Bam-i

Tonight's meal is going to be a kind of bam-i. This is a Cebuano specialty noodle dish, often served at feasts and banquets. Its chief feature is that it contains two types of noodles: a kind of soft chow mein noodle made from eggs and wheat, and those thin, translucent, vermicelli-like noodles that are actually, somehow, made from green beans. I think that in Cantonese the latter are called sai foon. I have no idea what the name bam-i translates to, if anything: ask a Cebuano and he'll tell you it means a pancit (noodle) dish with two kinds of noodles. :)

Bam-i normally contains a mixture of pork, chicken, liver, shrimp and sometimes squid, as well as shredded cabbage, shredded or Julienned carrots, red bell peppers, and wood-ear fungus which is sold dried then rehydrated and sliced prior to cooking with it. I don't have most of these things as we still haven't done our biweekly grocery shopping yet, due to the stormy weather. All I have is what I found in the cupboard, which was a package of each of the two kinds of noodles; and what I found at the local mini-market, which was three small pieces of chicken thigh meat, half a cabbage and a carrot (I forgot to get red bell peppers.) So, my bam-i is going to be way simpler than the normal recipes that people prepare to serve to guests and such.

Odong with sardines

Odong ingredients

Odong is a kind of short flour and egg noodle, yellowish in color, somewhat resembling spaghetti noodles. The most common way of preparing odong is a rich noodle soup or stew made with sardines in tomato and chili sauce. Sounds disgusting, tastes great! I plan to cook this for dinner tonight.

The key is to use Asian-style sardines. Americans, please don't try substituting cheap Beachcliff brand sardines in those flat cans: it will taste horrible. Try to find an Asian market and look for sardines in a small (around 150 grams), upright can (see photo above.) Favorite brand names include Ligo, Toyo, Family's, 555 and Mega. Make sure you get sardines in tomato sauce with chili added, unless you absolutely can't stand any spiciness at all in your food (they're not hot, by the way: just tasty), in which case get sardines in plain tomato sauce. Well, you'll need to go to an Asian or Filipino market anyway, to get your odong noodles, so you may as well just get your sardines there too.

Odong is sold in a plastic bag which contains several (around ten) small packets of noodles. You'll need six of these packets for this recipe, which sadly only leaves four for the next batch. I wish they'd give us 12.