Pan-Fried Noodles With Some Spice
A stir-fry becomes a weeknight go-to dish when garlic, ginger, lime and peanuts get some Asian heat.
Video by Jenny Woodward on Publish Date October 31, 2014. Photo by Andrew scrivani for The New York Times.I can make my go-to pantry pasta recipe on autopilot in 20 minutes flat, and I do so at least once a month. Boil pasta, brown some garlic and anchovies in olive oil, add chile flakes and butter and a squeeze of lemon. Serve with red wine, and feel the hardships of your day melt like the butter on a hot noodle.
This is all well and good, but it can be limiting. What if I’m not in the mood for those Italian flavors?
This recipe for spicy pan-fried noodles takes the same quick-to-make principle and applies it to the Asian condiments in my pantry. Instead of olive oil, I slick the noodles with peanut and sesame oils. Soy sauce and ginger provide the depth of flavor I get from anchovies. And sriracha supplies the chile heat, while lime juice steps in for lemon.
The only constant is the garlic, which is nonnegotiable when it comes to pasta and me. Here, I slice it thinly and fry it hard until it browns into crisp chips. As it sizzles, the garlic seasons the oil, which in turns imbues the noodles with its heady scent.
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My Asian-influenced noodle dish is greener than its European incarnation, from the addition of scallions and cilantro. While neither strictly qualifies as a pantry staple, I often have them on hand, and they are easy enough to pick up at the corner store on the way home from the subway.
The only potentially tricky thing to find may be the noodles themselves. I love this dish with Chinese egg noodles (also called Hong Kong-style noodles) because they are springy when you chew. But I’ve also made it with rice noodles and soba to good results. You need to boil the noodles only until they are halfway done; they finish cooking when you pan-fry them.
Unlike my Italian pasta dish, which works best in its simplest form, this spicy, tangy mess of noodles will readily absorb other ingredients. A handful of thawed, frozen edamame or baby spinach leaves, or both, thrown into the pan at the end of cooking makes the dish even greener. Heartier ingredients that need to be cooked — sliced mushrooms, halved shrimp, bits of tofu, chicken, beef or pork — can be stir-fried before adding the noodles.
After you get the basic technique down and a stash of the noodles in your cupboard, you can adapt this dish however you like. Twenty minutes later, dinner will be done.