broccoli oyster sauce noodles with fried onions
2 min readOyster sauce is a brilliantly versatile concoction, often used sparingly in Cantonese cooking to add greater depth to many dishes. This recipe celebrates the pure flavour of oyster sauce by coatingegg noodles rather luxuriously with. Crisp broccoli florets balance out the richness of the sauce, while the fried onions add a bit of cheeky indulgence.
Serves 2 vegetable oil, for shallow-frying 2 pinches ground white pepper 1 onion, thinly sliced tbsp cornflour 125g dried egg noodles 1 small broccoli, cut into florets 1 fresh red chilli, thinly sliced, to serve (optional) for the sauce 12 120ml oyster sauce pinches salt 2 spring onions, thinly sliced 1 Pour the oil into a saucepan to a depth of 1cm and put it over a high heat. In a bowl, massage the pepper into the sliced onion. To test that the oil is ready, drop a small piece of onion into it. It should fizz up, but not turn brown immediately.
Add the cornflour to the onion and use your fingers to ensure the onion is well coated. Add the onion slices to the hot oil. Lower the heat to medium, then use a pair of chopsticks to loosen the onions so that they don’t clump together. Fry for about 4 minutes until crisp and golden brown. Carefully re-move and drain on kitchen paper.
3 Fill a large saucepan two-thirds of the way up with boiling water, place it over a medium heat and add the noodles. As soon as you can loosen the noodles with chopsticks, push them to one side and nestle the broccoli in the free space. Cook on a rolling boil for further 2-3 minutes.
Meanwhile, put all the sauce ingredients into a small saucepan along with 120ml water. Simmer gently until the liquid has reduced by half.
5 Set aside a third of the sauce in a bowl, then drain the noodles and add to the reduced sauce. Toss the noodles in the sauce, then transfer them to two large plates. For a classically Cantonese presen-tation, tuck the broccoli florets (stem side in )all the way around the outside of the noodle nests.
Drizzle the remaining sauce around the edge of the broccoli and sprinkle the fried onions and chilli,if using, on top.
