Wagamama Week: Ginger Chilli Mushrooms

Years ago, I bought my friend a copy of The Wagamama Cookbook and posted it to him for his birthday. Unbeknownst to me, he had also posted me a copy, so they arrived at almost the same time :) I've occasionally used recipes from it, but early in my cooking career, I didn't have many of the exotic-seeming Japanese ingredients, so stuck to the simplest recipes. Opening my closet now, I find I have almost everything I need, so thought I'd get stuck in by trying the first seven vegetarian recipes in the book, one by one. Otherwise, I'd never have been able to pick - they all look so yummy!

I went through each one and wrote down what I needed - the only new storecupboard ingredient was konbu for making dashi, as the store I go to doesn't have dashi no moto, even though that's what Wagamama use ;) Writing down exactly what I needed made shopping strange - I don't think I've ever gone to the store looking to buy '4 carrots' instead of just 'carrots'. And it had the unfortunate side-effect of making me completely forget about lunch ingredients. On the plus side, I know I spent almost exactly $100, and in theory I will be out of food in exactly one week's time.

So to kick off the week, the brave SO started with one of the simpler recipes while I went to Zumba. It's nice when someone else suffers for your art ;)

Ingredients (Quantities in brackets are my revised suggestions):

• 250g soba noodles (150g)
• 3 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 red chilli, trimmed, deseeded and finely sliced
• 2 tbsp peeled and grated fresh ginger root
• 4 (king) oyster mushrooms, cut into 1cm slices
• 4 shiitake mushrooms, cut into 1cm slices
• clump of enoki mushrooms, about the size of your first, broken up
• handful of roughly chopped choi sum
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• generous handful of beansprouts
• 600ml miso soup (500ml)
• 4 spring onions, trimmed and sliced
• 2 sprigs coriander

Cook the noodles in a large pan of boiling water for 2-3 minutes, then drain and divide between two bowls, dropping the beansprouts on top. In a large hot wok, fry the chilli and ginger in the vegetable oil for 15-20 seconds, then add the mushrooms, choi sum and spring onions. Season with salt and sugar, and stir fry for 2-3 minutes.

Spoon the stir fry over the beansprouts and noodles, and ladle over the hot miso soup. Scatter with coriander and serve.

Verdict:

This was a pretty nice combination. The mushrooms lent a sort-of earthiness which was balanced well by the warming ginger and chilli, and the umame miso soup. We did feel like there were too many noodles; we ended up saving about 1/3 of the whole meal for one person's lunch the next day. I think 150g would be a more sensible amount. The mushroom pack we bought had a king oyster mushroom in it, and that stood up to the stir frying considerably better than the oysters and enokis, which basically vanished. I would switch to just using king oyster and shiitake, or even chestnut mushrooms, or add the enokis and oysters only 1 minute before serving. Lastly, the flavours were balanced, but a bit samey. I'd serve this with a hot lemon tea, or a lemonade, to try to bring in some contrasting sourness, as it's missing that note entirely.

Prawn and Sweet Potato Fritters ('Ukoy')

We had a sad sweet potato hanging around in the cupboard that I wanted to use up. This recipe turned out to be a stunningly inefficient way to do that, but made totally delicious and great finger food. You could eat them as a starters, but we just made 25 or so and chowed down while watching a movie :)

Ingredient:

• 250ml boiling water
• 250g raw small prawns
• 150g plain flour
• 80g ground rice
• 30g cornflour
• 2 eggs
• black pepper
• 125g peeled and grated sweet potato
• 115g bean sprouts
• 4 spring onions, finely sliced
• 1 small garlic clove
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp mild vinegar

Cook the prawns in the boiling water (in a saucepan, presumably) for 3-4 minutes, until pink and just cooked. Drain, reserving the prawn stock and leaving both prawns and stock to cool for ten minutes or so. Pluck the heads off, and if the shells are tough (i.e. if you couldn't find really small prawns), shell them completely.

Put the flours and ground rice into a bowl and whisk in the eggs and the cooled prawn liquid; season well with black pepper and salt. Add the grated sweet potato, bean sprouts and spring onions, and fold gently to combine. Drop 1 to 1 1/2 tbsp of batter into a frying pan of hot oil, and top with 2-3 prawns, pushing into the batter and then flattening with a spatula. Fry gently so the sweet potato has time to cook through, about 2-3 minutes each side. Stack on a plate with kitchen paper.

Crush the garlic and combine with the salt and vinegar to form a dipping sauce. The fritters also work well with sweet chilli sauce.

Pad Thai

Tuesdays I have an evening telecon, so the lovely husband takes over the reins in the kitchen. I find the best results are achieved by giving him a detailed recipe, and placing all of the ingredients out where he can find them. And giving him about twice as long as I would need ;) Tonight he absolutely excelled with this recipe, again from taste.com.au. Although we halved the proteins, this was still a generous quantity of food, and I took some to lunch the next day. So cut down on the noodles if you're not super-hungry.

Ingredients:

• 250g packet flat rice noodles
• 2 lemons, juiced
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons peanut oil
• 1 chicken breast, thinly sliced
• 250g prawns, peeled, deveined
• 3 spring onions, thinly sliced diagonally
• 1/2 inch of small red chilli (or more, to taste), deseeded, finely chopped
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 cup bean sprouts
• 1/4 cup roasted peanuts, finely chopped, optional
• small bunch coriander leaves, roughly chopped
• lime wedges, to serve

Place noodles into a heat-proof bowl and cover with hot water. Stand until nearly tender - you still want a little bite to them, so that they stand up under stir-frying. Drain and rinse under cold water.Combine lemon juice, fish sauce and sugar in a jug. Heat a wok over high heat, with a little oil. Add the chicken.and stir-fry for 2 minutes until golden. Add the prawns, onions and chilli, and stir-fry for a further 2 to 3 minutes or until the prawns turn pink. Add the part-cooked noodles and stir-fry for another 2 minutes.

Add the lemon juice mixture to wok and toss to combine. Pour the beaten eggs over the noodles and stir into the noodles as they cook. Turn off the heat, add the bean sprouts and half the coriander, and toss well to combine everything together. Serve on plates topped with the remaining coriander leaves, peanuts, and lime wedges.