This is Not Hokkien Char Mee

This is not hokkien char mee, but it’s a very acceptable approximation.

This recipe answers the age old question of what will happen if, instead of cooking your noodles in water, you cook them in a mixture of chicken stock and soy sauce. The noodles absorb the liquid and become infused with them and then you stir fry them at a very high temperature, which helps caramelize all the sugar you’ve added to the dish through a sweet, sticky type of soy sauce and your hoisin sauce. The result is an all time favorite, although I think it can barely be called Hokkien Char Mee. That dish is, I believe, an Malaysian noodle dish that almost always contains squid and shrimp and maybe other seafood products – also beef, chicken, pork, whatever. My version is just chicken, but how amazingly delicious it is will hopefully dispel any gripes about what it is not.

Fresh noodles are a must – go to Chinatown for the right kind – and as for greens, any number of varieties will work. The first time I made this I did so with choy sum and that was the greatest – but tatsoi, Chinese broccoli, snow pea leaves, or anything with a good ratio of stem to green will work well. Again, get thee to Chinatown. Most of the recipes or techniques in this collection have no “specialty” ingredients, and indeed, I find it rather off-putting when I’m reading a cookbook filled with ingredients I don’t know where to find and worse still, don’t understand how to work with or how they contribute. Also, I don’t love having a ton of ingredients in the house that I use for one thing only – but in this recipe, you MUST get kecap manis, an Indonesian version of soy sauce that is loaded with sugar (among other ingredients) and sort of feels like a cross between soy sauce and molasses. Again – Chinatown.

Ingredients:

• 1 chicken breast
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 TBSP kecap manis
• 2 TBSP oyster sauce
• 3 TBSP soy sauce
• 1 tsp cornstarch
• 1 cup chicken stock
• 1 squirt sriracha or similar chili-garlic sauce
• 1 bunch choy sum or other green, sliced thin into 2-3 inch ribbons
• 12 oz fresh flour noodles (yeah, you can use udon too)
• Black pepper
• ¼ cup high heat oil, like sunflower or safflower

Directions:

Pound your chicken breast flat by placing between two pieces of cellophane and waling on it with a rolling pin. When it’s flat, slice it roughly in half from left to right, then roughly in 1-inch thick ribbons. Place in a ziplock bag with 1 TBSP soy, the cornstarch, 1 TBSP oyster sauce, and some black pepper. Marinate for at least 15 minutes.

Next, mince your garlic and prepare your greens. Make sure they’re mostly dry before they go in the pan. When you’re ready to go, film the bottom of a large skillet (I like to use non-stick for this) with oil and place on high heat. Add half the minced the garlic and cook till it’s just beginning to brown. Add the greens and cook until just tender. Dump the mixture, including all the garlic, in a bowl and reserve.

Film the bottom of the pan again, add the rest of the garlic, and again cook until just beginning to brown. Add the chicken by reaching into the bag and removing with tongs. Lots of marinade will drip into the pan, which is fine, but don’t pour the bag in. Reserve the excess marinade. Stir fry the chicken until just done, about 2 minutes. Remove to the bowl on top of the greens.

Return the pan to the fire. Add the stock, the kecap manis, the remaining soy, the remaining oyster sauce, the remaining marinade, a squirt of sriracha, and a bit more black pepper. Stir to combine and bring to a rapid boil.

Add the noodles and stir to thoroughly submerge. Reduce heat to medium or medium high and cook, stirring frequently, until all the liquid is absorbed. At this point, if you’re using a non-stick pan (or its cast iron equivalent), you can go a little further, and keep cooking until the noodles dry out a bit and the sugars start just barely approach burning. You don’t want them to burn, of course, because that will make the whole thing unforgivably bitter, but they’re not going to get that high heat sugar caramelization at 212 degrees, which was their limit when braising. There’s a certain transformation that happens just after all the liquid disappears but before they over cook that is characterized by toughness, just a bit of chewiness, that occurs in addition to the high sear flavor left on the sides of some of the noodles Aside from just being really appealing, in my mind, one of the signatures of this dish. You don’t want to overcook these, or they’ll turn into a gooey, glutinous mess. You may even need to boil the noodles a little bit if they’re just releasing too much starch into the pan – that’s up to you and your noodles. But you do want to give them just enough time without any liquid to transform just a bit – you’ll know it when you taste it. The problem with using a standard aluminum or steel or copper pan is that they’ll just end up leaving a layer of sticky starchy stuff on the bottom which will reform and burn as fast as you can scrape it up. You want these noodles to remain in tact, and unless you’re working with a wok that’s been seasoned by generations of use, I recommend non-stick.

When the noodles have transformed, and not a minute after, transfer them to the bowl and toss the whole thing so that the greens and chicken are evenly distributed. The juices in the bottom of the bowl will remoisten the entire dish just right. Like all things, you’ll have to learn exactly how your brand of noodles reacts, how much liquid your greens release in the bowl, etc. If it’s just soup, you should add it to the pan before you put the noodles down. In any case, when the thing has become perfectly moist again and everything is distributed evenly, serve at once and enjoy!