1 tablespoon cornstarch
3/4 cup water
3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons sugar
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon ginger puree

12 ounces Chinese egg noodles
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 medium carrot, julienned
1/4 small red cabbage, sliced
1 medium red pepper, sliced
1 cup broccoli flowerets, steamed
1 shallot, sliced
water

1. Combine cornstarch and water in a small saucepan, then add soy sauce, sugar, garlic and ginger and cook over medium heat until thickened.
2. Meanwhile, bring a pot of water to a boil and cook the egg noodles.
3. In a fry pan or wok over medium-high heat, add the oil, then fry the carrot, cabbage and red pepper until pepper starts to blister, then add in the broccoli and shallot and fry until shallot is golden.
4. Drain the noodles and toss into the wok along with the prepared sauce. Toss to coat and serve.

Makes 4 servings

There's nothing like closing off a month with a really terrible photo of noodles. The only teriyaki I've done so far this year was for Salmon and it wasn't particularly good. When Shannon requested a teriyaki stirfry I figured I should give it another go. This sauce was a lot better; thicker and more flavorful. I wonder what Asian sauces taste like thickened with a roux instead of cornstarch? I imagine that the color would be lighter.

I put basically what I had in the fridge into the Teriyaki Noodle Bowl, which was carrots, red cabbage, red pepper and broccoli. Of course, there's no reason to use these vegetables over others and typical snow peas and such with thinly sliced meat is quite scrumptious. I'm not sure I've ever used scrumptious to describe anything before, but it seems sort of awkward now.

To change the subject, I am quite happy to be going into the last month of this project. Here starts an active countdown in my head. Of course, this is hardly the last month of working on A Food Year since there is still much to be done in terms of recreating the restaurant dinners, as well as an enormous amount of editing and photo doctoring, not to mention all the effort involved in the publishing process, but it's definitely nice to feel a sense of accomplishment, completeness and some sort of resolution to this madness. Has it really been 11 months already?