Shanghai noodles with pork mince

ingredients:

for the sauce:

2 tbsp brown bean sauce
1 tbsp hoisin sauce
1 tbsp Shaoxing wine
375 ml (1½ cups)chicken stock

for the rest of it:

80 ml (1/3 cup) vegetable oil
5 green onions, finely chopped, white and green parts separated
2 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped
300g minced pork
1 tsp white sugar, or to taste
1 tsp tapioca starch
500gm fresh Shanghai noodles
1 Lebanese cucumber

method:

1. First things first. Take off your coat, shake your umbrella out and get into a pair of slippers. Turn the heating on and rouse the family. “We’re having noodles for dinner!”you will say. “Oh, ok.” they will reply. Don’t worry about the lack of reaction. They’ll come around once they start to smell it

2. Now get to sauce making. Dump it all in whatever is deemed worthy and stir around. It can be tricky measuring out some of the ingredients, mainly because the lid of your jar will be this big and your tablespoon measure will be just that little bit wider. No matter. Guess-timate. Use your sense of smell to see what you think it should be like.

3. Hopefully by now you will have found a hungry hovering hippo to give you a hand. If not, you can do it yourself. It’s not so bad, truly. Chop up the spring onion and cucumber. Three bowls please. One for the white part of the spring onion, one for the green, and another for the cucumber. I’ve done my spring onion in rounds (straight across it) and my cucumber in little matchsticky pieces.

4. While they’re at it, get them to chop the garlic. That way their fingers will smell of garlic all night, and not yours.

5. We’re almost there! Truly! Tip the oil in a wok and wait til it gets hot. Toss the white part of the spring onion and the garlic in and fry until fragrant (but not brown). About half a minute will do nicely.

6. Toss the mince in and stir fry it until it becomes opaque and each bit of meat separates from the others.

7. Now toss your sauce mix in and simmer. After about five minutes, mix your starch with about 3 tablespoons of water and toss that in too. Bring it to the boil, then back to a simmer for another five minutes. Toss the green part of the spring onion in and stir just before serving.

8. In the meantime, cook your noodles in a separate pot of boiling water for about 3 minutes.

9. All done? Ladle a serve of noodles into a bowl, top with your nicely thickened meaty sauce, a good handful of cucumber and you’re good to go. Now, where was that remote…