Girl Meets Food

Peperonata Recipe

2012-07-07T10:13:00.001-07:00

The other day at my local supermarket I impulsively bought a bag of bell peppers because the promotion made it practically a steal. My family has never really used peppers as an addition to our dishes before so they were sitting in my fridge for a while and I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to cook with them.

Until it seemed like they would soon expire unless I use them up, I finally decided to look for a recipe to use them up all at once.

Here's a recipe that can let anyone use up all their peppers! This is one of those less is more recipes. So simple, yet so good :)

Take a good coloured variety of your sweet peppers

Slice them into long strips

Onions sliced into half moons

Tomatoes, seeded and diced

That's the most difficult part done!

Time to Cook!

Heat olice oil in a non-stick pan and sautee your onions. Add salt. Remove from heat when onions begin to colour.

Add the peppers

Stir well to combine with onions. 4-5 minutes until peppers are al dente, with a slight crunch.

Add garlic, sugar, salt, oregano. Then mix in diced tomatoes. Sautee for 1 minute.

Turn off the heat! It's ready to "plated" :P

(Can anyone of of you culinary experts tell me the proper word for putting the cooked food on a plate? Hahaha!)

Add some black pepper if desired, and squeeze on some lemon juice.

I would say the lemon juice here should not be optional. It really makes a big difference. It brings out the sweet taste of the tomatoes and peppers. The tangy touch brings an interesting taste to the table!

This is a great healthy side dish- although i ended up eating this as a main course - that can add some good nutrition as the vegetable portion to any meal! This is so simple, which makes it perfect for those lazy days where you don't want to cook up a feast with an hour's worth of preparation before being able to satisfy your stomach's callings :)

Recipe:

Serves 2

Olive oil or grapeseed oil
1 red bell pepper, seeded and sliced into strips
1 yellow bell pepper, seeded and sliced into strips
1 orange or green bell pepper, seeded and sliced into strips
1/2 onion, sliced into half moon strips
2 garlic cloves, sliced thin
1/2 tablespoon dried oregano (more if desired)
1 tablespoon cane sugar
2-3 tomatoes, seeded and diced
Salt and pepper
Lemon juice

Steps:

Heat oil in large saute pan on medium high heat. When the oil is almost smoking, add the onions. Sprinkle with a little salt and saute 2-3 minutes, until the onions just begin to colour
Add the peppers and stir well to combine with the onions. Saute for 4-5 minutes, stirring often. The peppers should be al dente - cooked, but with a little crunch left in them.
Add the garlic, and saute another 1-2 minutes. Sprinkle a little more salt over everything and add the sugar and dried oregano. Cook for 1 minute.
Add diced tomatoes and cook for 1 minute.
Turn off the heat and mix in some black pepper.
Before serving, add lemon juice.
Indulge.

Adapted from: http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/peperonata/

Hope you enjoyed this! Have a great weekend everyone :)

Skinny Way to Eat Chicken Wings - for the (really) fat-conscious

2012-06-27T00:11:00.002-07:00

Now we all know how tasty chicken wings are, but they aren't exactly the healthiest part of the chicken. When my mom made these honey-glazed wings the other day, I thought I'd take the opportunity to share my 'skinny' way to eat chicken wings. I know most of you would think this is absolutely unnecessary and ridiculous, but I tend to not mind doing a few odd things just to cut back on the few extra calories or grams of fat :P

This method does not require that we sacrifice taste or the chicken skin!

This will be my sample wing

The red circles indicate the area where the fat is stored on the wing

(I would've used a thicker line, but this was apparently the thickest there was on Paint)

Flipped the Wing and opened up the skin to demonstrate:

Look at how concentrated the fat is in that area...

The Method:

So the method is simple. Avoid eating these parts of the chicken wing.

Cut it off with scissors, or if you're a barbarian at home like me, just bite it off.

