Southeast Asia

I love Asian foods, but I cannot cook them. Not that any of the ethnic foods I make are completely traditional and true to their heritage, but the best I can do with Asian foods is to leave to the restaurants (especially with Indian and Chinese), use a box, or just incorporate the flavors into my own Americanized style. Last weekend, Brian and I wanted Asian, but neither of us could place our tastebuds on what we were craving. I mean, Asia is a big continent. We decided on Southeast Asia via Tom Thumb and World Market. Brian loves Pad Thai, but the only way I can make it is from a box. We picked up a box of Thai Kitchen Pad Thai noodles and sauce. Thai Kitchen is fairly good, but we discovered that the A Taste of Thai box was slightly more authentic (at least to Bangkok City standards. On a side note, I watched a show on the Travel Channel about Pad Thai, and that the red Pad Thai we get here is an Americanized way of making it. It's not red in Thailand.)

I followed the Thai Kitchen box fairly close, except instead of using bean sprouts, I used broccoli slaw, added shrimp, and a glob of peanut butter when I added the pad thai sauce. I usually top with crushed peanuts and chopped green onion, but I forgot about the green onion when we were at the store. Darn! It came out pretty good. Not as good as a restaurant of course, but acceptable to satiate our craving.

To go along with it, I also made spring rolls. I don't make them very pretty, but they are good. They are super easy to make, they just require a lot of steps. You can put almost anything in a spring roll, but I tend to just like vegetables and bean thread noodles best. Any veggies work, but cucumbers seem to always be in spring rolls when I order them.

Spring Rolls

Cucumber, cut into matchsticks
Red Bell Pepper, cut into matchsticks
Carrots, shredded (after peeling the carrot, I used my peeler and made carrot shavings)
Sai Fun Bean Thread Noodles
Spring Roll Wrappers (Rice Pancakes)

The ingredients:

You have to soak the rice pancakes in warm water before rolling. Make sure it's not too warm, because then it will curl all up and look like a jelly fish!

Then you quickly blot on a tea towel to dry:
I set the rice pancake on a plate, and then line up the ingedients. Then I sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds:
To roll, I roll up one side, then the bottom, and then the top, and then I roll it as tight as I can without the stuff poking out (I'm not very good at this yet):

I also made peanut sauce for the spring rolls. I came up with my peanut sauce recipe to mimic the peanut sauce of some of the Vietnamese restaurants in Arlington. It never comes out the same because I just drop ingredients, whisk, taste, over and over until I think it tastes okay. This time, I wrote it down as I went. This isn't exact, but I never make it exact anyway. It's fairly close the restaurants - well, it's close enough!

Peanut Sauce for Spring Rolls

2 TBSP Peanut Butter
1 TBSP Roasted Peanut Oil
1 1/2 TBSP Soy Sauce
2 TBSP Rice Vinegar
1/2 tsp Chili Garlic Sauce (or more if you like it spicier - I'm a spice wimp)
1 tsp Toasted Sesame Oil
1 tsp Mirin

Whisk all ingredients together until smooth. Top with crushed peanuts.

This is the first time I've used Mirin in it, and it seemed to make a positive difference. I got it at World Market, and I'll be honest, I think I heard it was rice wine, but I wasn't completely sure. A google search found this incredibly useful blog: The Perfect Pantry: Mirin. Of course then I had to start reading this other entries, and wasted a lot of time! Blogs are like reality TV - they suck you in!!