Oriental Pasta Delight

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Like what I said last Friday, Chef Deejay Santos prepared three dishes for the SM Hypermarket Master Chefs "Cooking Marathon," so for Yummy Sunday, I will share another recipe - the first dish Chef Deejay cooked.


Oriental Pasta Delight

{recipe from: Lee Kum Kee}

Ingredients:

• 300 grams ground pork
• 2 tablespoons oil
• 1 piece onion, chopped
• 1 teaspoon Lee Kum Kee chili garlic sauce
• 4 tablespoons Lee Kum Kee Panda oyster sauce
• 2 tablespoons rice wine
• 1/4 cup chicken stock
• 1 piece carrot, diced
• 1/2 cup green peas
• 200 grams fettuccine, cooked according to package directions
• chopped spring onions (optional)

How to Cook:

• Saute onion and Lee Kum Kee chili garlic sauce in oil. Add in pork and saute for about 5 minutes.
• Add in rice wine, Lee Kum Kee Panda oyster sauce, and chicken stock. Bring to a boil, then simmer until pork is cooked.
• Add carrots and peas and continue simmering until cooked. Pour over noodles and serve. Garnish with chopped spring onions if desired.

It was a very simple pasta dish, but very tasty. Josephine, a blogger I met at the event and I can't help but exclaim that if sprinkled with chopped nuts, this could pass as a Pad Thai. Looks like I have found a way to cook another pasta dish that doesn't use spaghetti sauce. :)

Sharing some things I learned from Chef Deejay while preparing this dish:

1. If you have no chicken stock, you can dissolve 1/2 cube of chicken bouillon in 1 cup hot water.
2. If your ground pork is slightly frozen and you feel you don't have ample time to wait for it to fully thaw, you can just place it in a pot under very low heat and check on it from time to time.
3. When cooking pasta, some people prefer serving their pasta dish with the sauce at the top of the noodles. This isn't a good practice as there is a tendency that other people (especially at parties) will be left with just pasta without sauce. Chef Deejay suggested to set aside some of the sauce, then toss the pasta in the pot where you cooked the sauce, then topped it with the set aside sauce for presentation. That way, even if the guests have consumed the top part of the dish, the pasta still has flavor.
4. When cooking the pasta, throw in some salt in the water. This will not only give pasta some flavor, but salt can help water to boil faster.

*** Jenn ***