You're not really sacrificing any of the taste at all because those edges actually take up a very small portion of the wing. And you still get to keep the majority of the skin that gives the chicken wings that extra texture.

It is a lot of unnecessary work if you've never even considered this before, which is why I think this is really for the fat conscious.

If you eat an entire stack of these at a time, or you have no self-control what-so-ever when it comes to good food, you'd be amazed at how much fat you're actually cutting out. (Save some quota for the dessert? ;) )

Another tip...

Choose free-range chickens. Free-range chickens are a lot healthier, due to their diet and lifestyle compared to factory farmed ones. Therefore, eating them would be a lot healthier for you too. Chicken feed in factory farms consist of chemicals, antibiotics, antimicrobials, hormones, and other substances to promote and enhance growth. They are also fed an unhealthy amount of grains and lack exercise, therefore becoming fat. This makes them appear larger, and more ready to sell. If we want to eat a nice healthy lean chicken, go free-range, go organic.

The photo above shows a picture of a super tiny chicken wing. My mom always tells me how the smallest wings and the smallest eggs are always the best. Because at least, that's how you know its all-natural and not chemical-boosted.

I'm not an expert on factory farming versus free-range farming, but I do know for sure the difference in taste and the visible difference in fat content. You don't have to rape your wallet if you wish to go for a healthier option. Public markets, Chinese wet markets, or local farms can offer them for very decent prices.

So is this method of eating chicken wings too strange to try out? Or just too much work?

Let me know!~

Chinese Steamed Pork Buns & Red Bean Paste Buns

2012-06-20T13:19:00.000-07:00

So far the stuff I've made have been pretty Western, so I decided to try to make something more Asian! And where's a better place to start than dimsum :)

These Pork Buns turned out REALLY good. I promise you that this recipe is restaurant quality. Not that difficult to make either, but it does take time and effort.

Mix together yeast, sugar, flour and warm water

Optional: allow stand for 30 minutes

(I skipped this step, but this can allow the yeast to rise a bit more. But there's plenty of time for that later)

Mix in warm water, flour, salt, sugar, vegetable oil

Knead until dough surface is smooth and elastic

Put dough into a bowl, cover with plastic film wrap. Leave for 2.5-3hrs.

Making the Filling:

Finely chop onions

Marinate the pork

Added some garlic chilli sauce. I didn't have any at home, so I used this pack left over from my last Nando's Chicken take-out. Their sauces are really good!

Mixed in: onions, soy sauce, chili garlic sauce, cane sugar, sesame oil, freshly grated ginger.

(I recommend adding salt. Mine turned out a little too plain when taken with the bun)

3 hours later:

Dough tripled in size!

Knead and flatten it on a floured surface

Wrapping the buns with my mom!

Roll out the dough thinly. They will rise a lot when steamed.

Not too bad for a first timer?

This is enough to make a small sized bun, but you can put a bigger dollop if you want, as long as you can still close the edges!

Too ghetto to get a rolling pin, so we used a water bottle hahah ;)

Trying with red bean stuffing!

This is super simple:

Cook red beans in water. It will naturally become paste.

Add sugar. As much as you find adequate.

All done and ready to be steamed!

We placed the buns on top of wax paper. Cut into squares.

15 minutes later:

They rose quite a bit, so remember to space them out before steaming!

Steps for the buns:

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon active dry yeast

• 1 teaspoon white sugar

• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour

• 1/4 cup water

• 1/2 cup warm water

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 2 tablespoons white sugar

• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Directions

1. Mix together yeast, 1 teaspoon sugar, 1/4 cup flour, and 1/4 cup warm water. Allow to stand for 30 minutes.

2. Mix in 1/2 cup warm water, flour, salt, 2 tablespoons sugar, and vegetable oil. Knead until dough surface is smooth and elastic. Roll over in a greased bowl, and let stand until triple in size, about 2 1/2 to 3 hours.

