On the rare occasion of me making it to London’s China Town I can’t resist trying small amounts of lots of new things, but always, always, I have to have my fix of Singapore noodles. It is an addiction I’ve had for 30 years. This recipe is good, but it can never be as good as those prepared in any half decent Chinese restaurant. In addition to chicken, ham and prawns, it also usually contains scraps of pork char siu. If it all looks like too much trouble then cook the pork with char siu sauce and stick to simple rice and perhaps some leafy pak choi cooked with ginger, garlic and oyster sauce.

Ingredients - serves 4

700g pork steaks, lightly seasoned
4 tbsp char siu sauce
200g fine rice noodles
1 large onion, halved & sliced
3 tbsp sunflower oil
10 dried shitake mushrooms, soaked in hot water
2 cloves garlic finely sliced
3cm cube fresh ginger, grated
3 tsp madras curry powder
2 tbsp light soy sauce
3 tbsp dry sherry
50g chopped cooked ham
50g shredded cooked chicken left overs
100g small, shelled prawns
4 spring onions, sliced thinly
salt to taste

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C
Heat 4 tbsp of char siu sauce in a frying pan and cook the pork steaks for a 3 minutes on each side until they are coated an brown from the sauce- transfer to the oven for a further 12 minutes or until cooked through, keep warm.

Soak the rice noodles in cold water for 15 minutes then drain and reserve. Squeeze the water out of the mushrooms after soaking them for at least half an hour and tear into pieces- keep the liquid.

Heat the sunflower oil in a large frying pan or wok over a high heat, throw in the garlic, ginger, mushrooms and onion and toss together for a couple of minutes then turn down low for a further 10 minutes to allow the flavours to infuse into the oil. Now add the curry powder and mix in.

Turn the heat up to medium, scatter in the small prawns, shredded chicken and cooked ham and cook a further 2 minutes then add drained noodles and toss together until all are hot. Finally, pour over the dry sherry, a little mushroom water and soy, sprinkle with a little salt and scatter with sliced spring onion. Slice the char siu pork thinly and serve over the noodles.