What's for dinner tonight?

I'm working on a giant post of all the soupy soup I have made in the past (especially the ones that my better half loved). That task seemed to be pretty daunting. I guess I should rework the post and break them into little pieces... Then I would be able to actually sit down and work on writing down those recipes and notes.

Anyways, lately the question in our house was "What's for dinner?" I guess I should start putting those recipes of things we eat on a regular basis for families and friends who can't come to dinner. Here's one: Indonesian Noodle.

If you visit Indonesia and ask for a noodle dish, you'll be looking at a lonnggggg list of noodle dish: thin noodle, thick noodle, bouncy noodle, egg noodle, rice noodle, a la [insert town name/region] noodle, fried, boiled, happy birthday noodle (yes, there's apparently a noodle dish reserved for birthday, since noodle represents longevity)... 

Despite all that, there is one noodle dish that's sort of uniform. I'm talking about the street dish: mie ayam (lit. transl.: chicken noodle). In reality, there are variations for this dish as well, for example: a Chinese shop uses ground pork or char siew (roasted pork) for this dish, whereas some other ones will use a combination of chicken and pork (so much for chicken noodle). The noodles used for this dish also varies: rice noodle (flat/thin), egg noodle (chewy, thin, flat)... However, even with all those variations, the main elements stay true: some (soy sauce) cooked chopped/ground meat, blanched leafy vegetable, spring onion, fried shallots, and sambal.

Here's our version.

Indonesian Mie Ayam

Ingredients:

1 lb ground meat (chicken or pork or turkey only) or

1 lb chicken thigh, cubed, small

8 oz straw mushroom, sliced (use sliced button mushroom if you don't have straw mushroom)

1/4 c Indonesian sweet soy sauce

1-2 tbs fish sauce

6 cloves of garlic (small), chopped

1 large shallot, sliced

3 tbs oil (not aromatic) to fry

Salt, pepper, sugar to taste

Noodle: 

any type of Chinese style egg noodle or rice noodle is what's typically used. I have never tried it with somen/soba

Noodle seasoning:

1 tsp Sesame oil/oil

1 tsp Salty soy sauce

1 tsp Sweet soy sauce (optional)

Garnishes:

Wontons, steamed/boiled

Blanched leafy vegetable (think bok choy/turnip green)

Fried shallot

Green onion, chopped

Sambal

Directions:

1. Heat oil on high heat.

2. Fry the meat, shallots, and garlic until meat is halfway cooked and crumbled

3. Add sweet soy sauce and fish sauce, continue cooking until meat is completely cooked, stirring often

4. Add mushroom, stir 

5. Adjust flavor with salt, sugar, and pepper, the final flavor should be just slightly sweet.

6. Let simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionaly

Assembly:

1. Boil noodle, drain and stir in the noodle seasonings

2. Assemble the meat, vegetable, and wontons

3. Sprinkle with fried shallots, and green onion

Notes:

1. Add sesame oil into the meat dish, the original Indonesian street dish doesn't have sesame oil flavor, but as I said, there are 10,000 versions of it so make it to the way you like it

2. Add some char siew (sweet roasted pork), sliced thinly, instead of the meat dish above. I believe this is the Medan/Bangka version 

3. Add some stir fried cubed chicken cooked without soy sauce along with the meat dish above, this is the version I grew up with (someone used to sell this dish near my childhood home)

4. Omit the soy sauce from the ground pork dish. This is the version my parents grew up with.

5. Omit the fish sauce and substitute for salty soy sauce. Also, omit the sesame oil and use only oil. This is the street version.

6. Add some blanched bean sprouts for added crunch.

7. Indonesians often serve this with soup on the side (simple soup made out of chicken broth and salt/pepper, garnished with fried shallot and green onion)

8. Ran out of noodle? No biggie, just add rice to the meat dish.