3. Spread out dough on a floured board. Sprinkle baking powder evenly on surface, and knead for 5 minutes.

For the Filling:

4 ounces ground pork
1/3 onion, finely chopped
2 teaspoons finely grated fresh ginger
2 teaspoons chili garlic sauce
2 teaspoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon sesame oil
salt (own adjustment)

1. Put the ground pork, onion, bamboo shoots, and ginger into a large bowl. Add the chili garlic sauce, soy sauce, sugar, salt, and sesame oil. Mix the ingredients together until well incorporated and the meat becomes sticky.

Assemble the Buns:

Roll out the dough. Make sure it is thin, the dough will rise when cooked
Each piece should be roughly the shape of a circle
Pinch the edges so that it is even thinner. If not, the top will become very thick when you pinch the closing edges together at the top.
Put a generous rounded tablespoon amount into each piece and wrap the dough by pinching and gently twisting the top. It will look better with practice! :D
Place finished buns on a piece of wax paper.
Steam on high heat for 15 minutes.
Ready to serve!

Additional Tips:

You can add 1 tablespoon of rice vinegar into the water when steaming to make the buns appear whiter.

Recipe adapted from:

Filling: http://www.lafujimama.com/2011/02/nikuman-japanese-pork-buns/

Buns: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/chinese-steamed-buns/

These were super fun to make, and they definitely tasted restaurant quality! Definitely recommended!

Have fun!~

More Tartlettes! - Strawberry & Raspberry, Lemon Cream Custard, Tarts lined with Dark Chocolate

2012-06-17T22:33:00.002-07:00

So I wanted to use up the custard I had left over from last time, but I remember how much I loved fruit tarts from Maxim's Bakery because the inner surface of the tarts were lined with chocolate. So I decided to melt some chocolate and give it a try :)

Click here for Lemon Cream Custard Recipe

I mentioned last time I cheated and just bought ready-made tarts, but I forgot to let you all know the ones I was using.

This is sold for a little over $5.00 in Safeway I believe, but I got these for around $3.99 at a No Frills :)

What they look like uncooked

After baking

I put some Lindt chocolate pieces in the center and put it back in the oven at low heat (250-300F)

When the chocolate is soft, spread it evenly on the sides with the back of a spoon.

Not dry yet!

Put it in the freezer for a few minutes for it to harden

Fill it with fruit!!~

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2012-06-11T00:14:00.003-07:00

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Lemon Cream Custard Tartlettes w/ Blackberries, Blueberries & Mango

2012-06-10T14:00:00.001-07:00

These can be customized with any fruits you want :) I chose blackberries and blueberries because the lemon flavour really compliments their taste :) I added mangos to make it sweeter because everything else is pretty tart and also to add some colour~

This recipe covers how to make the lemon cream custard to fill the tarts. I cheated, i bought ready made tart shells because i just didn't have tart molds.

Ingredients:

2 egg yolks
80ml brown sugar (I used organic cane sugar)
Zest of 1 lemon
1/6 cup lemon juice
5/8 cup milk (a little more than half a cup)

Mix lemon zest with milk

Heat in saucepan until almost-boiling point

Stop immediately

Beat together sugar with egg yolks

Add lemon juice and stir

Pour slowly the hot milk without letting yourself stop stirring

(I stopped stirring briefly to take a picture :P)

Keep stirring!

Colour turns to to a pastel yellow

This is what a double broiler looks like. This is needed to heat the egg mixture to make the custard.

I wasn't prepared to buy this, so I made my own:

Homemade double broiler

Simply put one pot over another!

Fill the bottom pot with water, approx 1/4 full

Pour custard mixture in

It will gradually thicken

Getting thicker and thicker...

Not sure why the colour turns out so neon on camera, but it was a lot more pastel in real-life.

Soo don't worry if yours turns out different

Finally managed to get a picture where the colour looks less neon. But this is actually a LOT whiter than the actual colour. I dont know anything about cameras, so maybe someone can tell me why this happens??!

The longer you cook the custard the thicker it will become.

