The Old Girl's away at present so I've got the house to myself for a couple of months.
Amongst other things this means that I can be a bit more creative when cooking.
When I cook dinner for The Old Girl I have to 'stick to the recipe' as she can be a bit of a purist and often tells me off for adding too many things to the dishes I make.
"Less is more Matey" she says after turning her nose up at the addition of plum sauce, sweet chili sauce, cubed potatoes and most of the contents of the herb drawer when making my Bolognese sauce.
She pretty much told me this last night on our nightly FaceTime call when I told her of the excellent noodle dish I'd made - a kind of variant on Singapore noodles.
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| Kind of like this |
I'd decided on a shrimp stir fry and pre-prepared sliced spring onion, chopped red and green capsicum, chopped garlic, 'Julienned' carrots and zucchini and frozen peas, shrimps and red chilli from the freezer. I also took out of the freezer a very small pottle of chicken stock. This had written on the lid 'Stock - Me' which identifies stock that The Old Girl makes which is superior to the Campbell's stock we often use and freeze any left over from cooking.
Anyway, once I had everything set out (when making a stir fry it works best to quickly flash fry everything to keep the vegetables crisp. This means having everything prepared and ready to be tossed into the wok) I set about making the dish. I sauteed the garlic in olive oil and added the shrimps spring onion and red chilli to quickly cook through. I took these out of the pan and added sliced carrots and zucchini with the peas and added soy sauce, teriyaki sauce and a dash of Worcester sauce quickly whisking these around before reaching for the thawed out chicken stock. "Funny" I thought "that stock looks quite yellow." I added it anyway, returned the shrimp, spring onion and chillies and stirred through. I tasted it to check on the seasonings and was surprised at how fruity and tangy it was. It then dawned on me that the 'stock' I had used was actually lemon juice. When I'd juiced a whole lot of lemons a while ago I'd frozen the juice in ice cube trays but also remembered that I'd put some in a small plastic pottle. In my usual haste I hadn't changed the wording on the lid. Never mind - it tasted good.
I heated through a packet of noodles in a bowl of boiling water, drained them and decided to mix these through the mixture to fully coat them. As the mixture was already fruity I added a half a cupful of mixed nuts and fruits I had as snacks in the pantry and gave the pan a quick burst of heat adding a little more teriyaki sauce and some sweet chilli sauce. The result was outstanding. This will be a go to dish for me in the future. Not for the Old Girl though.
"Less is more Matey"
