Pad Thai "Noodles"

I have come across many grain free noodles recipes on the internet that used  zucchini, squash, cucumber, sweet potatoes to substitute for noodles, but had never tried making it myself. I have a bumper crop of zucchini in my garden this year and been trying to give them away. Then I thought about these zucchini noodle recipes.

So I decided to try making Pad Thai with shredded zucchini today. It turned out a bit more wet than rice noodle pad thai as the zucchini release quite a bit of water when cooked. I also mixed in the eggs with zucchini like I'd normally do with pad thai, the eggs became a bit runny. Next time, I'd scramble the eggs first and set aside, and toss with the noodles at the end.

"Som Tum"

Traditonal Som Tum, a Thai dish is made with green papaya. Since I didn't have any green papayas handy (plus they are hard to find in groccery store sometimes), I substituted green papaya with shredded zucchini and kohlrabi which I had harvested a couple of days ago from my garden. 

The texture of kohlrabi was very close to green papaya as it was crunchy. Zucchini worked well too, but maybe made the salad just a bit watery. Besides substituting green papaya with zucchini and kohlrabi, I added some mint (from my garden) to the salad.

Roasted cauliflower with carrot top pesto

On the weekend, I have bought some carrots with the greens still intact. I have always wondered why don't we eat the carrot greens. So I googled about it and found some recipes for making carrot top pesto. It's basically chopped carrot greens, olive oil, almonds/walnut, Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper, all processed together in a food processor.

I have been having the pesto with rice pasta in the last couple days. Today, I wanted to try something different. Again, I googled recipes that use pesto, and a found roasted cauliflower tossed with pesto. Roast cauliflower with a bit of olive oil, and salt and pepper. When done, toss them with pesto. It tasted so good!

 

First trial of the food dehydrator

Strawberries, pineapples, apples and banana slices all ready to be dehydrated. 

Homemade Pho Sate

Got up this morning and saw that there's a rainfall warning in effect, all I could think of was a hot bowl of pho sate soup. I had bought some beef soup bones a month ago, and still sitting in the freezer. So, I got it out, and started making the broth. After searching for some Pho Bo recipes online, I decided to go with the one from www.vietworldkitchen.com (http://www.vietworldkitchen.com/blog/2008/10/pho-beef-noodle-soup.html), which included spices like star anise, cloves, cinnamon sticks. I skipped the fish sauce, which I know was one of the most important ingredients in Vietnamese cuisine! I substituted with a bit of tamari sauce.

Now the sate part... I looked for sauces at a couple of Asian markets but couldn't find any sate sauce that contained no MSG or peanuts (can't have them due to allergy). So, I decided to make my own. Again, Viet World Kitchen had a recipe for vietnamese style sate chile sauce (http://vietworldkitchen.typepad.com/blog/2007/07/lemongrass-chil.html), so, I just followed it. I used all the ingredients besides peanut oil (substituted with olive oil), red chili (substitued with jalapenos cause I couldn't find any red ones!), and siracha sauce (which has misc preservative that I wasn't sure about).

Voila! 

Despite no fish sauce, the soup turned out good. The broth could be simmered a little longer (I cooked it for only 3 hours).

A Tray of Goodness

I've heard a lot of good health benefits about wheatgrass but had never tried it myself. On the weekend, I saw a beautiful tray of organic wheatgrass at the farmers market, so I decided to give it a try.

I cut a handful of grass everyday to put in my smoothie or squeeze it through my juicer with other fruits and vegetables. It doesn't have much of a strong taste to it, so it was easy to combine wheatgrass into smoothies and juices.

After 6 days, this is what's left. I've been watering and giving the wheatgrass lots of sunshine by placing it outside for a few hours a day. After a few days, the patch that I had cut earlier started to grow taller. The grower of these wheatgrass told me that it will last for about a week. It's hard to tell from the picture, but some tip of the grass has started to turn yellow.

Thai Cabbage Wrap

I have been trying different vegetable leaves for making wraps. I find collard, lettuce, and cabbage leaves worked the best. This dish uses collard and cabbage leaves. Cabbage leaves needed a little more time to get softened in hot water.

For the filling, I stir fried some onions, garlic, peppers, carrots, kohlrabi, mint, and mung bean noodles (aka glass noodles). For the sauce, I mixed together some lime juice, mint, chilli, miso paste, honey, and almond butter.

You can probably use any vegetable-noodles combo for the filling. And use peanut butter instead of almond butter if you want to make it more Thai.