transmute leftovers to takeout

I had leftover slices of eye round, leftover fresh noodles, as well as onions, scallions, and bean sprouts. We made pho on Tuesday, but since Ryan made the broth, it was mostly an assembly meal, so I didn't post about it. I thought about making the noodles into a lo mein style thing when I was eating them on Tuesday, since the texture was very nice. I'd definitely get the same noodles again, they were terrific in the pho and perfect for this dish as well. I think they were Wang brand, which makes them even better.

I picked up some celery and mushrooms on the way home, but didn't end up using the mushrooms, since my sister was going to be partaking. They would have been delicious, however, so I will not where I would add them. I couldn't find shiitake, but fresh shiitake would be ideal, and crimini would be lovely as well.

I heated up a mix of oil (half and half vegetable and an extra peppery olive with a splash of sesame) over pretty high heat in my giant sauce pan (a stir fry pan would be good too). Once it started popping, threw in the chopped celery and onions (red, from the pho). Once they'd softened a bit, I pushed them over to the side and did the sliced eye round (salted and peppered, easy on the salt) in batches, just browning it and then moving it into the pile of aromatics. Once all the meat was in, I added mirin, soy sauce, leftover scallions and bean sprouts, as well as a ton of coarse ground black pepper and some garlic powder (I was lazy, but if I weren't I'd have put fresh in with the beef). I stirred and let it simmer while I put the noodles in the boiling water. Add a bit more soy sauce, sesame oil, black pepper and other seasonings to taste (red pepper flakes or chili sauce if you want some heat). If you want to do it exactly like me, you need to stop paying attention to the noodles just before they're about to boil over, and make a terrific mess of your stove. Ideally, you skip that step, but it seems to happen very quickly, and the fresh noodles are done in a couple of minutes tops. Turn everything off, and transfer the noodles (I used tongs, resulting in more mess) to the pan with the sauce. Basically, you're treating it like you would Italian pasta, you want it to still be hot and still have a decent amount of pasta water on it. Toss it to combine, and the pasta should soak up a good amount of the liquid, and what remains should combine with the pasta water and be thick and lovely and covered with veggies and beef. It should look pretty much exactly like takeout lo mein, only fresher.

For a pound and a half of meat and two pounds of fresh noodles, I used about half an onion, four (six?) celery stalks, two scallions, and about a cup of bean sprouts. Maybe a quarter cup of mirin, and about half a cup of soy sauce, added as two separate quarter cups. Sesame oil was splashes, pepper was grind until my hand got tired, and maybe a teaspoon or two of garlic powder.

experiments in cooling beverages

It is now well into iced tea season. I usually consume about 1-3 mugs (my mug is a bit larger than a pint, apparently, so saying 2-3 cups is misleading) of tea a day during the cooler months. I usually use a bit of skim milk and one teaspoon of organic sugar per giant mug. I am a fairly warm blooded person. Some of my friends have compared my thermal output to volcanoes and other such phenomena. So once it gets warm (by which I mean over 70 degrees), I start drinking iced tea instead. I usually have a gallon pitcher in the fridge, and have a small half gallon pitcher that I use for non-standard tea. I like my tea a little bit sweet, and since sugar is a pain to integrate with cool beverages, I've been experimenting with simple syrups. I've made ginger syrup (used it on fruit salad, but it was delicious with black tea as well), lime syrup (for mojito inspired tea), but a happy accident was what led me to make some vanilla syrup. I have a tub of sugar into which I put all the used vanilla pods and some older pods that got a bit tried out. This subtly infuses the sugar with vanilla. This tub was nearly out of sugar, and I was trying to get a cup out of it, and accidentally ended up with some vanilla pod bits in the syrup. I left them in there, and the flavor intensified a good bit in the syruping process. It is quite delicious in black tea, and I've been repeating the accident since.

Some other experiments I'd like to try include barley tea, which is apparently very popular in Japan, and more with green teas. Most of the iced green tea I make and purchase seems to have a woody or smoky flavor, which I'm not fond of. It's not bad, and in most commercial applications its usually covered with excessive sweetness. I'm trying shorter brew times with more bags, and it seems to mitigate it a bit.

I didn't forget to update last week, I did beer brats again. The only thing I did differently was grilled some onions to go with them. Skewers through the slices made them really easy to handle, and they were quite delicious. I should say something about the red bean paste I made, but that's for another post.