Robin has this Brazilian friend whom he befriended *online* from his animation course. They often chat via the internet and for some reason, this Brazilian friend and his wife kept asking him for a yakisoba recipe. Guess what? Robin asked me to write them a recipe instead. I have never cooked yakisoba (Japanese style fried noodles) and so I was hesitant. But after reading up on my very reliable Japanese cook book, and doing a search on the internet, we came up with the following recipe, and this is what it looks like:

 Ingredients
1. dried shiitake mushrooms (about 4-6)
2. beef fillet or pork fillet or chicken fillet (your preference) about 300g – 400g, thinly sliced
3. garlic, about 3 cloves, finely chopped
4. fresh ginger, finely chopped, about 3 teaspoons
5. yakisoba noodles (thin egg noodles can be used if yakisoba noodles not available), 500g
6. (optional) 3- 4 slices of ham (or bacon rashers), cut into small squares
7. vegetable oil (2 tablespoons)
8. sesame seed oil (1 teaspoon)
9. spring onions (6 sprigs, cut into 3cm lengths)
10. 1 carrot, peeled, thinly sliced
11. (optional) 1 small green capsicum (green pepper) cut into thin strips
12. chinese cabbage, thinly sliced (250g)
13. 1 tablespoon thinly sliced pickled ginger

sauce
1. 60ml Japanese soy sauce
2. 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
3. 1-2 tablespoons Japanese rice vinegar
4. 1 tablespoon sake
5. 1 tablespoon mirin
6. 1 tablespoon tomato sauce (ketchup)
7. 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
8. 2 teaspoons soft brown sugar

Condiments
pickled ginger

Method
1. Soak shiitake mushsrooms in hot water for about 30 minutes. Drain, but reserve 2 tablespoons of the soaking liquid. Discard mushroom stems and thinly sliced the caps.

2. Put meat in bowl with half the garlic and fresh ginger and mix well.

3. Put noodles in bowl and pour boiling water over them. Drain and separate noodles well.

4. To make sauce: combine all sauce ingredients in a bowl together with the reserved mushroom soaking liquid and the remaining garlic and ginger.

5. Heat wok to medium-high heat, add ham and stir-fry for about 3 minutes or until turn brown. Remove and set aside in a large bowl.
Combine the oils (vegetable and sesame seed) in a bowl. Heat wok to high and add a little of the combined oil mixture, then stir-fry meat for 1 minute or until the colour of meat changes. Remove meat and add it to the ham. Add a little more oil to the wok, then stir-fry mushrooms, spring onion, carrot, capsicum and cabbage for 1-2 minutes or until vegetables are just cooked but still crisp. Remove and add vegetables to the meat and ham. Add remaining oil to wok and stir-fry noodles for 1 minute. Return meat, ham and vegetables to the wok, add sauce and pickled ginger and stir-fry for 2-3 minutes or until all combined and heated through. Serve immediately, garnished with pickled ginger.

Don’t be scared off by the long ingredient list — you can actually omit some. I did. I have to say that the prep work takes quite a long time as there’s a lot of ingredients that require cutting and chopping. But, once you have prepared all the ingredients, the cooking part is very easy and quick. The effort is worth it — the noodles is delicious — that’s what Robin says! 🙂

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 7:33 pm and is filed under daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.