Singapore-style noodles

This is a good Saturday night sit in front of the television after you have been shopping all day type recipe. The sort of thing that you can cook in s few minutes is easy to cook almost everything is fresh and you only have to use one pan, so not much washing up. The truth is that most stir-fry’s are easy to make but you just have to take the time getting the right ingredients. The right ingredients are the sauces and spice that give you the flavours such as soy sauce, oyster sauce, rice vinegar, rice wine or sesame oil. Fill your store cupboard with things like this and you are able to make a tasty meal in no time at all.

For this dish you will need the following

2tbsp groundnut oil
1 inch of fresh root ginger
1or 2 red chilli
1 or 2 garlic cloves                                         
5 fresh shiitake mushrooms
A good pinch of ground turmeric
100g/3½oz smoked bacon
1 red pepper
1 carrot
A handful beansprouts or more
100g/3½oz chicken breast
250g/9oz dried vermicelli rice noodles
2tbsp light soy sauce
2tbsp oyster sauce
1tbsp clear rice vinegar
1egg
1tsp toasted sesame oil
2 spring onions, sliced lengthways

Now to get this right you have to do your prep first as the cooking only takes a short while but not long. Tip the dry noodles in the wok and pour boiling water over them, that is all you have to do and they will cook, the beauty of the thin rice noodle. Second slice and dice all your vegetables, thin slice carrot , slice mushroom, deseed pepper and slice, chop and slice garlic and ginger and finally slice and deseed chilli. Then cut the chicken in to strips and the smoked bacon.

Now to be honest I do not know if smoked bacon should be in this recipe but I do know it sort of works, and if it’s not broken don’t fix it.

So with all the hard work out of the way you can start to cook. Take the noodles out of your wok and drain of the water, put them in the serving bowl, saving you washing up, always think ahead. Then get the wok on the heat let it dry out and add the ground nut oil. Once the oil is nice and hot then add the chicken, garlic, ginger, chilli. Stir this round so that the chicken is all sealed.

Now add the bacon, mushrooms, carrot, red pepper, then take your egg and whisk it with the ground turmeric. Keep things moving in the wok and when the chicken is almost done add the noodles, beansprouts and cook for one minute. Then add the soy sauce, oyster sauce and vinegar and toss this all together.

Finally to finish pour in the egg and work this in to the mix gently for a minute or so until the egg is cooked. Then a dash of sesame oil into a bowl and garnish with the spring onions sliced on the diagonal.

If you do this right you end up with one chopping board, one wok, one bowl from the egg and what you serve it in and eat it off  to wash up, you cannot say better than that.