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Recipe Feedback

I've recently received some feedback on one of the recipes posted previously in the Regnum Journal.
In Edition Four of the Journal I posted a recipe for Longevity Noodles for people to try during the Chinese New Year.

The city of Llandeilo at this stage was kind enough to write up a short report on their experience of cooking, and eating this recipe;
Along with some surprising changes which you could also try yourself.

Here at the journal we're always interested in hearing of your experiences from eating the recipes posted, and
Llandeilo was the first who has submitted such an entry for us all to read - Will you be next?

If you wish to contribute just drop us a line to the Journal with the subject line Recipe Feedback.
Please include the recipe name and journal edition with the message (or messages).

Anyhow, here's what Llandeilo wrote about their experience with the recipe ...

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We were planning to have a turkey stir-fry for dinner on Sunday 3rd Feb, but then the new edition of the journal came out, with the recipe for Longevity Noodles.
Thinking that they would make us live longer, so giving more time to read the journal, we thought we would give them a try.

We had a packet of ready-cooked noodles, so we thought we could use them instead of cooking the noodles as described.
We weren't sure what a green onion was, and thought it might be a spring onion and we didn't have any anyway, so thought we would use a normal onion.
We didn't have any ham either, but had the turkey that we would have used in the stir-fry.

We were off to a good start!

The noodles were quite difficult to prepare, we would have been better cooking noodles as the recipe said.
But we had these ready-cooked noodles, which just stuck together in one great big lump (stir-frying them the previous day was an even worse nightmare, but that's another story).
After separating the noodles by hand, we micro-waved them warm. In hindsight, we will never buy these ready-cooked noodles again, but they were on special offer in the supermarket.

The sauce was easy to make, the only problem we had was that we didn't know which type of cup was being used.
American ones are smaller than English ones, but Chinese ones? We had no idea! We went with American ones, even though we are English, and it turned out okay.
Having alternatives in millilitres or fluid ounces would have helped us no end!

For the topping, as we only had a normal onion and some raw turkey so we fried them together for a few minutes.
The egg. Oh the egg! One of us has tried to make Chinese soups with egg in the past, and the egg always goes wrong.
In this recipe, it called for the wok to be heated to a suitable temperature. What does that mean?
Journal Comment: Most similar recipes deem a suitable temperature to be when the Wok has a slight red glow underneith.

Well, we got it too hot, and the egg was almost cooked as soon as it hit the pan!
However, we had already turned off the heat under the sauce, and that was cooling nicely.
When we added the sauce, it helped to cool the egg and stop it cooking, so it wasn't too over-cooked.
Stirring very, very fast (not so fast the sauce goes all over the kitchen) helps to break the egg into small bits.
The other option of pouring the egg into the sauce through a fork sounded interesting, but even messier that we usually get in the kitchen.
We might try it next time.

Well, the end result had lots of variations from the original recipe.
The main flavours come from the sauce, and that was strictly to the recipe apart from not knowing what Cup to use and overcooking the egg, The meal was really tasty!
From the recipe, it seemed that small amounts of stock, soy sauce and sesame oil would not bring enough flavour for all the noodles, but they did, and it was really nice.
Overcooking the egg meant it was in slightly larger lumps than we think it should have been, but it was still smaller than the noodles, so it wasn't very noticeable.
We think that you could (as we did) substitute anything into the topping that you have in the kitchen or fridge.
It only needs to be a small amount, as the noodles are the main part if the dish anyway.

We haven't included a picture, because the one in the issue of the journal with the recipe looks much nicer!




So, are they really going to cause us to live longer?
We hope so, so we can try out more recipes in the journal!

© Llandeilo & Brisbane Road