March 12-13 Chilli Cashew Chicken Noodles Without the Cashews

March 12     Chilli Cashew Chicken Noodles Sans Cashews
March 13     chermoula salmon , baby seedling shoot salad and Jen's yam/purple yam fries

 I had such big plans to make something really elaborate Saturday night since I had been working like a dog all week and not only hadn't cooked anything at all, I hadn't eaten anything other than fruit, smart food, chips and gummy worms all week. 

We went to the Brickworks farmer's market in the morning where we ate three freshly made corn tortillas with black beans, salsa and pea sprouts and the amazing french fries with coarse salt and fresh thyme. I bought a delicious goat cheddar from Fifth Town Artisan Cheese Co from Picton, some beautiful baby seedling sprouts from Cookstown Greens and a really nice little bottle of organic EVOO from Greece. 

For lunch, Little Shack and I had sandwiches made with the goat cheddar, sliced tomato, lots of kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, some seedling sprouts and kewpie mayonnaise on toasted Roggenbrot.

Heaven.

Having taken some chicken breasts out of the freezer, I was planning to make a risotto or a pasta but nothing was coming to me. I saw the bag of sugar snap peas in the crisper made a snap decision to make these chilli chicken noodles that I haven't had for years from one of my favourite cookbooks, Off The Shelf, by Donna Hay. Carbs were in order but I wasn't all that concerned how they made their way into my stomach so rice noodles were sounding just as good as pasta or rice. I vaguely remembered this dish being too sweet so I cut the sugar down, changed the cashews to sliced almonds and added whatever veggies I had in the fridge and didn't use much chilli (I added more chilli sauce to the adult's bowls when we ate it). This was quick and easy and really, really tasty and turned out to be exactly what I didn't know I wanted.

Sunday, I found the recipe for salmon with chermoula and built our meal around that. I HAD to make Jen's oven fries with my purple yams and and an orange yam. I didn't have canned chipotle chillis so i just added some chipotle powder with the balsamic vinegar. I mixed the mayo with the ketchup on my plate and loved every minute of it. Because my kid is a weirdo, he doesn't like the orange yam fries but likes the purple yam fries. He does, on the other hand, like orange yams mashed into his mashed potatoes. The kid just doesn't always make sense.

Chilli Almond Chicken Noodles

*Adapted from Chilli Cashew Chicken Noodles from On The Shelf by Donna Hay

200g dried thick rice noodles

2 tbls vegetable oil

3 large shallots, cut into chunks

2 cloves garlic minced

1 tsp hot chilli sauce or fresh, seeded, chopped red chillies to taste

2 tbls sugar

1/2 carrot, sliced thin on the diagonal

1/4 large yellow pepper, sliced

1/4 cup green cauliflower in small florets

227g (8 oz) bag of sugar snap peas

handful of sliced almonds

2 tbls fish sauce

2 tbls soy sauce

2 tbls lemon juice

1/4 cup cilantro leaves

Bring a pot of water to the boil and cook the noodles for 3 minutes. Drain and run under cold water and set aside.

Heat a deep frying pan over med-high heat. Add the oil, the onions, chilli sauce or fresh chillies and sugar and cook for 2 minutes. Add the carrot slices and cook for another 2 minutes. Add the pepper and the cauliflower and stir fry for another minute. Push all of that to the side (or you can remove it and add it back in after the chicken is cooked if you like) and add the chicken. Cook the chicken, stirring for about 4 minutes or until it starts to get golden. Stir the chicken in with the vegetables and that is when you will add the fish sauce, soy sauce, lemon juice, almonds and the drained noodles to the pan. Cook, stirring, for another 3 or 4 minutes until it's heated through. Sprinkle with cilantro and serve with more hot sauce if you like.

I would have totally used cashews but I couldn't find them so I used almonds and it was really good too but If I make it again I will use cashews and maybe even cut the sugar down to 1 tbls if I am not going to add enough chillies to balance out the sweetness.

Little Shack didn't love this for some reason but we did. He was happy to eat some leftover bbq pork buns so it just meant more for us!