goodness, I have to admit pineapples infuse the dish with an unmistakable and exotic charm. So I make an exception and use plenty of the lovely fruit in this recipe. But there has to be more than pineapples to make this dish awesome! I give you sweet and sour chicken alla Gabriela, with 3 ways to cook the chicken: that way, you choose how much you clog your arteries!

Serves 4 to 6.

Sauce:
2 cups rice wine vinegar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup cold water

In a medium pot, mix vinegar, sugar, ketchup and soy sauce together; bring to a low boil on medium heat. In a small bowl, mix cornstarch and water, then gently stir into the boiling pot. Cook and stir until thickened, about 10 to 15 minutes. It may seem like it's taking a long time, but just keep stirring until you've good a nice gooey consistency. Cover and set aside.

Now for the stir-fry:

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into cubes
Peanut oil
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 fresh chile, chopped
1 thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, chopped
1 red onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped

2 cups pineapple chunks
Sesame seeds, for garnish

Heat the oil over medium heat in a large wok. Sauté the garlic, chile, ginger and onion until soft, about 5 minutes. Add the chicken and pepper to the wok and fry until the chicken is well cooked, about 10 minutes. Pour the sauce in the wok along with the pineapple chunks. Mix well, reduce the heat, cover, and simmer for 15 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through and the flavors well blended. Serve over jasmine rice and sprinkled with sesame seeds.

You can also choose to fry or bake your chicken, in which case you will need the following:

1/2 cup cornstarn

1 egg, lightly beaten

Roll the pieces of chicken in the cornstarch and drown in the egg.

To fry, heat some peanut oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, but not smoking, fry the chicken in batches, until lightly browned and cooked through. Place on some paper towels to absorb the oil and reserve. Proceed with the recipe.

To bake, preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Brown the chicken in the frying pan, just to seal the meat. Then place the chicken pieces in a single layer in a large baking dish. Bake for 1 hour, turning the pieces every 15 minutes, and proceed with the recipe.

The downside of this recipe (if you don't consider chopping lots of stuff up a downside) is that the sauce requires an entire regular bottle of rice wine vinegar, which isn't the cheapest condiment out there. You can substitute it for regular white vinegar, which is much more affordable and comes in rather big bottles. I can't lie: the taste will be a bit different, but the dish will still be very good. However, if you love cooking Asian food, I highly recommend hitting the grocery stores in Chinatown, where you can get a huge bottle of rice wine vinegar for an excellent price. It's a sound investment for stir-fry addicts!

Don't be shy to use pork or tofu cubes instead of the chicken. All three cooking techniques work well for those proteins, too!

Pad Thai

I am a quintessential city-girl. The country is too quiet and the suburbs scare the beejesus out of me. I love the concrete jungle, the city life, the urban landscapes. Restaurants, bars, shops, cultural effervescence, freaks, geeks, squares and yuppies… And, like most typical city-slickers, Chinese, Thai and Szechuan food are an important part of my diet. What's not to love about it? Spicy, filling, cheap and often available even after the bars are closed, when you really need a snack…

The problem with many of North Americans' favorite Asian take-out foods is that they are as greasy as they are yummy. Not to mention the eternal cliché of those small restaurants' cleanliness standards… I am by no means a germ-phobic person, but even at my punkiest moments, I prefer to eat food that had been prepared in a clean wok. As such, I am always more than happy to treat myself to my favorite Asian food at home, where I can control how many times the stuff is fried, and decide exactly what veggies I get as a side-dish (why always green bell peppers and bok choy, why?!).

I am hooked on the hot, bitter kick of a good Pad Thai, but I was never a fan of throwing eggs in there, so when I found Isa Chandra's Brooklyn Pad Thai recipe in "Vegan with a Vengeance", I could hear the hallelujah chorus in my head. Unlike many cookbook authors out there, Ms. Moskowitz is not afraid to use spices liberally, and one taste of her delicious and absurdly simple sauce had me convinced.

Be sure to have your sauce and all your ingredients ready when you turn the heat on your wok, because once the process is started, it all goes quite fast! I suggest putting all the ingredients that go in the wok at the same time in the same bowl; that way, you can throw a bowlful in at the time without making a mess.

1 pound thick rice noodles - I like medium noodles such as these:

For the sauce:
6 tablespoons tamari
6 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 tablespoons Shriracha
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
3 tablespoons lime juice

For the Pad Thai:
6 tablespoons peanut oil
1 pound tofu, pressed and cut into very small triangles
1 medium red onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon minced lemongrass
2 cups bean sprouts
5 to 8 scallions, sliced
2 dried red chili, crumbled
1/2 cup roasted peanuts
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
Lime wedges

Prepare the rice noodles according to package instructions. Whisk together the ingredients for the sauce.

Preheat a large wok over moderate-high heat. Pour 2 tablespoons of peanut oil in the wok, and heat, then quickly add the tofu. Stir-fry for 4 to 5 minutes, until the tofu is crispy on the outside.

Remove from wok and set aside. Pour 2 tablespoons of peanut oil in the wok. Add half the red onion, and stir-fry for 30 seconds.

Add half the garlic and half the lemongrass, and stir-fry for another 30 seconds (I like to add mushrooms to my pad thai; if you want to do the same, this is the point at which you should add them for them to have time to get brown and juicy).

Add half of the sauce and when it starts to bubble, add half the noodles.

Cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly, then add half the tofu, bean sprouts, scallions, chilis and peanuts. Stir for 30 seconds.

Transfer to 2 serving plates and garnish with cilantro and lime wedges. Repeat with the remaining ingredients.

My boyfriend has the steel taste buds of an ex-smoker; if that's your case too (or if you just like it nice and hot), add another tablespoon of Shriracha to the sauce. Also keep in mind that the dried chile can be substituted with 2 tablespoons of chile flakes. Lemongrass can be hard to find; if you have some, great! If you weren't able to find any, the Pad Thai will still be very tasty.

I prefer wider rice noodles to the vermicelli type, but ultimately, the result is the same; they will absorb a good part of the sauce and become tangy and delicious. There should still be a bit of sauce left, to coat your tofu and which ever veggies you feel like trowing in there. I like baby corn (as you can see from the pictures), snow peas, shitake mushrooms and steamed broccoli, for variety. Feel free to substitute the tofu for chicken and/or shrimps if you fancy a more authentic Pad Thai; just make sure they are cooked through!

If you want something more classy than Japanese beer to drink with your Pad Thai, I would recommend a rosé wine that isn't too dry. A little liquid sweetness will balance out the piquant flavors of the Pad Thai beautifully. Cheers!