Ginger and Garlic Noodles

This is a beautiful and very flavorful version of the traditional chowmein. In this preparation, I have added lots of vegetables and these lend a hand in making the noodles even more flavorful. When I was a kid, I never liked ginger in my noodles and always protested when I detected ginger when my Mom made chowmein for me. But now I realize that garlic and ginger together give this a deeper flavor.

Recently when I made it for my kids and their friends, they loved it and polished off their plates. That was probably the best compliment I could ever get on how good these tasted. 

Ingredients

2 tbsp oil

2 tbsp finely grated ginger

2 tbsp finely minced garlic

1 tsp garlic red chilli paste

1 tbsp soy sauce

2 tsp vinegar

1-2 chillies (optional)

1 onion, finely sliced

15 green beans, finely sliced

1 green bell pepper, finely sliced

2 carrots, grated/finely sliced

¼ cabbage, shredded finely

10 scallions/green onions, finely sliced (separate the white onion part and the leaves)

salt to taste

one packet of chowmein, boiled per directions on the packet

Method

In a large pan or wok, heat up the oil. Once hot, add ginger and garlic and let it cook. Once slightly browned, add in the chillies, if using and then add the garlic red chilli paste. Let it cook for a couple of mins and then add the onions and the white part of the scallions. Fry the onions till cooked, then add the soy sauce and vinegar. Next add the green beans, stir fry and let it cook for a couple of minutes till adding the next vegetable. Add the bell pepper, then carrots and then the cabbage. Add half of the green scallion leaves. Cook the vegetables till they are cooked but still crispy. Don’t overcook these. Season the vegetables with a little salt and then add the noodles. Toss the noodles in till well mixed with the vegetables. Garnish with the remaining scallion greens. Serve hot. 

Tips

Add a little oil and salt to the water in which the noodles are boiled to prevent them from sticking. Also, after cooking, drain the water and toss the noodles in a teaspoon of oil. This will prevent them from sticking as they cool down.Taste the noodles and then adjust the salt when you finish off the dish. Since soy sauce is also salty, it is important to taste the noodles before adding more salt.
To make the garlic red chilli paste, soak 4-5 red chillies for a couple of hours. Then add 4-5 cloves of garlic to it and then grind these together. This can be stored in the fridge for a week to 10 days. You can also use sambal oelek paste which is a red chilli paste in vinegar instead of the garlic red chilli paste.

Schezwan Rice

Once you know how to make Schezwan sauce, then it is very easy to make schezwan rice or noodles. I use a variety of vegetables, generally whatever is available in the fridge to create a stir fried vegetable based in which I add cooked rice or noodles dish. Then I mix in an appropriate amount of Schezwan sauce. Schezwan rice is once of my favorite Indo-Chinese dishes. I used to eat it weekly or even more frequently when I was in college. There was a small restaurant across from my college where they used to make the most delicious Schezwan rice. It was this  memory that made me experiment with Schezwan sauce ingredients and try to develop that taste. Of course, they added ajinomoto in the restaurant, which is an ingredient that I skip. Instead I use celery in the sauce as well as the stir fry vegetable base.

Ingredients
1 cup rice, cooked
1 tbsp oil
1/2 onion, diced
1 garlic pod, minced
1 celery stick, sliced
1 carrot, diced
1/2 red bell pepper, diced
1/2 green bell pepper, diced
6-7 green beans, diced
1-3 tbsp schezwan sauce
salt to taste

Method
In a large pan (which can accomodate the cooked rice), heat the oil. Add garlic and onions. Stir fry till the onion startes to look transparent. Then add the vegetables in the order of the vegetable that takes the longest to cook to the one that takes the least amount of time. Here it would be celery, carrots, beans, and bell peppers. It does not take too long to cook each vegetable. The vegetable needs to be cooked, overcooked and soft/mushy. So each vegetable will take about a couple of minutes. Once all the vegetables have beeen cooked, add the cooked rice to it and stir well to mix the vegetables in with the rice. Then add the schezwan sauce to the rice. Add a little at a time to avoid getting it too spicy by adding too much at a time. Best way is to mix the rice and sauce well and taste as you go along. Once you have added enough sauce, adjust the salt. Serve hot.

Tips
If you have used deggi or kasmiri chilli powder in the sauce, you will be able to achieve a slight red color without adding food coloring. When you cook rice, add a little salt to it so that it is well distributed in the rice. Don't add a lot of salt, as the sauce has salt in it too. So final adjustment for the saltiness should be done at the end of the recipe. Cool the rice after cooking it. Try and separate out the grains before the rice cools down. This will help the rice grains stay separate instead of being stuck to each other. 

Schezwan Sauce

Let me start off by saying that this probably has nothing to do with the Sichuan cuisine of China, but is an Indian interpretation of spicy sauce used to make many Indo-Chinese dishes (Indianized version of Chinese food). It is a sauce used to make Shezwan vegetable stir fries as well as rice or noodles. Once you have the sauce prepared then just mix it into your fried rice/noodles/vegetables preparation and lo and behold a simple stir fry gets transformed into something spicy and delicious. As always, I have made this sauce without ajinomoto/MSG, however you can add this in if you want. It is listed as an optional ingredient.  I feel it is the use of celery in this sauce which gives it a unique taste.

