When I was growing up, there was a Chinese restaurant near me that served a few different stir-fries served in a "bird's nest". Although actual birds' nests are a thing, this is not what they served - it was shredded potatoes shaped into a bowl and then deep fried, usually served with a mix of seafood and vegetables in a rich, light colored but very garlic-heavy sauce. The dish has a lot in common with some versions of chow mein, which in some preparations is a bed of really crispy noodles with a very heavily sauced stir-fry plated over the top. Both are great, and the consistency is what really wins me over - crispy on the edges, but chewy and loaded with flavor as you work your way in, and as the noodles start soaking up the sauce from the outside in.
To try to replicate this, I bought a nest-frying tool, which is a strange contraption of two concentric hemispherical baskets that clamp together, and you load up the volume in between with potato and then deep fry the whole thing. Naturally, I've never used it. Instead, I've tried to make the noodle version of this dish a few times with minimal success, mostly because the crispy noodle cakes that serve as the foundation usually come out both squishy and burnt when trying to get heat into the center of a cake of pre-boiled noodles. On a recent attempt, after having a fit about ruining too many noodles, I gave up in a fit of rage and threw a small quantity of the noodles into my air fryer, which turned out to be the magic step - this turned a disaster of a process into a really easy one. And then today, based on a recent attempt at making a few Thai noodle soups from Serious Eats, I borrowed a technique where you make a garlic-infused oil and then use that as the oil to coat the noodles in, prior to air-frying. The result was better than any version I've had in a restaurant.
The toppings for this crispy noodle cake almost don't matter as long as there's enough of a decent, garlicky sauce to work its way into them at serving time. I tend to lean towards a beef with oyster sauce, so I liked the version that combines beef and bok choy from Omnivore's Cookbook, adapted to what was in the garden, and using some leftover rare rib roast and only lightly stir-fried. It's infinitely adaptable, so long as there's at least a cup of a thickened sauce to go over the noodles. If you get the timing just right, serving over the hot, freshly fried noodles will get them to sizzle audibly, and start soaking up that goodness right before you start eating.
A word on ingredients - use decent stuff. There's a good amount of oyster sauce in this, and Shaoxing wine is used in a couple of steps. Try to get a good quality version of these two things, which both make a difference. Try to find an oyster sauce that's actually got "oyster" as the first ingredient, and look for a wine that's got less salt and might be labeled "hua diao" or has aged a bit. This is going to change the flavor immensely, and took me a long time and many mediocre stir-fries to realize.
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| These are the versions of the key ingredients that I keep on hand. And yes, that's Japanese soy sauce, not Chinese. |
