Leftover Turkey

Turkey, cranberry and pecan sandwich - Chopped white meat turkey, chopped dried cranberries, chopped pecans, with mayonaise on butter croissant. Salt and pepper and a little dash of curry powder.

Hidden Valley Ranch RETRO

*Lately I've become disenchanted with bottled salad dressings. They just seem so overly gummy, oily, and stale. They sit in the door of the fridge like bad relatives: you don't like them, but you feel obligated to hang on to them.
*I remembered reading about the history of Hidden Valley Ranch, which was originally a POWDER, that you mixed with buttermilk. It was only after the rancher that invented it, sold the rights to some conglomerate, that it was reformulated for shelf life in a bottle.
*So, while at the store, I looked for, and found, the powdered kind. In fact there were 3 kinds of Hidden Valley Ranch: Buttermilk, Regular, and Dip Mix. Not wanting to purchase buttermilk, I grabbed the regular, which requires milk and Mayo (Hellman's of course).
*It mixes up easily enough, and has to chill to thicken. But the TASTE is so much better! The texture is not gummy and oily. And you don't get all those preservatives and such. Granted, the stuff only lasts in your fridge for 3-4 weeks, but with something this good, that's not a problem. Can't wait to get some real BUTTERMILK and try the original.
*All the 'old relatives' went into the trash, and I'm sticking with this dressing. Do a Google on Hidden Valley Ranch, and get some history. I think it's cool that the biggest dresssing in the history of human kind came from a guy, not a food conglomerate with billions to spend on research and focus groups.

Japanese Ramen Noodles

Last weekend my brother came over for a "Tampopo Party". He and I both really enjoyed the movie and have talked about getting together and making some noodles while watching the movie for a while.

Well, we finally did just that.

I got some of the ingredients around and Brett brought over some Sake and of course..you gotta have some pineapple!

The dough recipe we used consisted of:

155 grams cake flour

25 grams ap flour

110 grams club soda

6 grams vegetable oil

We mixed all ingredients together and started working the dough. You have to knead the dough for quite some time. You actually work it until it is feeling more like clay than bread dough.

We had thought about doing "hand pulled" noodles, but opted for using the pasta roller instead.

The noodles weren't perfect, some of them stuck together. But, I just think that is what makes it "home made":)

For the broth, I used sesame oil, garlic, ginger, chicken base, and soy sauce. I had used a recipe I found, but it ended up being super salty from all the soy, so I added more chicken base to level it out some. The garlic, ginger and sesame still came through quite well.

I garnished the soup with green onions, a little nori mix, and some chicken that I had cooked with chinese bbq seasoning.

The noodles turned out great. I must say, I think we did a great job for our first time. They were light with a bit of "give". And I was pleased with the broth as well.

We also made up some eggrolls. I had a cabbage/ground beef mixture that I rolled up. It wasn't anything traditional, but they turned out ok. It filled the "fried food" need. My big mistake was that I rolled them the night before. I completely didn't even think about the "moisture" factor. Silly me. And they were falling apart the next day. I had a few wrappers left and rerolled some of them, and the rest didn't completely fall apart.
So, ramen noodles, egg rolls, sake, and Tampopo. Very nice!