Nigella Lawson’s Thai Noodles with Cinnamon & Prawns

I've been alive a long time, and when it comes to eating, I've spent that time wisely and well. So it's not often I come across something that tastes so different to anything I've eaten before. This is a stir-fry, comforting and familiar, warm with ginger and hot with garlic. When I first ate this, it was cooked by a chef called Tom, spelt rather transliterated T-U-M, very gratifying, and he used Chinese celery, which is really mostly thin stalk and a lot of leaf. So what I do is I use what I think of as the shoots from a leafy stick of celery, which I chop, none too fastidiously, don't be shocked to hear. And what the celery gives is an anise flavour, but with herbal freshness. Now comes the same, but bringing base, star anise, and as if to amplify the star anise, some cinnamon crumbled in shards. I'm making a base for the prawns to cook in. So on top of those spices, dark soy sauce, steady with this, and on top of that, some light soy sauce, or thin, this is called this Thai version, with a fantastically fat child on it. A small dollop of oyster sauce for richness, and don't faint, some reddie ground pepper. I never thought I'd see the day when I use school pepper in my cooking, but this really works. Now some water, chicken stock concentrate. I never feel bad about using stock that isn't homemade. Chef Tung used chicken powder and that's the nearest thing I can get to it. And then some ketchup manis, which is like sweet soy ketchup. And into this bubbling brown liquid go the prawns. Wouldn't we all like to pop out to the local market to pick up some fresh plump prawns, and then stroll back down the beach. A large sun hat for me. But if I didn't think these frozen prawns worked here, I certainly wouldn't be cooking with them. Some of the sweetness of the prawns goes into this brown liquor, and those deep spices cling to the prawns. In go some glass noodles, cooked and drained. Stand back and I toss this together. I've always thought of Thai cooking as sprightly and sharp, but there's something about the darkness and depth of this which is exciting. And now a startling punch of ground cloves, and a pinch of ground cinnamon. Now obviously none of these ingredients is new, but it's how they're used in a particular way that makes them taste so different, and that is the essence of what cooking is. This is Thai seafood as you've never tasted it. Tawny tangle of noodles, and these golden prawns. I rather love the shards of cinnamon going through it. Obviously they're not to be eaten. Final touch, the leaves from the shoots of celery. A friend of mine's father said, if it goes in it, it's got to go on it. I said at the beginning that a stir fry was comforting and familiar, but what this is, is comforting and unfamiliar.