Who Needs Hoisin?

A few days ago, I was trying to come up with something for dinner that wouldn't require a trip to the grocery store. I found Chicken and Noodles with Peanut Sauce on the Cooking Light website. Knowing that pretty much all the ingredients are staples I tend to always have around the house, I figured I was safe. So I start doing the dinner thing, and in the midst of it, I discover that we don't have any Hoisin sauce. How can we not have Hoisin Sauce? We ALWAYS have Hoisin sauce! After frantically searching the kitchen for about 15 minutes, I'm finally able to convince myself that we are indeed out of Hoisin, and it's not just hiding in the pantry, or in the veggie drawer, or the door of the fridge (where I did find my sunglasses, but I guess that's a story for anoter day), and being past the point of no return on this dinner, I had to soldier on, sans Hoisin.

But really, who needs Hoisin when you have these ingredients?



I tried to think about the flavors that generally make up Hoisin sauce...it's definitely a sweet flavor, but has some salty tanginess to it as well. So, I decided to throw in some teriyaki sauce and some soy sauce...true, it wouldn't be as thick, so texture wouldn't be the same, I was hoping it would still at least taste ok. And since I wanted to go for a somewhat Thai-like taste in the sauce (and because Psycling and I both like a little heat in our food) I added some red curry paste to kick it up a notch. I was actually pleasantly surprised! The dish came out really well! Texture left a bit to be desired, both because of the thinner sauce, and because in my frantic search of the kitchen for the missing Hoisin I managed to overcook our udon noodles, so it was a littl mushy. But it tasted good, so that's all that really matters right?

So really, who needs Hoisin?

P.S. While eating left overs of this meal for dinner toinght, it occurred to me that some coconut milk would have provided some of that extra flavor that I was looking for in the sauce...maybe we'll try that next time...