Celebratory Chop Suey

For the past couple of days I have been checking my WordPress stats eagerly the first thing in the morning. This is to help decide what to eat during the day. Confused?

I decided a month back that the day I get 100 followers on my blog, I would celebrate- by treating myself to some Chop Suey. Somehow I was getting a craving for the sweet and tangy taste. I had also decided to do a different post once the magic number showed up. (I did celebrate 500 likes a few days back). So, why not make Chop Suey from scratch and write a post about it? It would be a far cry from what I normally write about and frankly reading a lot about making pies and chocolates and soups is making me itch to turn out a great dish and a great post.

I did a vegetarian version of the American Chop Suey because these days I have given up eating meat, chicken, fish… So I looked in the refrigerator to get together the vegetables available. Hmm.. onions of course from the vegetable basket and carrots, capsicum and cauliflower (yes, cauliflower and not the traditionally used cabbage which my family does not like anyway) from the fridge.

The vegetables got chopped into thin slices and juliennes.

Sliced Vegetables

I crispy fried the vegetables, starting with onions and adding other vegetables later on. This was done for a few minutes till I felt they were done. I seasoned these with some salt, black pepper and a couple of pinches of sugar. No, I did not use MSG because I figured out this was American, not a Chinese dish (actually, I just did not have any ajinomoto).

Crispy Fried Vegetables

Then, the noodles. I happened to have only the instant variety of noodles. OK, OK, I know I should have planned the 100 follower celebration better… So, the noodles got boiled and drained and kept aside. Do not peer too closely otherwise your spectacles would get steamy. I then took about 1/3 of them and deep fried them in oil. So far, so good.

Noodles-boiled and drained

After that, I raided the kitchen cabinet to see how many (or maybe all) ingredients I had to make the sauce. Tomato Ketchup, check. Soya sauce, check. Vinegar, check. And great, I found some corn flour too! This should make some tasty sauce. I mixed all the things in a pan and brought them to a boil and let them simmer. To thicken the sauce, I put in a little of the cornflour mixed in cold water to the simmering mixture and stirred rapidly. I also added salt, red chilli flakes and a tsp of sugar. I let it sit on the fire till the sauce thickened to my taste. I tried taking a picture here but the steaming sauce fogged up the camera lens!

Everything seemed to be going good. Serving the finished dish meant I put the noodles in a shallow dish, topped with the vegetables and poured the sauce over. A sprinkle of the crispy fried noodles and I was ready to celebrate!

Celebratory Dish- American Vegetable Chop Suey