My first attempt at Filipino Pancit noodle for dinner.....

So I've never made pancit before, but I have had it  and loved it. It was made by a Filipino nanny that lives in our neighborhood. It looked simple enough and I thought, I could totally do this. So I started researching for recipes to try. I'm not a recipe follower kinda girl, 99% of the time, I will find a recipe that I like and then modify it to my liking...lol

So I finally decided to go with the one posted by the Noodle Guy http://thenoodleguy.com/2012/10/12/pancit-recipe/ and this is what I came up with....

Ingredients:

• 2 packages of dry Pancit noodles (rice sticks)
• 1 small napa cabbage (shredded in 1/2 inch pieces)
• 1 medium carrots (either shredded or chopped thinly into matchsticks)
• 1 small onion (thinly sliced)
• 2 cloves garlic (minced)
• 6-8 large shrimp (shelled and deveined thinly sliced)
• 1 package of fish balls cut in half and thinly sliced
• 10 pieces of sliced tofu
• 1 tablespoon canola oil
• 2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce (optional, add 1 tablespoon soy sauce  if not adding fish sauce)
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Lemon wedge
• Chopped Scallions

I first soaked the noodles in warm water (for about 30 minutes-1hr)

Then I prepped my veggies and protein slicing and dicing them into smaller bite size pieces. The key is these noodles are very delicate so if you have large pieces of toppings then each bite won't be very balanced. I like to have each bite containing all the ingredients.

 napa cabbage and green onions (scallions)

 raw shrimp and fish balls sliced thinly

 matchstick sliced carrots and thinly sliced fried tofu

First heat the oil in a nonstick pan then add the garlic and the onion and stir-fry until fragrant and translucent (2-3 minutes) then add the protein and veggies and stirfry for another 2-3 minutes until mostly cooked

then transfer that to another bowl or pot....I left mine in the same pot and just got another same size non-stick pot. In the new pot, add 1 1/2 cups of water and 2 teaspoon of Knorr chicken bouillon until boiling. Then add in the noodles all at once (it is easier if you cut the noodles with scissors before adding them because it can be quite tricky to stir them if they are too long) add the soy sauce and fish sauce to the noodles and cook for about 4-5 minutes until all the liquid has been absorbed/evaporated. Then slowly incorporate the stir-fry meat and veggies to the noodles and turn off heat. Gently tossed until noodles and fillings are evenly distributed. Add the thinly sliced green onions at the end and do a quick toss. et Voila! serve it with some cilantro garnish and a wedge of lime/lemon.

It was quite tasty. The noodles were not dry nor mushy. It was the perfect chewy texture....my girls loved it and had 2 servings each! Overall, I would say this was a successful first attempt at making Pancit....the nice thing is you can put whatever meat or protein you want to so you can change it up to your liking.

I hope this has inspired you to try making this yourself....it wasn't terribly that difficult or time consuming. I would definitely make this again!