Japanese Fast Food

I got lazy today. I didn't want to think of what to cook for dinner. So, I cheated.

This is called yaki-soba, Japanese stir fried noodle. It belongs to a group of foods you eat at a fair, something like a corn dog, spuds and fried dough. It's a popular menu in kids. Hungry teenagers go to get it after school. Adults love it, too. I believe it originates Chinese food considering the way it's cooked and the type of noodle. It's pretty simple to make—stir-fry meat and vegetables, cook noodle with a little bit of water, mix them together, then add sauce. You can get a kit at an Asian grocery store. It consists of noodle and sauce. The noodle is like ramen noodle. I used the kit today.

I used the vegetables in the fridge — bean sprouts, carrots, onion and maitake mushrooms. Pork was added to enhance a flavor. A great thing about this dish is you can put any vegetables you can think of for stir fry. Cabbage is a good vegetable to add. You can put pork, chicken, shrimps or a combination of these if you wish. I prefer to stick to one animal protein. Personally, I think pork and shrimps make the dish better than chicken. It's like lo mein with a Japanese twist.

Whenever I use sauce in a packet like this, I feel guilty about lack of my effort. There is no creativity there. This packet contains all spices and other seasonings. The sauce tastes like Worcester sauce, not like one for lo mein, it has a little bit of kick to it with a little bit of sweetness. I could say that it tastes like a barbecue sauce. Ooh, I should try this — make yaki soba with barbecue sauce. A barbecue sauce needs a little twist. I might even use lo main for this. This would be a fun experiment. The lazy evening turned to an exciting inspiration.

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