Ingredients
1/4 cup onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp garlic
1 tbsp ginger
3 tbps crushed red chillies or 8 whole dry red chillies
1/4 cup celery, finely chopped
2 tbsp oil
2 tbsp ketchup
1 tsp vinegar
1/8 tsp black pepper
1 tsp red chilli powder (preferable something like kashmiri chilli powder/deggi mirch)
1 tsp dry parsely
salt to taste
a pinch of ajinomoto/msg (optional)
couple of drops red food coloring (optional)
water to soak chillies

Method
Soak whole red chillies or crushed red chillies in water and boil it for a few minutes. Cool it and strain. If using whole chillies then pulse through the mixer or food processor and mince them.
Heat oil in a small saucepan. Add the garlic, ginger, onions and stir fry for a couple of minutes till the onion is cooked and soft. Then add the celery, the chillies, ketchup, vinegar, black pepper, red chilli powder and parsley. Stir and cook the ingredients for a  minute. Pulse this mixture through the mixer till a coarse paste is formed. Once the paste has been cooked, it is ready to be added to rice or noodles. Add a little bit at a time, mix and taste the rice/noodles. The paste is very spicy and if you add a large amount at a time then it make the entire dish very spicy. Store the extra paste in a glass bottle in the fridge.

Tips
Add a couple of drops of red food coloring once the paste is cool. This will help provide the red color to the rice which is generally seen when you order shezwan rice or noodles in the restaurants. Also, if you want to get the restaurant style taste you may want to add ajinomoto or msg to the paste. If you add this then make sure to taste the paste before adding more salt. However, the paste can be a little salty. When you add it to rice or noodles, then taste the preparation before adding additional salt. Since the paste has so many spices and acidic ingredients, it is better to store it in a glass jar. You can store this paste for a couple of weeks in the fridge.

Vegetable Manchurian - Baked, Healthy and Delicious

After the success of gobi manchurian, I decided to tackle another fried manchurian dish, the vegetable manchurian. Now this is a labor intensive dish, especially when you fry all the vegetable manchurian balls. But baking it takes most of the hard work out of it. You can use a fine grater setting in your food processor to process the various vegetables but if it is not fine enough, I would recommend grating it manually with a grater. This will help to bring the components together in so a dough like consistency needed to keep the dumpling in one piece. Now, the disclaimer!! If you really enjoy the crispy taste of the manchurian balls/dumplings, you should stick to the frying method.  However if you like the texture and taste when the manchurian balls are well marinated in the sauce, then this is definitely a recipe you will want to try. I was hesitant to bake it initially since I wasn't sure if the dumplings would cook through completely, but it was definitely a successful experiment.

Ingredients
For the manchurian balls
1 cup cabbage finely grated
1/2 cup carrots finely grated
1/2 cup yellow onion very finely chopped
1 tbsp garlic ginger paste
4-5 tbsp all purpose flour/ maida
2-3 tbsp corn flour
salt to taste
pepper to taste
1 tbsp oil

For the sauce

2 tbsp oil
1/4 cup onion - diced
2-3 garlic cloves - finely chopped
1/8 tsp ginger - finely grated
green chillies - finely chopped, to taste
1 cup of green onion leaves - chopped
3-4 tbsp soy sauce
salt to taste
2 cups water
1-2 tbsp corn starch
salt to taste

Method
Mix together the cabbage, carrots, chillies and onion. Add the oil, salt and pepper. Add the maida and cornflour. Mix it all together to a dough like consistency. If the mixture is watery add more cornflour. Make small balls about 1-1.5 inches in diameter. Place all the manchurian balls on a baking sheet. Grease the baking sheet with some oil so that they do not stick to the sheet. Bake the manchurian balls at 450 F for about 10 minutes, then turn them over and bake on the other side for another 10 minutes. The manchurian balls will be well browned at this point.

In another pan, heat some oil. Add the onion and saute for a couple of minutes. Add the chillies, ginger and garlic and cook for a few more minutes. Make a slurry of water and cornflour. Add this to the pan and let it cook till the mixture starts thickening a little. To this add the soy sauce, salt and the manchurian balls. Let the manchurian balls cook in the sauce for a few minutes, so that they are cooked till the center and they absorb the sauce. This will also ensure that they are completely cooked to the center in case they are not completely done during the baking process. Then add the green onions and cook for a couple of minutes.
Serve hot with fried rice or chowmein.

Tips
As soon as  you add the salt, the manchurian vegetables will release a lot of liquid. It is important that you mix all the ingredients quickly and fry the manchurian balls or bake them immediately. If you line the baking sheet it with a parchment paper or aluminium foil, spray some oil on the foil or paper so that the manchurian balls don't stick. If the sauce doesn't thicken sufficiently, add a little bit of more cornflour. To avoid creating lumps, dissolve the cornflour in a little water and then pour this slurry into a larger amount of liquid. Stir thoroughly and this will help avoid lumps.

Tricolor Chowmein

I have been meaning to put this recipe up for the past couple of weeks. Finally found the time to post it. This is an easy stir fry recipe and a real appetizing option for the busy days when you don't have much time to cook.

Ingredients
1 Onion - sliced finely
1 Carrot - shredded
1/2 Green chillies - finely diced
1 tbsp - oil
2 garlic cloves - finely chopped
1 packet chinese noodles - cooked per the instructions on the packet
salt to taste

Method

Heat the oil in a wok. Add garlic to it, fry it for a minute. Add the chopped chillies and give it a quick fry. Add the onions. Cook the onions for 2-3 minutes. They should look a little transparent, but you dont want it to become soft. Also, make sure that you are cooking on high heat. To this add the shredded carrots. Again stir fry it for a couple of minutes. To this add the noodles and stir fry it. Add salt to your stir fry. Cook the dish for 3-4 minutes and serve. Add soy sauce to your liking and chili sauce if you want to make it spicier.

This is a great dish in itself. You can experiment with different vegetables. Cabbage, scallions, green beans also give it a great taste. You can make this dish with as few or as many veggies you like. A great side to this is scrambled eggs or a simple omlette.

Tips

The trick to making a stir fry is to cook the food as quickly as possible. So, keep the heat at a high temperature so that the cooking time is reduced. This keeps the vegetables crispy and also retains the colors of the vegetables.