Pancit Recipe *Guest Post

I met Marigold in Savannah while her husband and I studied illustration at SCAD. We often hosted  potlucks for us illustration grad students and their spouses/friends, participating in rousing games of Twister and Charades. Marigold was always sure to bring something delicious to eat too much of and is gracious enough to share one of her recipes for my readers here at An Austin Homestead. Be sure to check her blog out, too: it's a doozy with tons of crafts, tutorials, kid friendly fare and fantastic ideas and projects of all sorts! Thanks, Marigold!

Hello! My name is Marigold and I am visiting here from Hideous! Dreadful! Stinky! Today I would like to share one of my mom's recipes. For those of you who can't tell from looking at my typing, my mom was Filipino. Making me half-Filipino! I lost my mom to breast cancer a little over five years ago. Since then I have found myself having lots of moments where I really, really wish I had collected all of the recipes that she stored in her head. Because she could cook! And OH! how I miss her cooking! What I do now is basically call my sister and ask if she has Mom's recipe for such-and-such, then hunt the Internet for similar recipes, then do trial-and-error runs in my kitchen until I get something that's not quite as good as Mom used to make.
One of the recipes that I was lucky enough to get from her was for Pancit. This is a pretty basic Filipino noodle and vegetable dish that probably has a thousand variations. This one, though, is the best because it was my mom's!

Mom's Best Pancit Ever, Fool!
1 pkg. rice noodles
2 Tbs. vegetable oil
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 cup chicken or vegetable broth
1 cup water
1 handful (about a dozen or so) snow peas, ends trimmed
1 carrot
3-4 leaves bok choy
1 green onion
1/3 head of broccoli (approx. 1 heaping cup chopped)
1 tsp. sugar
salt & pepper to taste

for serving:
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/2 lime
1 clove crushed garlic

Combine the broth and water and warm in the microwave or stovetop until steaming hot (not quite boiling). In a bowl, soak the rice noodles in the hot broth for 10 minutes until they soften, stirring occasionally to ensure all noodles get soaked and softened.

Meanwhile, chop all of your vegetables into bite-sized pieces. The carrots should be cut thinly an at an angle, the bok choy into strips, the green onion should be finely chopped, etc.

Make your serving sauce: in a small (non-metal) bowl, combine soy sauce and crushed garlic and the juice of half a lime. Set aside.

Drain the noodles, reserving some of the broth. Don't rinse the noodles. Using clean kitchen scissors, cut the noodles up so that they are a few inches long. No need to be precise here, just make them short enough to be manageable enough to eat.

Heat oil in a wok or large frying pan over a medium high heat. Saute garlic until soft, about a minute, then add all of the vegetables. Cook for 2-3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add noodles. Sprinkle over with sugar, salt and pepper and a few teaspoons of your soy sauce mixture. Cook and toss together until heated through, about 3 minutes more.

Remove to a bowl. If some of the noodles have stuck to the bottom of the pan, deglaze with the pan with some of your reserved broth (about 1/4 cup should do). Scrape up any browned bits and stuck noodles with a wooden spoon. Pour over your bowl of cooked pancit and toss together.

Serve warm with a wedge of lime and sprinkle over with with soy sauce mixture.


That's it! You can also add shredded chicken, pork or shrimp to this dish to make it a little heartier for a main dish, but I have always loved it with just the noodles and veggies.
Thanks for having me over today, Miranda!