( For more recipes, take a look at my Flickr "food" set. The previous recipe on this site was Rice with bacon and mushrooms, which was a fried rice based dish. )

Having got to New Years Eve, we realised that our local Chinese takeaway was inexplicably closed. (They'd better not be planning to stay closed on 3rd February as well...) But anyway, we decided to rustle up our own chow mein style dish, and added some green chilli for extra zing!

PART I - Preparation

You'll need to have the following ingredients to hand:

• Noodles (I used these Chilli Noodles)
• Smoked sea salt
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Crushed black pepper
• Chopped garlic
• Chopped ginger
• Chopped green chilli
• Medium onion
• Sugar snap peas
• 1 x Cup of vegetable stock
• Soy sauce
• Five spice powder
• 2 x Chicken breasts

Chop the onion, and finely chop the garlic, ginger and chilli. Slice the sugar snap peas into bite-size pieces. Cube the chicken and season it with soy sauce, salt, pepper and a little five spice. Boil a kettle. The supposedly "straight to wok" noodles still need a quick soak!

I used a large saute pan throughout.

PART II - Cooking

Fry the chopped onion in a little extra virgin olive oil and add the chopped mixture of garlic, ginger and chilli. You might want to season with salt and pepper.

Add the cubed and seasoned chicken. Once the chicken is cooked through, add the vegetable stock. I let it simmer for a while.

Soak the noodles in boiling water. At the same time, add the chopped sugar snap peas to the pan. Cover and simmer.

Once you're happy with the sugar snap peas, drain the noodles, add them to the pan and mix well. Sprinkle in a little more soy sauce.

The noodles just need heating through. A couple of minutes should do the trick.

Serve onto heated plates. Don't know if it's just me, but this kind of stuff seems to go cold quickly.

PART III - Eating

What exactly is chow mein anyway? There seem to be about as many recipes as there are Internet users. (Well maybe not that many - but quite a lot.) I think this may not be very authentic, but who cares! The combination of garlic, ginger and chilli is a fine elixir that can be used to transform almost anything into a tasty meal. I'd summarise this as being a medium hot, spicy chicken and noodle dish. Enjoy with an ice cold beer!