Getting drunk and talking about Jesus

I hate Sundays. Sundays are sad, already full of the nostalgia of a too short weekend and rife with the thinly veiled threat of a Monday and the new work week ahead... as my dear friend T. would say in her sparkling wit - Sundays are made to get drunk and talk about Jesus. And as far as I am concerned, if I can manage to do both over a good home-cooked meal I have lovingly prepared for my friends, even better... so I cooked, like there's no tomorrow, no Monday, and *pop* went the corks...

Et voila! Taiwanese beef noodles, a wok of love and care by Froggie :-)

I had long wanted to try the gorgeous-looking Taiwanese beef noodles recipe featured by the no less gorgeous Nana in her fabulous video blog Wok with Nana, so I pestered a Taiwanese friend until he brought back some fresh hand-pulled taiwanese noodles for me to try the dish. He couldn't complain too much, as he landed an invitation for lunch in return ;-)




Ingredients for the beef stew
make sure to pick the clear type of rice wine




Doing the "mise-en-place" before starting to cook...




I used a mix of beef shin and beef brisket bought from my local supermarket to make the dish - "local freshly slaugthered beef" said the label. Not sure how "local" it was given the relative scarcity of pastures in HK but freshly slaugthered it was, trust the Hong Kongers with food freshness... and the meat was very tasty.



The recipe in itself is not technically difficult, the real difficulty for me was more to get the balance of flavours right, as I was cooking with fairly unfamiliar ingredients and lacked a reference point, having never been to Taiwan to try the original (my friend actually confessed this dish tasted nothing like the kind of noodles you would find in the streets of Taipei...). Also as a chilli-junkie, I had to be careful not to kill my friend over lunch and tone down the spice, as I know he does not dig very spicy food too much.




Oxtail broth, after a few minutes of cooking...




... and after 4 hours of gentle bubbling and patient skimming


In the end, I think I fared ok on the dish, even though it ended a bit on the sweet side - I will remember to have a lighter hand with the rock sugar next time. Overall, I think it is a very good recipe (kudos to Nana for sharing), but I can think of a few adjustments I will make next time to suit my taste (I think adding smoked dried chillies, star anise and cinnamon to the sauce could give a pretty interesting twist to the tomato-based flavour...)

The beef stew, before simmering...

... and after 1h45 of cooking (at this point the collagen in the shin and the brisket was perfectly tender)



If the beef noodles were the star of the meal, they were also escorted by an appetiser of manchego cheese and jamon iberico de bellota, always crowd pleasers...

  I ended the meal by serving one of my all time favourite desserts, Far Breton aux Pruneaux, which is a traditional dessert from Brittany and resembles a thick vanilla flan with dried prunes flavoured with alcohol. There are probably as many versions of this dessert as there are households in Brittany, and purists like to fight over the ratio of prunes to batter or whether to marinate the prunes in alcohol or add the booz to the batter... just to be clear, I like mine with not too many prunes, and with the booze in the batter... and no, before you ask, I do not use seeded prunes, spitting the pits out (on other guests...) is half the fun of eating this dessert, especially after a long boozy lunch ;-)

Due to oven temperature issues, my far turned out pretty ugly :-(...

... but looks don't matter. The texture was firm and creamy, perfectly evenly set (despite the initial scare) and quite delish actually :-)

Nana’s Taiwanese Beef Noodles (serves 3/4)

For the broth:

1 oxtail, cut

1 bunch spring onions, whole

5cm ginger, peeled

2.5 litres water

For the beef stew:

500gr beef (shank or brisket), cut in 1.5cm chunks

3 large tomatoes, peeled, seeded and diced

1 onion, roughly chopped

½ cup rice wine

½ cup soy sauce

1 handful rock sugar

3 cloves of garlic, peeled and thinly diced

1 bunch scallions, chopped

2 small bird’s eye chillies (this will give a low to medium spiciness, add 2 more for spicy and 4 more if you like your food really spicy), thinly sliced

2 tbsp peanut oil

Optional: pickled mustard greens to serve

300gr fresh noodles (thin, medium, thick, udon-like… according to taste)

·       First, make the broth. Cover the chunks of oxtail with the water, add the ginger and spring onions, and leave to simmer covered for 3 to 4 hours, or until the liquid has reduced by about a half, skimming the fat off the surface of the broth from time to time.

·       In a wok or cocotte, heat the oil and stir-fry the garlic, scallions, onion and chillies until fragrant. Add the tomatoes, stir-fry for a couple more minutes, then add the rice wine, soy sauce and finally the beef and the rock sugar.

·       Cover and let simmer gently for 1.5 to 2 hours (or until the beef is tender).

·       Cook the noodles in a large volume of boiling water, drain.

·       Share the noodles between 3 or 4 large bowls, top with the beef stew, ladle some oxtail broth on top and stir.

·       Drop a spoonful of thinly chopped-up mustard greens on the side of each bowl and enjoy while piping hot.

Far Breton aux Pruneaux (Brittany flan with prunes – serves 6)

140gr plain flour, sifted

120gr caster sugar

4 eggs

50cl milk

1 tbsp dark rum

1 pinch salt

200gr dried prunes (“Pruneaux d’Agen”, if you can find some, otherwise any dried prune will do)

Butter

·       Preheat the oven at 180°C.

·       Generously butter a glass oven-proof dish about 20 x 24cm (you can use salted butter for this, it will give an even better flavour to the dessert).

·       In a mixing bowl, stir the flour, salt and sugar together, add the eggs in the middle and whisk until the batter is smooth, adding milk little by little as the mixture becomes too stiff to stir (make sure to add the milk a spoonful at a time at the beginning to avoid lumps).

·       Add the rum.

·       Spread the prunes evenly over the bottom of the buttered dish, gently pour the batter over and bake for 25 to 30mn until the centre of the flan is set and the surface is nicely browned.

·       Serve warm or cold with some apple cider.