Still Feeling Peckish

So one of the things about this blog is that some people have been saying that the recipes are too complicated. Okay, the feedback was from some friends who are non-cooks. But still…the comments gave me pause. So I think today’s recipe will definitely be classified as drop dead easy. Truly I wasn’t really in the mood for cooking today. I woke up with lasagna on my mind but it did seem like it would take longer than I wanted. (Yes, even people who love to cook also have off days).

Today I only had the immediate family to cook for and since we had eaten a steamboat lunch, I figured that we would not be in any shape for a hefty dinner. So it had to be a one pot meal.

I remember growing up that my mother was not a very inspired cook. In fact I remembered every Saturday after my parents finished their half day of work, we would come back to the same dish of fried yellow noodles. Now in the days when I loved noodles, I had pretty strict preferences. Kway Teow (flat ribbon-like) rice noodles were my favorite, followed by Bee Hoon (rice vermicelli) followed by thin yellow wonton noodles. I didn’t like fat yellow noodles. Period. I think it was because in the 1980s, people still added some kind of chemical to keep the noodles bouncy and I abhorred the faint chemical taste the noodles had. So it wasn’t surprising that I loved Ipoh Hor Fun or Beef Hor Fun; the only yellow noodle dish I actually liked was Hokkien Mee.

Once I went low carb the noodle thing got a bit complicated. Shirataki Noodles is most like Tang Hoon (mung bean or potato starch glass noodles) but is really low in carbohydrate count as it is made out of konjac which is a kind of seaweed. But I occasionally indulge in a shirataki/okara noodle (Kibun brand, sold in some Japanese supermarkets).

This zero carb noodle actually tastes more like noodle than any other I’ve had before. And so it’s the perfect noodle (to me at least) for most local noodle dishes. The shop I usually get the noodle from had run out of the hor fun noodle variety so I cooked with the yellow noodle instead.

Beef noodles are pretty much my family’s favorite given that everybody loves beef. I had some unevenly cut ends of a large ribeye roll I had bought from a group buy which was perfect for this stir fry dish. Most of these Singapore noodle dishes use corn starch or tapioca starch for thickening; the trick in low carb cooking is xanthan gum. It does a decent job of thickening up gravies as long as you furiously stir it after adding it so as to avoid weird meteor-shaped lumps.

So here is Singapore-style beef noodles. The prep to finish took less than half an hour which is why I am now having a peaceful time blogging next to 2 snoozing dogs.