Archive for June, 2010

I’ve been making this modified version of Tyler Florence’s Cold Sesame Noodles for a few years.  It’s a huge hit, especially with people who think they won’t like them.

It’s a very easy recipe that uses a blender or food processor. It can be made spicy or not so spicy and it’s full of protein and flavor.  I usually serve this with grilled chicken, but you can eat it with anything.

I was just looking up this recipe to double check the ingredients and saw that there’s a new version. The one I’ve been making for years is an uncooked sauce that you make in the blender.  The one I’m seeing online now is a cooked sauce using the exact same ingredients (including amounts). I’ll have to try cooking it, but really the uncooked is so good and so easy, I’m not sure I’ll actually do that.

Cold Sesame Noodles (recipe repeated at the end of post without notes and pictures)

• 1 pound of thin spaghetti
• 3 tablespoons dark sesame oil
• 2 tablespoons peanut oil
• 1-inch piece fresh ginger -minced

Yes, I used a little more ginger than the recipe calls for.  I like ginger. A lot.

• 2 garlic cloves -minced
• 1 teaspoon red chili paste

• 2 tablespoons brown sugar

• 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter

• 3 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce (reduced sodium is fine)
• juice of one lime (may need more – adjust to taste)

This is not really a giant lime.  Sometimes I go crazy with the macro zoom.  For the sake of moving on, I am not including photos of all ingredients, just  the coolest looking ones.

• 6 tablespoons hot water (may not use it all)
• 2 green onions, thinly sliced
• fresh cilantro leaves, for garnish
• 1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds (sometimes I leave these out)

Directions

Cook pasta according to directions.  (Don’t overcook, because it will absorb the sauce later)

Drain immediately, and rinse with cold water until cool, and transfer to a wide bowl.

Toss with the sesame oil so they don’t stick together.

In a blender, add the peanut oil, ginger, garlic, chili paste, brown sugar, peanut butter, rice wine vinegar, soy sauce and lime juice.

Blend together  and add hot water to thin out as needed.  The sauce should be thick enough to coat the pasta, but not so thin that it’s runny.

Best when refrigerated overnight, but who’s kidding who here…it tastes good when freshly blended too.  Make sure the pasta isn’t warm though, that’s really key.

Toss the noodles with the peanut sauce until well coated. Serve at room temperature or chilled. Garnish with the sesame seeds,  green onions and cilantro. Cucumber slices are also acceptable.

Enjoy!

Cold Sesame Noodles

• 1 pound thin spaghetti
• 3 tablespoons dark sesame oil
• 2 tablespoons peanut oil
• 1-inch piece fresh ginger -minced
• 2 garlic cloves-minced
• 1 teaspoon red chili paste
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
• 3 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce (reduced sodium is fine)
• juice of one lime (may need more – adjust to taste)
• 6 tablespoons hot water (may not need it all)
• 2 green onions, thinly sliced
• fresh cilantro leaves, for garnish
• Cucumber slices, for garnish
• 1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds (sometimes I leave these out)

Directions

Cook pasta according to directions.  (Don’t overcook, because it will absorb the sauce later)
Drain immediately, and rinse with cold water until cool, and transfer to a wide bowl.
Toss with the sesame oil so they don’t stick together.
In a blender, add the peanut oil, ginger, garlic, chili paste, brown sugar, peanut butter, rice wine vinegar, soy sauce and lime juice.

Blend together  and add hot water to thin out as needed.  The sauce should be thick enough to coat the pasta, but not so thin that it’s runny.

Best when refrigerated overnight, but who’s kidding who here…it tastes good when freshly blended too.  Make sure the pasta isn’t warm though, that’s really key.

Toss the noodles with the peanut sauce until well coated. Serve at room temperature or chilled. Garnish with the sesame seeds,  green onions and cilantro. Cucumber slices are also acceptable.

JenTastic and her family are renting a lovely home in NC.  Being a military family, they are used to moving around a lot and basically house bouncing.  She had to choose this house sight unseen with the help of the Interweb and her friend Sarah who lives in the area.  They had a pretty good strategy going…JenTastic would scope out homes online and then Sarah would go visit them and report back with her assessment.  Kind of like Match.com or eHarmony for houses.  I think I’d like that job.

The upside to moving every 3 years or so is that you get really good at purging crap and packing. JenTastic is an amazing packer.  She can also rip open boxes like no one’s business. Another upside to moving a lot is that you get to live in a lot of different places and really learn what kind of house you like (or dislike). She’s lived in restored barracks, stand alone homes, townhomes, apartments, you name it.

The downside to moving (and renting) every few years is that you’re often stuck living with questionable decor. That my friends, is the subject of this here blog post.  Nothing against the lovely lady who owns this house, it *is* a nice home.  She just has strange ideas about decor and dare I say, taste?  After walking through this house I had the impression that she was in her 50s/60s, but alas that is not the case.

Me: So, the lady you’re renting this house from…she’s in her upper 50s-ish, right?  From the generation before us?

JenTastic: NO!  Can you believe she’s OUR age! (said with a great deal of sassy head shaking and widely opened eyes emphasis – Jen’s friends will know The Look of which I am speaking)

Me: Really?? NO! (cue the dramatic music)

JenTastic:  YES!  This house is like a granny gone bad and there’s no EXCUSE for it!

Me: *shaking head* So sad.  Don’t let me ever go down the path of poor taste in home decorating.

JenTastic: Giiiiirl, I will be your home decor reality check, dontcha worry.

OK, maybe I made up that very last part, but I’m sure she was thinking that in her head.  But yes, the lady who decorated (????) this home is in her 30s.

Now I will present the evidence of questionable decor.

