foodnomnoms on restaurant city

The idea of my blog actually came from a little Facebook game called Restaurant City. Heard of it? It's taking the Facebook world by storm. You should play. You start with a tiny little restaurant with 3 chairs and 2 workers (1 chef, 1 waiter). The objective of the game is to level up your restaurant so you can get a bigger store, more workers, and more monies in the bank. You collect and trade ingredients to make and level up your dishes in your menu. You serve 1 appetizer, main entree, and dessert dish. By levelling up your dishes, you gain more points from your customers. Sweet. If you look at the top right-hand corner of the picture, you can see that my restaurant has achieved the highest 50.0 popularity points. Because I am awesome.

Anyway, I started out the game by naming my restaurant Meateating Cow. I am a cow, and I thought it'd be funny to have a cannibalistic cow. Steak... After a while, I tired of the Meateating Cow name. Especially when I kept thinking I should be serving dishes with steak but I didn't have the ingredients for them. Meateating (I keep accidentally typing Meating) Cow was changed to Foodnomnoms. Because food should be nomm-ed. And the little characters totally look like they are nom-ing the food when they eat. And because I had recently seen this video. Such a catchy little tune.

And this is how this food blog came to be named FoodNOMNOMs.


Nomnomnoming-ly,
Carolyn

my bun cha (vietnamese pork w/ vermicelli) experiment

Moving posts from my regular blog on here where they belong!

Bun cha is one of the simplest Vietnamese dishes to make - it is grilled meat (usually pork) and greens (butter lettuce, mint, shredded cucumbers and carrots, etc) over dry vermicelli noodles. It's served with nuoc cham (sauce). I really liked the recipe I used! It tasted just like how the restaurants' make it.

Originally written 5/9/09
Last week, I saw that a friend was attempting to make this, and was inspired to try it as well. I love Vietnamese food - pho has always been one of my passions...my mother says I must have been Vietnamese in my past life. Which isn't such a stretch, I guess...actual Vietnamese ladies think I'm Vietnamese too. Like that one time I went up to the register to pay and the lady behind the counter started speaking to me in Vietnamese. And I smiled politely and told her sorry, no habla Vietnamese!

Anyway, back to the subject! Found this recipe online and happily set out prepping the night before my midterm. Needless to say, not much studying was done, but I did manage to finish the marinade for the pork and the nuoc cham (sauce) that night.

The next day came and I finished making the whole thing that night! Cooked the pork (no grill for me, unfortunately), noodles, washed the bean sprouts and mint, cut the carrots and threw everything together.


Great success!

Nomnomnoming-ly,
Carolyn

my 炸醬麵 (zha jiang mian) recipe

After promising Michael for a year that I would post this recipe and forgetting to each time I suddenly remembered my promise, I'm finally sitting down and getting it done! He even took pictures as I was making it one day...so I figure it's the least I could do. Note: the above picture is courtesy of Nibbledish...I wish my food could look as appetizing as this!

As this is my first recipe writing session, excuse the noobiness of directions and culinary terms.

Zha jiang mian, or noodles with fried bean and meat sauce in English, has been deemed "Chinese spaghetti" by some. Pretty self explantory - minced meat in soybean and hoisin sauce over a bowl of noodles. My mom actually taught me this recipe over the phone last year and I've modified some things as I go.

Ingredients:
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 lb. ground pork
1/2 an onion, diced
5 spoons sweetened soybean paste (甜麵醬 tian mian jiang)
5 spoons hoisin sauce (海鮮醬 hai shian jiang)
Dabble of soy sauce
2 blocks dried tofu (豆乾 dou gan), cubed
Handful of bean sprouts
1 stalk green onion, chopped
2 clumps of noodles

Optional: shredded cucumbers, carrots (to be added raw to the dish), chili sauce


Stir fry garlic, ground pork, and onions in a pan (remember to use a generous amount of oil).
When the meat is cooked through, mix in the sauces (though I say 5 spoons of each, do it to your own taste - I tend to like putting in more hoisin sauce for a sweeter sauce), and fried tofu. Mix everything thoroughly, then throw in the bean sprouts and green onions. Cook the noodles and throw it in a bowl with a clump of the zha jiang.

Tadaa! No top marks on presentation, but dang is it tasty...if I do say so myself!


Nomnomnoming-ly,
Carolyn

welcome

Welcome to Food NOMNOMs! A food blog where myself, Mike, and whoever else joins later, document our successful and failed experiments in the kitchen. We shall also rave about restaurants that blow our socks off, and whatever else we deem blog-worthy.

Nomnomnoming-ly,
Carolyn