52 New Recipes | Chicken Stir-Fry with Noodle Cake

My Hungry Harvest box gave me bok choy this week.

Which sent me off to Cook’s Illustrated’s website for some help.

(Bok choy and I aren’t really on a first-name basis.)

I found a fair number of sauteed bok choy recipes, but I wanted to use my bok choy as an ingredient, not so much as a main star of a recipe.

So, I found a chicken stir-fry recipe, which was intriguing because it included a noodle cake, which I’d never tried before.

Anyway. To use the bok choy, you slice up the stems sort of like celery and cook them before you cook the leaves.

This lets you get the stems cooked properly without overcooking the greens, which are added at the very, very end.

The noodle cake called for fresh Chinese egg noodles, which I couldn’t find. The suggested alternative was fresh spaghetti noodles, which I also couldn’t find.

So, I cooked up some regular spaghetti. I had a little trouble with my noodle cake getting chewy rather than crispy, which could be related to me using the wrong noodles.

Still, we all liked the dish, and it used up lots of my bok choy.

And my scallions, which were another Hungry Harvest item.

So, I think I’ll make this again, but I’ll go on the hunt for the fresh noodles the recipe specifies. Maybe an Asian specialty store? Or perhaps a supermarket with a large international section?

Someone else posted this recipe on their blog, so you can go check it out there if you want to give it a try.

What new dish did you make this week?

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Karen.

Thursday 19th of October 2017

I'm a day behind. Our new recipe attempts are by fits and starts. We tried kofta, which is basically ground lamb mixed with spices and molded around skewers, then grilled. The spices used with lamb are not spices we usually have with meat (cinnamon, cloves) but I still had 5Â½ out of 7 approvals. The lamb ended up at our house in a mixup involving pork sausage so it was a fortuitous thing that people liked it. :)

Also, do you ever make your own pasta? I even bought a pasta mill the other week at the estate resale shop nearby, and it has a spaghetti maker as part of it. Pasta dough is super easy in the stand mixer: for each cup of all-purpose flour you'll need Â¼ tsp salt, 1 egg, and 2 ish tbsp water.

Kristen

I've never made my own, largely because on average, we don't tend to eat a lot of pasta. So, the boxes I buy here and there just don't add up to much.

I've never used a pasta mill except for the one that came with my mom's Kitchen Aid and that was a rather dreadful experience. So, I guess I've been scarred ever since!

Carla

My Guatemalan grandmother made a noodle cake regularly to use up leftover noodles. She would add an egg just to keep it all together, fry it up and I used to, still do but she died over 10 years ago and my mom's just isn't as good, love the crispy bits. To be honest, she would make anything-cake to use up leftovers. Leftover rice: rice cake (rice, egg, salt, fry it up, eat the crispy bits, yum!) Leftover spinach: spinach-cake, my younger self really struggled with this but I love spinach now. Makes me want to make noodle cake for my kids.

LIZ (Eight Acres)

Yum! I just made chicken chow mein to use up chicken mince and cabbage ;)

Sara

Forgot to say that for those that find the large bok choy a little too spicy/peppery on it's own (me! fine in stir-fry), look for baby or young/very small bok. Either the varieties that mature small or the large varieties that are picked as young, are a little milder. I like the baby as it has the same great flavor but the peppery high notes aren't there. This is my preference when using bok as a side dish of some sort.

If you can't get the fresh noodles and need to use spaghetti, make them earlier in the day. Place them in the fridge for a few hours to a day. The dry noodles absorb too much liquid during cooking so don't want to crisp up. Allowing a rest time, makes them more like fresh, for the cake. At least that is my experience.

I love bok choy, particularly baby bok. I make stir-fry with it often. I grow the small kinds as often as possible and is ready to eat in just weeks. Takes up next to no space.