NAME THAT NOODLE

The Thais have Jasmine rice.  The Laos consume a glutinous rice called ‘sticky rice.  And, the Penangians have noodles.  To be fair Thais and Laotians have some noodle dishes as well, and, Penangians have some served with rice.  After all here in Penang Duck Rice wouldn’t be the same if the sliced crispy skin duck came on a pile of noodles instead of a bed of steaming rice.

I wish I had kept track of the noodles I have consumed here.  And, as we in the US make a noodle dish using just one noodle (spaghetti for example) a bowl of prawn mee, a fragrant soup with small shrimp and beansprouts swimming in a spicy broth contains glass noodles along with noodles made of wheat which resemble spaghetti.

Speaking of spaghetti, one of my dishes below, pork with cracklings and noodles looks suspiciously like pasta we would get at the local grocery store.

I think of noodles as being in three general categories: wheat, rice, and mung bean.  I guess my sub categories for wheat noodles would be light color and dark color, tender and chewy.  For rice noodles it would be thin to thicker width, and freshness ranging from fresh ready to cook noodles which are flexible but have quite a bit of texture before cooking to the angel, pillowy soft rice noodle that is pure heaven to eat.  Finally, we know mung bean noodles (made from mung bean flour) as glass or thread noodles.

One my real favorites is chee cheong fun shown below.  These oh so soft rice noodles are traditionally served with three different sauces.

This delicious Cantonese chicken dish came with a noodle favorite from China - a dark wheat chewy noodle.

You see yet another noodle being finished off to go into my Hokkien Mee

You'll see some medium width rice noodles mixed in with the bean sprouts in my Hokkien Chicken

There are even more in the soup that accompanies the chicken.

And the noodles you get in Mee Goreng, when mixed with the Sambal Balacan, really resembles a plate of pasta with spicy tomato sauce in both appearance and taste.

Expect to see different noodles on your plate at Chez Greenbrier and you may also be treated (or subjected to depending how they come out) my version of fresh rice noodles.  

Let’s go back to that bowl of prawn mee that I mentioned early on.  The broth might have a little shrimp kick to it, but it is almost entirely made up of water and a healthy dose of salbal balacan.  Balacan is a shrimp paste that is fermented and dried into a block.

I don’t think I am going to far afield here by saying that sambal basically means a chili based sauce.  Put in the chilies and you have sambal.  Add dried shrimp paste and you have sambal balacan.

Go back to the basic sambal, add some salt and vinegar to those smashed chilies and you have sambal oelek.  I have a jar of shrimp paste at home in the fridge.  It is a relative of sambal balacan.

In fact if you really get into it you'll find that many countries have their own version: Indonesian Terasi, in Thailand it's Kapi (which is an essential ingredient in nam phrik), Hom Ha in southeastern China, and on and on.  This make me think we should have a shrimp paste tasting one day at Chez Greenbrier.

It has taken several paragraphs for me to get around to what I was thinking up there when I mentioned prawn mee.  You will need a good sambal balacan for your Malaysian dishes.  Be it soup or stir fry, sambal balacan finds its way into many of them.

When I went hunting through my pictures for 'noodle' pictures I was struck by two of the candid shots I have taken here.

The first one I title 'Post Luncheon al Fresco Nap

The title of the other one is "If You Think I'm Getting In There, You're Nuts!

Bon Appetit.