Hakka Noodles | Indo-Chinese Cabbage Noodles

Sweet, not spicy

I love these types of cabbage dry noodle stir fries!

The cabbage adds a nice sweetness, and cooks down well, so it’s a nice way to eat your vegetables.

As you may know, I’m Hakka on one side of my family, as discussed in the Tofu Manchurian post. This recipe is inspired by Indian-Hakka noodles I had at a restaurant the other month.

In Chinese-Hakka and Cantonese cooking (that I’m more familir with), it’s common to make a sauce made of:

• oyster sauce (I use the vegetarian version)

• soya sauce

• salt

• sugar

Whereas in Indian-Hakka cooking, it seems that it’s common to use same 4 ingredients above, but with an addition of chili sauce or ketchup. Something red.

At least, this is what I gather. If you’re familiar with Indo-Chinese cooking, let me know if this is right!

For this recipe we’ll use ketchup the red addition to our sauce.

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But instead of oyster sauce, we will be using hoisin sauce. It ends up making the noodles more sweet.

The reason is: I was out of my usual veg. oyster sauce the day I made this, so I tried hoisin as a sub. It turned out well!

Hakka Noodles

Serves: 4 - 6
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 10 minutes

Tools:

• A frying pan

Ingredients

Noodles

• 450 g spaghetti

Stir Fry

• 1 white onion, thinly sliced (about 1 cup)

• 3 cloves of garlic, diced

• 5 cups cabbage, shredded (about 1/2 of a head)

• 1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced (about 1 cup)

• 1 tbsp neutral oil

Sauce

• 2 tbsp ketchup

• 2 tbsp hoisin sauce

• 1/4 cup soya sauce

• 1 tbsp white vinegar

• 1/2 cup water

• 1 tsp cornstarch + 2 tbsp hot water, for a slurry

Method

1. Cook the noodles: Fill a large pot with water and boil. Once the water is boiling, add the 450 g of spaghetti noodles.

   • Cook for about 8 minutes (or 1 minute less than the instructions on the package) and then drain. Run cold water over the noodles to pause the cooking process.

   • Note: We will be frying the noodles briefly later, so they will cook more then.

2. While the noodles are cooking, prepare the vegetables. Add the following to individual bowls or to their own spot on a cutting board/plate:

   1. Dice 3 cloves of garlic

   2. Thinly slice a white onion.

   3. Shred (thinly slice) half a head of cabbage.

   4. Thinly slice a red bell pepper.

3. While the noodles are cooking, make the sauce (you can also make the sauce while the vegetables are cooking in step 5).

   1. In a medium sized bowl, mix together 2 tbsp of ketchup, 2 tbsp of hoisin sauce, 1/4 cup soya sauce, 1 tbsp white vinegar, and 1/2 cup of water.

   2. Stir until combined.

4. Heat up a frying pan over medium heat. Once it’s hot, add a tablespoon of oil to the frying pan (or add more oil if you prefer).

5. Fry the vegetables:

   1. Add the onion and stir fry for about 3 minutes until they’re soft and slightly brown.

   2. Add the garlic, cabbage, and pepper.

   3. Stir fry for about 5 - 10 minutes until brown. The cabbage should look translucent.

6. Add the cooked noodles to the frying pan.

7. Add the sauce on top of the noodles. Give it a mix.

8. Make a cornstarch slurry: In a small bowl, mix together 1 tsp cornstarch and 2 tbsp hot water.

9. Add the cornstarch slurry on top of the noodles. Mix all together.

10. Fry for another few minutes. And then enjoy!

Hakka Noodles | Indo-Chinese Cabbage Noodles

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• Make it saucier: The sauce to ingredient ratio outlined above results in a light coating of sauce. If you’d like more sauce, double it!

• Meal prep the sauce! Try making a double — or even triple — batch of the sauce, without the cornstarch.

  • Doubling it means mixing the following together, then keeping in a jar in the fridge:

    • 4 tbsp ketchup

    • 4 tbsp hoisin sauce

    • 1/2 cup soya sauce

    • 2 tbsp white vinegar

    • 1 cup water

    • 1 tsp cornstarch + 2 tbsp hot water, for a slurry

  • When you want to cook mid week it’ll be a bit faster than making everything right from scratch.

  • Even better, meal prep the veggies to save even more time mid-week.

• Add protein: This would work well with tofu. Either firm tofu that you fry with the onions, or soft tofu that is fried for 10 minutes by itself before adding the onions. But really, any protein should work. Just make sure to fry it a bit.

• Make it spicy: this dish is intentionally not spicy, but you can add some spice if you want. I suggest serving it with some chili crisp on top if you’d like some spice.

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• Spaghetti: Spaghettini. Or rice noodles, or any other sort of Chinese noodle.

• White onion: Red onion.

• Vegetables: Substitute the red pepper with the following:

  • Green bell pepper

  • Carrots

  • Zucchini

  • Broccoli

• Ketchup: You could use tomato paste, but I recommend sticking to ketchup.

• White vinegar: Shaoxing cooking wine, lemon, or white wine.

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