Seafood-Flavored Fried Udon

Fried udon — I made this once before a while back. This is round two.

Last time had plenty of problems. First, it didn’t taste great: I used soy sauce instead of XO sauce. Second, way too oily and way too dark. Third, it took forever.

So this time I learned from that:

1. Kept the vegetable prep fast
2. Synced the udon blanching with the stir-frying so everything moves together
3. Bought XO sauce, went easy on the soy sauce, added the greens last.

At least efficiency improved a lot — the whole thing took 15 minutes.

But there are downsides.

First, I was out of lettuce, so I used napa cabbage, which didn’t give that green pop. No cherry tomatoes either, so less color variety — swapped in carrots. And most importantly, no cucumber.

Personally though, I’m way happier with it. Mainly because it tastes good. The seafood flavor from the XO sauce is no joke — straight-up aromatic, one sniff and you’re hungry. And the color isn’t as black as last time.

So next time, if I stock the ingredients properly, it should be ready for the table.

By the way, during the National Day holiday I remade the salted egg braised tofu and chicken curry at home.

Same story as this udon: big flavor improvement, big efficiency gain, but the presentation got worse. No picture of the salted egg tofu, but you can probably tell from the curry photo that the rice was too hard — not enough water when steaming. Last time the curry was pork, this time chicken. And last time I put in too much water; this time the amount was just right, but I got cocky and simmered it a bit too long, so the bottom scorched a little…

All in all, my cooking is still improving, at least on the efficiency front. Gotta keep at it.