Cooking with Top Chef Canada

This weekend I finally decided to try out Chef Karine Moulin’s noodle quick fire from Top Chef Canada.  Now I know why it didn’t get to the plate in time.  This one took me about 45 minutes to make, and I was attempting to work quickly - though in all fairness, I am not a chef and would never claim to be.  I’m simply fearless (some would say stupid) enough to try just about anything in the kitchen.
The second thing I will say, is that I rarely cook from a recipe.  I read a lot of them, gather ideas and then try to make them my own.  It’s neither pride nor arrogance; it’s laziness!  But this time, armed with the recipe I got from Food Network CA and the post from Dan Clapson I ventured forth.  Now, it’s worth noting that when I first saw the posted photos, I thought I was embarking on a soup, but when I read he recipe through, it turned out to be a sauce for the pasta.

























**Note to self - always read the recipe through before you start!
I should also note that Dan had a distinct advantage over me, he got to cook this with Karine, herself!
While I am envious of that opportunity, it didn’t stop me from giving it a whirl - let’s go!

I won’t reproduce the entire recipe here since I’ve linked to it above, I’ll just share the differences.
First thing to do is get the pasta made so it can rest - I have to say that this is one of the very few times I’ve made pasta with straight all purpose flour and not semolina - but then, that’s the Italian in me.  The one hiccup with this was getting the nori ‘crushed’ as the recipe calls for.  I didn’t want to put it in my spice grinder and pulverize it, and it didn’t crush to small enough pieces by hand, so I ended up putting it in a bowl and finishing the job with kitchen shears - snip, snip.

























While the pasta is resting, combine the sauce ingredients in a processor.  This was my favorite part of the process since the aromas were absolutely heaven sent!  I don’t have a mini-processor so my ‘paste’ was a bit more coarse than is probably called for but it worked out fine anyway.

























I also diverged from the recipe slightly here, since it was so coarse, I heated it in the pan and sautéed a bit before adding the coconut milk - just to soften the ingredients and give them a head start.

























Next step - get the water for the pasta on to the boil, since you want to go right from cutting the pasta to the boiling water.  Then roll out the pasta - I ended up rolling to the #3 setting on my KitchenAid pasta roller.

























I also decided that my protein loving husband would want some ‘meat’ with his dinner so I pan seared some shrimp until nearly done, then hit them with a dash of lime juice just at the end.


























Follow the recipe by straining the sauce into a saucepan, then cook that pasta as directed in the recipe, shocking it with cold water and reheating in the sauce - don’t skip that step since the pasta will absorb those wonderful flavors!  Then plate.

























I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I did.  The flavors are rich and complex and will transport you to Southeast Asia, even on a snowy evening on the prairies!