Cooking
These versatile Indonesian stir-fried noodles strike a perfect balance of flavors that you’ll want to eat again and again (speaking from experience).
Something I’ve learned adapting recipes for New York Times Cooking is that, in the process of fine-tuning chefs’ recipes for home cooks, you have to make the recipe a lot, eating the dish on repeat for several days straight. I had the great pleasure of making this mie goreng with the chef Zulfikar Fahd, the owner of Java Bali Kitchen in Toronto, a couple of times in my own home. After he left, I made it a few more times to get the details right.
And then I made it a couple of times after that, because the dish is so delicious and I didn’t want to stop eating it.
The key to these noodles, which I learned by watching Zulfikar, is to really and truly let the sauced noodles cook to the point when the sweet soy sauce — which is indeed very sweet — thoroughly caramelizes and takes on the slightest of bitter edges. (Think of barely burnt caramel, or the deep brown edges of a Basque cheesecake. That’s the flavor we’re going for here.)
As with many stir-fried noodle dishes, this is a great way to clean out those odds and ends in the fridge and freezer. A carrot here, a leek there, a handful of bok choy and a third of a bag of frozen shrimp; all would be delicious in this quick and vibrant stir-fry.
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Mie Goreng
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