San Francisco’s Vietnamese-American garlic noodles gets an update and an upgrade with the addition of button mushrooms, shiitake and shimeji.
Cook’s notes
Why add mushrooms? We love mushrooms here at home. Filling, great texture, flavorful. There was a time when my older daughter went vegetarian and mushrooms became a regular item in our shopping cart. If you ever consider giving up meat, include plenty of mushrooms in your diet because they make a lovely substitute.
I especially love fresh mushrooms. Button mushrooms, shiitake and and shimeji are used here because those are the most easily obtainable mushroom varieties in our corner of the boondock. You may use other mushroom varieties so long as they are fresh. Canned mushrooms will not do justice to this dish.
What about dried mushrooms? While many cooks claim that dried mushrooms have a more complex flavor, the texture of rehydrated mushrooms is different. No matter how long they’re soaked in water, they will always come out more chewy than fresh mushrooms.
Egg noodle is the default for cooking garlic noodles. The noodles used here are from Taiwan — about half an inch wide before cooking, a bit curly on one side and with a fantastic mouth feel.
Which noodle is better? Both are good. We’ve tried using rice noodles and they work too. What isn’t recommended is substituting Italian pasta for Asian noodles.
3-mushroom garlic noodles
Ingredients
- 300 grams Asian noodles (about 10.5 oz.)
- 2 tablespoons cooking oil (we use palm oil)
- 4 tablespoons butter
- 150 grams fresh button mushrooms sliced or diced
- 150 grams fresh shiitake sliced or diced
- 150 grams shimeji root ends cut off and discarded
- salt
- ground pepper
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- ½ tablespoon oyster sauce
- ½ tablespoon light soy sauce
- ½ tablespoon fish sauce
- juice from half a lime or lemon (optional but highly recommended)
- sliced scallions to garnish
- grated cheese (we use Pecorino) to garnish
Instructions
- Cook the noodles in boiling water, drain, dump in a bowl of iced water, allow to get cold than drain again.
- In a wok, heat half of the oil and half of the butter.
- Saute the mushrooms with a few pinches of salt and pepper for a minute or two, or just until they start to shrink. Scoop out and set aside.
- Heat the remaining cooking oil and butter in the pan.
- Saute the garlic for a few minutes until just starting to brown.
- Add the noodles, and toss thoroughly to coat each strand with the flavorful oil.
- Pour in the oyster sauce, soy sauce and fish sauce.
- Toss until the sauces have been distributed evenly and the noodles are heated through.
- Add the mushrooms to the noodles and toss until the mushrooms are reheated.
- Optionally, squeeze lemon juice over the noodles and mushrooms.
- Divide your mushroom garlic noodles among four bowls.
- Sprinkle with scallions and grate cheese directly over each bowl before serving.
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