I made the roasted quail in plum sauce that I posted about yesterday. And the soba noodles and enoki mushrooms. I thought the meal was great. Chris is not a big noodle fan of any kind (give that Cajun boy some RICE!), but he thought it was good, for noodles. And he liked the quail. The kids liked the "little tiny chickens" but not the noodles.
They didn’t like the "other" noodles either - that is the enoki mushrooms. *sigh* I tried. But it was really good. Really. It was.
The recipe I started from was from here: http://steamykitchen.com/blog/2007/11/28/roast-chicken-with-sweet-plum-sauce/
I used the quail. Salt & pepper, stuffed the bodies with a garlic cloves and lemon wedge should have warned Chris about that - he bit into the lemon wedge, was a bit bitter. Not sure how he did that anyway...but he did. The lemon and garlic really added a great flavor to the quail meat - you could taste it but it wasn’t overwhelming. I rubbed butter and plum sauce all over them, and roasted in the oven covered with foil until mostly done.
SLUTTY little birds, aren’t they? All laid out on their backs, legs up and open.
At this point, I removed the foil, tossed in a bit more plum sauce, and returned to the oven to brown.
Now, I was lazy. Had I been serving this to people who mattered (ie - not just my family), I would have covered the little tiny leg bones to prevent them from getting too dark ... but I didn’t. From here, I did toss with just a bit more plum sauce and returned to the oven for a minute just before serving.
I made enoki mushrooms. We made up this recipe years ago in an effort to duplicate the enoki mushroom dish we would get at Hana (Uptown). None of the other sushi places we frequented carried this dish, but it was one of our favorites at Hana. At home, we saute the enoki mushrooms in butter, add just a bit of chicken stock, fish sauce, and soy sauce. I don’t know how they do the dish at Hana, but I know ours comes close enough to satisfy that craving.
Then ... the "brown" (and therefore not quite right) noodles. Buckwheat Japanese noodles - I love how they come prepacked in portions. I made two of the portion controlled bundles, and it was more than enough for the four of us. Of course, my prediction on the kids "the noodles are brown, this isn’t right.." held true. They didn’t really eat them. More for me. They were so good! Buttery, sweet, spicy, garlicy...you can’t go wrong (unless you are my kids - who were offended that the noodles were not white and covered with alfredo sauce).
The sauce recipe started from this (another edition of Jaden’s Steamy Kitchen blog) ... http://steamykitchen.com/blog/2007/06/02/garlic-scallion-noodles/
But of course I didn’t measure anything, and I added as I went along. I didn’t have enough green onions (scallions) for 1/4 cup chopped - but I had a bunch of shallots. My oyster sauce jar was almost empty (had I realized this, I would have bought more at the Asian market yesterday), so I scraped the jar out and am sure it was less than a tablespoon - who does that?? Why bother leaving it in the fridge?? I added just a squirt or two of Hoisin, which is NOT a substitute for oyster, but it is sweet and brown, and good. I probably added more than 1 tsp of fish sauce too. I didn’t measure. I tasted and splashed, dashed, and tasted again... I thought that it needed some spice so I threw in the dried chili (you know, the seed things in a jar).
And finally, the plated dinner. It satisfied a craving for me. The salad was a last minute thrown together VERY basic salad with a dressing made from sweet chili sauce (another sauce from the Asian Market).
Tonight, I made what everyone requested. Chris had fried egg over grits. The kids had taco’s, and I had leftover quail (with another batch of soba noodles), and a salad.
