Mee Goreng

Total time: Noodles: About 1-1.5 hours, including 30 minutes resting, Mee Goreng: Just over an hour

Source: Noodles: China Sichuan Food, Mee Goreng: The Ultimate Vegetarian Cookbook

Servings: 5

Note: I switched days from the menu because the mango that I needed for the cauliflower tacos isn’t ripe yet and I ended up scheduling tutoring close to dinner time so the prep worked better with my schedule.

This one was a no for the children (the stubborn, picky one is still at the table as I write) but a resounding yes for the adults. I was wary because tofu isn’t generally my jam, but I cut the pieces smaller than recommended in the recipe and the combination of browning and the sauce worked well. The sauce was a bit sweet for me, so I might go light on the brown sugar and/or molasses or might amp up the chili paste a bit.

I loved making the noodles. It’s like magic watching water turning flour into dough. I used bread flour because it suggested a high-protein flour, then accidentally added a bit too much water and compensated with the flour I had put on the counter for kneading. The idea is to put as much water as you need to hydrate the dough, so the amounts are flexible. I cheated and used my pasta machine to roll it out and cut it, rolling it through on 0 a few times before cutting it with the linguine cutter. I could imagine rolling it a bit thinner, but I also stretched it out some while separating the strands, and thought the consistency was pretty good.

I had tutoring tonight which ran longer than I had initially anticipated, so I made the noodles in advance, refrigerating them while I was tutoring, and then got home and immediately started prep. I switched the order around a bit, cutting and laying out the tofu first, then starting the water, then making the sauce and prepping the rest of the ingredients in the order they were needed for the recipe. I was able to get most of the prep done while the tofu drained and water heated, with the water coming to a boil right as my tofu timer went off. I cooked the pasta before working on the tofu just to get that taken care of and off of the stove, then finished the rest of the ingredient prep while the tofu cooked. Nothing felt rushed even without prepping ingredients before starting and the whole process was pretty quick.

Every time I make any sort of Asian dish, I really wish ATK had more Asian recipes, so if anyone has good tried-and-true Asian cookbooks, let me know. I don’t know enough about Asian food to distinguish between different types of Asian cuisine, so recommend your favorites.