Under 15 minutes hakka noodles

There are days when there is very little left over from lunch and I am either too lazy or too caught up with other things to whip up the whole roti + dal/vegetables and raita dinner. On one such days, the husband asks me, why don't you ever make hakka noodles? Well, maybe because I have never made it before, maybe because the sight of the over oily hakka noodles at the restaurants got to me and I was plain not interested in making it. But seemed like it was something that he liked. So the next supermarket visit involved picking up a packet of Chings hakka noodles and a bottle of soy and green chilli sauce each.

When I went through the procedure, I was in for a nice surprise. There was hardly anything to the recipe. And now I make it often, on my lazy days and we happily follow it up with some curd rice and complete the meal. So here is how I make Hakka Noodles in less than 15 minutes. It will take you lesser time if you don't skimp on pots and pans. I do all the cooking in the same pan which doesn't let me do parallel processing.

I make it with very little oil. You may call me a killjoy, but I like it this way. Eaten hot, you won't notice the difference.

Ingredients

1 cup of veg - carrots, beans, spring onions, cabbage, capsicum, chopped lengthwise
1 packet of hakka noodles
salt and pepper powder to taste
1 tbsp of soy sauce
1 tbsp of green chilli sauce
2 tbsp of oil

Method

Clean and chop the vegetables lengthwise. I microwave vegetables like carrot and beans for a minute since I don't like them too raw in the noodles.

Next, in a pan, heat 1 tbsp of oil and add to it the onion (i used the onion from the spring onion) and capsicum. You can add minced garlic to this if you want. On high flame, saute this well. Add to this the microwaved vegetables and stir.

In the end, sprinkle the chopped spring onion shoot from the top. To this, add the soy sauce and green chilli sauce. Mix really well. All of this is done on really high flame. Turn off the gas and remove the vegetables in a bowl.


In the same pan, heat sufficient amount of water and cook the noodles as per pack instructions. I add some oil to the water itself to prevent the noodles from sticking. Cook on high flame. It takes less than 2 minutes for them to cook. Turn off the gas when they start frothing up.

Strain it in a colander, run under some cold water to stop the cooking process and add another tsp of oil on it and mix well with your hands to prevent it from sticking. Now, in the same pan, take your prepared vegetables.

Add the strained noodles to this and toss well on high flame. Season with some salt ( the soy sauce already has enough salt and we cooked the noodles also with some salt, so go easy on it) and white pepper powder. Serve hot!