"Special" noodles

This is my only legit family recipe, I think. Something my dad flung together a couple of times and I asked to learn, and which I then made for myself and others from the age of, what, 14 or so?

Props to Richard Farquhar for forcing me to add tabasco sauce that one time. That was one of many adaptations and refinements that took place over the years.

And hey, I know the whole "story" thing for recipes sucks, but this really was my gateway proper cooking. We don't use salt because the soy and nam pla provide that; the physics of how starch molecules behave; timing two different strands of a recipe; sensibly improvising when you don't have exactly what you want; cooking for others and having it appreciated… I really have a relationship with this one.

Ingredients

Serves 2 adults or 1 adult and two kids

Sauce

Method

The noodles need to go into boiling water for 4 minutes. When you do this in relation to the sauce is up to you and how confident you are with your ingredients and timings. When you've been making it for 30 years the whole thing can come together in 5 mins.

For the sauce:

  1. put 200ml of water in a small pan on a high heat
  2. add half a vegetable stock cube
  3. add 1 tablespoon of soy sauce
  4. add 1 tablespoon of fish sauce / nam pla
  5. add 30g of creamed coconut
  6. add 1 tablespoon of smooth peanut butter
  7. add a big pince of sugar
  8. add a crushed clove of garlic
  9. add a teaspoon of toasted sesame oil
  10. add 1 tablespoon of tomato puree
  11. add a dash (or two) of Tabasco sauce

Notes

Pretty much everything here is negotiable. You can use chicken stock, oyster sauce, coconut milk, crunchy PB (😒), garlic powder / garlic granules, fresh tomatoes / pasata, cholula…

It's more of a vibe than a recipe: a kinda satay peanut sauce, basically, with some coconut and a touch of heat. This is just my canonical version.

The order you add stuff doesn't really matter either, but here are my observations:

END