Singapore Street Noodles with Fried Egg

This recipe was inspired by Ching-He Huang's Singapore noodles from Cooking Channel. I made it my own by using grapeseed instead of peanut oil, adding garlic and shallot, halving the turmeric, adding more fresh and dry red chilis, and adding the fried eggs at the end. The original recipe also uses bean sprouts, which would have been fantastic, but unfortunately, they didn't have any at the grocery store, so I had to mix it up.

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons grapeseed oil
• 1 chopped shallot
• 1 tbsp. chopped garlic
• 1 tbsp. grated ginger
• 2 fresh red chilis
• 10 fresh shiitake mushrooms, sliced
• 1 tbsp. ground turmeric
• 3 1/2 ounces diced smoked bacon
• 1 red bell pepper, seeded and sliced
• 1 handful julienned carrot strips
• 3 1/2 ounces cooked chicken breast, shredded (lamb or beef would be awesome too)
• 8 ounces dried vermicelli rice noodles, pre-soaked in hot water for 10 minutes and drained
• 1 tbsp. dried chili flakes
• 2 tbsp. lite soy sauce
• 2 tbsp. oyster sauce
• 1 tbsp. some kind of white vinegar (regular, rice, or cider vinegar)
• 1 egg, beaten
  
• Dash toasted sesame oil
• 2 spring onions (green), sliced
• 2 additional eggs fried sunny side up, as a side.

Directions

Heat the oil in a wok or pan, and when hot, stir-fry the ginger, garlic, shallots, red chilis, mushrooms and turmeric for a few seconds. Add the bacon, and cook for less than 1 minute. Add the red bell pepper, carrots, and bean sprouts and cook for another minute, then add the cooked chicken, and stir well to combine.

Add the noodles, and stir-fry well, for 2 minutes, then season with the chilis, soy sauce, oyster sauce and vinegar. Stir to combine. You have to work it quite vigorously to get all the ingredients mixed with the noodles, which overwhelm at first.

Add in the beaten egg, stirring gently until the egg is cooked through, less than 1 minute. The egg kind of disappears into the dish; you don't see strips or anything really, but that egg flavor is really good. Then, season with the sesame oil. Sprinkle over the spring onions.

Fry sunny side up eggs in a separate pan. Make sure the center is still a little uncooked. Serve the egg as a side to the noodle once you plate (not pictured). Add Sriracha sauce too if you like.

Response:

We LOVED this dish. It reminded me of hole in the wall Asian restaurant food. The most labor-intensive part is shredding chicken; it's really easy to do but time-consuming. Cooked chicken has a natural pattern of lines and you just pull it apart along its natural lines. It's also really fun to cook vermicelli noodles...you don't need boiling water, just hot water. It's great. This meal also made me realize that I need to cook with bacon more often! What got me really excited was that I got to try out my new Wusthof chef's knife,using it for everything from the chicken and bacon to the spring onion. Sliced through like a dream! This is a good dish for having friends over or to eat really really late night after a night out.

I think I'm going to use this dish to invent some chicken or lamb coconut semia. Semia is basically Indian-style vermicelli noodles. Cook it up upma style with some mustard seeds, green chilis, tomato, dry roasted coconut, OGG...it will be wonderful. Yum! Next time.

Happy Recipe-ing.