Saturday, April 24, 2010

What to do with ham and plain yogurt?

I love when the unexpected turns out great.  Yesterday Andy and I wanted to have an easy dinner without a lot of fuss.  He was talking about Taco Bell, but I had just gone major grocery shopping the other day.  Plus, ever since we've made friends with our neighbor Mathilde, Taco Bell just doesn't sound that great.  Mathilde's authentic Mexican food is to die for!  So I talked Andy out of Taco Bell and set out to make something easy.  I knew I needed to use up some ham, but I was tired of my regular leftover ham recipes.  Instead, I looked around and came up with this curry noodle dish.  It was amazing: one of the best pastas I've ever made and oh so simple.  The egg noodles have great substance and the scent of the curry powder will make your house smell great!  If you want yours to have a little more bite, add some red pepper to your dish.  Enjoy!

Curry Noodles with Summer Squash
Ingredients:
8 oz Egg Noodles*
2 Cups Chopped Ham
1 Medium Yellow Squash
1 Medium Zucchini
1 and 1/2 Cups Water
1 TBSP Dried Minced Onion
1/2 TBSP Curry Powder
1 and 1/2 TBSP Cream Cheese
3 Oz Plain Yogurt
2 Chopped Roma Tomatoes

1. Put water in a medium sized soup pan on stove top and bring to a boil.
2. While water is starting to boil, chop ham, squash and zucchini.  Put in a separate medium sized soup pan.  Add water, dried onion, cream cheese, yogurt and curry powder to pan.  Turn heat on high right before putting egg noodles into boiling water.   Bring to a boil and turn down to medium heat.  Continue stirring while cooking so sauce won't burn on the bottom.
3. Follow directions on egg noodles.  Cook until al dente.  When finished cooking, drain water and put back into pan. Turn stove off under noodles.
4. Right before mixing sauce in with noodles, take out a large spoon full of sauce and mix a teaspoon of flour with liquid to form a paste.  Pour paste back into sauce and bring sauce to a boil, stirring frequently.  (This will thicken your sauce up a bit.)  Pour sauce over noodles, turn heat back on and bring to a boil, stirring.  Turn off heat and let sit covered for 5 to 10 minutes.

* I used specialty, dried egg noodles (from Aldis).  If you don't have these, I reccomend the type you buy from the freezer.

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