Tuesday 12 January 2016

Black Pepper Noodles

One of our favorite dishes from a local Chinese restaurant is "Beef with Black Pepper Thick Noodles".  A hobby of mine that started with my mom when I was a pre-teen was to taste things multiple times in restaurants, guess what was in it, and try to recreate it at home....all WITHOUT the help of my new friend, Google!

I found this recipe, bought most of the ingredients and was all set to make it, but my husband excitedly took over from me.  I wasn't going to argue.  I took it as a chance to sit back and relax on a late Saturday afternoon!   We used beef instead of seafood and used up some veggies in the house like peppers, broccoli, baby corn...not sure what else to be honest.  I know that we ended up using a bit more black pepper and soy sauce as well as adding a drizzle of sesame oil at the end.

http://blog.seasonwithspice.com/2012/02/seafood-yaki-udon-recipe.html


We had enough noodles for him to make another batch the next day with leftover chicken, so we obviously enjoyed this.  Note to readers...maybe just double the recipe on the first go!

All in all, this was very close to our restaurant fave.  I can see it being made again when I am craving some Chinese noodles.  Maybe we can get adventurous and make a few more of our favorite dishes and have a theme dinner....I have always wanted to try and make Egg Foo Young....stay tuned!

Turkey Black Bean Enchiladas

Wondering what to do with that leftover turkey in the freezer?  I was wondering the same, and I felt inspired to try enchiladas.  A google search had many variations, but this one caught my eye as you have to make your own enchilada sauce plus all of the flavours were exactly what I was looking for.  For those of you who need photos, check out this link.  There are a lot of photos and my meal actually looked EXACTLY like these photos!!

http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/turkey_enchiladas/

These are DELICIOUS!  They are also a lot of work.  I am going to disagree with the 10 minute prep time  - I must be slow!  It took me an hour and a half from start to finish.  The good news is that you can prep the garnish and clean-up while these are in the oven!  I used a LOT of dishes.  I think that the effort is worth it, though.

I was so impressed that I made my own enchilada sauce as I usually buy mine.  I was even more surprised by the amount of chili powder used and that there wasn't any tomato sauce or paste in the recipe...the red colour is all chili powder!     I loved the texture of the tortillas after being dipped in the sauce and then baked.  Next time, I would consider using less cinnamon and would try to make them with  corn tortillas - yum!  Now...the garnishes are essential - raw onion, fresh avocado, crisp lettuce, creamy sour cream, fresh lime juice and cilantro on top of these enchiladas was the perfect mix of warm and cold, soft and crisp, and the flavours from everything were perfectly balanced (minus what I thought was a very slight overpowering of cinnamon).  I used two jalepenos and thought that was mild, so I might consider three....it is hard to know with jalepenos sometimes!

So....I guess I will have to make some more turkey drums in the slow cooker so I have some leftover turkey so I can make these again on a WEEKEND :)