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seasoning or drizzling, flavours that bind by Lee Kum Kee,

proud sponsor of Eva Pau's Asian Kitchen.

My name is Eva,

and I'm very excited to welcome you into my Asian Kitchen.

In this series, I'll share the secrets

behind cooking authentic, fresh, delicious Asian food at home.

Recipes to breathe a bit of fresh air into your weekly meal plan.

I can eat this every day.

To me, food and family are inseparable.

My mum and dad are from China,

but we've lived in Ireland since I was one month old,

so I'm a true blend of East and West.

I grew up running around my parents' supermarket,

so my life has always been about food, food, food.

I'm not a professional chef, but cooking is my passion.

So when I'm not working,

I'm at home experimenting with food or thinking about it.

I collect cookbooks and read them like other people read fiction.

I'm very lucky that I get to travel to Asia a few times a year.

I visit my granny Hong Kong, who is still cooking at 93,

and I keep up with all the food trends.

So join me as we recreate the bold and vibrant flavours of Asia.

♪ ♪

Today, we're diving into Asian noodles.

They are a fabulous ingredient offering huge variety.

They can be made from rice, wheat, egg, or starches.

They can be thick or thin, round or flat,

springy, silken, chewy, slippery, tender or firm,

and range from neutral in flavour to a mild sweet or saltiness.

So it's safe to say

that there's a noodle to suit every dish imaginable.

I'll be using a super fine vermicelli noodle

in one of my all-time favourites, Singapore noodles,

a truly wonderful, moreish dish with a gentle curry hit.

It smells so good.

And there's a thick, chewy glass noodle

in my delicious beef and vegetable japchae.

The noodles are going to be absolutely delicious.

But first up,

I'm making mouthwatering Chinese black pepper beef with egg noodles.

Okay, so this is my quick, Cantonese stir fry dish.

Now, if you've ever made a beef stir fry,

the beef can become quite tough and dry and chewy.

But I'm gonna show you how to overcome this

using a simple marinade with a secret ingredient.

So I have a fabulous thick-cut sirloin steak here.

I've cut it against the grain

so that it will become a bit more tender.

Into the marinade,

I'm just gonna add one tablespoon of light soya sauce.

A tablespoon of Chinese cooking wine.

It has a really nice aroma,

and it's quite sweet and a little bit briny.

Next, we need some sugar and corn flour.

Now, I'm gonna add in half a teaspoon of my bicarbonate of soda.

Bicarb is actually the secret ingredient.

So the sciencey bit behind this

is that it raises the PH level of the outer side of the beef,

and then it tenderises it. It seals in all the juices.

Even marinating it for 10 to 15 minutes really makes a difference.

I'm just going to set that aside,

and we're going to start prepping our veg.

So we have two cloves of garlic here that I'm just going to finely slice.

And then we're gonna chop half a red pepper.

My earliest memory of this dish is actually

one that my Uncle Hoi made for me when I was younger,

and he used to be a dim sum chef in Hong Kong.

And this is a dish that he would have made for me

a lot when I was younger.

Actually, he still makes me this dish aged 80

and drops it over to the house almost every other weekend.

And the tastes are just fabulous.

So now we're gonna take half a green pepper

just to give the dish more colour.

And now we're onto the red onion.

So we're just gonna prepare all our vegetables now.

Once we have them all prepared,

the dish is gonna come together very quickly.

So the last thing we're going to prepare

are a few stalks of spring onion,

and we're gonna chop these into two-inch pieces.

Okay, so now we're just gonna get a little bowl to make our sauce.

First ingredient is light soy sauce.

Then we're gonna use a tablespoon of oyster sauce.

Now, oyster sauce is a real Asian pantry staple.

As the name suggests,

it's actually made from oyster extract,

and you can see that it's actually quite a thick sauce,

but it has a lot of umami flavour.

Then we're gonna add in a tablespoon of Chinese cooking wine,

tablespoon of dark soy for some colour,

half a teaspoon of the white wine vinegar,

two teaspoons of sugar for some sweetness,

and now for the coarse black pepper.

Now, sometimes when I make this for my family

and you don't want it to be too peppery,

I sometimes leave this out.

Of course, you can't actually call it black pepper beef then,

but it works either way.

So I'm going to mix that together.

Now it's noodle time.

