Thai stirfry

We stopped by the Super88 the other day, picked up some fresh udon noodles.  These guys are interesting, just super thick, chewy, and strangely delicious noodles.  I figured we had the proper ingredients for a stir fry, of the Thai variety, if only because of the limes that I had kicking around.  Stir fry dishes are pretty loose when it comes to a recipe, but Ed started eating this and declared that it got an extremely high Ed-rating.  Then he considered for a bit, and amended the statement to be "the best cabbage dish I've ever had", and then amended the Ed-rating to even higher, as in this is so tasty he'd actually pay money for it at a restaurant.  I'm not sure what the difference was - I mean, this was one good stir fry - but I figured I'd better write down the pieces that turned it from a pile of cooked food stuffs into a unified dish.

 

I started by flavoring the oil.  Into the wok went a solid glug or two of vegetable oil. Once that was hot, but not yet smoking, I dropped in a dried red thai chili, cut into thirds or so.  All the seeds immediately fell out, and that gave a really nice kick to the dish.  Toss that around for a bit, maybe 30s, and once you can smell the spice (if you want really spicy, add 2-3 peppers), throw in some minced garlic, ginger, and thinly sliced lemongrass.  In retrospect, I should have done with the lemongrass what I did with the pepper, and thrown in a large chunk or two, just to flavor the oil, rather than cutting it into pieces, since it wasn't a fresh stalk of lemongrass, so it was kind of woody.

Aromatics set, now it was time for the filling bits.  About a quarter of a head of purple cabbage, diced, and some floppy-looking use-me-now-or-never kale made up the veggies.  On top of those went a large pinch (a small handful?) of brown sugar, a few small glugs of soy sauce, and a small glug of fish sauce.  Once the veggies were no longer raw, in went some cubed firm tofu and the udon noodles.  And the juice of two limes.  Then a large handful of basil leaves, and some cilantro leaves fresh on top once you pull it off the heat.

The only thing that really would have made the dish is if we'd had some ground peanuts for the top.  Anyway, I think it was the large quantities of lime juice that sealed the deal for me; we'll be making variations on this for a while!