Udon noodles with pork and vegetables
This dish contains some unusual for Russian and European cuisines ingredients: red miso paste (akamiso) and black wood ear fungus. Both are easy to find even in Russia – I just go shopping in special stores that sell exotic products. And these ingredients don’t cost much. Also you can turn this recipe into a vegetarian one if you use tofu instead of meat.
Generally I cook in big amounts – one dish that I’ll be eating later one week long or so. 🙂 From this amount of ingredients you will produce 6-7 big portions. Feel free to decrease the amount of ingredients proportionately.
Ingredients (you’ll need a wok-pan with capacity 4 l and up):
- 50 ml of flavorless oil
- 10 g of ginger root (if you don’t have fresh ginger, you may use 2 tsp of ginger powder instead)
- 200 g of carrots
- 700-800 g of slightly frozen pork (fillet of pork leg with marble fat will be perfect)
- 100-150 g of onion (you can use leek instead)
- 1,5 tsp of garlic powder
- 2 pinches of cinnamon
- 3 tbsp of sugar
- 1 tbsp of vinegar 9%
- 115 ml of soy sauce
- 100 g of akamiso (red miso paste)
- 450 g of young cabbage
- 25-50 g of dried black wood ear mushrooms (aka black Chinese fungus or cloud ear fungus)
- 500 g of udon noodles (uncooked)
Options:
- 150 g of edamame beans (peeled)
Instructions
1. Put dried black Chinese mushrooms in a bowl and add 1-1,5 l of boiling water.
2. Cut pork in long thin stripes (0,5×0,5 cm). To do it easy the pork should be slightly frozen. If the pork was deep frozen, it will take at least 3 hours at room temperature to defrost it.
3. Cut carrot, cabbage, onion (leek) and mushrooms in thin stripes, mince ginger.
4. Pour water in a pot and add salt (1 tsp of salt per 2 l). Bring to a boil. Add udon noodles. Cook constantly stirring. See the time o the package of your noodles.
5. While noodles are being cooked, prepare sauces and spices. So that later you will be able to add them quickly. Ingredients in list above are sorted according to the time of adding.
Drain water off noodles and rinse in cold water thoroughly, otherwise it will glue into 1 huge ball later.
6. Add oil to wok frying pan and turn maximum heat on. When the oil is hot enough, add ginger and carrot. Stir fry for 2 min.
7. Set aside and add pork.
After 1 min. stir-frying combine pork with carrot and stir fry for 1 min. Pork should be half-cooked: stripes should be white and slightly pink in several parts.
8. Add onion, stir fry for another 1 min.
9. Add vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, cinnamon, garlic powder and miso paste. Stir thoroughly.
10. Add cabbage, edamame beans and black wood fungus. Combine with other ingredients and cook stirring ~3 min, cabbage should lose its volume.
11. Add udon noodles, stir thoroughly and switch off the stove.
