Ginger Noodles

The idea for making this blog came from a number of different sources, but one of the major ones was a project I worked on last year in my Cantonese class.

I've been slowly trying to pick up some Cantonese -  my boyfriend's entire family speaks it at home - so last year I decided to take a formal class in the subject. The class was a lot of fun, I feel I got a foundation for the language, and I can actually pronounce and differentiate between tones (usually), which was one of my major goals. Whether or not I can keep up with conversations, well... that's another story!

One of the projects we were assigned was to describe a recipe in full - look up all the ingredients in Cantonese and instruct the class how to make the dish.  I LOVE to cook, so I figured, since my Cantonese isn't the finest, that if I really wanted to tell people how to make a dish, I should just go ahead and make it, while documenting the whole thing. Then, if my Cantonese wobbled a bit (which undoubtedly it did), the process would still be clear. I had a Cantonese cookbook and a dish in it that I had made before and loved, and was fairly straightforward. And thus, my photo-documentary on how to make ginger noodles with scallions was born.

I had a lot of fun with this project, breaking the process down and explaining it. When cooking for various department events or for friends, I often get recipe requests - and I often try to get recipes off of others when I have something I enjoy. So I figured, if I'm going to cook (or knit, or sew), why not have a place where I can post the results? Therefore, for your enjoyment, please enjoy the recipe for Ginger Noodles, now conveniently in both Cantonese (Jyutping system of writing) and English!



Liu6:                                                                 Ingredients:

1/2 lb jau4 min6                                                  1/2 lb egg noodles    

Faa1 sang1 jau4                                                  peanut oil  

4 tbs goeng1                                                       4 tsp fresh grated ginger

1 c. cung1                                                           1 cup chopped scallions or onions

1 lb dau6 fu6                                                       1 lb tofu, cubed (firm)

Zoeng3:                                                            Sauce:

3 tbs hou4 jau4                                                 3 tbs oyster sauce

3 tsp si6 jau4                                                     3 tsp soy sauce

1.5 tsp baak6 tong4                                           1.5 tsp sugar

6 tbs gai1 tong1                                                 6 tbs chicken broth

2 tsp maa4 jau4                                                  2 tsp sesame oil

jim4 tung4 haak3 ziu1                                        salt and black pepper


 

 Boil water with some salt, and cook egg noodles until al dente, stirring occasionally. Drain and put to the side, and let cool. While the noodles are cooking, mix all the sauce ingredients thoroughly in a bowl. You can chop the onions/scallions (roughly for onions, more fine for scallions) and grate the ginger at this time, as well. Cube the tofu, and let soak in that sauce for a bit, then fry briefly in the pan (SAVING the sauce - do NOT pour the sauce in the pan at this point, just strain out the tofu and fry THAT in the pan) until it's browned a little bit. Set aside for later.

Heat up the pan again with the peanut oil until it's nice and hot, then fry the ginger for 30 seconds. Next, add the noodles, cook that for another minute or so, then add the onions. You want to cook until the noodles are all very hot and the onions soften (scallions are less picky). Then, add the sauce. At this point your pan/wok will be hissing at you, so keep stirring that noodle mixture so everything gets coated by the tasty, tasty sauce, about a minute more.  Then add the tofu, make sure that's heated up as well. Add salt and pepper to taste.

At this point, you have a tasty, filling meal of noodley goodness which took maybe 35 minutes -  and some of that was waiting for water to boil. You'll note that I used onions, which I ALWAYS have around, as opposed to scallions, which I buy every once in a while and half of them go to waste. Onions just have more lasting power, and all you have to do is cook a little longer. As a bonus, you can make it completely vegetarian, simply by substituting veggie broth or water for chicken broth and getting vegetarian oyster sauce (made from mushrooms). My roommate is pescatarian (no meat except for fish and seafood), so that second substitution wasn't necessary for me. I also had some parve (no meat, no dairy) chicken flavored bouillon which was perfect for this alteration, so I still got that flavor. (I used to live with a kosher housemate). I love my meat, but delicious food is delicious food and I'm generally happy to switch to cooking the veggie option if it makes someone else's life easier.