Beef Stirfry with(out) Gai Larn (Chinese Broccoli) - 2 stars

and here is meal #3 from the week of hellishly time consuming meals. this was supposed to take less than a half hour, and ended up being over an hour!

the dish is supposed to be made with fresh rice noodles and gai larn (chinese broccoli). there were many problems with making this dish:

1. i had purchased the fresh rice noodles a couple days before i made this, thinking they'd be just fine... oh no. i soaked them in hot water to try to separate them - they just dissolved into mush. they weren't close to the expiration date on the package, but they were far from fresh anyway. gross! so i cooked up some dry rice noodles that i had in the cupboard.

2. i had broccoli rabe and regular broccoli crowns - no gai larn. here's a little broccoli education for you:




on the top left is regular broccoli, top right is broccoli rabe, and on the bottom is gai larn. when i was buying the ingredients for this, my friend amy accidentally grabbed regular broccoli for me. i didn't realize it til i was home - and the store that i went to later in the week only had broccoli rabe. i purchased it, thinking it'd be close enough to chinese broccoli... only while i was chopping it up to add it to the dish did i remember that i've cooked broccoli rabe before, and i do not like it. in my opinion, it's really, really bitter and tough, and the amount of work that's required to make it palatable is not worth it.

in the end, i tossed the broccoli rabe, just used the regular broccoli, and it was fine. however... the last problem...

3. the dish called for a substantial amount (1/2 cup) of kecap manis, which is a thick, dark, sweet soy sauce. i had some in the refrigerator, but apparently never bothered to look at the label. in EACH SERVING of the kecap manis, there were 200 calories and 85% of my daily sodium intake (2 tsp or 1 tbsp is the serving size - i can't remember which). that is disgusting, and so unhealthy. no one needs to eat that much salt. the calorie part... well, that's not as surprising because it's a sweet soy sauce, so the sugar content adds most of those calories to it. i look at labels on everything i buy because of the whole lactose intolerance thing, so i'm not sure how i missed this one. i tossed the kecap manis bottle (i think - if not, i'll throw it away tonight :) ). i've only found one brand (ABC is the name) that makes it, so unless i find another lower sodium, healthier version, i'll not be cooking with it again.

so... to assemble the dish, i sauteed everything together according to the recipe. i cut the salt with a lot of lime juice, which the recipe did not call for. in the end, it didn't taste too bad - but only because of the lime juice. without it, it was just a pile of sickly salty noodles with some beef and broccoli.

i strongly considered throwing the whole thing out half way through the process, but i just couldn't bring myself to waste that much. instead, i tried to keep my portion small and avoid the leftovers. i didn't want tony to have to eat anything that unhealthy either, but he seemed to like it just fine.

i'd like to try cooking with gai larn sometime, so i'll have to find a different recipe in my Wok Cookbook that uses it. and that doesn't use kecap manis. :)