Rebecca’s Recipe of the Week: Black Noodles with (or without) Prawns | Canalside Community Food

This, like all the Thomasina Miers recipes I’ve tried, is easy and, as she’d say, utterly yum. I’ve never used the prawns but since the original recipe calls for them I thought I’d include them. You choose. You can get black rice noodles at Gaia. This makes a fresh, quick, mid-week dinner.

Black Noodles with (or without) Prawns
Serves four

Ingredients
2 ears of corn
1-2 dried chillies
200g French beans, topped, tailed and cut in half
250g black rice noodles
3 tablespoons sunflower oil
1 large red onion, peeled, halved and thinly sliced
3 fat cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
1 handful peanuts (if you’re not using the prawns increase this to a very big handful)
450g prawns (optional)
1 tablespoon fish sauce
Juice of 1 lime
1 handful mint leaves, roughly chopped
salt and pepper

Preparation
‘Shuck’ the corn: peel off the leaves and remove the corn silk—the delicate threads that surround the cob. By the way, it’s best not to shuck corn until you’re ready to use it. The kernels dry out quickly. Cut the kernels off each cob. Do this by standing the cob upright, on its end, on a board or in a wide bowl and slicing down along the length of the cob.

Chop the chillies. Remove the seeds unless you’d like the dish to be very hot.

Steam the beans for four minutes, until tender but still with a little crunch. Lift them out, set them aside, and then use the steaming water, topped up if needed, to cook the noodles according to the instructions on the packet. Drain them, rinse in cold water, toss with 1 teaspoon of oil so they don’t stick to themselves, and set aside.

Heat the remaining oil in a wide pan over high heat, and stir-fry the onions, kernels of corn and chilli for a few minutes. Season generously with salt and pepper, add the garlic and peanuts, and stir-fry until the garlic starts to go translucent. Add the prawns (if using) and stir-fry for a few more minutes, until they turn pink and look a little caramelised around the edges. The corn should by now have also taken on some colour. Taste, add more chilli if you want more spice, and then add the fish sauce, lime juice, beans and noodles, and toss to heat through. Add more lime or fish sauce to taste, scatter over the mint and serve in deep, warmed bowls.

(Recipe adapted from Thomasina Miers, The Weekend Cook.)