Cook to desired consistency

If it becomes too thick, you can thin it out with a bit of water or milk

Now just fill the tarlettes and add the fruit!

Steps:

Finely grate lemon zest
Add it to the milk
Heat milk and zest mixture until almost-boiling point. Stop immediately.
In a bowl, mix sugar with egg yolks
Add lemon juice and stir
Pour in warm milk mixture while stirring at the same time
Place this cream mixture into a pot
Place pot over another pot with boiling water and let the steam heat the cream. (Refer to double broiler picture above)
Keep cooking around 10-15 minutes until it reaches ideal consistency
Transfer the lemon cream in a bowl placed in a container full of iced water (add ice cubes to make the water bath cooler). Mix from time to time and cover with a plastic wrap. Place in the fridge until it cools completely.
Bake tarts according to directions. Wait for it to cool completely.
Fill custard in tarts.
Add fruits of your choice!

Recipe adapted from: La Tartine Gourmande

Enjoy~

Red Pagoda Bistro

2012-06-05T00:53:00.005-07:00

Food: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Value: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Service: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Ambiance: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Address:

1408 Commercial Dr

Vancouver

I recently bought a coupon for this Vietnamese restaurant from Groupon.com. The offer was:

Vietnamese Meal with Starter and Pho for Two for $15 (Value $30)

And this meal included:

One sample plate with spring rolls, salad roll, chicken and pork brochette, minced shrimp on sugar cane, beef wrapped in heart leaves, and vermicelli salad (a $14.95 value)
Two bowls of pho noodle soup (a $7.95 value each)

Before purchasing restaurant coupons, I always check up on some reviews to make sure I'm actually getting a good deal on a good restaurant. Urbanspoon.com gave this a whooping 4.5 stars out of 5 (91%)!

So last week I decided to check this place out:

It's pretty small, with no parking at the back. So you have to pay for street parking.

Menu page for the Pho

We were allowed to choose any two of our choice with the Groupon.

The interior

We went pretty early that day so there were not many people yet, but it started to fill up around noon to one.

Window seats

Peanut Sauce & Fish Sauce

soo good!

19. Pagoda Special Beef Noodle

This was really good! It wasn't greasy at all. As you can see from the picture, the soup isn't shimmering with grease overload. The broth tasted very flavourful, without being too salty. What I really liked was that I did not feel super thirsty after eating this. Often when I eat out I tend to need to replenish with gallons of water because of the overuse of sodium and MSG in various restaurants.

I have to say the beef was not super tender. This is because the beef they used was not the "fatty beef" most Pho places use. There are pros and cons to this, but I reckon most people prefer the fatty beef because it tends to be more soft.

Having that said, this is a really good thing for those who are health or fat-conscious :)

23. Sate Peanut Noodle (w/Chicken)

This was AMAZING. I would come back to this restaurant purely for this dish. If you visit, you MUST ORDER THIS. The soup here tastes like 'Dan Dan Mian' (擔擔麵), but even better.

There really isn't much I can say to express how good this soup was.

Just Try It.

For some reason the starter plate came last =/

Looked very appetizing though~

Chicken and pork brochette

Beef wrapped in heart leaves

Salad Roll

Ingredients were definitely really fresh

The spring rolls

To be honest, I don't eat Vietnamese food an awful lot so I don't have much to compare to. But my mom, who often eats Viet, commented that these spring rolls were better than the best she has had in Vancouver :)

Minced shrimp on sugarcane

I would definitely recommend this place. I would also love to come again. The service is really good and the food came pretty quickly. The quality of the food for the value was well worth it.

My favourite thing about the food was that it was not too greasy or too salty. I am quite critical when food becomes "too" anything. Too sweet, too salty, too oily, etc. But I really enjoyed how the flavours balanced out here :)

Let me know what you think if any of you visit!

Maple Syrup Pancake Muffins

2012-05-31T20:49:00.000-07:00

I'll be honest. I have no idea what "pancake muffins" are. And I still don't.

