Over the years I have amassed quite the Nigella cook book collection, some I have bought, others have been gifted, all are well used and treasured!  I make Chinese style  fried noodles using egg noodles, soy, oyster sauce, chilli, garlic and ginger regularly. When I read this recipe in the book Simply Nigella I was really intrigued,I had no idea what it would taste like.

The answer was not totally unfamiliar from my normal noodles, which makes sense given many of the same ingredients are used, but there was certainly a different dimension introduced primarily by the celery and cinnamon.

I thought it was quite an unusual one and so wanted to document and share it here. I was a bit short of a couple of the ingredients so had to substitute but have marked this out in the recipe below and have linked the original here.

Time: approx. 30 minutes

Serves 2

 Ingredients

• 1 tbsp sunflower oil

• 2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped

• 3cm/1¼in piece fresh root ginger, peeled and cut into fine matchsticks

• 1 star anise

• ½ long or 1 short stick cinnamon, broken into shards

• 2–3 leafy stems from the top of 1 stick celery, stems cut into short lengths, leaves roughly chopped

• 1½ tbsp light soy sauce

• 1 tbsp dark soy sauce

• 1 tbsp oyster sauce

• ¼ tsp ground white pepper

• 1 tsp chicken stock concentrate (I just used chicken stock)

• 1 tbsp ketjap manis (or 1 tbsp dark soy sauce mixed with 1 tbsp soft dark brown sugar)

• 10 raw peeled king prawns, thawed if frozen (I used a 150g pack of fresh prawns from the supermarket)

• 80g/2¾oz mung bean (glass) noodles or rice vermicelli, soaked and drained as per packet instructions

• fat pinch ground cinnamon

• fat pinch ground cloves

• 1 spring onion for garnish

Method

Heat the oil in a large wok and fry the ginger, star anise, cinnamon and garlic. Then add the leafy celery leafy stems. (I chopped in some of the normal stalk too). Ideally save some of the leaves for garnish, I didn’t have enough so I ended up garnishing with some spring onion.

Stir in both soy sauces and leave to simmer for 30 seconds, then stir in the oyster sauce and ground pepper.

Add 100ml/3½fl oz cold water, followed by the chicken stock and the ketjap manis (I didn’t have this so used a mix of dark soy sauce and soft brown sugar), stir until everything’s well combined and bring to the boil.

Add the king prawns and fry until just cooked. Finally, add the drained noodles and stir well.

Add the pinches of ground cinnamon and cloves, stir again.

Dish up and add the spring onion and/or celery leaves for garnish. Discard the cinnamon stick and star anise before eating.