Aunty Mena's Knock-Off Noodles
Sep. 18th, 2011 09:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labellementeuseSo there's this vegetarian/vegan restaurant on Cuba St called Aunty Mena's and although I am not vegetarian I ate there awhile ago with my friend Clare who is a vegetarian and had this thing called curry noodle and it was totally. delicious.
It was very fresh, not at all limp or soggy cauliflower and broccoli and carrots on fried thick noodles covered in a curry sauce with vege balls and what I think was tofu but I'm not actually sure. It is completely delicious and I urge you to try it next time you're on Cuba St and don't know what you want for lunch or dinner. Really, really good stuff.
Anyway I also like the fresh udon sold by a lady at our Saturday market and wanted to do something different with them than just shove them in a laksa, so, I googled a bit and messed around with some tofu and I came up with this: a really very good knock-off. It's not quite the same as the original dish, which is a little sweeter and has potatoes and also their vege balls are AMAZING, but it's really pretty good.
Completely Inauthentic Aunty Mena's Knock-Off Noodles
Stage One: Frozen Tofu Cutlets
Okay but the downside is this recipe does have STAGES. But the upside is, this stage you can do well ahead.
Ingredients:
Tofu, like maybe a 500g pack or something, put in the freezer for 24 hours
1 carrot, sliced finely
1 stick of celery, sliced
1/2 C white wine
1 t thyme
3 T soy sauce
2 T mirin
2 C light stock - vegetable is all good, I used chicken because it's what I had, probably even fish would be fine
2 t honey
1 T sesame oil
Defrost the tofu (in the fridge overnight or in the microwave, defrost, 4-10 mins). It's OK if the centre is a little frozen but you do want it pretty defrosty. You will notice that it's kind of spongey and layer-y. (This is because the water in the tofu expands, creating layers of soy and layers of water, it's kinda cool-looking although it is annoying if it happens because, say, your fridge runs to the really-really-cold.) Press down gently using paper towels to drain as much water etc as you can. Slice the tofu into sort of even-ish pieces about the size of chicken nuggets. Do not worry if it looks kind of bitsy and falling-to-partsy.
Heat the sesame oil in a pan. Saute the carrot and celery until they're lightly browned. Add all the liquid and other ingredients and the tofu and simmer for at least fifteen minutes, longer if you like.
Drain the pan into a bowl. Reserve the liquid. Discard the carrot and celery and leave the tofu to rest in your colander. I found leaving it for a good hour or so meant that the bitsy bits stuck together a bit and so I wasn't working with tofu shreds for the next bit.
Coat the pieces of tofu in cornflour. Heat some olive oil in a pan on medium-high and fry the tofu until golden-brown on each side. At this stage the tofu is DELICIOUS and you can stop right here and do other stuff with it. It tastes like chicken (unless you used another kind of stock like fish stock in which case it probably tastes like fish!) and is delicious.
Stage Two The Actual Curry Noodle Bit
Ingredients
Udon noodles I really recommend you go and get them from the lady at the Newtown School Saturday Market because hers are rilly rilly good.
Stir-fry vegetables to your taste, I like broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots. Other favourites are things like capsicum, zucchini, um, baby corn? Frozen peas and beans? Mushrooms? Whatever you like, it's your dinner. Mushrooms would probably change the taste quite a bit but it's up to you really.
Half a cup to a cup of coconut cream or milk. Or probably regular milk if you want is fine. Yoghurt could be good too.
Curry paste:
1/2 t turmeric
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled and grated or minced (Tui's tip: keep your ginger in the freezer, it's super-easy to grate from frozen and never goes mouldy)
1 star anise
Heaped teaspoon of coriander seeds (or 1 T coriander powder)
1 t cumin powder
1/2 t cardamom
1/4 t ground cloves
1/4 t cinnamon
2 T fish sauce, or soy sauce if you're going vegetarian
Chili powder to taste - I cook for my sister and she is a whiny whiner about hot food so I used 1/4 t. Use your discretion but remember it's easy to add more, hard to take it away.
Prepare the curry paste, either by chucking the whole lot in a food processor and blending til it's pasty, or putting the solids in your mortar and pestle and pestling it until it's all together and adding the liquid slowly until it's pasty, or by mincing all the ingredients together and hoping for the best (go on, guess what I did).
Prepare your vegetables. Separate them out into soft-and-don't-really-need-much-cooking (zucchini, mushrooms) and do-probably-need-some-cooking (carrots, cauliflower, broccoli). Try to cut them of a size that they'll cook in around them same amount of time.
Cook the noodles in the broth reserved from step 1. You'll probably need to use more water. At the same time, steam the need-cooking vegetables. I think these really only need to be steamed for 5 minutes, max, because I like my veges crispy.