But how can you not be tempted to try the recipe when the picture looks like this?

I know it looks nothing like the typical glam cupcake with the two-story icing goodness on top, but the idea of having it glazed with maple syrup sounded just as attractive~

Trying it out:

Mixing the batter

Again I halved the recipe, which was supposed to make 6, but I might've gotten greedy and filled the cups with too much batter :(

Decided to experiment~

Made 2 originals

1 blueberry

1 pecan

1 dark chocolate

Making the maple glaze!

The muffins are ready!

Ok. So not the prettiest things in the world.

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I'd like to take this opportunity to make a disclaimer, that I am not a professional cook or baker. In fact I don't own any professional equipment, such as electric mixers, or an oven. I bake with a tiny toaster oven. I simply like to try out recipes in my simple home :)

---------------------------------------

They even came out differently in height!

(If you try this at home with a proper oven I don't think this will happen. My toaster over is not good at distributing heat and normally heats the back row a lot more)

love blueberry muffins~ <3

Time to glaze!

Wow, looks so much better!!!

Kinda starting to resemble the picture now~ ^^

Probbbabbbllyyy over-did it with the syrup..... :P

Ate the one with blueberries first! Yum!

Comments about this recipe:

The muffin is not a moist muffin
It is soft, but at the same time almost slightly 'bread-like'
It may look like I poured too much maple glaze, but when I ate it, it didn't seem like too much at all
The cake itself is quite plain, so I would recommend overloading on the syrup. I find that the sweetness of maple syrup is quite gentle and doesn't overpower the goodness of the whole like refined sugar
The maple glaze hardens after a while, adding texture to the muffin
Pecan was my favourite flavour :)

I would say the taste of this muffin is really good. It got strangely addictive too. I gobbled three all in one go @.@ I might need some help perfecting the aesthetic aspect though~

Here's the link to the recipe! Click here.

Breakfast Today: Cottage Cheese Pancakes w/ Honey-Orange Butter & Maple Syrup

2012-05-29T19:01:00.001-07:00

Recently I've been quite preoccupied with pancakes. I went to IHOPs the other day, and they just didn't seem to be as satisfying as I remember. I know their specialty is that they're "fluffy", but instead I found them to be too crumbly, mushy and lacked texture.

So I came across a recipe that incorporated cottage cheese in it and I decided to give it a try, given how many good things I've read about cottage cheese recently.

As usual I halved the recipe:

My materials & ingredients

The batter

First try~

I love pancakes with that pattern! Reminds me of Japanese crepes :)

I was testing with different heat adjustments. This was Low-Medium.

3rd try:

Medium heat. This was my favourite :) Nicely browned and the 'snowflake' pattern is even.

I was gonna take a bite after I was done cooking all the batter, but I couldn't help but take a bite ^^

The outside is ever-so-slightly crispy. And the inside was really soft. Almost airy. Like a cheesecake without the heavy cream cheese flavour. Loved it. The texture was perfect.

This is home-made Honey-Orange Butter

I found this recipe somewhere and decided it would go lovely with pancakes :)

(see below for recipe)

All done & stacked!

Having them layered and all in one bite made it seem like I was eating cake :D

With the honey-orange butter and drizzled with maple syrup! I really liked the combination!

When I put syrup on IHOP's pancakes,they soaked up all the liquid and got kind of mushy. But this retained the texture really well and the outer layer did not become soft as easily.

For anyone who loves pancakes or even for those who don't: TRY THIS RECIPE!

It's really super easy and does not take a lot of time at all! Click here~

Comments about the Honey-Orange Butter

I did not follow the recipe exactly. I looked at the ingredients and decided to adjust it to my own liking. This is all you need:

Honey
Butter
Zest of an orange
Orange juice

Mix those together and refrigerate!

- I mixed with with a fork. Pressed the butter into the other ingredients. Food processors would work too.

