This one was fun. It’s actually Chinese Spaghetti. I used angel hair pasta. The sauce has all our favorites, ground beef, garlic, ginger, a little hoisin sauce and beef broth. Also added some crushed red pepper flakes. I don’t know where I found this recipe. I couldn’t find it when I looked for it again. But if you google the title, dozens of web pages have it.
We spooned the meat sauce over the noodles just like spaghetti with red sauce. I learned the first time I went to a potluck dinner in Philadelphia that they call spaghetti sauce gravy. It sounded strange to me the first time I heard it. To me, gravy does not have tomato sauce in it, only meat drippings, flour and milk. So in this case, I think I do feel comfortable calling this sauce gravy, with an Asian flavor.
The Sesame Orange Napa Cabbage salad was really good too. The dressing has fresh squeezed orange juice, olive oil, rice vinegar, maple syrup, and toasted sesame oil. It went well with the Chinese spaghetti. Besides the cabbage cut up small I added a grated carrot (I successfully by myself set up and used the food processor, a tool totally unfamiliar to me as I have never owned or used one myself), a sliced green pepper and a whole bunch of sliced almonds and sesame seeds. I had a recipe but really didn’t follow it closely, I just went by taste. I liked it, will do it again. I recipe can be found at Swirls and Spice.com.
The bagel bites were another experiment. I had a package of raisins in my cupboard taking up space for a long time and I wanted to use them up. I soaked them in hot water to soften them up and then looked for some way to use them. I found that recipe and decided to give it a try. Sounded like it was simple and had only a few ingredients. I’ve been curious about making a dough from Greek yogurt and almond flour, so this was my opportunity to find out.
It’s just Greek yogurt, two cups of almond flour, raisons and cinnamon sugar. What I had on hand was almond meal, not flour so that’s what I used. You just mix the yogurt, raisins and flour. That’s it. Then form into balls, roll in cinnamon sugar to coat the outside, and bake in the over at 350° for about a half an hour.
They were just so so. Had hardly any taste at all. The recipe said to use coconut sugar but I didn’t have any so I used plain sugar. Not impressed. We ate them but not with much pleasure. If I do this again, I’ll use real almond flour, not meal, and coconut sugar. I’ll also add something to the dough to make it more interesting, like maybe a little honey, an egg, and some baking powder so they’re a little lighter and taste better. This was a recipe I got from Instagram.