Drunken (or at least mostly inebriated) Noodles

In today's installment of "Now You're Cooking with Torgo!" we made Drunken Noodles, a simple Thai(?) stir fry dish.

I consider it noteworthy when I use one or more new ingredients, particularly when they're major components. For this, I needed rice noodles. That was really no major accomplishment. And the other ingredients: ground chicken, bell pepper, onion, garlic, sugar, soy sauce, fresh basil... these were basic.

The big problem was something called kaffir lime leaves. The section of the supermarket where they display the "Leaves" is always a bit odd to me. There's stuff like parsley, flat leaf parsley, mid-tempo parsley, parsley, parsley, and spam. It's like looking at the plants you're walking through in the woods and trying to pick out the poison ivy (or oak? I can never remember. Three leaves, something about three leaves).

We found basil quickly enough, but the lime leaves eluded us. They may not be rare, but we were at a fairly limited market. How limited? No fresh green chiles. How do you maintain self-respect as a supermarket and not carry a wide variety of chili peppers? Apparently, too easily. I had to opt for canned chiles this time, sad as that was.

As for the lime leaves, I'm sorry, kaffir lime leaves (incidentally, my computer defines "kaffir" as a noun, chiefly S. African, offensive: an insulting and contemptuous term for a black African), I just used lime juice.

The results were mixed. The dish was good, but frankly, I don't think a shortage of leafage was the problem. Next time, I'm going to throw in some hot peppers, hotter than the green chiles. Hot is good.