Chicken chow mein

The two most popular names for Chinese restaurants and takeaways in Britain are “Hong Kong” and “China Garden”, and the chances are that you will be familiar with their menus: chop suey, chow mein, spring rolls, sweet and sour pork, egg fried rice.

It’s a very British take on Chinese cuisine, created by the first wave of the restaurants established in this country in the 1950s. Their recipes were either toned down to suit local tastes, or adapted to accommodate the available ingredients.

I’ve often wondered why this generic cuisine has never really moved on from the familiar archetype described by Siouxsie & the Banshees in Hong Kong Garden, their 1978 hit. Maybe it’s because we Cantonese, though great gamblers, are not natural entrepreneurs. When you have taken the great risk of relocating to a foreign country, and you are often without a firm grasp of the local language, the last thing you want to worry about is innovation.

It’s always been my dream to take the next step in the evolution of this populist Chinese cuisine: reinventing old favourites for a more sophisticated 21st-century British palate. This one involves chicken chow mein — usually “No 23” on the takeaway menu — but not as we know it. It may just be coming to a Hong Kong China Jade Garden Wing Wah Golden Dragon near you soon.

Ingredients
Serves one

Prep: 1hr
Cook: 20 min

50g dried egg noodles, soaked in hot water until soft and drained
120g chicken breast, sliced into strips 5mm thick
30g yellow chives, chopped into 5cm lengths (green chives are fine if there’s no yellow)
50g shiitake mushroom, sliced
30g spring onion, chopped into 5cm lengths
Vegetable oil

Marinade:

1tsp soya sauce
1tsp cornflour

Seasoning:

Pinch of salt
Pinch of pepper
Pinch of sugar
1tsp oyster sauce
½tsp potato starch

Method

Marinate chicken in soya sauce and cornflour and leave for ten mins. Heat the oil in a pan, flash-cook the chicken for a few minutes, making sure the chicken pieces do not stick together. Remove the chicken from the oil and drain on a kitchen towel. Put to one side. Heat the wok with several teaspoons of oil and add the noodles, spreading out into a pancake. Fry until crispy, then turn over and fry the other side. Remove to serving dish. Heat the wok, add a teaspoon of oil, add the chicken, shiitake mushroom, chives and spring onion, and lightly stir-fry for a minute. Add chicken stock, season with salt, pepper, sugar and oyster sauce, thickening the sauce slightly with adding potato starch. Pour over the noodles before serving.

Alan Lau is the founder of the Wagamama chain and proprietor of Yauatcha, Hakkasan and Busaba Eat Thai in Central London. His first recipe book is due out in the autumn.

Jill Dupleix will resume on Monday.