So, I'm still without a job. And money is tight. So this meal is made using what's on hand. I decided to use Ramen noodles as the carb in the meal and try to follow some sort of "Pad Thai" idea of a recipe. The picture is the approximation of ingredients that I had to work with. Beyond that, I did include garlic powder, ancho chile powder, paprika, flour and soy sauce. It's like a mix of my previously made S&S chicken and Pad Thai. I was working off the ropes with this meal, so it was challenging. I "blackened" a tilapia fillet I had in the freezer, but it didn't truly blacken up like I would a catfish fillet. It was ok.
I boiled the ramen noodles in a seperate pan and then removed the fish from the pan and broke it down into small pieces. Of course, I have to include some egg in the dish, so I scrambled an egg in soy sauce and pepper, added the veggies and spices and "stir fried" them together. At least, as close as a stir fry as you can get in a non-stick on an electric stove. The next step was reintroducing the noodles and adding some ramen "chicken" flavor and then throwing the fish in. I "deglazed" twice with water to achieve a complete flavor infusion through the food and make sure the fish was completely cooked.
In the end, it was better than normal Nissan Ramen noodles, but... honestly, it wasn't that great. I've cooked much better food, but I've also generally had better ingredients to work with. The mix veggies I found in the back of my freezer were so old that the greens never turned a color other than "frozen green." It was at least a decent dinner. That's all I could ask for right now. Now, I gotta try and find a job!
Update: Blair got home and ate a serving of this (yeah, a single serving of Ramen turned into multiple servings of food! AWESOME!) and she had this to say "It's kind of fishy... is there fish in this?" and I replied "yeah, it's about two drops of fish sauce and some tilapia. The fish sauce may have been too much" to which she replied "yeah, one drop too much, if you ask me." I can't argue that it's too fishy, but at least it's got protein and tasted ok. So, Poor Ass Meal achieved.
No comments:
Post a Comment