One One Five - Toosday Stir Fry

Before we begin, a wrap up on Monday's lunch, the curry. It really was delicious, but at the same time I've still got so much further to go in curry making.

For Tuesday, I decided to go for an Asian stir fry style noodle dish. Ironically, Asian cuisine is possibly my weak point. There are a number of reasons for this. The main one is I haven't watched many Asian cooking shows, so I don't really know the proper technique and flavouring. Sure, I've seen lots of the TV chefs do some Asian food, but it's always with the European touch or using their methods. Also I don't spend a lot of time watching my mum cook. I love her to death but she does tend to over cook a lot of things.

So it was with a little apprehension that I took this dish on. Out of sheer laziness, I decided to make it real simple. I peeled and quartered half an onion and then separated it into its layers. I also thinly sliced half a carrot, sliced a couple of cloves of garlic and two chillis. In a wok, in went in a bit of vegetable oil and before it got hot, I threw in the garlic and chilli and let the flavours infuse into the oil. Once the garlic just started to colour, in went the onions and carrots and they were tossed until they started to colour. I decided to use the drumstick and wing meat with this dish. I took the drumstick meat off the bone and used the whole wings minus the tips (which can go into a stock) and they went in.

And this is where I got really lost, the seasoning. I've heard so much about the Four S's, sweet, sour, salty and spicy. I don't know if I should have but I did try to add a bit of each. Chilli already made up the spicy, I added oyster sauce for salt, some Chinese vinegar for sour and a bit of honey for sweetness.

It was all tossed about with some egg noodles and bean sprout and dish is done. If I'm completely honest, I was not looking forward to eating it and when the time came, I was amazingly underwhelmed.

So where did I go wrong? Everywhere. The seasoning mostly. I have to figure that out properly. Also some more vegetables could go in if I had them on hand, like beans, snow peas or broccoli. In short, fail.