12 minute stir-fried noodles with steak!

I thought up this recipe on a lazy Saturday night due to the ingredients available. It's quick, simple and delicious!

Ingredients:

·         Noodles (any type, although I prefer the medium egg noodles)

·         Beef steak

·         Onions (some sliced long and thin, and some diced)

·         Broccoli

·         Peppers

·         Garlic

·         Ginger

·         Soy sauce

·         White table vinegar

·         Chiu Chow Chilli Oil by Lee Kum Kee

·         Sesame oil

To get this recipe down in 12 minutes, you will need to cook things simultaneously.

Method:

Firstly, boil some water in the kettle and then move to a saucepan and boil the noodles. Whilst you do this, place a griddle pan on the hob on medium-high heat. As soon as it has reached the desired temperature, place the steak on and cook. Ideally you want the steak to be medium rare, although it all depends on your preference. Keep turning the steak every minute to ensure an even cook.

Chop the onions, peppers, broccoli and keep to one side ready to cook. 

Grind the ginger and garlic and set aside. Once all veggies are ready, place a wok on the hob to medium high heat. With a little vegetable/sunflower oil, lightly brown the onions. Add in the peppers and stir fry for a min. Add in the broccoli and stir fry for a couple mins. Finally add in the ginger and garlic and stir fry for 30 seconds. Turn the heat down to low, and now add in the noodles. Drizzle in a small amount of soy sauce to the veggies and noodles. Stir fry for a min and take it off the heat.

After steak has cooked and rested, slice it into thin(ish) 1-1.5 cm slices. In a separate bowl, pour in 35ml of soy sauce, a capful of white table vinegar, and some of the diced onions. Add in a dash of water and mix well. This soy onion mix is a sort of garnish over the noodles and steak. Drizzle the noodles and steak with sesame oil. The nutty flavour of the sesame oil will very much enhance the flavour of the steak. The Chilli oil is the joker card here and adds all the incredible flavour in this dish.

Mix as below and enjoy!

I may have lied about the time it takes to cook this meal! It's probably going to take 20 mins or so, however, if anyone is able to make it in 12 mins or less, I'd love to hear about it! 

Seafood Delight!

In Bali's south eastern coast, the town of Nusa Dua is filled with exotic hotels and resorts with expensive 5* restaurants. There is however a street of market stalls and cheaper restaurants that serve up some decent grub for a fraction of the price. We'd decided that this night was going to be a seafood feast seeing as we were by the coast! Walking up the street, we heard live music coming out of this restaurant. Peeking in, the tables were filled, with the diners looking pretty happy, so we decided that this would be the place. The Prada restaurant on Jl Pantai Mengiat.

Looking at the menu, things got rather confusing! It was a fairly large menu with lots of options, and if your eyes are bigger than your stomach (like in my case), then you can see the problem! Finally decided, the calamari for starters, crab in chilli sauce and seafood in black pepper sauce for the mains.

The calamari was delicious. Perfectly coated with breadcrumbs, and fried golden brown. Cooked well enough to ensure the meat didn't go stringy. The tartar sauce which accompanied it was spot on. Good, easy little starter that. (There was meant to be a picture of the calamari, but before I could get my camera out, the calamari had been attacked by my girlfriend's claws!)

When we ordered the crab, we assumed we were going to get one crab in chilli sauce. Instead, there was 3 of them tasty little guys sitting on the plate! The sauce was nice and spicy and the crab was sweet and fresh. It was a bit of hard work getting the meat out of the crab, but that's the beauty of it. It was totally worth the effort!

The seafood dish looked like a bit a sizzler of mixed seafood. That was not the case. In fact, it was stir fried mix of seafood (prawns, squid, fish etc) in a perfectly balance black pepper sauce. The sauce was the kicker of this dish. It was sweet, yet spicy at the same time. The black pepper was prominent, but not overpowering. The seafood was tender and well cooked. It was absolutely delicious!

With a bottle of beer, a glass of wine and some decent live acoustic music, this place was a bit of a gem. Adding to it, when we danced to one of the songs, the waiter came over with a complimentary jug of Arak (a type of local vodka) and proceeded to get us happier!

And all in, the evening cost us US$35! Goes to show, in a place with high end restaurants and resorts, it's not too difficult to find good eats that won't cost an arm and a leg!