Mee Hoon

You may know this dish as pancit. Depends on what kind of restaurant you visit or where you’re from. It’s difficult memorizing the names of all the foreign dishes you like unless you eat out a lot…or you cook them yourself. I honestly didn’t even know the name of this dish until I was an adult trying to duplicate something my mom had cooked on occasion while I was growing up. I had to ask her, describing it as best I could not knowing the name of mushrooms she used but only how they crunched in my mouth; the noodles by how she prepped them before cooking.

It doesn’t have the exact same flavor as my mom’s cooking it myself, but I’m able to leave out the ingredients I didn’t like, especially onions, and replace them with shallots while choosing other vegetables I like.

This time I used Napa cabbage, shredded carrots, and shallots…

Also, rice noodles and frozen shrimp whereas traditionally, you use dried shrimp.

Having a variety of colors adds to the culinary experience.

Here’s some of the prep: soaking the noodles, chopping the shallots, washing/drying the cabbage. Similarly to https://cookingupuneecrivaine.wordpress.com/2017/03/29/classic-fried-rice/ , you make sure everything that needs to be cooked is cooked and then combine everything, including sauce, to heat through. Very simple.

 

Turkey Meatball Phơ

Noodle soup is the perfect dinner for me after a long drive between states. It not only satisfies the I’m-not-hungry-but-need-to-eat-something-before-I-crash-for-the-night-so-I-don’t-wake-up-hungry-and-everything-is-already/still-closed dilemma, but it also does a great job of rehydrating me.

We have our favorite Pho place, but I wanted to try making it at home since I’ve used all of the ingredients before in other recipes.

Finding the right noodles was a little confusing. I’m pretty sure these noodles are cooked by restaurants and then removed from the liquid until they’re ready to serve because my noodles ended up disintegrating in the soup when I tried cooking some flavor into them! It was still delicious, just not as pretty as I’m used to.

Ingredients here are really like a Hot Pot; the amount is by taste. You can find some sort of rice noodles at most grocery stores. I found some dried rice noodles that came in a bag. For the soup, I made six cups of broth using water and Better-Than-Bouillon chicken stock (check the label for the appropriate proportions) and then added my favorite Asian cuisine veggies.

Straw mushrooms

Bamboo

Water chestnuts

Broccoli

Spinach and…

My Turkey Meatball recipe can be found and is also used in the Crock-Pot Beef Stew with dried cilantro added to give it a more Asian than Italian flavor.

Try it and tell me how it goes!