I deliberately keep back just enough chicken from a roast chicken so that I can make this meal. It’s just so tasty. The sauce is based on Vietnamese flavours so it’s bright, salty and full of umami. You can use fresh chicken too, just cook off some cubed chicken in a little veg oil before adding the cabbage. There’s no complicated cooking here, just bags of flavour.

INGREDIENTS
Serves 2 Adults & 2 Kids
300g cooked chicken
1 large sweetheart or Chinese cabbage
1 large shallot or 2 small
2 packs of straight to wok udon noodles
for the sauce
3 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp rice vinegar
2 tbsp soy sauce
1.5 tsp white sugar
1/4 tsp chilli flakes
1 lime
the toppings
slices of fresh red chilli
crispy onions
peanuts
small bunch of coriander, basil and mint

• Wash and chop the cabbage (discarding the hard core). Peel and finely slice the shallot. Put 1 tbsp of veg oil to a large skillet or wok and cook the cabbage and shallot for a couple of minutes on a medium high heat. Add the cooked chicken and stir.
• Add the udon noodles, turn the heat down to medium and place a lid on the pan while you mix together the sauce.

• Put the fish sauce, chilli flakes, rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, the juice of half a lime and the sugar into a bowl and whisk together. Lift the lid and pour over the sauce then replace the lid and cook on medium until the noodles have completely loosened and can be tossed into the veggies using chopsticks. This stops the noodles breaking up too much.
• Roughly chop some peanuts, finely slice some fresh chilli and roughly chop the herbs. Dish up the noodles and top with nuts, chilli, herbs, fried onions and lime wedges.