Three weeks seems like a much longer time than I really appreciated; it feels like I'm crawling back to this platform after a year-long barefoot quest through the Gobi Desert. Actually, I was just finishing off my masters thesis (which, I feel is kind of an equivalent process to fighting monstrous sand worms). Perhaps starting a food blog while I had university work to be doing wasn't a great exercise in personal responsibility, but hey, I got six posts churned out before thinking "maybe I should review my priorities...?"
So, with that out of the way, welcome to post number seven! You may have noticed that this is the first "after dark" chapter of this culinary chronicle. While this suggests at many potentially thrilling avenues, I'm actually only alluding to the fact that I have *acquired* a light-box, meaning that I can take non-fuzzy pictures of food during those unspeakable hours of darkness. I'm not sure I can actually publish the story of how I acquired this, so I'm going to let your imagination fill in the blanks here!
Last quick piece of housekeeping; I'm going to change up the structure of these posts a little bit. Whereas before I had a block of free writing and information about the dish, before the recipe itself and the adjustments section, I'm going to combine the first two sections from this post onward. This feels like it'll make the sections flow a bit more. Besides, we can't trace back the Ancient Mesopotamian roots of everything we put in our mouths, can we?
So, my "after-dark special/comeback" recipe is actually what put the idea of starting a blog into my mind when I first made a slightly different version of it a few months ago. Originally it started as a braised fennel dish somewhat in line with the Shanghai-style of cooking. This adaptation, which I've tentatively termed Braised Fennel Udon is a significant departure from that. I like to think of it as a flight from Saigon to Osaka with a stopover in Shanghai, which I'd love to say is because of my strong international outlook, but really it's because I'm indecisive about ingredients and I just crossed my fingers that they'd all work together. Udon purists, you may want to sit this one out.
Braising is a relatively recent discovery of mine, first introduced to me from Nigella Lawson's 'Garlic Mushrooms with Chilli & Lemon' (recipe is not online, but can be found in her book Nigellissima). The term basically refers to the application of dry heat (from frying), followed by wet heat (from shallow stewing), and in terms of both texture and taste sometimes it can be exactly what is needed.
What's that I hear you say? "But you just did a recipe with aniseed!" Uh, yes. Yes, I did... But, as much as I loath to talk about a flavour I like by promising that you can't taste it too much, the braising element means that it's just one part of a whole palette of tastes on offer here. The braising liquid takes much of it's inspiration from Southeast Asian, and particularly Southern Vietnamese, cooking with a few Chinese and Japanese additions that I might have accidentally spilled into the wok (I guess I'm just kinda awkward and clumsy like that, tee-hee).
Braised Fennel Udon - Recipe
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Serves 1-2
Ingredients
100g of dried udon noodles
1 large fennel bulb, or 2 small bulbs (approximately 400g)
125g of shiitake mushrooms
2 red chillis
1 medium stalk of celery
3 cloves of garlic
1 inch piece of ginger
Leaves from 4-5 stalks of Thai basil
1 tbsp of shaoxing or saké (for other alternatives, see notes below)
1/2 tbsp of soy sauce
1 tbsp of mirin
1 tsp of fish sauce
1/2 tsp of oyster sauce
2 tbsp of vegetable oil
1 tbsp of sesame oil
Salt
MSG (optional)
Set a bowl aside for your aromatics, these will be fried in the oil together. Crush the garlic
cloves before finely chopping.
Halve and de-seed one of the red chillis and finely chop into small pieces.
Peel the ginger and finely chop into small pieces.
Break off a stalk of celery, and finely chop into small pieces.
Finally, cut off the green stalks from the top of the fennel and cut off the ends. Finely chop into small pieces before adding the aromatics to the bowl.
Cut out the base of the remaining fennel bulb before chopping coarsely. You want these pieces of fennel to be much bigger than those in the aromatics bowl.
Wash the mushrooms and cut them into smaller pieces. Shiitake mushrooms vary a lot in size; for most it will be most appropriate to cut them in two, however larger ones can be quartered and smaller ones can be just left as they are (there is something incredibly satisfying about a dish with adorably small mushrooms that have remained intact, don't you think?).
Cut the top off of the remaining red chilli before slicing it horizontally to create thin circular pieces.
Pour both kinds of oil into a wok and warm over a medium heat, before adding the contents of the aromatics bowl. Fry on a medium heat for about 3 minutes. This is so that the ingredients can flavour the oil.
After the aromatics are done, add the fennel into the wok. Stir until coated with the oil, before adding salt and turning up to a high-heat. Add shaoxing/saké, soy sauce, mirin, fish sauce and oyster sauce and bring to the boil. Once this is boiling (this won't take long), cover the wok and turn down to medium-low heat. Keep covered and simmering for 8 minutes.
At this point, you can put your water on to a boil to cook the dried udon. This will only take 5 minutes once the water has come to a boil.
After the fennel has simmered for 8 minutes, add the mushrooms and the chillis to the wok and stir until coated with liquid. Bring the wok to the boil, cover, turn down to a medium-low heat and simmer for a further five minutes.
While the wok is simmering, pluck the leaves from the Thai basil. You can chop these if you'd prefer, but I think the leaves are great whole. When the simmering is finished, stir the Thai basil into the mixture and cook for 1 minute.
Drain the udon noodles, and add them into the wok, stirring them into the mixture. You may find a pair of cooking chopsticks more helpful than a wooden spoon here to ensure that they're fully integrated.
Empty into your preferred bowl, leave for a few minutes to cool, and enjoy!
Notes
There are a lot of potential adjustments here, but most notable is the shaoxing. This is an aged Chinese cooking wine made from fermented brown rice. You can find this in UK supermarkets (most often, I see it in Tesco) but it's usually much cheaper if you can find a Chinese or a Thai supermarket nearby. Other things that can be used are saké as specified above, dry sherry or vermouth (if you like a dry martini, the latter might be the option for you!)
The mushrooms by no means have to be shiitake. I used them hear because I think the chewiness really lends something textually, when the fennel tends to meld together. I think that oyster mushrooms would also be great, and chestnut or white would be fine too. If, forsooth, you don't like mushrooms then aubergine would be a fabulous substitute with a silkier texture.
This recipe does have a fair bit of heat to it, so if your spice tolerance is quite low then I would suggest that you leave out the first chilli, and just use the horizontally chopped one.
You could use other noodles here, however I think the udon noodles do a great job of intermingling with the braising liquid.
Thai basil can be found in some UK supermarkets. I usually see it in Tesco or Sainsbury's but you could also find it in a Thai or Vietnamese grocery store.
I would not be offended if you were to top with with a fried/poached egg.
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