- Don't add too much juice because it won't "absorb" into the butter. The zest actually gives it a lot of the orange flavour already

This tastes like butter with a hint of orange marmalade. Give butter a really gourmet touch ;)

Adapted from the recipe here.

Samples & Sweepstakes of the Day: Vitamints & Cookware Set

2012-05-29T12:16:00.000-07:00

Vitamints
Apparently these taste great and even freshens your breath! I just ordered mine, get your sample here!

Enter to Win a 13 Piece Lagostina Cookware Set

$999.99 value!

This brand seems to make some good quality items. Too bad you have to register an account to enter the contest. But worth a try if you're a cooking fanatic like me :P

Click here to enter!

Contest closes May 31st

Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler - Fresh out the oven!~~

2012-05-26T16:32:00.002-07:00

I want to dedicate a good portion of this blog to sharing some tried-and-tested online recipes. The pictures always look great, but you never know if its worth trying until you've attempted it.

I really like looking for recipes online because ~~I'm too cheap to buy cookbooks~~ it's soo convinient. I recommend www.foodily.com because it lets you type ingredients in the search bar and it returns results with that ingredient in it. So if you ever have some left over ingredients you want to get rid of, you can always look up recipes to use it up :)

I just finished making a strawberry rhubarb cobbler for the first time and this is what it looks like on the website:

Giving this a go:

Marinating the rhubarb and strawberry pieces

Cobbler crust dough

It actually took a bit of work kneading the unmelted butter into the flour with a fork

30~40mins later:

My finished cobbler!!!

oops dropped some ice cream on the compote ><

I used vanilla ice cream as opposed to whipped cream.

Close enough? What do you think? :P

I've never tried rhubarb before this. I don't recall rhubarb being sold in Hong Kong either. But I was really intrigued, maybe because they're red and red things usually look attractive to me :P They taste really tart. Kind of like a sour orange. The taste goes REALLY well with strawberry too! This is what rhubarb looks like:

(kind of like red celery? haha)

Comments about this recipe:

It says use tapioca, but I read comments that corn starch or flour would work as a thickener. So if you don't want to buy an entire bag of tapioca you can use those substitutes.

I usually find that Western dessert recipes are over sweet and I need to half the sugar or use 3/4 of what they recommend. But I actually used the entire amount, and it was perfect. I tend to be a little sensitive with desserts overpowered with sugar but this recipe's sugar level is definitely appropriate. It balances it out the tartness of the rhubarb and strawberries perfectly

Link to recipe: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/strawberry_rhubarb_cobbler/

Enjoy! ^^

蛋餅 (Dan Bing)

2012-05-25T22:57:00.000-07:00

(image found on Google Images)

So when I went to Taiwan for exchange last year, I had these things called 蛋餅 every so often. Taiwan has a lot 'late-night-and-early breakfast' restaurants (宵夜早餐店). The appearance would somewhat resemble a crossover between a Dai Pai Dong (大牌檔) in Hong Kong and a Cha Chan Teng (tea cafe/茶餐廳).

They were the perfect after-clubbing go-to :) Everything was so cheap and the taste is always authentic. The food they serve is really simple, such as soybean milk 豆醬, Chinese donut 油條, and Chinese egg pancake 蛋餅.

My ABSOLUTE FAVOURITE were the Chinese egg pancakes/Dan Bings/蛋餅. Maybe because for my love for eggs in general. It's basically a soft crepe, with an egg fried on top of it and rolled up (or wrapped up depending on the chef that night). There are various fillings to choose too, or you can have it plain as well. My favourite was the dried shredded pork floss (肉鬆).

Ever since I left Taiwan, I wasn't able to find it anywhere except for this Shanghainese restaurant called Dinesty. However, they sell it for $3.50CAD (plus tip & tax), and inside I was just like Bitch Please. I get this stuff for 30NT ($1CAD) =__=

But deep inside I still craved this like crazy. It's so simple, but oh-so-good.