Heat some oil (like a tablespoon?) in a pan. Throw in the curry paste and swish around until it's getting really fragrant and beautiful-smelling. Drizzle a little coconut cream in until it's enough to coat the tofu and soft veges. Throw these in and stir them around for awhile. Keep stirring and adding coconut cream until it's all cooked and delicious and the consistency you're looking for. You want a thick, saucy curry, not a thin, soupy curry.
During the previous step, drain the noodles, throw them into a hot, slightly oiled pan, and stir fry these.
Put fried noodles on your plate. Put lightly steamed veges on top of noodles. Spoon over tofu/vege curry. Eat it. It's effing delicious. And it's practically vegetarian.
In other news:
- today I actually paid my sister to (help me) clean my room. Yes, that's really, hugely, tremendously sad. It was getting in this horrible state because between one thing and another I've been living out of a suitcase for about three weeks - a carry-on luggage sized suitcase - only returning home to switch out the clothes and stuff. Anyway now I can see my floor and I have clean sheets and it's amazing.
- I made awesome cheesecake brownies yesterday. I also made orange sorbet but it isn't freezing (STILL, 24hrs later) and it's stressing me out so we won't talk about that.
- I also cleaned parts of the house! Like the stovetop and the kitchen! And I went to the vege market yesterday and the supermarket today and now our fridge is full of food that isn't six-week-old chicken soup and defrosting sausage rolls (emphatically not mine). Broccoli and carrots and milk. I know this doesn't all sound like much of an achievement but last weekend I didn't leave the house from 6pm Friday to 5pm Sunday and in fact I spent most of it lying in bed in dirty sheets feeling gross but too tired to move, so I consider it a MASSIVE achievement that I put a bra on both days this weekend.
- And speaking of milk what would you do if you had a cup of cream and half a cup of coconut milk and a litre of blue top that you needed to use in the next couple of days?
- I tried to watch Game of Thrones and I'm simultaneously really enjoying it and hating it. So. Much. Rape. So. Much. Violence. And. Animal. Harm. on the other hand man I miss watching a fantasy show, why are you all terrible?
- Hugely tremendously excited for Fringe next week though! And to watch the Vampire Diaries and catch up on Doctor Who!
Also shit g/t in 6 weeks and I haven't re-read Robin yet to get great Steph caps, shit. Also-also work has been really really busy lately and I'm exhausted and I owe someone lovely an enormous beta and it's taking ages and ages and I just want to curl up and sleep right nowwwww and I'm going to. but I'm going to feel *guilty* about it? Like I feel guilty about not commenting on my flist and not having read any of the fic you guys have posted and, basically, doing nothing but re-read kidfic in my bookmarks. Too bad.
It was very fresh, not at all limp or soggy cauliflower and broccoli and carrots on fried thick noodles covered in a curry sauce with vege balls and what I think was tofu but I'm not actually sure. It is completely delicious and I urge you to try it next time you're on Cuba St and don't know what you want for lunch or dinner. Really, really good stuff.
Anyway I also like the fresh udon sold by a lady at our Saturday market and wanted to do something different with them than just shove them in a laksa, so, I googled a bit and messed around with some tofu and I came up with this: a really very good knock-off. It's not quite the same as the original dish, which is a little sweeter and has potatoes and also their vege balls are AMAZING, but it's really pretty good.
Completely Inauthentic Aunty Mena's Knock-Off Noodles
Stage One: Frozen Tofu Cutlets
Okay but the downside is this recipe does have STAGES. But the upside is, this stage you can do well ahead.
Ingredients:
Tofu, like maybe a 500g pack or something, put in the freezer for 24 hours
1 carrot, sliced finely
1 stick of celery, sliced
1/2 C white wine
1 t thyme
3 T soy sauce
2 T mirin
2 C light stock - vegetable is all good, I used chicken because it's what I had, probably even fish would be fine
2 t honey
1 T sesame oil
Defrost the tofu (in the fridge overnight or in the microwave, defrost, 4-10 mins). It's OK if the centre is a little frozen but you do want it pretty defrosty. You will notice that it's kind of spongey and layer-y. (This is because the water in the tofu expands, creating layers of soy and layers of water, it's kinda cool-looking although it is annoying if it happens because, say, your fridge runs to the really-really-cold.) Press down gently using paper towels to drain as much water etc as you can. Slice the tofu into sort of even-ish pieces about the size of chicken nuggets. Do not worry if it looks kind of bitsy and falling-to-partsy.
Heat the sesame oil in a pan. Saute the carrot and celery until they're lightly browned. Add all the liquid and other ingredients and the tofu and simmer for at least fifteen minutes, longer if you like.
Drain the pan into a bowl. Reserve the liquid. Discard the carrot and celery and leave the tofu to rest in your colander. I found leaving it for a good hour or so meant that the bitsy bits stuck together a bit and so I wasn't working with tofu shreds for the next bit.
