kitchen slave

Do you ever have those days where you can just barely drag yourself to do anything? That’s me this week. I feel uninspired and stressed out and anxious. It doesn’t help that I’m a worrywart and I’ll blow everything out of proportion, picking away at a problem until it has escalated to a crisis. Maybe all this stress has transferred over to my cooking because the mee siam I made today was not as great as I expected. Of course, the blog I got the recipe from did warn that it wasn’t a great recipe but I thought if I tinkered enough, it would turn out great. It isn’t terrible but neither is it earth shattering. I think the one part that made the dish better was the gravy for the noodles. It had a great blend of sweet, spicy, sour and coconut richness. I also wanted to do something special for Presto Pasta Nights, which is turning 3! Hence the cutesy picture but overall this was a hard dish to photograph well.

Happy 3rd birthday Presto Pasta Nights!

Mee Siam

Ingredients
Noodles
1 package brown rice vermicelli
2 tablespoons oil
1 cup beansprouts, rinsed
1 tablespoon coconut cream
1 tablespoon fish sauce

Spice Paste for noodles
6 dried red chillies (use less if you don’t want it that spicy)
1/8 cup shallots
1 1/2 teaspoons dou jiang (fermented soya beans)
1 tablespoon water

Gravy
2 tablespoons oil
1 1/2 cups chicken stock or water
2 tablespoons tamarind paste
2 teaspoons lime juice
1/8 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1/4 cup coconut cream

Spice Paste for gravy
1 tablespoons dou jiang (fermented soya beans)
3/4 cup shallots
1 1/2 teaspoons belacan (shrimp paste)
2 buah keras (candlenuts or substitute 6 raw cashews)
3 dried red chillies

Garnish
1 cup cooked shrimp
3/4 cup tofu puffs
2 hardboiled eggs, halved

Directions
1. Bring pot of water to boil and add noodles. Cook until tender. Drain.
2. Grind spice paste ingredients together in a food processor.
3. Heat oil in pan and add spice paste. Cook until oil rises to the top of the paste.
4. Add beansprouts and cook for 30 seconds. Add noodles and coconut cream and mix thoroughly. Add fish sauce and taste. Adjust if needed. Set aside noodles.
5. For the gravy, blend spice paste ingredients together in a food processor until smooth.
6. Heat oil in pan and cook spice paste until oil rises to the top. Add chicken broth, lime juice, tamarind paste, brown sugar and fish sauce then bring to a boil.
7. Add coconut cream to the gravy and taste. Adjust if necessary, adding more brown sugar if not sweet enough, fish sauce if not salty enough or lime juice if not sour enough.
8. Place noodles on a plate. Top with tofu puffs, shrimp and eggs. Pour as much gravy over noodles as you would like and serve with chili garlic sauce.

I’m submitting this recipe to Presto Pasta Nights, a weekly event created by Ruth and which is also hosted by her this week. Happy 3rd birthday to Presto Pasta Nights!

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Tags: noodles, shrimp, sour, spicy, tofu