This month, Sourced & Seasoned winter contributor, Style My Plate, shares a Chinese interpretation of a popular dish that we all know and love: Surf and Turf.
A self-confessed ‘death row meal’, Vic serves up her take in the form of a sizzling stir-fry, with sliced steak, fresh seafood, and, of course, all the Asian veg. But what really makes this dish is the air-fried crispy noodles that soak up every bit of the salty, syrupy sauce. Don’t own an air-frier? No stress! You can fry the noodles in a wok or pan until they’re nice and crunchy.
Download your copy of the recipe here and learn a little more about Style My Plate and the story behind her Chinese Surf and Turf Crunchy Noodles below.
‘If I was on death row, this would without a doubt be my last meal. My love for this crispy noodle dish came about at a very young age, when my parents used to take me to Victoria Street in Richmond to get the famous ‘crunchy noodles’. The two of them used to go to this one restaurant (which has now sadly closed) when they were university students, and continued the tradition, taking my younger sister and I to the same place every Sunday for dinner.
To say I am addicted to this dish is definitely an understatement, so given our family institution closed its doors, we had to reinvent the much-loved recipe.
It started off with mum stepping up to the plate, but naturally due to my growing love for cooking, I knew I had to try and do my own take on these crunchy Chow Mein. Aside from the obvious crispy noodles being a major drawcard for this favourite, the salty and syrupy sauce that soaks up the noodles to make some of them soft is also a massive turn-on for me.
Made healthier by frying my egg noodles in the air fryer rather than deep-frying, this is an incredibly easy recipe that will come seamlessly to you once you have made it a couple of times. It’s all in the ingredients prep, and then it’s bam bam thank you mam from there.
Here’s what you need for crunchy noodles. I have separated the ingredients into their respective groupings;
- Base ingredients (all purchases from Lee’s Asian Grocery) – for the sauce and the crispy noodles; and
- Meat, seafood, and vegetables – these of course can be subbed out for your taste preference, a lot of restaurants use chicken in this dish, as well as normal broccoli and cauliflower if you aren’t into Asian greens.’
Vic’s tender slices of porterhouse steak are from our meat market, AKA Bracher Arcade. This area of the food Market is also full to the brim of poultry, seafood, and game, including organic food options.
