SERVES 3 TO 6
Every restaurant has at least one dish that customers adore and the chef (who used to adore it) now hates. Familiarity breeds both addiction and contempt in the case of this favorite, such that when the chef even flirts with the idea of taking it off the menu, the customers don’t complain, they cry!
This is our love/hate child, a thick disk of subtly seasoned, thin egg noodles that is pressed into a hot skillet and browned on both sides. Called “two yellow faces” in Chinese, we turn them out by the score in our downstairs kitchen and use them in our upstairs finishing kitchen to pillow zesty stir-fries. Eaten plain (by our morning cooks, who consider them great breakfast fare) or topped with a lush stir-fry (by our customers, who are passionate about them), they are our house favorite and may well become yours.
You can make either one large pillow, as instructed in the recipe, or two small pillows using two 7-inch skillets.
After years of making noodle pillows in cast-iron skillets—the way I’d learned from the pot-sticker man who lived near our Taiwan alleyway and cooked on a streetside brazier—I discovered nonstick cooking and gave up kitchen aerobics. You still will need to use an ample amount of oil to achieve proper browning, but the light skillet makes it a cinch to flip the pillow, and it’s thus easy to check the pillow bottom to see if it’s golden.
½ pound very thin (1/16 inch) fresh Chinese egg noodles
Scant 2 teaspoons Five-Flavor Oil (page 13), Ma-La Oil (page 17), or Japanese sesame oil
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1½ tablespoons finely chopped Chinese chives
1½ tablespoons thinly sliced green and white scallion rings
4 to 5 tablespoons corn or peanut oil, for pan-frying
1. Fluff the noodles in a colander to separate and untangle the strands. Bring a generous amount of water to a rolling boil over high heat. Add the noodles and swish gently with chopsticks until the noodles are al dente but cooked, about 2 minutes. Drain promptly, plunge briefly into ample ice water to chill, then drain thoroughly.
2. Toss the noodles with the sesame-infused oil, salt, chives, and scallions, using your fingers to distribute the seasonings and separate the strands. At this point, the noodles may be sealed and refrigerated overnight.
3. Swirl 2½ tablespoons of the corn oil into an 11- to 12-inch nonstick skillet set over moderately high heat. When hot enough to sizzle a noodle, coil the noodles in the skillet and press to even them with a spatula. Cook the noodles until golden on the bottom, 5 to 7 minutes, adjusting the heat so they sizzle without scorching. Flip the pillow over (or invert it onto a plate and slip it back into the skillet browned side up) and drizzle the remaining 1½ to 2 tablespoons oil down the side of the pan. Swirl the pan to distribute the oil under the noodles and brown the second side, 5 to 7 minutes more. Slip the pillow onto a baking sheet lined with 4 to 5 layers of paper towels; let drain.
If working in advance, let the pillow cool on a rack to room temperature after draining. Place it on a bed of dry paper towels, seal, and refrigerate for 1 or 2 days. (There is a slight flavor loss, but pillow-lovers are undeterred.) Rewarm on a baking sheet set on the middle rack of a preheated 400°F oven until the pillow is crisp and hot, about 5 minutes.
4. To serve, cut the noodle pillow into appealing thick wedges and place alongside (or underneath) a saucy stir-fry.
MENU SUGGESTIONS: Any saucy stir-fry mates perfectly with a noodle pillow. You can also serve the golden wedges alongside a big bowl of soup or a main-course salad. Children are known to like them as much as Big Macs, and everyone loves to eat them with their fingers.
