52. Spicy rice noodles for Presto Pasta Night #55

My goodness, it is Wednesday night and the Presto Pasta night deadline looms. I decided to make a quick dish of spicy fried rice noodles. No problems. I can make this with my eyes closed. Easy peasy. Ah! But pride comes before a fall! I almost didn't join PPN this week but then I thought, why not? I'll write about it. Cooking is not just about the perfect dishes one makes but also about the flops and how one deals with a mistake.

The first part was OK. I stir fried the shrimps and scallops with the broccoli and mushrooms. It was after I added a couple of tablespoons of chili jam to the wok and started to fry the noodles that I ran into trouble.

What happened was that I soaked these rice noodles and assumed they were ready for frying. I was multitasking - talking on the phone and cooking - it was so ironic - I was giving a friend a recipe!

I wasn't paying enough attention to my cooking. Finally, I noticed that the noodles didn't look right. I tasted a piece and it was too hard and chewy so I put a cup of water into the pan and figured it would cook the noodles. After the liquid had evaporated, leaving a lot of starch in the pan, the noodles were still not done. Not good. Plus, I had a hungry husband asking for his dinner!

I feel guilty when I throw food out. My mom lived through the war, knew about hunger and hated waste. She would give us hell if we even left a bit of food on our plates. So I retrieved the noodles from the wok and cooked them in a pot of boiling water. If this didn't fix it then I would have thrown the noodles out and made some udon topped with the stir-fried shrimps. But it looked OK and the result is shown in the picture below: Moist mushy noodles, slightly flavoured with spicy chili jam topped with shrimps, scallops, broccoli and mushrooms. Not as good as what I intended but I didn't tell Mr. KC and he ate it quite happily. For Mr. KC dessert is the best part of the meal so I'm going to make it up to him at Easter with a delicious confection from Orlando Murrin's No Cook Cookbook - Kirsch meringue ice cream cake!


Here is the proper recipe (for 2):

Ingredients:

1/4 pound of shrimps, cleaned and butterflied
1/4 pound of scallops

Marinated in:
2 Tablespoons of light soy sauce
A splash of sesame oil
An egg white, beaten
1 tablespoon of cornstarch
Ground white pepper

1 small head of broccoli, broken into florets, blanched in boiling water
A handful of mushrooms, sliced
2 tablespoons of chili jam
A clove of garlic, smashed
A knob of ginger, shredded
A piece of green onion, shredded
Salt and pepper to taste
Oil

1/2 a package of noodles, cooked in boiling water till slightly firm, rinsed in cold water and drained

Method:

1. Heat frying pan or wok and add oil. Swirl the oil around in the pan.
2. Add the garlic, ginger and green onions, fry a bit then add mushrooms and broccoli to cook together for about a minute. Set aside
3. You may need to add more oil to stir fry the scallops and shrimps.Stir in the vegetables. Set aside.
4. Add the chili jam to the pan and then add the noodles. Fry together to mix the jam evenly with the noodles. Jam is quite thick, like tar - you may need to add a bit of broth to thin it down.
5. Toss the stir fried shrimps and vegetables into the noodles and stir fry to mix.
6. Dish up.

Do you ever have cooking flops? How do you deal with them?

This will be the 55th Presto Pasta Night, the very popular food blogging event hosted by Ruth of Once Upon a Feast. Do join her this weekend.