Teriyaki chicken with noodles and stir fried vegetables

I was making this up as I went along to be honest. Bit of a panic, but it turned out very nice.

This serves 3 people.

Ingredients:

6 heads of pak choi - chopped bite sized

Half a Chinese cabbage - chopped bite sized

300g of dried egg noodles

3 breasts of chicken

An onion - roughly chopped

A few cloves of garlic

900ml of miso soup

1 Yellow pepper - cut into strips

150 ml of Teriyaki sauce

The miso soup can be bought dried in packets. I got mine in Superquinn. Alternatively you can get soy bean paste in an Asian market and use it along with some soy sauce to make up a broth. Depending on the soy paste you get you may need to experiment with quantities to get this right.

I got the Chinese Cabbage in an Asian market. They keep for weeks in the fridge. Even halved it was fine for a week.

Method:
If you are using home made teriyaki sauce, make it up now and leave aside until you need it. It is better if you can make it in advance, let it cool completely and put it in the fridge. It will thicken up and you can heat it quickly in the microwave when you need it. The thicker it is the better for clinging to the chicken in the finished dish.

Heat a little oil in a non stick pan and fry the chicken breasts. Turn them occasionally to make sure they don't burn and try not to over cook them or they will be a bit dry.

While the chicken is cooking heat a little oil in a wok and add some minced garlic. Add the chopped vegetables to the wok and stir vigorously.

Put the noodles into a pot of boiling water - no need for salt. They should take about 3 minutes to cook, but check the instructions on the packet.

Make up the miso soup with boiling water and leave to stand.

The vegetables should be ready in about 2-3 minutes. Check that they are done to your liking.
Drain the noodles and divide them between the bowls. Divide the vegetables between the bowls. Take the chicken breasts out of the pan and slice them into strips. Place these on top of the veg. Next pour the miso over the whole lot. Finally pour the teriyaki over the chicken.

Ebi chili men

This is ebi chili men. It comes from the Wagamama cookbook.
I got the prawns in Aldi. They were ready cooked and the recipe calls for raw, but they worked out just fine.
One of the best things about this book is the list of sauces at the start. It tells you how to make stuff like proper teriyaki sauce and for this dish: chili sauce. Once you have the sauce made the dishes are largely stir fried vegetables, a protein like chicken with noodles. There are very nice broths made from soy bean paste and miso too. The dishes are very simple and quick. Once you have gotten a few of the staples in from an Asian market, or a decent supermarket you are flying.
I got this book for the library a couple of weeks ago and bought it after making a couple of recipes from it. Its one of our favorites now.

Tuna Teriyaki with stir fried vegetables and noodles

I got some frozen Tuna Steaks from Aldi the other day and was looking for something to do with them. If you overcook tuna steaks they are tough and dry, so rare or at worst medium is the way to go. I made a teriyaki salmon last week and had some of the sauce left in the fridge, so this seemed like a winner. I was also in the Oriental Emporium on Abbey Street last week, so the fridge had plenty of nice Chinese greens that needed to be used.


This serves 2 people.
You will need a wok for stir frying the vegetables, a pot to cook the noodles and a pan to cook the tuna. (Ideally a griddle pan to give them the nice lines and not over cook them.)

Ingredients
2 Frozen Tuna Steaks from Aldi (others brands are obviously fine, but not canned)
4-6 heads of Pak Choy
½ a head of Chinese cabbage(Also called Napa Cabbage)
1 Carrot finely chopped
A couple of green chillies chopped small
About 100 ml of teriyaki sauce. You can use bought, but this is better.
Enough noodles for 2 people. About 100-150 g per person should be fine.

Defrost the tuna steaks. I did this out of the fridge for about 10 hours. Make sure they are fully defrosted before you start as the centre will likely be cold as they don't get cooked very much. The microwave will not help here as it will slightly cook the steaks and make them tough. Wash the steaks and dry them with some kitchen paper. Rub a little oil on them. Sunflower is fine or a non-extra virgin olive kind. Extra Virgin will burn when you cook at high temp. Season them with salt and pepper on both sides.

Chop the vegetables up roughly. The Pak Choy and the Chinese Cabbage will wilt a lot, so don't need too much chopping to make them manageable. 
Fill a pot for the noddles with boiling water. Bring this back to the boil.
Heat the teriyaki sauce up. I did this in the microwave and it came out fine.
Heat the wok up very hot until it is almost smoking. Then add the oil to it and throw the chopped chillies in there. Stir fry this for a few seconds to flavour the oil. Then add all of your chopped up vegetables. Try to keep these moving as much as you can.
Put the tuna steaks on the hot pan.
Plunge the noodles into the boiling water.
Don't panic! Each of these things takes about 2½ minutes, so everything should finish at the same time.
Flip the tuna after a minute. Make sure the noodles do not boil over. Keep stirring the vegetables.
As soon as you are happy with the vegetables turn them off. Drain the noodles and divide them up between 2 large bowls. Divide the vegetables up and arrange them on top. Next slice the tuna into strips. This makes it easier to eat with chopsticks and looks nicer too. Pour the teriyaki sauce over the whole lot.
The instructions are quite long, but this is a very easy recipe. Well worth getting the ingredients together for.

Stir fried beef

Bit of leftover steak from yesterday's dinner. Aldi finest range, striploin. Gorgeous stuff. So tender you could eat it with a spoon.

Just had a little bit left - about half a steak. So sliced it thin.
Fried some ginger in a wok with hot veg oil. Added plenty of garlic and an onion, finely chopped. Then a carrot chopped small. Made a bit of a bags of this at first and had to fish the carotts out to chop them smaller. Hate rock hard carrots in a stir fry. Must quarter them lengthways first next time.
Threw the steak in on top of the whole lot and gave it all a good stir frying.
Put the noodles into a saucepan and tipped a kettle of boiling water on top. They were a bit mushy when I got to them. Noodles seem to be a bit delicate when it comes to cooking. Must plunge them into boiling water next time and time them. Can experiment with the cooking time then to make sure I get them right.
Added a sachet of sauce from Aldi too. Sweet and spicy this one was called. And it was vinegary crap. Kinda messed up a good start by chucking this in. It did not relieve much of the effort either. Will make my own stir fry sauce next time.
All in all not a great meal, but it did the job and was not too much work after a day at the office.
Might try something like this next time:

http://www.ivu.org/recipes/chinese/easy-peasy.html