Culinary Adventures

This has been one of my experiments during my lack of posts vacation. I love this dish for its simplicity and the fact that it is a one dish meal. This is again one of my favorite dinner in a hurry meal. The best part about it is that even chopping the veggies for this is reasonably easy. They can be rough chopped, which is  easier than slaving over chopping veggies fine. 

Ingredients

 Noodles - 1 packet 

1 onion sliced 

4 spring onions chopped 

1 cup mushrooms chopped 

1 cup mung bean sprouts 

1/2 cup zucchini sliced 

1 cup cilantro chopped 

1/2 cup chicken / beef thinly sliced. 

2 tbsp red chilli flakes or red chilli in oil 

1 tbsp ginger garlic paste 

1/2 cup soy sauce  oil as required 

Method 

Cook noodles as per directions and keep aside. Heat a very heavy pan on high heat.

Add a couple of table spoons of oil.

Then add half the meat. The meat shold start sizzling at once.   Add a table spoon of soy sauce to the meat to season it. Keep stirring constantly.   Once the meat begins to change color add half of the vegetables and noodles. keep stirring as you add the ingredients.

 Also add in half of the ginger garlic paste, chilli flakes, cilantro and soy sauce. 

Stir constantly for 2 - 3 min remove from heat and serve immediately garnished with cilantro. 

Proceed as above for the remaining ingredients too.

Makes two servings. 

Tips  

I use the pre cooked noodles found in the Asian grocery stores. This is a huge time saver. All I need to do is rinse the noodles in hot water and they are ready to use immediately. I usually put the noodles in a bowl of hot water and leave them in for a few min while I chop my veggies.  I then drain them and they are ready to use. 

I rough chop all the veggies. Onions are sliced wide.  I usually use button mushrooms. The small ones are left as is and the bigger ones are halved or quartered, depending on size. 

To cut thin slices of meat, the best thing to do is partially freeze the meat.  I usually partially thaw the frozen meat and cut very thin slices by holding the knife at an angle. If you are not too particular that the meat be very thin. You can also use the same method on completely thawed or unfrozen meats. The best part about Mongolian noodles is that you can add any type of veggies or meats that you want.

The key to cooking is a large and very heavy pan, if possible a cast iron pan. I use a heavy non stick pan, so its not necessary to have cast iron pans. Also the pan should be very hot before you start adding the ingredients and constant stirring is a must.  If there is food stuck to the pan after making one serving. Just add some water and scrape at it. When done on a high heat with water even a wooden spoon can loosen the food and you can either tip the pan contents into another vessel or wipe away the remaining moisture and all the burnt food with a clean kitchen towel.      

 

Tags: mongolian noodles, noodles

                            

This entry was posted on Friday, December 15th, 2006 at 1:00 am and is filed under Noodles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.