Because cooking is our family pastime, we rarely order takeout. When we do, we crave dishes too cumbersome to cook, such as complicated Indian dishes and Asian stir-fries.
A case in point: the Singapore noodles from our local Asian noodle shop. The dish’s combination of Chinese-style, stir-fried veggies, tender shrimp and barbecued pork, along with a heady curry sauce, always intrigues.
Challenged to make this at home, we looked at several recipes by noted authors Ken Hom, Martin Yan and Nathan Fong for ideas. Then we went to the salad bar to see if we could shorten some of the ingredient prep. Bingo: sliced onions and peppers, baby corn, even sliced bamboo shoots. Our supermarket’s produce section also sells cartons of cleaned and sliced shiitake mushrooms (allowing us to skip the lengthy soaking of the dried version).
Happily, even suburban supermarkets stock rice noodles, and many have the skinny variety we like for this dish. These noodles are about the size of spaghetti (which will substitute here just fine). The rice noodles do not require cooking — just soaking in very hot tap water — and stay toothsome even after saucing. Some members of my family prefer the packaged “chow mein stir-fry noodles” found in the Asian aisle; these wheat noodles, like their Italian semolina counterparts, soak up the sauce more readily and yield a softer texture.
Time spent cleaning and finely slicing the leek proves worthwhile because the texture works wonderfully in this stir-fry. But here we’re swapping barbecue pork, a standard element in restaurant fare, for faster-cooking chicken thighs. A quick curry sauce concocted from readily available condiments intensifies after a brief spin in the microwave. Also, if you like, have some sriracha hot chili sauce to serve at the table. It is sold in Asian markets and the Asian aisle of many supermarkets.
After all the prep work has been done, place your ingredients near the stove and enlist a helper to set the timer and ensure items go in the pan in proper order. After about 10 minutes of high-heat action, everyone agrees this is as good as takeout — and maybe even better.
