Chinese Fish Chilli with Noodles

Serves One 

Preparation time:

Cutting/Chopping – 5mins

Preparing the marinade & marinating time – 35mins

Cooking time – 7-10mins

Ingredients:

Chinese Egg Noodles – 100gms

Fish – Sheri (local Qatari fish) – 100gms

Spring Onion – 2no

Capsicum – Yellow – 1/6

Capsicum – Green – 1/6

Tomato (small) – 1no

Ginger chopped – 1tbsp

Garlic chopped – 1tbsp

Green Chilli – 1no

Red Chilli Paste – 4tbsp

Ground Black Pepper – 1/8tsp

Corn Flour – 3tbsp (1 for the marinade and 2 for the sauce)

Sesame Oil – 2tbsp (1 each for frying the fish and for the main cooking)

White Wine – Chardonnay – 2tbsp

Sugar – 1tbsp

Salt 

How I cut them:

I cut the fish into small pieces.

The vegetables were cut into large size pieces having rough dimensions of 4cm to 5cm each. For the spring onions, I chopped the white part into diskettes and the green part into long tubes of around 4cm to 5cm each.

I chopped the chilly, garlic and ginger into medium sized pieces. 

How I cooked it:

Red Chilli Paste

I used the Red Chilli Paste that I’d got during the weekend along with the barbequed chicken from Rotana Restaurant. However, making one is not difficult at all. All it requires is to soak 3-4 dried red chillies in 3tbsp of water and then grind it into a paste. When it is done, just add ½tsp of vinegar to it. 

Chinese Fish Chilli

In a bowl, I added the fish cubes, corn flour, Ground Black Pepper, 1tbsp of the Red Chilli Paste, 1tbsp Corn Flour and 2tbsp of Chardonnay and mixed them well.

When I saw that the fish cubes were coated well in the mix, I covered the bowl with a plastic wrap and left in the fridge for half an hour.

While this mix was being marinated, I copped/cut all the vegetables and cooked the noodles.

By the end of 30mins, I heated sesame oil in a skillet and fried the fish. When the fish was done, I left it aside on a plate lined with tissue paper.

Then, I heated sesame oil in a wok over high flame. I swirled the wok around to ensure that the oil had coated the wok well till the top, rather than just staying settled at the bottom.

When the wok was hot and ready, I tossed in the chilli, garlic and ginger.
After around 30secs or so, I added in all the vegetables in the wok and cooked them by tossing intermittently which, went on for a couple of minutes or so.

Later I added in the Red Chilli Paste, Sugar and Salt and, cooked the contents mixing and tossing them over a high flame.

When the mix was turning brown, I added 2tbsp of corn flour into a bowl of the water that I had retained after cooking the noodles. I poured this mix into the wok added the fried fish and let it cook.

I cooked the mix by continuously stirring it. In about 3-4mins the watery mix had coagulated into thick gravy. The dish was ready!

 

Plain Noodles

Cooking noodles was the easiest part. I used a packet of authentic Chinese Egg Noodles of the brand 'Pearl River Bridge'

Instructions for cooking the noodles were provided on the packet itself and it hardly took 7-8mins to finish cooking it, which was done while the fish was put to marinate. The packet contained 4 sets of noodles of 100gms each since I was cooking only for one person, I used one of the four.

 

The experience:

Fast to cook and good to eat! Lived up to its name ‘Fish Chilli’.