Saturday, May 29, 2021

Adventures in cooking


Working down my recipe to-try folder, I made
Sort-of-Thai Noodles
Adapted from "Garlic and Sapphires," by Ruth Reichl

 

The headnote says, Ruth Reichl, editor of Gourmet magazine, says that everyone loves her Americanized version of Thai noodles.

Well. If you like pork and shrimp and eggs and rice noodles, green onions, sugar and fish sauce...what's not to like?


My answer: this dish. I found it impossible to stop eating the stuff, but it wasn't good in any sense of the word. It was just fattening.  It didn't need pork AND shrimp AND eggs--that was way overkill.


My personal mistakes were to use the wrong kind of noodles and then overcook them; use the amount of pork the recipe called for when half that much would have been plenty; and skip the peanuts. I just don't care for them. Oh, and I missed the lime juice. Chefs are always overdoing the citrus, so that was probably a pointless addition. But I'll try sprinkling a little on just to see.


I could see this dish working with (a) more fish sauce (b) less sugar (c) only an eighth pound of pork, for flavoring, and (d) the rice noodles cooked very, very gently.

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