Panko chicken and mushrooms with udon noodles

This panko chicken and mushrooms with udon noodles is another one of the fusion dishes that arose from Japanese culture in California, Mexico and Hawaii. Pure comfort food, it's easy to whip up with relatively little effort.

Poke-ing the bear

While the poke craze continues among zennimillenis in Europe, I got to thinking about other forgotten fusion cuisines with a Japanese slant. Exactly how much the Japanese in Hawaii influenced poke dishes is up for debate. Some claim it is a pure Hawaiian tradition built on by new foods Captain Cook et al brought to the islands; no Japanese influence at all etc. Others claim it is hugely influenced by the influx of Japanese settlers in the 19th century and the food culture they brought with them.

This dish, however, suffers from no sense of an unclear history. In the late 1890s, there was a notable wave of Japanese migration to Mexico. Most of these immigrants were connected with an attempt to establish a new coffee industry in Mexico. It failed and most of the Japanese families later relocated to California. Those that remained became Mexican. And this is one of the dishes a Japanese-Mexican friend taught me; simple comfort food that is utterly delicious.

Tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos

This recipe is specifically for two people. However, please ignore implied quantities in any of the images. Whenever I do this kind of shallow frying, I always cook additional food (chicken and mushrooms in this case) that I use in lunches or other meals over the next few days.

One way to look at it is that I'm a stingy wee bugger who resents using all that murderously expensive electricity and oil. Another way to look at it, instilled in me by my father Denton as a child, is that if you are going to expend the fuel energy getting a body of oil really hot, you'd best optimise the opportunity. I know the kids think they invented the Carbon Zero agenda, but my mentor was a madman who happily built enclosures for our pet guinea pigs and rabbits that enabled their droppings to be converted into organic manure with minimal effort. I had long been "carbon reducing" long before the term "ozone layer" entered the popular parlance in the mid-1980s.

3 top tips to get this recipe right:

• While you're shallow-frying the mushrooms and chicken in batches, inevitably, some of the panko breadcrumbs will fall off and turn black in the oil as they cook. Remove them using a sieve spoon as the frying goes on to avoid a "burnt" flavour in the later batches.

• If you only have small closed cup mushrooms, don't cut them in half. Simply take them through the stages of getting the panko coating on them and shallow fry whole. The whole raison d'être of the mushrooms in this dish is that they retain a certain al dente yet slightly juicy quality beneath the golden breadcrumbs.

• It's hard to describe exactly how the slices of carrots should be in this dish; neither too thick, nor too thin. What I do for this kind of Japanese wok cooking, I slice the carrots vertically using a cheese slicer or Japanese mandolin. If you have good knife skills, you can get the same effect with a sharp knife, but my hack works for me. Most food processors, by contrast, simply create slices that are too fine for what you want in the texture of this dish.

Shopping list

for the panko chicken and mushrooms with udon

• Approx. 300g udon noodles

• 1 large skinless chicken breast per diner, cut vertically into fillets

• ¼ white cabbage, finely sliced

• 1 large carrot, finely sliced vertically

• Approx. 150g closed cup mushrooms; cut in half vertically

• 2 thumb's lengths of fresh ginger; peeled and finely grated

• 3 cloves of garlic, finely grated

• 1 tspn chipotle chili flakes

• 2 tbspns dark soy sauce

• 4 tbspns sweet soy sauce (or Kecap Manis)

• The juice of 1 fresh lime

• 2 tspns black pepper, coarsely ground

• Approx. ⅓ cup panko breadcrumbs

• Approx. ⅓ cup cornflour; sifted

• 1 egg; whisked

• 4 spring onions, chopped

• Approx. 4 tbspns sunflower oil and 1 tspn sesame oil (for wok cooking)

• Enough sunflower oil for shallow frying (the chicken and mushrooms)

