Crustacean's Garlic Noodles

So... I'm always keeping an eye out for popular restaurant dishes and when I saw an Instagram pic of these noodles with Roasted Crab I was determined to try them myself.  Crustaceans is a really popular Vietnamese restaurant on the west coast and most of the reviews mention the Garlic Noodles as the best thing on the menu.

Every recipe I found called for MSG in some form, and although I know its not good for me, it makes food taste amazing.  We grew up cooking with it regularly, and eventually stopped for health reasons but I do occasionally indulge, and this dish was a good enough reason.

I didn't follow the recipe to a "T" because I couldn't find Maggi's Seasoning Sauce at the time so I had to improvise, we'll call this the hood version of Crustacean's Garlic Noodles.  This recipe is really about the sauce, which can be made in batches and kept refrigerated for a while.  Maggi's provided the touch of MSG I couldn't find so I created my own version of it by crushing a bouillon cube into soy sauce.  Considering I don't know what Maggis' seasoning sauce tastes like I was just trying to incorporate the bouillon cube so I'd have some MSG flavor mixed in.  

Before you read this recipe, try to remember, you shouldn't eat these noodles too often because of the MSG, plus they're kind of greasy because of all the butter, YUM!!

1 stick unsalted butter (same as 4 oz/110 g/1/2 cup/8 tablespoons)
2 heaping tablespoons minced garlic, or more to taste
1 tablespoon Maggi seasoning sauce
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon sugar

I replaced the Maggi's with my soy sauce concoction and it tasted great..

Just in case you couldn't figure it out: you need to boil and drain the pasta LOL

Once the pasta is almost cooked you can start the sauce, it takes very little time unless you're adding meat or seafood, keep that in mind.  Its always better to have the pasta waiting, heat from the sauce will warm it up.

First saute the garlic in the butter being careful not to let the garlic brown, if it does scrap it and start over, burnt garlic is not the desired flavor...

Next add the remaining ingredients and let simmer until all blended, then add any seafood or meat to the pan.

I used shrimp and lobster meat instead of roasting crab, sounded like a little too much work at the time.

Once the seafood was cooked I added the cooked noodles and tossed them in the sauce until coated.

The recipe calls for Parmesan cheese on top, it didn't really enhance the flavor to me, and I don't like cheeses in my Asian food, next time I'll skip it.

I've missed this blog, thanks for reading...