Prawn Chow Mein

Chow Mein means fried noodles and there are probably as many recipes or versions of this as there are cooks in China. You probably wouldn’t find anything like my version in the great People’s Republic of China but it is still quite tasty.

Ingredients, serves 4:

• Packet of dried Chinese egg noodles
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 150g peeled big prawns (shrimp). I use frozen ones, thaw under a cold tap and drain in sieve.
• 1 carrot chopped into thin ‘julienne strips’
• 1 onion chopped into biggish chunks
• 3 cloves pf garlic, chopped
• Fresh ginger (about 2cm square) chopped
• 1 tsp chilli bean paste
• 3 tbsp fresh chicken stock
• 3 tbsp sherry
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 spring onion cut into very fine strips.
• Assorted other vegetables as you wish. You could use baby asparagus, thin French beans, red pepper and little pieces of celery and of course Chinese cabbage.


And then you need to:

Bring pot of water to the boil, chuck in noodles and cook for 3 mins. Drain, throw into bowl of cold water and then drain again. Put into large bowl, pour over sesame oil, stir to coat and put to one side.

Heat wok to medium high heat, add 1 tbsp groundnut oil, and throw in onion, garlic, ginger and carrot.

Stir for about 1 mins and then add stock, sherry, soy sauce and chilli bean paste. Cook for about another 2 mins, add all other vegetables and the prawns, and continue to cook until the sauce has become quite thick (this should not take long). Add the cooked noodles and the spring onion, stir to coat and to mix through and then tip out into a large shallow dish.

Serve with a little dish of soy sauce into which you have chopped 3 or 4 thai chillis.