Pan-Fried Noodles with Vegetables

In recent weeks, we've taken to celebrating our collective weight loss (about 55 pounds now) on weigh-in days, every Monday, by having a bit of a splurge dinner. The long and short of it is that we allow ourselves a few simple carbs: all stick and no carrot is no fun. This week, it was noodles. We love noodles in any way: in soup as in ramen, wet with sauce such as in lo mein, dry fried as in chow mein, and of course, Italian-style as in spaghetti aglio e olio.

This week, I decided to serve a mound of stir-fried vegetables on a cake of pan-fried noodles, a quasi Hong Kong-style dish. Call it chow mein, pan-fried noodles, or yakisoba as you will. I call it a delicious way to eat a couple hundred calories of simple carbs while still eating a pile of vegetables.

Pan-Fried Noodles with Vegetables

Frying Noodles

It all started by making a stir fry of nappa cabbage, bean sprouts, shiitake mushrooms, snow peas, green onions, garlic, and lots of ginger, with a splash of soy sauce for salt. And while that was cooking, I steamed some wheat noodles briefly in the microwave to limber them up and put them in a large skillet to brown into a cake, flipping halfway through.

And that's it. The vegetable prep takes a while, but the cooking is done quickly. Given that I prepped the vegetables sporadically during the afternoon, dinner was on the table in under fifteen minutes, a win all the way around.