Stir fry noodles

After using some of the noodles for the salad, I had enough left over for a decent meal. The idea to make noodles for lunch hit me when the hunger pangs hit me and I needed to make something quick. There was nothing to reheat in the fridge, and this was the perfect oppurtunity to use up the noodles.

Last month when we went to New York City to meet up with our friends, we went to an Indo Chinese restaurant. I had almost given up hope of eating good Indo chinese food in the US. You can imagine my sheer joy when I landed in this restaurant. I forgot the name of the restaurant, but next time I go there I will be sure to fill you with the details. We had something called hakka noodles which were just yummy and this was my attempt to recreate it. After the dish was made, it was nothing like the original but still yummy.

Recipe:

Cook the noodles seperately in salted boiling water.

To a hot pan, add some sesame oil. Add some ginger and garlic chopped, followed by veggies ( scallions, cabbage, capsicum, snow peas, carrots etc.) and stir fry on high heat. For heat add a couple of slit chillies. To this add some soysauce, salt and a dash of rice wine vinegar. Stir well to combine. And that is it. Decorate with the green of the scallions and some sprouts.

Asian salad

We made some new friends and yesterday was invited over for dinner at their place. It was going to be an Asian inspired dinner and so I offered to bring an Asian salad. I decided to keep the salad vegetarian as chicken teriyaki was the main course.
The recipe was from this book. The salad was delicious and so light. Everyone enjoyed it. I added some cooked noodles on the top, which added a visual impact to the dish..somehow for me, noodles and ‘asian’ go together.

For the dressing

Fresh lime juice 4 tablespoon
Olive oil 3 tbsp
Sesame seed oil 1 tbsp
Soy sauce 1 tbsp
A good pinch of brown sugar
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, finely chopped
Garlic clove finely sliced- half clove
1 fresh chilly, seeded and finely sliced
1 large handful of cilantro and basil, chopped ( I only used cilantro)

Mix all the above into a bottle and shake vigorously. I didnot measure all the ingredients, just rough measurements and adjusted the taste.

For the salad

Combine veggies( I used thinly sliced bell pepper, finely sliced cabbage, cucumber diced, scallions, snow peas, broccoli sprouts)

Noodles: I cut the noodles into about 2 inch pieces, cooked in boiling water.

Heate some sesame oil, add some sliced scallions, ginger,soysauce . To this add the cooked noodles and give a quick stir. Add to the top of the veggies. This step takes the salad a step up from ordinary.

Decorate with toasted sesame seeds and cilantro!!