Saturday, September 24, 2011

My New Obsession

Asian Cooking.

Since our move in June, my taste buds have decided that the most delicious food on the planet is Asian food. Curry, Rice, Thai food, Noodles bowls...Oh, may the Heavens open up and swallow me whole! I can't get enough. It is all I want to eat these days. And I have entered on a new quest to figure out how to make them.

I have gone to a local Asian Market and invested in new ingredients to me, including fish sauce, oyster sauce, rice vinegar, fried shallots, chile paste, Srirache sauce (my favorite!), sesame oil. I have a pile of recipes to try. I have had some successes, some failures. I have tons to learn. And I'm totally intimidated by what may be the most simple thing in the world, but seems to be an incomprehensible mystery: Asian Noodles.

If you've shopped at an Asian market before, you have seen the vast quantities and varieties of noodles they sell. It is truly impressive! Package after package of noodles that are slightly different from each other, but since I don't read their languages, I can't figure out what makes them different, or how exactly to find the one kind of noodle that is specified in a recipe. I definitely don't know enough about them to know how they will behave in a recipe, so I certainly can't blindly choose something out of the masses.

I asked for help, and the kind owner of the shop led me to all the different kinds of noodles I needed. I purchased some dried Chinese egg noodles. I have never cooked them before, and so when I got home and started making dinner, I read these Engrish instructions (click on the picture to make it big enough to read):

It made me laugh. I clearly have a lot to learn about this.

***And while we're on the topic, if you have a favorite Asian recipe that makes your mouth sing, please share it with me! I'd love to add it to my repertoire.

2 comments:

Madame Palmkey said...

Chris is the asian cooking master. We have an entire cupboard devoted to the weird sauces he brings home from the Asian market. You two should get in touch, though I warn you that like me he is not a recipe following kind. He throws things together for miraculous goodness. But maybe he'll write stuff down for family...

kalie said...

This is too funny. It reminds me of a toy my MIL has that is covered in Engrish phrases like "Helps creative and imaginative" and "best to watch the child in case of the toy can break."