A New Hope

Today Lundulph had a very hard day. We knew it both in advance and I decided to give him a treat and make a new dish from my Thai cook book. This is indeed a beautiful cookbook, the photos are brilliant and even to a person like me that doesn't eat seafood, the seafood dishes look nice. Unfortunately it is an American book and all recipes are given with American measures. In addition, I think they have seriously underestimated some amounts, not to mention cooking times. The translation into metric leaves a lot to be desired too. So I end up correcting it and I don't really like to do that the first time I follow a recipe. My Mum can just read a recipe and know what's wrong with it, but I haven't mastered that knack yet. Well, excluding Thai fish sauce, Nam Pla (that sounds like Klingon, hi, hi). The book is very generous with it, I think the number of tablespoons of fish sauce should be halved and the unit should be teaspoons. Then it's just right.

Anyway, enough rambling. Today's recipe is called Guay Teow Raad Naa and is translated as Wide Noodles with Cream Sauce. And below are the measurements I used, not entirely according to the recipe.

Ingredients

Marinade

2 tbsp cornflour
2 large eggs
4 tsp toasted sesame oil
2 tsp finely ground black pepper
2 tbsp Vegeta

Main dish

375 g turkey breast
250 g wide rice noodles
1.5 tbsp toasted sesame oil
3 tbsp Japanese soy sauce
1 tbsp pressed garlic
1 l water
0.5 tsp fish sauce
2 tbsp light brown soft sugar
2 tbsp cornflour dissolved in 3-4 tbsp water
1 small broccoli head
5-6 Chantenay carrots
1 long red pepper
1 dl frozen peas
3 dl diced mushrooms

Method

1. Mix the ingredients for the marinade. I had some very old finely ground black pepper that I used, the heat and most of it's aroma has gone, so if you're using fresh black pepper, the amount should perhaps be reduced to avoid it dominating the whole dish.
2. Slice the turkey breast into really thin strips - about half a centimeter thick and across the muscle fibres, so that it soaks up the marinade quicker. Stir in the pieces into the marinade and leave to stand while preparing the other ingredients.
3. Soak the noodles in hot water for at least 10 minutes until they go soft. The noodles are the ones I bought last Sunday from the Thai market. In their dry form they were translucent and I hoped they would go completely see-through, but instead they went white.
4. Wash and cut up the broccoli into small florets; wash and slice the carrots and pepper thinly - about a third of a centimeter thick.
5. Peel and dice the mushrooms if they are fresh, I used ones I'd frozen, so that speeded things up a bit.
6. Heat up half the toasted sesame oil on medium heat in a wok pan. Add the soy sauce. Drain the noodles and add to the wok. Stir constantly until all the oil has been taken up and the noodles are pale brown. Take out of the pan and place in an oven-proof dish in the oven to keep hot.
7. Peel the garlic, mix the cornflour with the water.
   
8. In the same pan as before, heat up the rest of the oil, press in the garlic and leave to fry for about a minute, then add the water, fish sauce and sugar and stir well.
9. Add the turkey along with the marinade and bring to the boil. Add the dissolved cornflour and stir constantly. A medium thick sauce should form, if it's too dry, add some more water. Leave to bubble for 5 - 6 minutes.
10. Add the vegetables and mushrooms and stir in well. Let cook for another 5 - 10 minutes. It'll look like a beige stew, but the vegetables should still be visible with their bright colours.
    
11. To serve, place the noodles at the bottom of a bowl and top up with the stew.

Given my mishaps over the last week, I had very low hopes for this, it didn't look anything like the picture in the cookbook, but boy, was it tasty! So I did managed to treat Lundulph to a nice dinner. Will try to get a photo up tomorrow, we were just too hungry to bother with that today.

28.10.2007 update:
Here is what it looked like, not too esthetically pleasing, but very tasty indeed.