Simply cover your nest of egg noodles with hot water,

and then I'm gonna put a plate on top of the bowl.

Now, egg noodles have a lovely colour,

but doesn't have that much flavour,

but has a really nice texture with a firmness and a nice bite.

Okay, so the noodles are ready.

So now we're just gonna drain them

and then pop them onto a baking tray with kitchen paper

because I'm going to make the egg noodles extra special.

We're gonna make them crispy.

Add a drizzle of oil, pat the noodles dry.

Now we're just gonna add the noodles into the pan with the oil,

and you really want to spread them out

so that it becomes like a crispy noodle pancake.

You want to hear that little sizzle.

So we're just going to leave it to fry for 2 to 3 minutes on each side.

When you see it a little bit brown, then you need to flip it over.

Okay, so the edges look like they are crisping up now.

I'm gonna grab the lid of this pan.

I'm gonna set the pancake on and then flip it over.

Drizzle a little bit of oil on the edge of the pan.

Of course, you don't have to, but I love it.

And who wouldn't love a crispy noodle pancake.

Okay, so the noodle pancake is ready,

and we're just gonna set that onto a plate.

So now it's stir-fry time.

So we have all our elements prepped, so it's gonna be really quick.

A dribble of oil, and once it's hot, in go the onion and garlic.

So we're just gonna sauté the onions for 2 to 3 minutes to soften them.

Next, our beef strips.

Oh, the smell of this is so good.

You just wanna turn up the heat on the pan

to make sure that your beef is nicely seared.

Once it's seared,

in go our peppers, spring onion, and our sauce.

So you want to stir-fry this for another 2 to 3 minutes

until all the sauce and everything is well combined

and all the vegetables have soaked up all the lovely sauce.

So if you're not making the crispy noodle pancake,

your noodles can actually go in now.

But because we're doing the crispy pancake,

here it goes with a final sprinkle of toasted sesame seeds.

So now we're ready to taste.

♪ ♪

Perfect.

The beef is so So tender.

It really is incredible what a little bicar can do to it.

The peppers still have a little bit of crunch,

and the noodles are carrying all that delicious black pepper sauce.

This is a good one.

My next noodle dish features Char Siu pork,

and I've come to my local butcher to find just the right cut.

A pork neck works really well as it needs to be a little fatty.

Hi, can I get 400 grammes of pork neck, please?

Good. Will that be okay? Perfect. Thank you.

There you go. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. See you.

Okay. Bye.

Now, first up, we're gonna marinate our pork.

Now, if you can't get pork collar, you can use pork fillet.

It is a little bit of a leaner cut of meat,

but it's actually okay for Singapore noodles

because we're actually going to be slicing them quite finely.

Into the pork, I'm going to add a spoon of yellow bean sauce.

Now, this is crushed, fermented soya bean,

a tablespoon of the hoisin.

This is lovely and sweet,

full of umami flavour.

And then a teaspoon each of oyster sauce,

Chinese cooking wine,

light soy,

and dark soy.

I'm gonna add 2 tablespoons of sugar.

Now, I'm gonna poke a few holes into the pork neck

so all of that lovely marinade seeps in.

So this sauce is similar to a barbecue sauce.

It's rich and sweet and savoury.

Now you need to leave all those lovely sauces

to marinate into the pork,

and we're going to pop it in the fridge

for at least 30 minutes.

♪ ♪

So char siu directly translates from Chinese as fork roasted.

Now, back in the days,

they would have had long strips of pork hung on these large forks

and then roasted in this massive, big, torpedo-shaped bullet oven.

But today, we're going to be roasting ours in an air fryer.

So that needs to be cooking in the air fryer

at 180 degrees for 20 minutes.

Now, our veg.

Thinly slice half a green pepper,

half a red pepper,

half a red onion,

and you've guessed it, half a carrot.

We're just going to finally slice these.

Just need a little for colour.

And finally, we're gonna chop our spring onions.

Okay, I'll put the spring onions there.

And now for the noodles.

So we have our lovely thin rice noodles here.

I have a pot of boiling water,

and I'm just gonna add the noodles into the boiling water.

So we just want to rehydrate them.

We don't want to cook them

because we're gonna be stir-frying them later.

Pop the lid on and turn the heat off.

Just enough time for a quick clean-down.

Whether it's breakfast, lunch, or a quick snack,

chiu chow with Lee Kum Kee,

proud sponsor of Eva Pau's Asian Kitchen.

