Noodle Atlas · Main
Singapore Noodles
- Intermediate
- 35 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with wood-smoke running underneath, fresh herbs arguing happily on top, finishing long and savory.
Ingredients
- 250g thin rice vermicelli, soaked in warm water 10 min until pliable, drained WELL and left to dry-fluff: wet noodles clump and steam
- 150g shrimp; 150g char siu or ham, slivered; 2 eggs
- 1 onion + 1 red pepper, slivered; 2 handfuls bean sprouts; 3 scallions in lengths
- THE SIGNATURE: 1.5 tbsp good curry powder + ½ tsp turmeric, bloomed in oil, not dusted on dry
- Sauce: 1 tbsp light soy + 1 tsp fish sauce + ½ tsp sugar; white pepper
Equipment
Wok
The skills inside
Wok techniqueSearing: the hard crustSteaming: basket, leaf and lidSoaking dried goods back to life
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · egg · fish · shellfish · soy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Scramble the eggs first in the hot wok; out. Sear shrimp and char siu; out.
- Fry onion and pepper 1 min; then bloom the curry powder and turmeric in a little fresh oil in the center 15 seconds until fragrant: raw curry powder tastes dusty; bloomed, it tastes golden. 1 min
- Noodles in; toss with tongs, lifting and dropping, adding the sauce around the rim; everything else back in with the sprouts and scallions.
- Toss high and fast 90 seconds: every strand evenly yellow, nothing clumped, sprouts still snapping. White pepper; serve immediately.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Wok technique 28 recipes
- Everything went in dry and went in in order. Wet protein or wet vegetables drop the wok below the heat that browns, and what follows is a stew in a round pan however hard the burner is working.
- The wok stays loud from the first moment to the last. A wok that falls quiet has been overloaded, and the food in it is now boiling in its own liquid.
- Every piece is coated and glossy with no pooled sauce in the bottom of the dish: the sauce should cling by reduction and starch, not sit under the food.
- Vegetables keep their colour and a bite at the centre. Grey-green greens or a limp stem mean too long in the pan, and nothing later in the dish recovers them.
- It carries the faint scorched note that only comes from food touching metal above about 200C, distinct from bitterness, which means the aromatics were burnt and is a different failure entirely.
Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once, or it went in wet. The wok loses its heat, the food releases water and simmers, the sauce thins instead of clinging, and the dish arrives pale and slack with liquid pooling under it.
Soaking dried goods back to life 69 recipes
- Fully submerged with room to swell: the level is well above everything at the start and still above it at the end.
- Given the full time, and judged by what is in the bowl rather than by the hours on the clock.
- Tested at the CENTRE of the largest piece, cut or pressed. Anything with a hard dry core will still have one after cooking, because the outside softens first and stops the water getting further in.
- The soaking water was dealt with on purpose: kept because it holds flavour, or thrown away because it holds what should not be eaten, but never simply left undecided.
- Drained before it is used, so the dish does not silently gain all the water that came with it.
Where it goes wrong Too little water, or too little time. The pieces swell until they are packed tight against each other and the ones in the middle never fully take up water; they will not soften later in the dish either, so the finished plate has hard pieces scattered through it.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Albariño
- Also Right
- Champagne
- From the Taps
- Pilsner or witbier
- Zero-Proof
- White grape & tonic
Shellfish sweetness meets acid, salinity, and bubbles, precision instruments for delicate meat.
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