earth food

grown from the page at earthside.org/Food & in support of the forth-coming cookbook of the same name by June Perg Floyd

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Spicy Auto Fish Noodle Soup Recipe

Spicy Auto Fish Noodle Soup

This recipe is for one of a variet of newer dishes that fall into a a category we are calling 'autofoud'.

A common characteristic of all items which are dubbed 'autofoud' (or: 'auto-food') is simply that they are food items prepared and served by restaurants or fast-food places /which are used as ingredients in other, consumer-prepared foods. For example, the fish in this recipe is an autofoud, and hence is called 'autofish' (or: auto-fish)

Ingredients:

1/2 ten piece auto-fish dinner from [Cap'n D's] (approx 5 pcs auto-fish)
1/2 side order of auto-hush puppies [same as above]
approx 2 dozen little plastic packages of malt vinegar (bottled malt vinegar may be substituted)
1 package [Top] ramen noodles (N.I.N.A. - Nissin Is Not Autofoud)
soy sauce (to taste)
North Korean Chinese Regular Hot Chili Sauce [see:Cock Sauce:Walmart]
Water (approx 0.35 liter)

Required Equipment:

chopsticks
bowl
microwave oven
refrigerator

Preparation:

Get the stuff
Eat 1.5 auto-hush puppies and 2 or 3 pieces of the auto-fish while it's all still steamy hot from the drive-thru, with liberal use of the malt vinegar over alL (this step is important to keep you from getting too hungry or perhap even starving duing preparation, which will typically take at least four or five hours)
Leaving the remaining autofoud in it's white styrofoam bounding box, place the box in a (working) refrigerator for about 8 hours, until cold.
Rediscover the box of autofoud in the fridge.
[Eat the remaing 0.5 auto-hush puppie - this step is optional and may be performed out of order]
Crush/crumble the package of [Top(tm) brand from Nissin Corp] ramen noodles into a deep glass bowl (Pyrex is good, this is going to get hot - if Pyrex is not available, ceramic dishes also work well; we recommend you avoid plastic cookware in the microwave - or in general, for that matter - nasty stuff, plastic, except maybe the kind McD's serves - expensive, too); add water (don't quite cover the noodles), and microwave on high for 3 minutes or until the water is steaming; stir w/ chopstick
Break up the pieces of fish into the bowl of [now steaming - be careful] noodles; stir w/ chopstick;
Add the seasonings to the bowl of what has now become soup:
1. a dash of malt vinegar
2. hot chili sauce (squeeze the bottle until it feels right)
3. soy sauce (add last)
Stir w/ chopstick
Enjoy

Tips and Suggestions:

if you like the small, salt-water crustaceans called 'shrimp', you could substitute auto-shrimp for the auto-fish in this recipe
Other flavors of Vinegar may be chosen to complement the rice vinegar in the soy sauce.
Eat with chopsticks, drink the broth from the bowl
Reeses Peanut Butter Cup for desert
For a beverage, we suggest that tea (as you like it) or a chilled mixture of sugar-water and lime juice goes well with this dish.
ramen noodles are done when they turn whitish and have a consistency about halfway between cruchy and mushy
throw away the 'flavor sachet' that comes in the ramen noodle package; it contains extreme (in a human context) levels of sodium and may be dangerous to consume; also, it covers the taste of the other ingredients if used; note that it needs to be disposed of properly - the only animals that will eat the stuff seem to be rats and roaches, and flavor packet contents are widely believed by the earthside community to be extremely toxic, and a move is afoot to give the dry, volatile powder a "controlled substance" status within The Realm until and unless certain prepared food manufacturers quit putting these things in the noodle packages; the stuff is just too hazardous to have lying about, and should have warning label

Labels: 0x0000, autofoud, chili sauce, earthside, fish, microwave, noodles, sake, soup, soy sauce, spicy, tea

posted by pd wilson # 16:49

Saturday, January 27, 2007

leftover tortilla integrity

Ingredients

Note: this one is probably not easily repeatable - or at least, most food techs who are just interested in preparing a meal for consumption today won't go to the trouble of e.g. buying a package of tortillas and leaving them opened in the crisper drawer of the fridge for 2 weeks just to reproduce the condition of the torillas. I suppose a similar dish could be prepared using rice that hasn't been frozen, and fresh tortillas. Fortunately, Ghetto Kitches Labs maintains a substantial inventory of various specialized ingredients specifically for these types of experiments.

