Thursday, July 15, 2010

The Daring Cooks July 2010 Challenge: Nut Butters

The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

And I am 1 day late from posting!

This month's challenge was not really a cooking challenge but rather a laziness challenge for me. As Taiwanese, we eat lots of savory nut foods such as sesame cold noodle,  chicken rice noodle salad, pork bums with sesame paste, salmon with walnut paste, etc. But as days get colder down here Chile, I am more lazy than ever!

I bought walnut, peanut, almond, sesame, soy beans... thinking that I'll make it a great month... but instead, we've only ate 2 dishes, actually, it's a dish and a drink.


Peanut butter (this yields 1 1/2 cup of peanut butter)
2 cups of peanut (toasted, no salt and no skin)
2 Tbsp of veg. oil. (I used grape seed oil and you may add more if you want it creamier)
1 tsp of salt (or more to taste)

Put everything in blender and blend for 1 min. Be careful as it might over heat the motor so you could probably blend it "Rum-Ruuumm-Rummm" and so on instead of "Ruuuuuuuummmmmmm"






Chinese shrimp and veggie fried noodle w/ peanut butter (2~3 serving)
2 rings of noodle (chinese white noodle or any flat noodle) 
200 g raw shrimp shelled and move the digestive track at it's back.
1/2 cup celery
1/2 cup carrot
1 cup bell pepper (any colour is fine, mix of colour is best)
1/2 cup mushroom (preferably shitake mushroom)
1 Tbsp salt
1 Tbsp rice wine or white wine
2 Tbsp of veg. oil
optional: 1 spicy red pepper (small finger size)


Nut sauce:
2 Tbsp peanut butter (or any nut butter)
1 Tsp soysauce
1 Tsp vinegar
Mix well.

1. Cook noodle according to package instruction
2. Marinade shrimp with wine and 1/2 tbsp salt
3. Cut all veggies to finger bite size (may want to julienne cut carrot as it takes longer to cook)

4. Heat pan on high heat until hot (around 15sec for me) and pour in the veg. oil
5. Pour in marinaded shrimp with it's sauce (wine) and flip when one side is red.
6. Pour in all the cut up veggies right after you 1st flip the shrimp so that the veggies are on top of the shrimp. Please note that if you over cook the shrimp too much, it will be a bit too chewy and not as fresh-sweet). Add salt and stir fry for 1 min or until the veggies reach the texture that you prefer (crunchy=30min or soft>1min).
7. By now the noodles should be cooked and drained, stir them in with the veggies and shrimp.Toss until well blended and turn off the heat.
8. Serve on plate and top with nut sauce.

Multi-Nut drink:
2 tsp sesame paste
1 tsp almond paste
1 tsp peanut butter paste
1 Tbsp sugar
1 cup hot soymilk
Mix and add more sugar if you prefer it sweeter as nuts are a bit sweet already.