The House of An has a new dish to serve at its SoCal restaurants Crustacean, AnQi, and Tiato. The company held a noodle-off this week with local cooks preparing their own recipes to the judgment of local journalists for a cool grand in prize money and a place for the dish on the menus. With its finger on the pulse of what L.A. really wants to eat, a hybrid of Mexican and southeast Asian cooking took the day (eat your heart out, Xoia) in a Fragrant Tinga Malaysia, a blend of chorizo, chicken, and flat-noodles or vermicelli with pasilla chiles, engineered by Marina Del Rey’s Cecilia Fabulich. See the full recipe below.
Recipe: Fragrant Tinga Malaysia
from Cecilia Fabulich
3/4 flat noodles or vermicelli
2 tbl peanut oil
2 Tbl brown sugar **
2 Tbl soy sauce
2 Tbl Rice vinegar
2 Tbl fish sauce
1 Tbl sherry
1/2 tsp corn starch
2 boneless skinless chicken thighs about 6 ounces
6 oz firm dry chorizo, such as La Espanola brand or dry longaniza
1 C diced tomatoes, drained
1/2 C slivered roasted pasilla chile
2 T chopped mint
2 T chopped cilantro
Boil noodles in salted water until tender. Drain and set aside.
Combine sauce ingredients: Brown sugar, soy sauce, vinegar, and fish sauce. Mix and set aside.
Wash chicken thighs, remove skin, slice thinly, pat dry and set aside on paper towels.
Slice chorizo into 1/4” “coins.” Saute chorizo in oil in a large skillet over moderate heat, stirring until fat is rendered, about two minutes. Set chorizo aside on paper towels to drain. Leave about 2 tsp of fat in skillet.
Sear chicken in skillet, stir fry on all sides until cooked through. Add crushed pepper and stir for about 1 minute more. Remove from pan and set aside.
Add pasilla chili, stir fry for 2 minutes, then add tomatoes, mint, and cilantro to pan and cook until heated through. Stir in chicken and chorizo to combine.
Mix corn starch with 2 TBL of sauce mixture to combine. Stir remaining sauce.
Make a well in center of skillet. Add sauce ingredients, stir to bubbling. Then combine with entire pan ingredients. Toss in noodles.
Garnish: Slice 4 cloves of garlic paper thin. Dust with corn starch and fry in a hot oiled skillet.
Serves: 6-8
**Cooks note: Certain brands of chorizo are saltier than others. Balance the sweet and saltiness of the dish with the brown sugar to taste.
