Look! I made real dinner!

As I drove home tonight, I knew I wanted to cook up some of the CSA bok choy. There was a piece of Copper River salmon in the freezer from when I bought a huge slice at Costco and divided it up for later. Because I am weak, I also added some noodle crack. More on that later, I promise.

The bok choy I just sliced and steamed and then tossed in Som’ Good sauce. My mom first found it at a craft fair in Hawaii and now you can find it in Shirokiya (a major Japanese/Hawaiian store – like a department store with food). It’s really good on just about anything. The salmon was prepared in a way that borrows from my mom’s oyster sauce salmon. For Thanksgiving, she usually takes a salmon fillet (like from Costco), smears it with oyster sauce, then spreads regular mayo over that, sprinkles on green onions and then bakes it for about 40 minutes. I had this leftover mayo from a fried green bean recipe test:

It’s actually a pretty cool recipe (that I can’t share here… yet) that is just milk, garlic, cilantro, lemon juice, and oil. It whips up into a mayonnaise that is great for dipping and spreading. After eating it with the fried green beans, I found myself spreading it on garlic toast chips. And I still had a little crock of it. So, I figured that it’s like mayo, my mom put mayo on salmon, I’m going to put this on the salmon and bake it. So I did. 40 minutes at 350ºF and because I took the skin off and placed it on the foil separately I also got a crispy little salmon skin chip. Yum.

Have you noticed that I don’t use real recipes much? Because I just noticed it right now, typing out my dinner. Actually, I do use recipes when I bake. I’m not good enough to improvise with baked goods. Savory dishes, lunches and dinners, I can whip up and throw together and it usually comes out well.

Now, on to the noodle crack. Did I come up with that? No, Jayden admits that this dish is addictive and very much crack-like. When I first read the recipe, I thought it sounded pretty good. I’ve made egg noodles in Som’ Good sauce before, with the garlic/sweet/salty combination being very good, so why not the Garlic Scallion Noodles? I actually bought my first bottle of fish sauce to make this dish. I used the egg noodles I had in the freezer, another treat hand-imported from Hawaii:

I use the whole package (2 small bags of noodles) to make Jayden’s recipe. The first time I added broccoli to try and make myself feel better about it. Then I tried to rationalize that 3 Tb. butter over 4 servings is really very minimal. Then I laughed because I could easily have eaten the whole pan all by myself. I only ate half because T came home and was hungry and I would never let him go hungry, no matter how selfishly I want to hoard yummy food. I am nice like that.  I also feel that it’s not that bad because I don’t always use 3 Tb. butter.  I just grab whatever leftover end of the butter stick is in the fridge.  Sometimes it’s about 3 Tb.  Sometimes it’s more like 2.  It’s always more than 1 Tb, though.  And rarely is it ever more than 4 Tb.  So, see?  The average is much less than you think and it’s okay!

Anyway, this time I just made the noodles, figuring that with the salmon and bok choy I would be too full to gorge on noodle crack (this is what I call it now, “Garlic Scallion Noodles” takes too long to say). Because I made myself eat the salmon and the bok choy first, I was indeed too full to eat a pan of noodles. Even with the crispy edges and buttery garlic sweetness. Mmm… oh, yum yum yum. If you make these noodles once, every time you pass the noodles in your freezer while looking for skinless chicken breasts you’ll briefly consider bagging the chicken and just having noodle crack for dinner. Every time you see noodles. You’ll remember the buttery crispness that the noodles get when they sit in the pan and fry a bit. You’ll start smacking your lips at the garlic butter with sweet brown sugar taste that you get to lick up. You won’t even taste the fish sauce, but you know that it makes a difference having it there. Then you’ll remember that you can scarf down a whole pan by yourself and you will come to your senses, ignore the noodles, and resume searching for the chicken. Once in a while, though, long after your last batch so as not to raise suspicion of your addiction, you will make these noodles when someone else is around to share in the yumminess and keep you in check. Then, and only then, under the oblivious supervision of someone who loves you, you surrender to the noodle crack and feel at peace.

In order to prevent me from eating the leftover noodles from the fridge, in the dark, quickly so as not to be caught, I made myself a simple dessert of a sliced CSA peach and a scoop of chocolate ice cream. It was almost good enough to satiate me. If I finish this up, brush my teeth, and then hop into bed, I think I’ll be safe.