I made Oishii Eats Vietnamese Summer Rolls (Goi Cuon) with Cashew Nut Dipping Sauce this morning on television! They came out fantastic and the crew devoured them seconds after the camera shut off. In the video I show you how to roll ‘em tight!
Wanna watch?
‘m going to give you 6 letters, out of order and I bet I can show you just ONE IMAGE and in that image you’ll be able to see, hear, feel and smell EXACTLY what those 6 letters form.
Here are the letters….in random order:
H I S O T H
Ready? Ok….read on…
Chinese New Year is coming up in just a couple of weeks! It will be the Year of the Rat!
I’ll be sharing some of my favorite Chinese dishes with you - easy meals that you can whip up for the holiday. Chinese are big on food symbolisms - and some of the references are pretty far out there - but hey, if eating this hairy moss dish:
means that I might just win the lottery this year, I’ll take my chances. Traditionally, we eat noodles for Chinese New Year - which symbolizes long life. Just don’t cut the noodles before serving - you’ll be snipping your life short.
You can use any type of noodles for this dish - rice noodles (great for gluten-free), wheat noodles or in a pinch, use regular spaghetti noodles for the Fried Noodles with Garlic Shrimp dish.
Here are my favorite noodles to use when I’m in a hurry:
These noodles only take a couple of minutes to cook, because they are soft, fresh noodles not dried. When I make a trip to the Asian market, I grab a few packs and put them in the freezer. They freeze great and when ever you need a quick meal, just boil a pot of water, add the pack of frozen noodles in and in 2 minutes, they are ready. If you aren’t going to freeze them, it only takes 1 minute to cook. Timing of course depends on the thickness of the noodles you choose - check the packaging for instructions.
You can use any type of vegetables: mushrooms, cabbage, bok-choy, spinach, bamboo shoots, tofu, snow peas, etc. The only rule is when adding the vegetables to the wok, add them in the order it takes longest to cook. HUH?! What did I just say? You know what I mean. Vegetables that take longer to cook go in first, fry a bit, then add the next vegetable. Cut your vegetables into nice, thin, easy to quickly fry pieces.
If using carrots, I suggest cutting into slivers, or super thin slices so that they can fry easily. I use my favorite tool in the whole world - the 
Oxo Julienne Tool. For less than $10, this baby has saved me time and nicked fingers. Plus, the vegetable comes out looking really pretty.
In my dish, I chose crunchy, fresh celery, carrots and scallions:
For meat/seafood - you can use shrimp, chicken, thinly sliced pork or beef. Or just keep it vegetarian. Totally up to you.
The Fried Noodle with Garlic Shrimp recipe is from this book:
Wei Chuan Chinese Rice and Noodles, my copy is well-worn and this book has tons of recipes for fried noodles, noodle soup, fried rice, rice dishes, etc. Recipes are in both English and Chinese.
Recipe after the jump!
I’ve got a regular schedule now for my local ABC appearance - the last Thursday of every month. So, I’ve got a week to go and would love you to choose which blogger dish to cook in my live 5-minute bit. as part of the ABC morning news Of course I’ll post the video online for all of you to giggle at me!
Here’s the criteria for how I choose which dish to feature.
Asian Food: Since I specialize in modern Asian cuisine, the dishes that I like to feature has to be East Asian, SE Asian or even South Asian. I’m just starting to dabble into Indian cuisine (LOVE IT!!) and I’m sure with the help of my Indian blogger friends, I’ll soon be whipping up classic Indian dishes soon! Perhaps next month I will cook an Indian dish on TV. Plus, I just received the MOST amazing vegetarian Indian cookbook directly from the authors of Cooking at Home with Pedatha in India, more on that later.
Easy & Fast: The dish has to be something that a home cook can make in their kitchen. So anything fancy, expensive and time consuming is out.
No Oven: Unfortunately, the studio on set doesn’t have an oven. So I’m limited to stovetop.
Timing: The set looks like this:
and I’m just yards away from the newscasters, so NO LOUD foods like butchering live animals (ewww!)
The newscasters do their morning news, then 40 minutes into it, they cut to the kitchen. I’ve got 5 minutes-ish to demo something. I don’t have to cook the entire dish during this time, but I get to talk about whatever I’m cooking (giving a nice shoutout to blogger’s dish of course!) and demo something. Then the news continues on and towards the end of the newscast 20 minutes later, everyone ends up in the kitchen and we show the final dish (and eat too!)
So, it’s quite a feat of coordination and timing to make sure that I can finish in time. So, anything that can be made within an hour’s time is great (I can cook while the news is going on)
Ready to vote?
There’s been a lot of “clicking” in the Steamy Kitchen household - both keyboard and camera. I’ve been pretty quiet for the past 2 weeks, busy teaching myself how to photograph for print, which is WAY different than photographing for the blog. While I’ve always thought that my food photos were pretty damn awesome, photographing for hi-res 350 dpi top-quality cookbook is another matter. Slight imperfections on a blog is fine - at lo-res you really don’t notice much. Plus, it’s kinda nice to have those imperfections on a blog - it just adds to the charm and authentic-ness of a home-cooked meal. But blow that same photo up and print at hi-res, and that little speck of sesame seed that was out of place?
IT LOOKS LIKE A MASSIVE RIPE ZIT.
So, with a bit of new gear, I turned the spare bedroom into a mini-photo studio (sorry MiMi and Papa), a small table as my “set”, photography lights, piles of fabric, a stack of placemats and a gazillion dishes, cups and chopsticks.
Oh yes, and a nice spot for my Van Gogh Double Espresso Vodka on the rocks.
By the way, the first time I brought a bottle home of the vodka, Scott raised an eyebrow at the concept of “double espresso” and “vodka” trapped in a single bottle.As if my mood swinging PMS marathons once a month weren’t quite enough, now he’s gotta deal with the UPPER! OF! THE! DOUBLE! ESPRESSO! and then the ……….downer……….of.……….the……….vodka..…
That roller coaster ride follows every single sip. He’s since hid the bottle from me and has replaced it with fancy schmancy Italian soda, which I actually really enjoy.
Anyways, since whatever I’ve been cooking for the photo shoot ends up on my dinner table, it’s been a challenge to get the absolute perfect shot while keeping the food looking fresh without being manipulated so that we can devour it for supper. Shellac, glycerin and hot glue aren’t just part of our family diet at the moment, and I’m quite sure it would cause massive bouts of constipation.
Wanna see some pics?