Coat the pieces of tofu in cornflour. Heat some olive oil in a pan on medium-high and fry the tofu until golden-brown on each side. At this stage the tofu is DELICIOUS and you can stop right here and do other stuff with it. It tastes like chicken (unless you used another kind of stock like fish stock in which case it probably tastes like fish!) and is delicious.
Stage Two The Actual Curry Noodle Bit
Ingredients
Udon noodles I really recommend you go and get them from the lady at the Newtown School Saturday Market because hers are rilly rilly good.
Stir-fry vegetables to your taste, I like broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots. Other favourites are things like capsicum, zucchini, um, baby corn? Frozen peas and beans? Mushrooms? Whatever you like, it's your dinner. Mushrooms would probably change the taste quite a bit but it's up to you really.
Half a cup to a cup of coconut cream or milk. Or probably regular milk if you want is fine. Yoghurt could be good too.
Curry paste:
1/2 t turmeric
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled and grated or minced (Tui's tip: keep your ginger in the freezer, it's super-easy to grate from frozen and never goes mouldy)
1 star anise
Heaped teaspoon of coriander seeds (or 1 T coriander powder)
1 t cumin powder
1/2 t cardamom
1/4 t ground cloves
1/4 t cinnamon
2 T fish sauce, or soy sauce if you're going vegetarian
Chili powder to taste - I cook for my sister and she is a whiny whiner about hot food so I used 1/4 t. Use your discretion but remember it's easy to add more, hard to take it away.
Prepare the curry paste, either by chucking the whole lot in a food processor and blending til it's pasty, or putting the solids in your mortar and pestle and pestling it until it's all together and adding the liquid slowly until it's pasty, or by mincing all the ingredients together and hoping for the best (go on, guess what I did).
Prepare your vegetables. Separate them out into soft-and-don't-really-need-much-cooking (zucchini, mushrooms) and do-probably-need-some-cooking (carrots, cauliflower, broccoli). Try to cut them of a size that they'll cook in around them same amount of time.
Cook the noodles in the broth reserved from step 1. You'll probably need to use more water. At the same time, steam the need-cooking vegetables. I think these really only need to be steamed for 5 minutes, max, because I like my veges crispy.
Heat some oil (like a tablespoon?) in a pan. Throw in the curry paste and swish around until it's getting really fragrant and beautiful-smelling. Drizzle a little coconut cream in until it's enough to coat the tofu and soft veges. Throw these in and stir them around for awhile. Keep stirring and adding coconut cream until it's all cooked and delicious and the consistency you're looking for. You want a thick, saucy curry, not a thin, soupy curry.
During the previous step, drain the noodles, throw them into a hot, slightly oiled pan, and stir fry these.
Put fried noodles on your plate. Put lightly steamed veges on top of noodles. Spoon over tofu/vege curry. Eat it. It's effing delicious. And it's practically vegetarian.
In other news:
- today I actually paid my sister to (help me) clean my room. Yes, that's really, hugely, tremendously sad. It was getting in this horrible state because between one thing and another I've been living out of a suitcase for about three weeks - a carry-on luggage sized suitcase - only returning home to switch out the clothes and stuff. Anyway now I can see my floor and I have clean sheets and it's amazing.
- I made awesome cheesecake brownies yesterday. I also made orange sorbet but it isn't freezing (STILL, 24hrs later) and it's stressing me out so we won't talk about that.
- I also cleaned parts of the house! Like the stovetop and the kitchen! And I went to the vege market yesterday and the supermarket today and now our fridge is full of food that isn't six-week-old chicken soup and defrosting sausage rolls (emphatically not mine). Broccoli and carrots and milk. I know this doesn't all sound like much of an achievement but last weekend I didn't leave the house from 6pm Friday to 5pm Sunday and in fact I spent most of it lying in bed in dirty sheets feeling gross but too tired to move, so I consider it a MASSIVE achievement that I put a bra on both days this weekend.
- And speaking of milk what would you do if you had a cup of cream and half a cup of coconut milk and a litre of blue top that you needed to use in the next couple of days?
- I tried to watch Game of Thrones and I'm simultaneously really enjoying it and hating it. So. Much. Rape. So. Much. Violence. And. Animal. Harm. on the other hand man I miss watching a fantasy show, why are you all terrible?
- Hugely tremendously excited for Fringe next week though! And to watch the Vampire Diaries and catch up on Doctor Who!
Also shit g/t in 6 weeks and I haven't re-read Robin yet to get great Steph caps, shit. Also-also work has been really really busy lately and I'm exhausted and I owe someone lovely an enormous beta and it's taking ages and ages and I just want to curl up and sleep right nowwwww and I'm going to. but I'm going to feel *guilty* about it? Like I feel guilty about not commenting on my flist and not having read any of the fic you guys have posted and, basically, doing nothing but re-read kidfic in my bookmarks. Too bad.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-19 07:13 am (UTC)<333