EAT DISCO LOVE

mee rebus

In an attempt to use up the ingredients I already had in my fridge, as well as not eat a hunk of juicy meat for dinner last night, I decided to myself that I needed to do something with the leftover mashed sweet potatoes from last night.  Plain mashed sweet potatoes.  Most of the recipe ideas I looked up were for desert-like dishes and I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. 

As I started to give up, thinking that maybe I would give up on this mission or resign to eating warmed sweet mash as a crappy side dish to last night’s dinner, I recalled one of the most unique uses of sweet potato I ate in Malaysia and most recently at my friend Glen’s house a couple of years ago: mee rebus.  Since I have left Malaysia, I have not seen it on a menu here in Canada.  To be honest, it’s not a dish I had that many times in Malaysia and it’s only when Glen’s mom made it that I recalled it. 

Mee rebus entails yellow egg noodles served with a curry/sweet potato gravy. The gravy calls for either chicken or beef stock (I used chicken) as well as dried prawns in the paste, while other recipes called for a prawn stock.  I have a massive bag of frozen spot prawn heads in the freezer so decided to chuck those into my gravy.  I guess it wasn’t totally vegetarian since I used stock from animals, but … oh well.  It gets particularly exciting with the garnishing: cilantro, bean sprouts, lime juice, boiled eggs, fried tofu and cucumber slivers.

Also, I kind of cheated here — instead of making the gravy paste on my own I decided to use Thai yellow curry.  The ingredients are more or less the same and I figured the prawn heads could compensate for the lack of dried shrimps.  I can’t claim to be a mee rebus expert but I have to say, the result was tasty!  I think part of the joy in this dish for me, which I find in so many other SE Asian dishes, is the variation of garnishes providing different colours, tastes and textures. A humble, yet exciting meal.  Long story short: don’t throw away your mashed yams!

Ingredients for the gravy:

4 shallots
3 cloves garlic
1” ginger
4 tbsp dried shrimps – soak in water for 15 minutes
6 red chilies – remove seeds
2 stalk lemon grass – remove the outer layers and cut small

Blend all the above into a smooth paste.

2 medium size sweet potatoes – steamed and mashed
2 tbsp curry powder
1 tbsp fermented soy bean paste (tau cheong)
1 tsp sugar
Salt to taste
5-6 cups chicken or beef stock

1. Combined the curry powder, bean paste into the blended ingredients. Mix well. Heat up a stock-pot, put about 3 tbsp of oil and add in the blended spices. Sauté the spices for 5 minutes or until dry and fragrant.
2. Add in stock and mashed sweet potatoes. Stir well and bring it up to a boil. Turn down the heat and let it simmer for 10 minutes. Add in sugar and salt. The thickness of the gravy is depending on individual preference. You can add some water to make it lighter.

Ingredients for garnishing:

500 gram yellow noodles – blanched in hot water for a few minutes
A handful of bean sprouts – blanched in boiling water for a few seconds
5-6 pieces prawn fritters – cut into cubes
2 pieces fried tofu – cut into cubes
3 hard boiled eggs
1 cucumber – julienned
2 red chilies – sliced
Some fried shallots

To serve:

Put the some noodles and bean sprouts in the serving plate or bowl. Pour enough gravy over it and top it with the garnishes.

http://www.mykitchensnippets.com/2011/03/mee-rebusnoodles-in-sweet-potato-gravy.html

yournewname:

Warman Road’s Mural has been repainted for Pride Week!

More Saskatoon street art can be found here.

(via saskhistory)

Life is more enhanced when you have a partner in crime

Let’s ensure that whenever we’re writing about indigenous peoples, we use “pan-indigenous” inspired font - in newspapers, policy papers, academic documents, etc.  Oh, and let’s ensure that we make the document colourful, and include designs and images that look like they’re inspired by primitive cave paintings.

Unfortunately to some extent, anthropology has been guilty of this too. I was, however, pleased to see that the anth.ubc.ca website was recently renovated and no longer looks like a colonial/explorer/curio cabinet dreamland.

Fat squirting out of a juicy homemade sausage

louis-ck.jpeg (1600×1067) →

Anyone else living louis ck?

in the past 3 hours i have bought 2 kilograms of spot prawn heads, 3 free range chickens, cooked the lao dish “o-lam” (a dill and chicken stew) and am currently in the process of making momofuku’s crack pie (my second time this week.)

natgeofound:

Alexander Graham Bell and Mabel kissing within a tetrahedral kite, October 1903.
Photograph courtesy Library of Congress

Thanks for the follow guidewired and trippy blog. Are you from Saskatchewan?

(via guidewire)

out of context and out of time

I noticed that a local restaurant (a Spanish “tapas” joint that serves overly large portions and a disturbing amount of vodka based fruit salads) totally ripped off this recipe from Lucky Peach, touting it as one of the chef’s specials.

Undoubtedly and inevitably, recipe sharing happens - and dishes evolve and take on unique manifestations with each chef.  But 1) this is a really specific recipe particular to a story 2) there were no credits 3) when I asked the server about it, she gave me some tale about the Chef being inspired by a recent pollution incident that occurred in a local LAKE 4) this whole Lucky Peach issue was about the end of the world/pollution/importance of trying to eat more local etc.  and clearly the Chef totally abused and molested the recipe even more but not just stealing it, but appropriating a recipe based on a story of local ocean environments using a story about a lake in the prairies.  I would have been more forgiving if he called his recipe “pollution” but used local prairie ingredients but no, he had to go out of his way to source monkfish liver