Glass Noodles with Vegetables

Preparation

1. Since the vegetables are cooked quickly and aren’t heated for long, buy the best-quality carrots, peppers and mushrooms. If you like, you can use other store-bought mushrooms instead of shiitake: oyster mushrooms, button mushrooms, or preserved wild mushrooms.

2. Prepare all the ingredients in advance.

   

3. Remove the seeds from the sweet pepper and cut it into strips.

4. Peel the carrot and grate it, preferably into strips too.

5. The hot pepper is optional, but with it the dish gets a subtle, piquant taste. Peel the hot pepper and cut it into thin, short strips.

6. The mushrooms can be soaked first and then cut in half.

7. The green onion can be used with the white part: just cut it lengthwise into 4-5 pieces.

   

Stir-frying the vegetables

1. A Chinese cast-iron wok without a lid is handy for this. Pour sesame oil into the wok, 3-4 tbsp is enough. Heat the oil.

2. Then add the cut hot pepper and green onion. Stirring, fry the onion and chili for 2-3 mins. The point of these is to flavor the sesame oil for frying: the dish should be very fragrant and slightly spicy.

   

3. Then add the cut carrot to the wok. Fry the carrot until soft. Stir the vegetables fairly often so they don’t burn and fry evenly.

   By the way, a wok is designed so that the heat goes into a small, thick bottom while the sloping, spherical sides stay relatively cool. So for better frying, keep the food in the center, where the hot oil collects.

   

4. Add the sweet pepper cut into strips to the fried carrot. It is usually quite juicy, and liquid may appear while it fries in the wok. That’s normal, it evaporates fairly quickly. Fry the pepper until soft and the first signs of browning appear.

   

5. Next, add the mushrooms to the vegetables. A mushroom can hold a lot of moisture, and once frying starts it will run out into the dish. But it also evaporates well. Mushrooms fry quickly, and 5-6 mins is enough for them to be fully cooked.

   

6. After this you can add the sauces to the wok. We added 2 tbsp light soy sauce and 1 tbsp mushroom sauce.

7. We also squeezed in the juice of a quarter of a lime, which gives the glass noodles with vegetables an original and very pleasant taste. Fry the vegetables in the sauce for 3-4 mins.

Noodles and serving

1. Boil the noodles 5-6 mins before the vegetables are done, as for glass noodle salad. For this dish we boiled the noodles in plenty of water for 3 mins.

2. Then we drained them in a colander and rinsed them under cold running water. If you skip this, the noodles stick into a lump and can’t be mixed with the fried vegetables.

   

3. Put the boiled noodles into the wok with the vegetables. They are quite hard to mix; this is usually done with chopsticks. But we managed fine with two forks, which turned out to be quite convenient.

4. Carefully and unhurriedly mix the noodles and vegetables. All the ingredients should be evenly distributed.

   By the way, if you think the dish needs more heat, go ahead. Chinese dishes are often at their best when they’re noticeably spicy.

   

5. Fry the vegetables and glass noodles for another 4-5 mins, stirring constantly. After that the dish is ready. Serve it right away, while it’s hot.

   

6. Glass noodles with vegetables are usually served on an ordinary plate or in a large hemispherical bowl. Put the noodles and vegetables on a serving plate and sprinkle with sesame seeds. This dish is traditionally eaten with chopsticks, but given the circumstances, a fork will do. Before serving, add a slice of lime to the plate.