Basil Noodles

It's sad to say that even in a house like mine, where bad food is just unacceptable to me, and central market feels like a playground, that my grocery bill is sometimes compromised by other, more pressing bills. Dear hubby has been pushing me to reduce to $75 per week. Ooooh, a challenge.....

So many of my most innovative dinners would fall into a category of meals I like to call "day before payday" dishes. These recipes are generally composed of some basic pantry items I keep on hand, plus whatever random fresh or frozen vegetables I have lying around. There are of course, specific veggies that would match the best with the flavors in the sauce, but I don't discriminate. I try to love all veggies equally :)

The other night's creation was a pleasant surprise, since I thought it ended up tasting like one of my favorite dishes at our favorite Thai place here in town, Thai Dee (if my memory serves me correctly, which it often doesn't.) Sorry there's no picture, (I must get into the habit of taking pictures of all of my food now) it was just so good that I couldn't bring myself to go find the camera after I sat down for the first bite. Enjoy :)

Basil Noodles

Serves 2

Two bundles of egg noodles, half of an 8oz pkg.
1/2 brick of firm tofu, cut into cubes or rectangular pieces
1/2 white onion, diced
1/2 jalapeno, sliced
1 or 2 thin coins of ginger
1 or 2 crushed garlic cloves
2 c. veggies of your choice (bell peppers, bamboo shoots, and straw mushrooms work well with the sauce)
Handful of fresh basil, chopped (to garnish)

Sauce:
~1/4 c. soy sauce
1 tsp. lime juice
1-2 tsp. curry powder, to taste
~ 1/4 c. cho sauce (this is a mixture that I keep on hand for flavoring rice used to roll sushi.)

Cho sauce:
1 c. mirin (Chinese cooking wine) or white wine
1/2 c. seaweed stock (put a 2x2 inch square of Dasima in 1/2 c. water and boil, let sit for an hour or so until cool.)
1/2 c. sugar
1/4 c. salt
1/4 c. maple syrup
1/2 c. 5% vinegar

Start boiling water for the noodles, and add a little oil so they don't stick together. Heat a large, nonstick skillet with oil and add the tofu when it is nice and hot but not smoking. Saute until several sides of the tofu are golden brown.

Add onions, jalapenos, ginger and garlic and continue to stir-fry on medium-high heat until onions are translucent. Add other veggies as appropriate to their cooking time (add harder vegetables that must cook longer before softer vegetables, or green ones that you want to keep their color and crispness.) Sprinkle the curry powder over the cooking vegetables. Put as much or as little as you like, but a little bit may go a long way--the frying spice will probably burn your eyes a little and make you cough!

Once the veggies have gotten slightly browned but are not finished cooking, splash the soy sauce, cho, and lime juice into the pan.I didn't measure these ingredients, I literally just splashed some in, until the veggies were less than 1/4 covered by the sauce. Allow the sauce to simmer down while stirring around the veggies to coat them. Drop the noodles into the boiling water if you have not done so yet.

Drain the noodles and arrange on the plates. Cover with tofu, veggies, and sauce. Top with the chopped fresh basil.

Welcome!

The Green-Eyed Gourmet is a new blog by poet and pastry chef Candace Caceres (that's me!) After months of showing off my mad skillz to every neighbor and friend willing to take a taste, I finally decided to take the cult of my cooking online and share the delicious doctrine with you, dear readers.

The basis for the "green-eyed" theme is that I love to eat my veggies. I've been a vegetarian off and on for almost 8 years, so a large part of this blog will be dedicated to the many amazing vegetarian recipes that I try out each month. I inherited a very intuitive" dash-of-this, pinch-of-that" cooking style from my Italian grandmother, but I will certainly make an effort to be friendly to everyone out there for whom the recipe is more gospel than guideline; to mark my quarter-cups and teaspoons so that you can make it taste the way it was intended.

Also, I am green-eyed as I ponder the whole "green lifestyle" dilemma from the perspective of a small young family on a tight budget. This perspective makes some green choices easier, like making our bicycles our main form of transportation, and keeping a veggie garden as a cheaper alternative to organic store-bought produce; but it can also make some choices more difficult, as the free-trade, organic, etc. products seem to be much more expensive, and consist of more corporate hype than actual quality. So in addition to my recipes and other odd food-related experiments, I expect that I will from time to time discuss my feelings about a "greening" society.

I work as a pastry chef and cake decorator, so although my recipes are vegetarian, some will not be "healthy" per-se, and many more will not be vegan. The whole idea of the vegan "cheez" sauce icks me out, so the vegan recipes you will find here will be coincidentally vegan, and not forcibly vegan. What can I say--a life without cheesecake hardly seems worth living. :)

So thanks for stopping by, and please check back again later for some taste-bud tickling treats, Green-Eyed Gourmet style :D