Most of a quart of white rice - left over from an order of egg foo yung. It sat in the fidge until it froze. Nothing wrong with that, really, but it needed defrosting.
Four whole wheat tortillas sat in the drawer in the bottom of the fridge in a torn package until the exposed part of each of the tortillas had gotten quite dried out and hard.
A 7 ounce package of Starkist tuna
olive oil, garlic powder, soy sauce, chili sauce

Directions

Remove the frozen rice from the cardboard chinese food container, placing it in the large [microwavable] glass mixing bowl [Anchor Hocking]
Adjust the "temperature" dial of the microwave to be somewhere around "medium" - this setting changes during cooking, so the precision used in this step is not particularly important - the idea is to thaw the rice gently, then heat it up causing it to give up some moisture to the tortillas
Place the bowl in the microwave and lay the partly dried out tortillas over the top - on top of the rice
Start the microwave - the timer setting doesn't really matter, since the m/w has to be stopped frequently to check the state of the rice and the tortillas
After about a minute or a minute and half, stop the m/w and check - if the rice is not thawed, run it some more. It may be useful to adjust the temp, but if the rice gets too hot to quickly, the rest of this won't work right. Also, if the tortillas get too hot too soon, they will get too tough or (in the extreme case) too crispy.
Once the rice has thawed, but before it gets hot, move the tortillas underneath the rice - a spoon might be useful for this, but is not required.
Drizzle some olive oil (enough to plausibly make its way down thru the rice and onto the tortillas) over the top of the rice, increase the temperature setting incrementally and run the m/w some more. Repeat this step until the rice is steaming, and the tortillas have softened enough to eat.
Take the bowl with the rice and tortillas out of the m/w, open the tuna and empty it over the rice.
Add garlic powder, chili sauce, and soy sauce on top of the tuna, to taste.
Stir the rice and spices into the rice [use chopsticks], then [again w/ the chopsticks] drag one of the tortillas out from under the rice - most of the way - capture some of the of the rice and tuna onto the tortilla and role it up - if you want extra chili sauce, this would be the time to add it. Repeat this step with each of the tortillas until the tune & rice are taken.
Enjoy!

Notes

This is good with coffee.

This dish is significantly more complex and takes quite a bit longer to prepare than most of the stuff we do here.

Additional spices and/or different types of oils, rice, or tortillas would give the dish a slightly different character using the same procedure.

Labels: chili sauce, garlic powder, microwave, olive oil, rice, tuna

posted by pd wilson # 06:12

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

starting over again

Ramen noodles in the microwave - a different microwave now, and the hotpot got left at the lab.

Get some thinly sliced (shaved) chicken breast from the deli (the "buffalo chicken breast" is good). Put a good hand full of the chicken in the bowl. Drizzle some walnut oil over it, then add some of the powdered ginger, garlic powder, and chili sauce. Note that this chili sauce is different; it has a picture of a duck in flight instead of a chicken on the bottle, and it seems slightly sweeter. We will keep the bottle and compare the ingredients.

Put some water in a cup (we're using a styrofoam coffee cup from the Citgo store). Put the cup of water in the microwave for about 3 minutes (this is a slow microwave) to get it hot. While the water is heating get a package of Top ramen noodles and - before opening it - lay it on the counter and hit it a few times to crush the noodle (not too hard, or the cello wrap will pop open, and the noodles will go everywhere except into the bowl). Empty the crushed noodle into the bowl on top of the chicken and spices. Discard the soup mix packet and the cello wrap.

When the microwave dings (or beeps, as the case may be), pour the water over into the bowl over the noodles and chicken. You probably won't want all the water unless you want this to be a soup - we use about about 6 ounces - the noodle will soak this up, for the most part, leaving a little broth.

Stir.

You could cover the bowl and let the noodle soak up the water, but it's cold enough in here that we wanted to continue to apply heat, so: put the bowl back in the microwave and set it for another 3 minutes (2 might be enough). Wait [impatiently] for the m/w to ding again.

Be careful when you get this out of the microwave - it will be hot enough to burn you. Set it aside to let it cool before trying to eat it.

Labels: chicken, chili sauce, garlic powder, ginger, microwave, noodles, ramen, water

posted by pd wilson # 22:28

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

tofu and wild rice

Ingredients:

1 pkg organic extra firm tofu
1 pkg uncle ben's pre-cooked wild rice
thai peanut sauce
"rooster" chili sauce
some chili oil I found in target
chopped garlic
some powdered ginger root mixed with sake (about an oz)

Directions:

put the tofu, oil, peanut sauce, chili sauce, garlic, and galanga mixture into a bowl and microwave it for 2 minutes (time may vary)
when the tofu finishes, put the package of rice in for 90 seconds (don't forget to open the top of it, or it makes a disturbing 'pop' sound at about 63 seconds into the cook cycle :D)
when the rice is done, put it in the bowl with the tofu, stir it up (w/ chopsticks)
enjoy!

This is basically another one of my "meal-in-a-bowl" specialties - quite tasty! It would be good with some chicken or beef broth, too, but I only have 1 liter cartons of those, and didn't want to open one, since I'll be leaving before I could use it up, and the weather is not cold enough to keep it chilled once I take it out of the fridge.

Labels: chili oil, chili sauce, garlic, ginger, microwave, rice, sake, tofu

posted by pd wilson # 03:09