And it finally came to me that I could try making this at home!

I actually found a recipe for how to make the crepe. But I also found that one of my local supermarkets had the actual 蛋餅 crepe in the frozen foods isle. I usually like to try out making things myself, but they were pretty cheap and just seemed more economical than to buy a bunch of ingredients to make a piece of crepe.

Also, I was craving it so bad I didn't want to suffer through the anticipation of the finished product as I take time rolling the dough :P

So this is what my home-made 蛋餅 looks like!

Fried the egg on the crepe with scallions + added pork floss

Rolled up~

Cut in half and ready to serve!

This ended up tasting really good! But I definitely wouldn't say it tasted "Taiwanese". Could not exactly point out the difference... but the authenticism just wasn't there. Nevertheless, the taste it great! And if any of you would like to try this out as well, I adapted my recipe from this site:

http://www.lafujimama.com/2009/05/jian-bing-chinese-breakfast-crepes/

Happy cooking!

Soup Harusame - TANTANFU

2012-05-25T02:02:00.000-07:00

So I was working on a paper pretty late the other night and decided to have a little snack. I've been quitting late night indulging for a while now, but since I was too busy to have dinner earlier that day I thought I'd let this one pass :)

Anyway, I found this pack of instant noodles I bought a few weeks ago from Yaohan (Asian supermarket in Canada), and the fact that it said 67kcal seemed to further justify my midnight snacking.

The flavour is basically Dan Dan Mian (担担面), which is a noodle dish with a fragrant spicy peanut-y soup base.

And what made me really want to share this was because of the shock that lies ahead....

Do you see it?

It's TINY! This is legit the smallest pack of instant noodles I've ever seen! This explains the 67kcals...

Next to an Oreo.

The bundle of noodles is ALMOST as small as an Oreo O________O

Here's what the soup base seasoning looks like:

Mixed in

This actually tasted amazzingggg... Here's a breakdown:

The noodles were neither too hard nor too soft. In fact, they had a springy elasticity to them. It wasn't plastic and unchewable, it was just soft with the perfect bounce.

The soup really impressed me too. Half way through I realized I had already forgotten that I was eating instant noodles. It tasted rich and flavourful. Not in that the MSG was strong, but more like it actually tasted like soup. The taste of the spices, the aromatic garlic and the subtle peanut and sesame just didn't seem artificial.

Actually included the minced meat too!!

I couldn't actually understand the instructions, so I just put it in a mug and poured boiling over it, put a lid on and left it for 3~4 mins. Can anyone translate this?

I'd say this is pretty healthy considering that it's junk food. Pretty low cal, low fat, low sugar, though high in sodium.

I also checked the ingredients (like I always do because I'm such a nutrition Nazi :P), and realized their ingredients are really good.

Vermicelli: potato starch, green bean

An easy way to see if a product is healthy for you or not, or at least, less unhealthy, is to see how many ingredients it contains. Less is more :)

These noodles don't contain a lot of artificial additives and chemicals many instant noodles have. For example, sodium carbonates, potassium carbonates, or stuff like gelatin or starch to create the elastic texture of the noodles.

It doesn't contain oil. Many instant noodles are fried. And not with the best oils either. Most of them are made with palm oil. Additionally, a lot of them have added salt. This adds to the level of sodium per serving.

Soup: I'm too lazy to type out all the ingredients. BUT I did notice that it does not contain any artificial flavouring, monosodium glutamate (MSG), or preservatives. Instead, they use ingredients such as garlic powder, fish sauce, miso, yeast, sesame, pepper, and so on. These sound pretty legit to me. No wonder it tasted so much like 'real' soup.

Lastly, I just want to add that although I was so taken aback that the portion was SO incredibly tiny, after eating it, I realized it was just the right size for a snack. In fact, it was great portion control. If it were any bigger I would have eaten a lot more than I needed to feel satisfied.

So would I recommend this product? Yes :)