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Pasta with Meat and Vegetable Stew (Uyghur Laghman)

uyghur-laghmanLaghman is a Uyghur noodle dish topped with a mild stew of meat and vegetables. Make our easy version with warming flavours and slippery thick egg noodles. Uyghur cooks rightly demand that the noodles should be hand-pulled, but they are pros at the delicate and tricky art of pulling and flinging noodles, and if you're not, well, it is challenging to put it mildly. This version (reluctantly) cheats on the noodles but brings you the warming flavours of laghman, a dish served throughout Central Asia, popular with everyone, from yesterday's commissars to today's chess players.

thick egg noodles (275 g)
2 Tbsp. sunflower oil
lamb leg steak, cut into bite-sized chunks (500 g)
1 onion, diced
2-4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 tsp. cumin seeds
Chinese cabbage, chopped into bite-sized pieces (150 g)
1 red pepper, chopped into 2 cm pieces
1 green pepper, chopped into 2 cm pieces
1 red chilli, deseeded and thinly sliced
2 Tbsp. tomato purée
beef stock (350 mL)

Garnish:
1 Tbsp. sesame seeds
fresh chives

Have all your ingredients ready to go before you start, then cook the noodles following pack instructions. Add 1 Tbsp. of oil to a wok or large frying pan and put over a medium heat. Season the lamb well before frying it for 5 minutes - keep it moving in the pan, or else it'll stick. When almost cooked through, remove and cover with foil to keep it juicy.

Add another Tbsp. of oil and keep the wok or pan over a medium heat. Fry the onion with the garlic and cumin seeds for a few minutes, stirring all the time. Add all the other vegetables, along with the tomato purée, and fry over a medium-high heat for 20 minutes or until the vegetables have softened. Add the stock and bring to a boil, letting it bubble for another 10 minutes so that it begins to thicken. Add the lamb back to the pan along with its juices to warm through, check the seasoning and remove from the heat.

Serve the noodles in large bowls, with the stew on top, sprinkling over some sesame seeds and chives, if you like.

Makes 4 servings.