Lee Kum Kee, proud sponsor of Eva Pau's Asian Kitchen.

So now our noodles are drained,

and I'm just gonna pop a tea towel over the noodles

so that it continues to soften a little.

Let's check on our air fryer.

Wow.

Doesn't it smell and look amazing?

So I'm gonna try and cut into the pork now.

It's so juicy with this pork neck.

This smells so good.

I'm gonna have a sneaky little taste.

Mmh!

You can really taste that lovely hoisin.

So we're actually not gonna be using the full char siu,

but char siu is so versatile.

You can literally just have it with some soy and some rice.

So it's time to bring everything together now.

I'm going to add a drizzle of oil into to the hot wok.

I have a beaten egg here, and I'm just going to slightly scramble it.

It'll only take a minute or so.

Set the egg aside and add a little more oil to your pan.

So we just have some defrosted, deveined prawns here

that have all been shelled.

Pan-fry the prawns on both sides

until they turn a little bit pink and from translucent to a bit white.

Another drizzle of oil.

I'm gonna add all my vegetables.

So I'm gonna add the carrots,

some onion, the green pepper, and the red pepper.

I just love the energy of cooking in a hot wok.

So we're just gonna stir-fry these for 2-3 minutes.

Okay, so now we're gonna add in our noodles.

I'm gonna add in our prawns and egg,

our char siu.

And we're just gonna quickly mix up a little bit of sauce.

So I have here some mild curry paste.

I'm going to add in three teaspoons,

along with about a tablespoon of soy sauce.

This sauce is really what brings it all together.

Add the sauce into the noodles.

So you really want to just mix the sauce in really well

so that you coat all the lovely noodles.

It's funny. When I was in Singapore,

and when I lived there for a few months,

I actually went to some restaurants to try and find this dish,

and it didn't exist.

The story goes that it actually originated in Hong Kong

in the 1950s,

when they used some curry powder from Singapore,

and the chef really liked the exotic flavour of the curry

and decided to call it Singapore noodles.

And the name stuck.

So lastly, we're just gonna add in some bean sprouts

for a bit of crunch.

I'm using fresh bean sprouts here,

and we're gonna add in some scallion.

You can really smell this lovely aroma of the curry and the noodles.

It really reminds me of when I first had it,

when I was eight years old,

and I was going to Chinese school at the weekend.

And after Chinese school, we'd go to a Chinese restaurant,

and this was one of my favourite dishes.

It's just lovely.

Amazing.

Time to plate up.

And I'm ready for a taste.

Hmm.

This hits the spot every single time.

The light and fluffy noodles are the perfect base for the sauce,

with its intermingling Chinese and Indian flavours

that pair so well with the tender pork,

the juicy prawns, and crunchy vegetables.

This really is a very special bowl of noodles,

and it's all mine.

Now we're off to Korea

to try its most famous noodle dish called Japchae.

It uses these glass noodles made from sweet potato starch.

You'll see

that they become translucent like glass when cooked.

Combined with tender beef, gorgeous veg,

and a sublime soy base sauce, Japchae is quite addictive.

Okay, first off, we need to start with the beef.

So I have here some rib-eye steak that I'm just going to finely slice.

You can use any kind of beef you want.

Sirloin, fillet beef if you feel fancy.

All you want to do is to get thin little strips.

Japchae literally translates as mixed vegetables,

but clearly, it has evolved.

Just gonna give my hands a quick wash.

Now, to marinate, the secret to delicious meat,

I'm going to add

a tablespoon of light soy,

some sugar, sea salt, and black pepper.

In Korean cooking,

they like to use black pepper for the more intense flavour.

So earlier, we used bicarb to tenderise our meat,

but in Korea, they like to use freshly grated pears.

Now, here I have a really big Korean fresh pear.

I'm just gonna take the skin off

and we're going to grate some of the pear into the beef.

The Korean pear is quite juicy.

It's probably not as strong a flavour of pear as you have here,

but it is definitely seriously juicy.

And look, the flesh is lovely and white,

and it adds a real nice kind of sweetness to your marinade.

You can see how juicy it is.

Now, if you don't have a Korean pear

or can't get your hands on a Korean pear,

any type of pear will work.

You just want to add a bit of the fruit and that sweetness

into the marinade.

