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Stir Fry & Yakisoba Parallelisms (part 2: Yakisoba)

Clay Alexander — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 15:00:00 +0000

This is part 2 of the Stir Fry & Yakisoba Parallelism. This is my adaptation of yakisoba, a favorite street food and festival food of mine from Japan. Soba noodles are buckwheat noodles, so this dish may be good for anyone who suffers from diabetes (just take it easy on the mirin). The dish usually has carrots and cabbage, but I had broccoli around and didn’t have cabbage around, so I adapted. I also used zarusoba, which is sweet potato soba.

First I started cooking the noodles. Don’t worry, I took off the little piece of paper before I put it in.

Added some seasame oil to the pan. I feel seasame oil help add alot of taste to asian dishes, so I use it.

And my vegies are: brocolli, carrots, and garlic. Again, no cabbage.

Started cooking the vegies a bit.

Cooked it a bit and then added garlic

Added the sauces. (same as in the stir fry).

Strained the noodles. I actually made a bit too many noodles.

Adding the noodles.

Stir it around a bit. Actually I think this needs a bit more sauce, since I made too many noodles.

After adding some sauce, I cooked it a bit longer until it started sticking to the wok. Then I plated it

Looks good doesn’t it?

This is good enough for some people, but I need my Sircahi :)

Oh yeah!

Look at the beauty of it. Look spicy enough?

In all, the sauce for both dishes are the same, then techniques are the same. You can basically use any vegies. All that I personally differ is the noodles. You can even do dishes like yakiudon or something. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Stir Fry & Yakisoba Parallelisms (part 1: Stir Fry)

Clay Alexander — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:00:38 +0000

I feel that done right, you can have amazing yakisoba. That being said, it’s pretty much like stir fry. I made stir fry for dinner one next and then yakisoba the next. The main difference is that I don’t make real yakisoba … I make a sorta Americanize version because it’s easier. First off, I don’t use a griddle (I don’t have one large enough anymore). So I use a wok instead (just like stir fry). Secondly I don’t keep cabbage around that often. Cabbage is kinda a must in yakisoba, but I kinda had to leave that out.

<–Vegie Stir Fry

Yakisoba —>

Part 1 is the Stir Fry while part 2 is the yakisoba. Both were made with 1 cutting board, 1 knife, 1 wok, 1 pasta pot, 1 collander, and 1 spatulla. Not too heavy on the dishes huh? These dishes are usually very cheap, serves alot, and made under 30 minutes (prob took about 20 minutes tops).

Part 1: Stir Fry

We started out with some sesame oil in the pan.

Now that we have the wok all oiled up and ready to go ….

Here’s the vegies (carrots, baby corn, asparagus, and enoki mushrooms):

I put in the carrots first, because I like them kinda soft … like an orange noodle, but less carbs.

Then I went ahead and added the widest noodles I could find at Hong Kong Market.

In goes asparaguses (asparaguses? see my ps at the bottom of this other post).

I put the lid on. The wide noodles are cooking in the corner.

Once they have been cooked a bit, I added in some diced garlic.

I added some baby corn and enoki mushrooms last because the enoki shrooms don’t take long to cook and I like my baby corn still a little crispy.

Now for my stir fry sauce (very similar to my fried rice sauce). There’s some soy sauce.

Then there’s the mirin (Japanese sweet cooking sake).

Then I added some fish sauce. It’s starting to get a little steamy.

Then I added in some Sirachi :). This may not seem like much if you’ve never had Sirachi, but to alot of people, this will may the dish too spicy. If would start out with a little bit (2-3 lines) if you’ve never tried it before. I just really like Sirachi and have adapted to its particular spiciness (I prob added some more in to my plate later on as well).

I cooked the sauce for a couple minutes to reduce it some, but I didn’t want a syrup sauce since the noodles were going in as well. I then added my wide noodles that have been finished cooking and subsequently drained.

Stirred this around a bit, getting everything together and all the sauce well mixed in. Also, frying the noodles a little bit makes them pretty tasty. Then I plated it and ate it.

Check out 504eats.com on Saturday to see the Yakisoba (part 2 of the parallelisms).

p.s. I’m pretty sure parallelism is not being used correctly.

Fried Rice: Chicken, Brocolli, Carrot

Clay Alexander — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 15:00:49 +0000

I like making fried rice. There’s vegies. There’s rices. There’s meat. And it’s a pretty quick meal. You can even use old rice and it’s still good. I think I used some week old white rice in this (I can’t remember, it was a while ago).

Start out with some oil and chicken in your hot wok. I like to use seasame oil. Sometimes at the end I through in some seasame seeds to tie the oil with something with texture.

This was actually pre chopped, but I through it in all at once. Then I added the carrots and onions (onions are always in my fried rice, no matter what). Sometimes I use some minced or pressed garlic.

I put the cover on this and steamed it a little. Then I added the brocolli, soy sauce, mirin, and minced ginger.

It cooked for a while until it looked like this, where I added some Sirachi (mmmm Sirachi):

Then I put in the old rice

Mixed it up a bit

Cooked it together and mixed it up some more

Now it’s started to stick a bit to the wok. That means it’s delicious … err done! Let’s eat!

Look heavenly … or it’s the bad brightness control of the camera … I think this is when I learned of the “food” option on the camera.