Let’s start with the dead flowers in the bathroom.  I’m all for the “Picket fence” look, but maybe with silk flowers.  I mean seriously, these roses are dead.  Dried flowers have ROTTED and DIED, people.  Do you really want something rotten and dead hanging in your bathroom?

Bathroom #2 – Crazy Balloon Land.  WTH? No, this isn’t creepy at all.  Not even when you look really really closely.

The other side of BalloonLandia. What is that?  A BLIMP?   In the bathroom? Next to a mobile of shooting stars.  Nice.

(Actually JenTastic just informed me that her children call it the “Dirigible in the Bathroom” How smart are those kids?)

Moving on from the dead flower, balloon infested bathrooms to one of the children’s rooms where we see this lovely switch plate.  Personally, I don’t do cute, fuzzy OR snails. This would have to go.

The back porch is a really nice area and I’ll be so jealous of the lovely reading zone when it’s not a million freaking degrees out there.  This is overall a nice room, full of screened in windows that will allow for a good breeze.

BUT.

Check out this madness.

Yes, that really bold border goes perfectly with the raw wood paneling.  The kind that will give you splinters when you touch it.  Love it.

Now, let’s direct our eyes to the floor.  A hand painted harlequin pattern complete with pink ladybugs which JenTastic already covered with the carpeting. (Secretly, I kind of like this…but maybe not in this room)

Moving on to the kitchen.  This lady has a rooster border, which I guess in itself isn’t terrible, but look at these roosters.  Do you notice anything strange about them?  Go ahead, take a good look. I’ll wait.

THEY ARE WEARING ANIMAL PRINTS!

*bangs head on wall*  Lady, you’re killing me.

In the dining room, I have no words. I will let the wallpaper scream for itself.

I just have to say that Jack better hurry on up and climb down so he can escape the Giant.

This house is full of dormers on the second level, which generally means lots of little storage rooms of some sort.  I’m sure as a kid, I would have loved a little minature room in my own bedroom to have as a play room, but from an adult’s perspective, it’s not going over so well.

This would be the perfect time to mention that JenTastic has an irrational fear of little things.  I’m going to leave it at that.

Check out the weirdly cut out doors.

I had the pleasure (??!) of sleeping a few feet away from these rooms and I’m not ashamed to say they creeped me out a little.  Even more in the morning when I’d wake up and the DOORS WOULD BE OPEN.

OK, just one of them. The one with the square window.  It took me a few days to figure out that Dexter the Cat was jumping in there at night and exploding out like a flying monkey, which I personally experienced at 5 in the morning and thought I was being sent to Jesus.

Finally, the last and most disturbing thing isn’t really a decor issue. It’s the scary locked door at the back of the house.   Bad enough that it’s a scary locked door, but it also has a gaudy mirror attached. Oh the horror!

See for yourself.

Extreme close up of the lock.  it’s like the Lost numbers, what is the mystery of 8 7 3?  Do we dare open the lock and see what lives in this closet?  We will have to stay tuned to see what happens!

Have I mentioned that I think I gave myself a laughing hernia on this trip?

Why can’t you get ripped abs from laughing?  I may invent that exercise program.

We discovered a hidden gem in Carthage, NC.  Ok, maybe it’s not hidden and we didn’t technically discover it.  How about I just get to the food?

PikNPig is a bbq place specializing in pork.  Pulled pork and ribs and some chicken.  I’m all about the pulled pork so I was very happy.

This place is situated next to a small airstrip. You can sit outside and watch planes landing and taking off while you are shoveling down the food.

Pics of the smokehouse

I freely admit I don’t know a lot about BBQ, except that I like it. A lot.  I live near Chicago, which is not known as a BBQ hotspot, so I eat as much as I can when I’m traveling and it’s available.

This was the best pulled pork I’ve ever had.  The meat was tender, flavorful (really, does anything taste better than pork? I didn’t think so) and it just fell apart on the plate.  It tasted great even without sauce, but of course I used some.  They had a honey bbq and a spicy bbq sauce. I don’t like really spicy food, but I found the honey and the spicy together were a winning combination.

Oh that big jug in the middle is famous southern sweet tea.  It was delicious and not overly sweet, just enough.

Take home sauces.  Honey Butt Sauce and Spicy Butt Sauce.  Really, I’m not making this up.

Ok ok, on to the food.  I ordered the pulled pork combo for $6.95 and it came with cole slaw, hush puppies with jalapeno butter, and a sweet potato.  Um delicious! So delicious I took two photos!

Let me take a moment to tell you that the hush puppies were not at all like the grease balls you get at Long John Silvers (if you dare.)  These were little nuggets of dough, fried and chewy.  Tasty.

Look, it’s almost all gone. This was the kind of meal that after you’re done, you don’t want to eat or drink anything for a long time because the flavors linger on your tongue.

Now for desserts! 

JenTastic ordered this delicious concoction of yellow cake, pudding, crushed pineapple, whipped cream and coconut. They call it “Better Than Sex Cake’.  You’ll have to ask her if it lived up to it’s name.

I tried the Coco-Cola cake, also called Co Cola cake.  It looks dry, but it was really moist. I think they use a special kind of cocoa powder.  The frosting was really tasty, too!

Can you tell I liked it?

Our meal was very reasonably priced and the food was incredibly good.  The restaurant itself is small and a little cramped. It was a former post office filled with a lot of the original furniture.  All sorts of cool stuff.  The waitresses were friendly and it really looked like a neighborhood place.  They told us they get a lot of people flying in for take out and heading back out to their planes.  Must be nice.

I’d recommend PikNPig for anyone near Fort Bragg, NC. It’s worth the drive.