Sichuan pork and pumpkin stir-fry over crispy noodles

I found this recipe on a fellow blogger website - thanks 3 Hungry Tummies - but had to make some changes to make this a bit more of a full meal, with some extra greens, larger quantities, and some improved methods. As I mentioned in the beef and bok choy over crispy noodles recipe, this is an extreme comfort food dish for me, but even more so than the beef and bok choy version, this one has the noodle I remember but adds some new and intense flavors that make this dish really satisfying. It's spicy, sweet, savory, salty, warming, crunchy, chewy - there's a lot going on here.

I really recommend trying the noodles in the air fryer, which helps them come out perfectly. I tried many times in a pan or wok, but the hot air really gets this the right level of crispy throughout, in a way that could only be achieved by deep frying otherwise.

• 1/2 lb frozen lo mein noodles, cooked till al dente, drained, refreshed with cold water and drained again
• 1/2 lb wedge of pumpkin (less than half of a pie pumpkin's worth), peeled and diced
• 1/2 lb ground pork (coarse if you can get / make it)
• 3 garlic cloves, chopped
• a small knob of ginger (appx 1 tbsp), chopped
• 10 dried Chinese chiles
• 2 cups chopped bok choy or other Chinese greens, stems and leaves separated, cut into 1/2" strips
• 2 tbsp of doubanjian (hot bean paste)
• 2 tbsp of oyster sauce
• 1/2 tbsp light soy + 1 tsp for marinating
• 1/2 tbsp of dark soy
• 2 tbsp of sugar
• 1/2 tbsp Chinese cooking wine + 1 tsp for marinating
• 1 cup of chicken stock
• 1 tbsp cornstarch dissolved in 1 tbsp water, for thickening + 1/2 tbsp for marinating
• 1 tsp sesame oil, for marinating
• 1/4 tsp white pepper, for marinating
• 4 spring onions, cut into 2 in lengths then cut lengthwise
• 1/2 tbs of Sichuan peppercorn, lightly roasted and crushed/ground
• Canola oil, for stir-frying.

Cook the lo mein noodles per the instructions, then rinse, drain, and toss in 2 tbsp neutral cooking oil like canola. Follow the process from beef and bok choy over crispy noodles.

Dice the pumpkin and prepare the garlic and spring onions.

Marinate minced pork with the smaller quantity of light soy and Chinese cooking wine, the white pepper, and the smaller quantity of cornstarch. Toss to coat, allow to sit 5 minutes, then add the sesame oil last to seal in the marinade slightly while cooking.

Pre-heat an air fryer to 385 F for a few minutes, then make a small noodle cake no larger than the area of your air fryer, and not more than a few noodles thick, and throw in for 8 minutes. Once browned, remove, and repeat with remaining noodles. This should make 2-3 patties, but scale up as desired.

Fry the diced pumpkin in canola oil over high heat until slightly charred. Remove to a bowl. Add more oil, then brown the minced, marinated pork with a little more oil when the wok heats up again, breaking up large lumps as you go. Remove to the bowl with the pumpkin.

Reheat the work over medium-high heat, add more oil, and quickly stir-fry the bok choy stems for a minute or so until starting to char slightly. Add the chopped garlic, ginger, and Sichuan peppercorns with a little more oil and stir-fry for 30 seconds. Return the pork and pumpkin to the wok, but push out to the sides. Add in the dried chiles and hot bean paste and cook until the oil turns a little red.

Incorporate the pumpkin and pork into the stir fry and toss on high heat for a minute, adding the sauce base (sugar, light soy, dark soy, cooking wine, oyster sauce) at the end.

Add stock, bring to a simmer, cover, and cook until the pumpkin is tender, which could be 5-15 minutes depending on the pumpkin. As the pumpkin is nearing doneness, add the bok choy leaves and stir to incorporate. Thicken with the cornstarch slurry, bring to a boil to ensure the cornstarch does its job, and add in the spring onions.

Pour the spicy sauce over the crispy noodles and enjoy.

Beef and Bok Choy Over Crispy Air-Fried Noodles

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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.

These are the versions of the key ingredients that I keep on hand. And yes, that's Japanese soy sauce, not Chinese.