Tag Archives: kitchen

Cha Chiang Mein

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Julie at the cooktop

My mouth was watering after watching a segment on Martha Stewart’s Noodle Show.  There was this little Chinese lady standing over the cooktop with a big wok and speaking in broken English.  “We make, uh, dish, Cha Chiang Mein, uh, like, uh Chinese spaghetti.”  Awesome!  Note: We really like this dish at Yu’s Mandarin in Schaumburg.  However, the dish on television was more like home-style cooking.  Yu’s Mandarin has a sauce that’s as dark as mahogany and as thick as molasses. We’d probably be afraid of how much soy sauce is actually in it.

So, I looked up the recipe on Martha Stewart and tweaked it to how we would make it, with what we have.

Cha Chianh Mein ingredientsChinese cooking wine

  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 medium onion, chopped fine
  • 3 cloves garlic (I’d use more next time), minced
  • 1 lb. ground pork
  • 1 lb. spaghetti

Sauce

  • 1-1/2 tbsp. soy sauce
  • 2 tsp. black bean sauce (found in Asian stores or aisle)
  • 1 tbsp. hoisin sauce (not the same as plum sauce)
  • 2 tbsp. Chinese cooking wine (white wine)
  • 2 tbsp. water
  • 1 tsp. sugar

Cook spaghetti according to directions.

Prepped onions and garlic

While pasta is cooking:  Prep your garlic and onion.  Mix all sauce ingredients in a bowl or mixing cup.  Should be about 1/2 cup of liquid.  Heat up the vegetable oil in your wok or pan over med-high heat.  Add garlic and onions, saute until they become slightly translucent.  Add sauce mixture and stir until heated – a few minutes.  Add ground pork and break it up as it cooks.  Continue stirring/breaking up meat until water/liquid has evaporated.  Meat should look dark/seasoned.  This will be about 10-15 min.

Cooking Cha Chiang MeinAdding pork

Finishing the Cha Chiang MeinCha Chiang Fan instead

Serve meat mixture over spaghetti, but in my case, I had white rice available.  So now it’s Cha Chiang Fan instead of Mein.

Crazy Cake

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I read about this in an old Bon Appetit magazine. The author of the article was recalling how her aunts argued over whose chocolate (crazy) cake was better. Why called “crazy” cake? Because of the way it’s made. No eggs, few ingredients that can be found in the pantry, mixed by hand in the pan that you’re baking it in… I LOVE this because it is so SIMPLE!

  • 1-1/2 c. flour
  • 1 c. sugar
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • 3 tbsp. cocoa
  • 6 tbsp. vegetable oil
  • 1 tbsp. white vinegar (I’ve used black cherry balsamic, but it’s a little pricey and the flavor doesn’t shine through like I thought it would)
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • 1 c. warm water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift dry ingredients together in 8 x 8 baking pan. Make 3 depressions/wells and fill with liquids. Pour in water and mix with fork until most lumps are gone. DO NOT beat. Bake for 30 minutes, or check center with toothpick until it comes out clean. If you’re really confident with your baking, the cake is done when the center should spring up if you push slightly with your finger.  Frost the cake with your favorite flavor icing… I like vanilla.

sugar spice and everything nice

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Spent a lot of the day watching the Inauguration coverage. I have to say, I do enjoy all the orchestration, the performances, the weird trivia (I learned about the President’s limousine), the tv cameras following every move down to what they’re eating for lunch (which by the way sounded very intriguing… venison, shellfish… fancy!). I don’t know, I guess it’s voyeurism at its best. I did feel proud today to be living in the land of the free, home of the brave. There aren’t that many places where there is such peaceful transitions of power. At least it seems like that.

I also spent a very small amount of time reorganizing our spice rack. I don’t know why I bother. The little one will be in it again as soon as I turn my back. I just let him. There isn’t too much in there he can harm or can harm him, really. He’s out of the “put-everything-in-my-mouth” phase and has been for a while. I tease that maybe he’ll be the kid with the fine palate. He pulls out the small spice rack, and takes the little bottles and puts them on the floor. Then he says, “Mom! See!” and runs away. That’s about all he does.

Our spices bottles used to have that McCormick red plastic cover, then I started buying the fancier McCormick’s spices. We still have bottles (empty) from the no-name brand from our wedding registry, but some are now housing fresh spices, like the ones you see here from one of my favorite places, The Spice House. I can’t believe how nearby it is, and how long it actually took us to visit the location in Evanston. Abby can’t stand it, poor thing. She smells the place 1-1/2 blocks away when we’re walking. And, Ollie, he’s a little “klepto” thinking he’s shopping while he takes the little bottles and puts them in the stroller bag. People, if you find yourself in Evanston, and like cooking, go here. I always want to cook more when I visit, and I want to try new recipes.

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Our friends, Jeff and Tricia, gave us a baker’s gift set from here at least 4 years ago, and it was only two summers ago that I actually stepped into the storefront. We’re loving the Mexican spice collection given by my sister-in-law and her fiance.

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Look! I think it’s original “dot matrix” printed labels. Classic. We keep refilling these bottles.

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Here’ another favorite that Eastman brought home from a cooking class at Viking Cooking School in Glenview. This is muy delicioso!

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Okay, here’s our growing collection of yummy teas from TeaLula, our local tea shop. I LOVE the selections here. So many to choose from. You’ll find Ollie and myself there some mornings just hanging out with the owners, Sheila and Fred. I was considering making my own chai spice blend, but thought, 1) I already have green tea chai flavored, and 2) I should just buy some from The Spice House where they’ve already figured out a nice mix.

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