Give this a really good stir,

and we're gonna set it aside and start on our vegetables.

Julienne your carrots, lovely thin sticks.

Now, if you are a foodie and haven't been to Korea,

I highly recommend you put it on your bucket list.

The street markets in Korea are filled

with all types of savoury stalls,

kimchi, steamed dumpling, red bean, deep fried donuts,

and there is so much more.

It's an absolute feast for your eyes and taste buds.

Next are peppers,

a half of each colour, and again, finely sliced.

So it was my mum who actually taught me how to use a cleaver.

She was chopping pretty quickly, and I was wondering,

How are you not, like, chopping your fingers?

And she had this little technique.

When you're putting your finger here,

you actually move your knuckles a bit forward.

So your knuckles are kind of pushing the cleaver a bit forward,

so you're not actually chopping your fingers.

Okay, we need some white onion and some spring onion.

So we just want to slice these roughly.

We're going to also slice up our lovely fresh shiitake mushrooms.

So you wanna just take the stalk off and slice them finely.

I'm using the fresh shiitake mushrooms here

for their gorgeous, intense flavour.

Now, if you can't find fresh shiitake mushrooms,

you can use dried ones as well and just rehydrate them.

Now, we're ready to prep our noodles and noodle dressing.

I'm just gonna clear some space.

I just love these noodles.

They're so silky and chewy,

and they're just perfect for this dish.

So I've boiled the kettle because you want them to go into hot water.

I just think it's absolute magic when they become a bit see-through.

So while the noodles are cooking, I'm going to make a noodle dressing.

I'm using Korean soy here.

The main difference is that it's a little bit saltier

than other soy sauces

because they don't really add sugar in their soy.

But if you don't have it, you can use light soy.

Add some sugar,

some roasted sesame seeds, chopped garlic,

a bit of my sesame oil,

and some black pepper.

This is going to be gorgeous.

You have that sesame oil and the toasted sesame seeds,

and then the umami flavour of the soy sauce.

That smells so good.

The noodles are going to be absolutely delicious.

Okay, let's strain our noodles.

Japchae is usually served at celebrations,

like birthdays and weddings,

but we really should be celebrating all the time.

So that's why I'm making this now.

Time to stir-fry.

Add a drizzle of oil.

In go the peppers,

the carrot,

and the onion.

Now, traditionally in Korea,

they would stir-fry each vegetable separately

in order to get the correct bite and crunch.

But I'm just going to stir-fry them together as it saves us time.

I'm also using some Chinese spinach.

I have them chopped here.

They are a little bit different to Western type of spinach

just because they have a long stalk,

and you actually use the stalk parts as well.

So I've just chopped them here into two-inch pieces,

and I find that they add just a nice crunch to this dish.

But if you don't have the Chinese spinach,

you can use local spinach and just use the leaves as well.

So,

once you see that the spinach is wilted down,

it's time to take your veggies out.

Another drizzle of oil,

and in goes our beef

and our shiitake mushrooms.

I wish you could smell this.

It smells amazing.

You'll just have to make it yourself.

The beef is sliced so thinly.

Really only need three or four minutes in the pan.

I've just added in the scallion there,

and it's ready to come out and into the noodles.

And in go our veg.

Time to give it all a very good mix.

Look at all those beautiful colours.

And the beauty of this dish is that it can be eaten hot or cold.

So you can make this dish ahead of time.

And when your guests arrive,

they have something to eat straight away.

I can see why they serve this for celebrations.

It's so full of beautiful colours.

I'm just gonna clear a bit of space,

and then we can plate up.

Can't wait to taste these noodles. They look so good.

A final sprinkle of sesame seeds, and now I can taste them.

Wow. It is such an amazing dish.

Definitely, the star of this dish is the textures.

The texture of the silky, chewy noodles,

the crunchy vegetables.

This is an absolute winner.

You have to try it at home.

Three gorgeous fresh noodle dishes to make your taste buds sing for joy.

Hope you'll give them a try in the coming week.

And whether they're egg, rice, or glass noodles,

I can guarantee that you and your family will be wowed.

Have fun cooking, and see you next time.

All the recipes from today's episode

are available at rte.ie/food.

From marinades to stir fries,

grills and glaze, seasoning or drizzling,

flavours that bind by Lee Kum Kee,

proud sponsor of Eva Pau's Asian Kitchen.