Letter to Julia 20120326

In the name of Allah, most Gracious, most Merciful.

For dinner last night I had fried noodles. Fried noodles, or mee goreng as it is called here in Malaysia, is a common dish. Everyone knows what it is and eats it, and has some version of it when cooking it for themselves. I find that the common dishes are the hardest to perfect. I know very few of the traditional Malaysian dishes, because I'm too lazy to learn probably, and I'm such a chaotic cook. I like to go with the flow, you know, and cook up whatever I feel like eating at the particular moment. And when I have no money, I cook up whatever I have at the moment. I have 100 or so different versions of mee goreng, for the simple reason that I'm such a chaotic cook. It's not that I can't stick to a recipe, after all, I used to make the same pizza over and over again from scratch for the masses back during the pizza days. Did you know that the most difficult pizza to cook perfectly is a plain cheese pizza?

Anyway, fried noodles, or chow mein, or lo mein, or mee goreng. The essential element is the noodles, of course. For mee goreng, it would the the course noodles made usually of flour, eggs, grease, salt and water. The dough is extruded into yellowish noodles and mixed with more grease to maintain separation, portioned then packaged while still moist. Over in the USA, you wouldn't find moist egg noodles too easily. They would be dried, and you would have to moisten it yourself usually, but if you can, try to obtain the moist kind. First, you must prepare the fond in a wok. Fond is what you would call a sauce you would cook up to coat the noodles. A typical fond would be to fry up chopped garlic, onions, celery, soy sauce, etc until you get a dark, greasy, salty paste. Last night, I used onion, chicken liver, chilli paste, and salted soybeans. I like to perceive fried noodles like making a salad: toss the noodles into the fond as you would toss the salad until they are well mixed, then turn down the heat and add your pre-cooked meats and vegetables at the very end, so the veggies don't lose their snap, then toss it all together and turn off the fire.

I really don't consider myself the best mee goreng cook. There are certainly better mee goreng cooks out there. When you get here, I'll take you out to one of my favorite places for fried noodles. InsyaAllah. I hope you like it.