Fusion Fun

Yummy remixed food

I so like to break the rules when it comes to cooking, especially with regards to those of where certain foods come from and using certain ingredients that completely change the expected national identity of a dish. So, Above is an example. Here we have hokkien noodles, a noodle originating in Malaysian but used in a wide variety of regions across Asia today; cherry tomatoes, used mostly in Mediterranean cuisine, along with julienne carrots, a style of chopping most closely associated with both french and Asiatic cooking; butter fried beans, sealed in a pan and richly crunchy; all topped off with a Portuguese sauce (chilly, garlic, black pepper, coriander and parsley)

You may be thinking that all of these things together would just cause an unwarranted furor in the mouth, well there is a final ingredient that i have left out for effect, one that has long been a bringer together of flavours, an addition of richness and a subtle thickener.

ITS CREAM!!

I really had a lot to work with here, three pans were going at once as apposed to my normal style of one pot cooking (that’s another book i love actually, I think it goes by that title but a quick look on Amazon suggests it may be out of print 😦 )

The addition of cream wasn’t just a seminal choice either, as many of you know, drinking milk with something spicy reduces the sensation of heat and cools the mouth and stomach. My boyfriend isn’t the biggest lover of spicy foods, but I couldn’t pass up on a little bit of curry on a Tuesday, so i compromised and added the cream.

Result? A delicious well balanced meal that wasn’t too hot or too bland.

Tips and a schedule?

Brown your chicken first in small batches,  until just white, set aside to fry the onion (1/2), in a separate pan prepare the beans by frying them in good butter, then add cherry tomatoes and beans at the same time, the sauce, when the ‘cherries’ are blistering add the chicken in and you Portuguese sauce, mix with cream (2 tbsp), put a lid on it for a couple of minutes to infuse THEN add you noodles for a final stir-thru.

YUM :)Tess