This is a popular type of fried noodles in Thailand. It has a relatively simplistic flavour profile, heavy with soy and oyster sauce,. In contrast pad thai tends to have lighter zingier flavours with peanuts, lime and chilli.

It took me ages to find nice wide rice noodles to make this dish with, I finally found some in a really big Asian supermarket that had a 20 metre long aisle of different types of noodle! For this dish, the wider the noodles the better in my opinion.

Traditionally you would also use gai lan/Chinese broccoli for this dish but I couldn’t find that either!  In this version I have used tenderstem broccoli and I threw in a red bell pepper for a little something extra and a pop of colour. And so this version of pad see ew is perhaps a bit of a Tum Yum Yum adaptation. As always, I believe in using the ingredients that you have available to you and more importantly, that you actually like to eat. As with salads, I believe that friend rice and fried noodles are the perfect dishes to make use of whatever you have in the fridge.  

Perhaps the only fairly specific thing in this recipe is the sauce which is a very robust, deep and salty soy-based sauce that generously coats the noodles giving them a lovely deep brown gleam.  This is such a satisfying noodle dish, that takes no time at all (other than soaking the noodles in advance if dried) please do give it a go!

Serves 3

Time: 20 minutes (plus time to soak noodles if needed)

Ingredients

• 250g dried wide rice stick noodles

• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

• 250g boneless and skinless chicken thighs, sliced

• 2 large eggs

• 150g tenderstem broccoli (or Chinese broccoli/gai lan), cut in half if the stalks are awkwardly long to eat

• 1 red bell pepper, core removed and sliced in to strips

• 1 spring onion sliced

• Approx 3 tbsp vegetable oil

Sauce

• 2 tbsp dark soy sauce

• 1 tbsp oyster sauce

• 2 tsp soy sauce

• 2tsp fish sauce

• 2 tsp sugar

• 2 tbsp water

Method

Prepare the noodles according to packet instructions. Mine for example needed 30-45 minutes soaking before cooking. I tend to find it is really easy to over cook rice noodles and before you know it they are breaking up and getting a bit mushy.

Mix the sauce ingredients.

Heat a tablespoon of oil in a wok and fry the garlic until fragrant then add in the chicken. Fry until browned on al sides, keep it on the move else you may find it sticks the pan.

Add in the broccoli and pepper and keep stir frying until everything is pretty much cooked.

Push the contents of the wok to one side and add the two eggs then scramble in the pan and mix in with the rest of the ingredients.

Tip everything on to a plate and scrape the wok clean as best you can.

Heat the wok again adding another 2 tablespoons of oil then add the noodles, closely followed by the sauce, then toss.

For my noodles I didn’t need to cook them beforehand after soaking, I added a couple extra spoons of water, and just let the noodles cook through in the sauce. For my noodles this took about 2 minutes but do whatever works best for the noodles you are using.

Add back in the chicken, egg and vegetables to the wok with the noodles and the spring onion then toss so everything is thoroughly coated in the sauce.

Serve immediately.