Thai Express Launceston

Long time since I blogged about something I ate. Anyway this is long overdue, I just never got around to blogging about it. There is a food court in Launceston called Food Hall along Brisbane Street and there's this stall called Thai Express. I doubt it has any affiliation to the Thai Express in Singapore though. Ate there quite a few times but after awhile I always seem to eat the same dish. Maybe because I'm a poor student and it's the cheapest one on the menu, but it also tastes good.

It's just called Thai soup noodles and you have a choice of chicken meat or fish balls. It's served in a clear broth with bean sprouts and pad thai noodles. The noodles are soft and slippery and you just slurp it up with the soup and meat. Great for a cold day! After adding the chilli flakes the soup becomes spicy yet some what salty. Not sure if it's MSG or something that makes it taste good but I just drink up all the soup anyway! Haha.

It's best when you add the chilli flakes to it to make it really spicy. Shiokness! Asian food is kinda hard to come back in Launceston so this is one of the kinds of comfort food for me. And at a steal of just AUD$6. I've never eaten something like this before back in Singapore or Thailand for that matter, so I'm not sure how it stacks up to food back home but I think this dish is still decent for Asian food in Launceston.

"Zha Jiang Mian" minced pork noodle

Hi Folks! Exams are over and it's been a really long time since I last blogged about food. Haven't had the time to do so till now. My friend Benny and I were quite bored and decided to experiment on making our own kind of zha jiang mian while we were in Launceston. Of course you can't compare it to the types you get in restaurants or anything but I think the taste is still pretty good. This was a real experiment as we just threw in all kinds of sauces and substituted the noodles with somen.

Ingredients:

Minced pork
Shitake mushrooms (dried or fresh should be fine)
Somen noodles
garlic, minced
Sweet dark soy sauce (or normal dark soy sauce, just add some sugar)
Light soy sauce
Sesame oil
corn flour
chilli powder (if you want a bit of spice)

1. Heat up pan and add oil. Fry garlic till a bit brown then add in minced pork and continue frying till colour changes.

2. Add in dark and light soy sauce to taste. The first time we made this I think we also added in a bit of powdered chicken stock and fish sauce (might not be so important though). Also add in sesame and chilli powder if you like. Add in some water for the sauce.



3. Throw in mushrooms and continue to stir the mixture. Allow the sauce to bring to a boil and let it boil for a while. Mix some corn flour with water and add it to the sauce to thicken it, making sure that you continue to stir the sauce while mixing in the corn flour. Concurrently while you're doing this you should be boiling water to cook your somen noodles.



4. Once your noodles is cooked and the sauce has thickened, mix your noodles with a bit of sesame oil, then pour the meat sauce mixture over it and serve.

Kimchi Fried Rice

Yes one exam down! Time to take a break and blog about some more food. This time round I have a guest showing me how to make his version of fried rice. In the kitchen we have Jay or Jin Kyu from Korea showing me how to cook kimchi fried rice using the left over kimchi which I made the last time.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup of Kimchi
1 cups of Rice
2 eggs
1 onion, sliced

optional items:
carrots
baby corn
potatoes
tuna
other meats


1. Heat up pan and add oil. Cut up the kimchi into small sized pieces and fry.

2. Fry for a few minutes before adding in your rice and mix together.

3. After frying rice for awhile start to throw in all your other ingredients like carrots, potatoes and corn and continue frying.

4. Crack eggs into bowl, add in onions and beat it up. Jay actually wanted to do something like what we call pattaya in Singapore which is to fry an egg and wrap it over the rice but he was lazy and tried a lazy man style but failed so he ended up just mixing in the eggs with the rice. Once eggs are cooked you can take it off the stove. Alternatively you can remove the rice from the stove and fry an omelett and then put the rice back in and wrap the egg around it.

(Hugh trying to be helpful in the kitchen)

And finally the end product as shown below! Presentation looks good huh?

Basically the process is pretty similar to how we would normally cook fried rice. It's just mainly the ingredients put inside, the core ingredient being kimchi of course, which is enough to flavour the dish. It's important to add the sauce from the kimchi into the rice of course, and you can also add in some gochujang for more heat. You can top it off with some tomato ketchup. Thanks Jay!

Dark Sauce Pork

My first exam is tomorrow but I decided to take some time off to blog about something new I've learned here in Tassie. Picked up this recipe from a Singaporean friend of mine called Linus who got it from his mother I believe. Lets just call it dark sauce pork or dao yu bak.

Ingredients:
300g pork (I used pork rashers which is basically 3 layer fatty pork), cubed or pieces
dark soy sauce
pepper
salt
approx 1/2 to 1 tbsp of sugar
chilli powder or flakes
10 whole clove herbs
10 cloves of garlic, smash it a bit

optional items:
hard boiled eggs
firm tofu, cubed
shitake mushrooms, sliced
onions, sliced

1. In a bowl mix together the pork with dark soy sauce and some pepper, making sure that all the pork is coated in the soy sauce. Leave it to sit and marinate while u prepare your other ingredients. If you want you can leave it the marinate for a few hours to allow the pork to soak up more flavour.



2. Once you're ready to cook, add some oil in your pan and fry your garlic till they start turning brown. Add in your pork and continue frying till it changes colour.

3. At this point, add in some water. Depending on your preference you can make this dish more saucy or watery. Add in the cloves, chilli flakes/powder, a bit of salt and sugar. (Adjust the amount of chilli or sugar according to your taste preference, some people prefer it more spicy/sweet whereas others don't) You will probably need to add in more dark soy sauce as well. Cover and leave it to simmer on lower heat. Stir occasionally.

Linus said that how long you leave it over the fire depends on you. The longer you leave it on the softer the meat should be I reckon. If you don't have the luxury of time then just make sure the meat is cooked and you can take it off the stove. I keep it over the fire for about an additional 30 minutes after the initial frying.

4. Approximitely 15 minutes into the simmering process you can add in stuff like hard boiled eggs, firm tofu and shitake mushrooms. Throw them in earlier if you don't intend to keep it over the stove for so long. On my most recent attempt at making this dish I also added onions which I thought were quite nice, but that's because I love onions. Be sure to stir it around now and then throughout the process, this will also allow the sauce to coat the eggs and tofu and change their colour and enhance their flavour.

Essentially this dish should have a somewhat salty, sweet and spicy flavour to it, with a hint of the clove herbs. Great with rice or you can do those kong bak bao kind of thing too I reckon. I'm just wondering if next time I should try adding some corn starch to thicken the sauce further... As well as trying to let it simmer for an even longer time, might taste even better! Well, experiment another time I guess! Hope I did justice to Linus mom's recipe. Thanks for this great recipe man!