Loadsa Mushrooms(mushroom chow mein?)

Zziggi

Pal wrote:

Takeaway secrets are actually pretty easy. For a chinese:

Get any Ken Hom book. Buy the cheapest, most tasteless meat you can find: Tescos value meat is similar in quality to catering company meat as it contains the requisit amount of added water and chemicals designed to increase it's purchase weight.

When cooking your chosen recipe ensure you add lots of MSG to make it taste good, then when it is almost cooked, put it in a plastic container and freeze it. A week later when you want to eat it, defrost rapidly in a microwave and reheat quickly in a wok in order to make sure that the food is ready in under 10 minutes. If you like you can pretend to yourself that it has been freshly prepared.

Then put the food back in a plastic container, and pay an recent arrival in the UK with little command of the english language £2 an hour to collect it from your house. Wait an hour and half while he drives it around town on his moped, until he rings you and asks for directions back to your house.

Wait another half an hour then collect the cold food from the delivery man on your doorstep. Give him a £20 note and wait for a hour while he counts out your change in pennies.

Close the front door and remember to feel slightly guilty about not giving him a tip.

Serve it onto plates, then heat it up again in the microwave for 5 minutes, before serving to everyone in turn. Make sure you serve any child aged between 2 and 10 first. This ensures that they have finished eating by the time you have sat down to eat your reheated food, and will ensure that you spend your meal listening to them whine about wanting to leave the table and watch telly.

Sit on sofa feeling slightly sick, watch big brother. Swear to go on healthy diet "tomorrow" while debating whether to reheat those sweet and sour pork balls that were leftover.

The rest I will leave up to you, but suggest that shouting at your bored kids when they start flicking leftover food around with their forks really adds to the family atmosphere.

ABSOLUTELY! :rotfl:

Downsizing__for_sanity

Yep, read the article about MSG in the Observer Food Monthly - MSG apparently increases the taste of "umami" in food - a flavour that seaweed, asparagus, marmite, cheese and walnuts have, amongst other foods. MSG is chemically identical to the glutamate in these foods, and the article was saying that the first big food scare of our time - MSG - wasn't really well researched.

Pal

I was discussing MSG with a dietician a few weeks ago. Apparently MSG is just a more "potent" artificial salt that your body finds harder to metabolise than natural foods, presumably including the glutomate mentioned in the article. So eating a lot of MSG tends to lead to water retention when mixed with a fairly high fat western diet. It also apparently contributes to high blood pressure, just as high levels of normal salt does.

I would guess that, on average, people in asian countries tend to eat healthier than the average westerner does, so an increase in salt has less of a negative impact when people are calculating statistics.

Personally I have no idea if any of the above is true or not, but why would I want to eat an artifical chemical if I can simply avoid it? Why take any risk at all with an additive that is unnecessary?

Mushrooms on toast anyone?

apprentice_tycoon

Monosodium Glutamate used to be made by Knorr and retailed as a product called - if memory serves - Savour

misty

Probably a tad late for tea but I found this Shiitake Mushroom and Vegetable Chow Mein here http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/shiitakemushroomandv_67783.shtml
can't do fancy links sorry. I use the BBC site sometimes (obviously after checking MSE doesn't have it!!)




Ingredients
2 strips of medium egg noodles (about 150g/5oz)
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 garlic clove, crushed
100g/4oz shiitake mushrooms, halved or quartered
100g/4oz baby corn, halved or quartered
100g/4oz sugar snap peas
½ red pepper, de-seeded and very finely sliced
1x225g can bamboo shoots, drained
4-6 spring onions, shredded
couple handfuls beansprouts
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp soft light brown sugar
2 tbsp rice wine or dry sherry



Method
1. Cook the noodles according to the packet instructions.
2. While the noodles are cooking, heat the oil in a wok or large frying pan. Once it's really hot and almost smoking, add the garlic, mushrooms, baby corn, sugar snap peas and red pepper. Stir-fry for about 2 minutes, then add the bamboo shoots, spring onions, beansprouts and cooked noodles. Continue to fry for about 30 seconds and add the soy sauce, sugar and rice wine or dry sherry. Stir-fry for about 1 minute until the noodles are heated through and serve straight away.

Tips:
For a chicken chow mein, cut 1 chicken breast into thin strips and add to the pan first, cook for a minute and then add the vegetables as above.
As an alternative, add a couple of handfuls of cooked prawns or cashew nuts to the wok at the same time as the spring onions and beansprouts.

Zziggi

Try this;

Mushroom Chow Mein

1 medium onion
box of mushrooms
oil
water
soya sauce
straight-to-wok noodles

chop up a medium onion and put in a hot wok with a little oil. Then throw in the mushrooms and a bit of water. Let them cook. Then add some straight-to-wok noodles. Cook for literally 3 minutes then shake in some soya sauce. Shouldn't taste too bad and is not too disimilar from takeaway mushroom chow mein in my experience.

Downsizing__for_sanity

Mushroom stroganoff is also very nice - sauce is the same as for beef stroganoff, but it cooks quicker as you can imagine. Serve with rice or hot buttered noodles.

lswwong

Just a short precis of the sort of Chinese cooking technique that you could use with mushrooms.

1. Mushrooms tend to give out lots of water when sauteed. So the trick is to plain sautee them first in the wok or frying pan - just a bit of sunflower oil or oliver oil will do. Then drain the liquid off and scoop the mushrooms off on to a clean plate.

2. Clean the wok, wipe dry and put back on the heat. When it is fairly hot, put in about a tablespoon of oil (or more if you like). Add a teaspoon of sesame oil if you have some, this gives a nice flavour. If you have some fresh ginger, slice 2 pieces (about 3mm thick) and put them in the oil and let them fry a bit. This gives the oil even better flavour. When the ginger pieces begin to crisp, fish them out and discard.

3. Now put in the mushrooms. Make sure that the wok and oil inside are really hot - this helps to enhance flavour and improve caramelisation. Quickly stir-fry the mushrooms (add a little salt at this point if you like your food fairly savoury) and while everything is still really hot, add a splash of dry sherry (or dry white wine if you have that spare somewhere). The booze part is vital! It really lifts the flavour. I guess the alcohol gets the temperature up higher. A lot of Chinese flavours revolve around ginger, garlic, spring onions and dry sherry/rice wine.

4. To finish off, and if you want to use soy sauce, add about 1 to 2 tablespoons of the stuff and and remember to add half to one teaspoon of SUGAR. The sugar balances out the saltiness and also caramelises and turns into a nice, thick-ish sauce i.e. not too runny.

5. Toss in some freshly cooked egg or rice noodles.

penrith

thanks everybody for your help. I liked ziggis simplicity and Iswwong explanation (am guessing your post is 'insider information'?)

lswwong

Mais oui!