• salt to taste

side dishes

• Iceberg lettuce salad with tahini and yuzu ponzu dressing

• Kyurizuke - pickled Japanese cucumber

for the salad

• ⅓ iceberg lettuce; chopped

• 2 tspns ponzu yuzu sauce

• 2 tspns tahini

Cooking method

the panko chicken and mushrooms with udon

1. Prepare your udon noodles as appropriate. Drain and rinse thoroughly in cold water to prevent sticking. You can actually do this hours before and store in the fridge until it is time to stir fry them. Most importantly, they need to be cold when they go into the wok

2. Set up your "panko station". In three shallow bowls, arrange the cornflour, whisked egg and panko breadcrumbs in that order. Heat enough oil for shallow frying on a medium-high heat

3. Once the oil is hot, start with the mushrooms. First roll in the cornflour (which absorbs excess moisture), then dip them in the egg bath and finally roll in the panko breadcrumbs. For this dish, the panko should not be heavily encrusted. Fry in the hot oil, turning at least once. As soon as the panko is golden brown, remove from the oil with tongs or a sieve spoon and place on a plate lined with kitchen paper towel to absorb the excess oil

4. Repeat the same process with the chicken fillets. Again, the chicken does not need to be heavily coated with the panko. Remove once the chicken is fully cooked and the panko crumbs golden brown

5. In a wok, heat the oils for stir frying on a high heat. Once hot, add the cabbage, stirring almost constantly to prevent burning, though a little "catching" here and there brings a nice caramelised flavour to the dish. When the cabbage shows signs of softening, add the carrot to the wok. Add the dark soy sauce and stir fry

6. As soon as the carrot show signs of softening, add the udon and a little extra sesame oil. Add the chipotle chilli flakes and black pepper and stir in. Add the sweet soy sauce and stir in

7. Add the lime juice and stir in. While the liquid in the noodles is cooking off, slice your cooked chicken fillets into bite-sized pieces. Once the liquid has largely cooked off, add the panko-covered chicken pieces and mushrooms into the wok and gently stir in with the udon

8. Season with salt. When everything in the wok is piping hot, remove from the heat, cover and rest for a few minutes while you prepare the salad. Dress with a little additional dark soy sauce and garnish with the chopped spring onions just before plating

9. Mix the tahini and ponzu yuzu together in a cup and pour over the iceberg lettuce salad

10. Take to table together any desired condiments, in this case kyurizuke - pickled Japanese bitter cucumber

Alternatives

This dish is very easily turned lactovegetarian or vegan. Apart from the chicken and egg used to bond the panko breadcrumbs, it is essentially vegan. In Japanese dishes I tend towards substituting teriyaki or sweet soy in any situation in which egg would be the usual "binder". Yes, it will turn things darker in colour, but it does the job, and arguably brings more flavour.

My two favourite recommendations are that you use Quorn "chicken" breasts in exactly the same way as here, or (smoked) tofu blocks. Both work well. Alternatively, simply double the quantity of mushrooms.

I can, indeed, recommend a number of pescatarian versions. My personal favourite is using fillets of white fish (such as cod, haddock or hake) treated in exactly the same manner as the chicken in this recipe. However, with white fish, you need to definitely use thick fillets of fish or else the fish overcooks before the panko turns golden brown. However, my personal decadent favourite is to use smoked mussels in the same way.

Pairings

Japanese food (or even Mexican-Japanese food) works wonderfully with beer. And, in this case I really am going to lead with beer, a specific beer. I could probably get tried for treason for recommending a French beer... but maybe not because we all know Alsace is really Elsaß. I digress. Kronenbourg 1664 Blanc works an utter treat. They're not exaggerating when they speak of the citrus notes. They are so present in this beer and utterly perfect in picking up on the nods to citrus in the dish, This is an unusual case of me being a little didactic about the pairing: it really works.

On the wine front, I haven't entirely made up my mind. The last time I cooked it during the first pandemic lockdown in the UK, I pulled a Capucha Cedro Alvarão Branco out of the stockpile, and it certainly worked well. But, even then, I think this is a dish better suited to beer or simple sparkling water.