Teriyaki pork stir-fried noodles

Serves 2

There are two stages to this dish, and two sets of ingredients - see also stage 2 below.

Stage 1: Teriyaki Pork

Ingredients:

• 1 good-sized boneless pork steak (150g or more)
• a little oil or pork fat for frying

Teriyaki sauce:

• 2 tbsp Kikkoman sweet soy sauce
• 2 tbsp mirin
• 3 tbsp sake
• Sprinkle of Chinese 5-spice seasoning

(or use an equivalent quantity of a bottled teriyaki sauce)

Mix the teriyaki ingredients in a glass. Heat the oil or fat in a wok. I used some pork fat which I had in the fridge from an earlier roast. Groundnut or vegetable oil are fine, maybe with a dash of sesame oil for extra flavour. When the oil is hot, throw in the pork steak whole. Fry it on a high heat on one side for about 1 minute, until starting to brown, then turn and do the same on the other side. Turn the heat down and cook slowly for around 2 minutes on each side.

Pour in the teriyaki sauce ingredients, and gently poach the pork for 5-10 minutes, depending on the thickness, turning occasionally, until it is no longer bloody in the middle. Still pink is good. Remove the pork from the pan and set aside to cool. Chop the pork into small pieces appropriate for stir-frying when it has cooled a little. Turn up the heat and reduce the sauce in the pan until it starts to thicken. Set aside the sauce as the base for the potion for the stir fry. Clean the wok.

An alternative option at this point...

Stage 2: Stir-fried noodles

• Chopped pork and reduced sauce from stage one.
• Stir-fry vegetables (I used pak choi, bean sprouts, spring onions, grated carrot)
• Fresh green chilli (any hot element) (I used half of a very hot small green chilli. Any kind of chilli, red or green, fresh or dried, or something hot added to the sauce could have a similar effect)
• 1 clove garlic
• fresh ginger (roughly the same quantity as the garlic)
• 140-150g buckwheat noodles (or any other kind of noodles)
• 1-2 tbsp oil (e.g. groundnut and sesame)
• juice of half a lime

Bring a pan-full of water to the boil, then add the noodles. Keep on a rolling boil for the amount of time specifed on the packet (minus 1 minute or so - they are going to get a bit more cooking in the stir-fry). When ready, remove from the heat, drain into a strainer with a handle and run under the cold tap to cool them down and stop them from continuing to cook. Set aside and allow to cool.

Wash and chop the vegetables. Keep these to hand, along with the sauce. Add the lime juice to the teriyaki sauce. There should be about 30ml - add a little soy sauce and mirin to the teriyaki sauce if you need more. This is the potion - read more about Martin's potions.

Heat the oil in the wok. Throw in the pork first, and make sure it is starting to brown, then pour in a little (c. 1 tbsp) of the sauce. Let the sauce evaporate before throwing in the veg. Add the veg and add a little of the sauce from time to time, but only as much as will evaporate quickly. Straight after the last veg add the noodles and then the rest of the sauce. Ensure it is all piping hot and then transfer everything to a warmed bowl. Serve and eat!

Read more about stir-frying.

Drinking suggestions

I find this best matched with lager. I had Kirin Ichiban. I tried it with a Robertson Winery Chenin Blanc 2010 (South Africa), £3.99 from Majestic, but the strong chilli taste meant that I couldn't taste wine, so I reverted to the beer. The wine was very drinkable though, and we enjoyed it after the meal.

An alternative

After completing stage 1, you could slice the pork into bite sized pieces for eating with chopsticks, reduce the sauce down to a sticky syrup and pour it over the pork. That would be teriyaki pork, good served with plain boiled rice. Adding some ginger juice to the sauce, or frying the pork with some ginger slices would be good for some extra flavour. This would basically be Tsuji's 'Ginger Pork', which I will make on a future occasion.