Dan Dan Noodles
This matters to me because...
Dan dan noodles is one of the first Chinese dishes that I did not grow up eating but discovered how ubuitous is in many Chinese regions outside of Guangzhou. I wanted to expand my Chinese cooking repertoire outside of the Cantonese-style dishes, and I felt like dan dan noodles was good starting point. Using sauces and a crispy ground pork topping is something entirely new to me.
Ingredients
- Chinese wheat noodles
- Ground pork
- Chinese preserved mustard greens
- Tahini
- Soy sauce
- Chinese black rice vinegar
- Sesame oil
- Sichuan peppercorns
- Ginger
- Garlic
- Water
- Lao gan ma chili oil
2 Comments
- Using grated raw garlic is extremely strong. It can easily overpower the rest of the flavors. However, because of how strongly flavored everything else was (like the mustard greens and vinegar), I thought it actually complementing everything fairly well.
- The dish wasn't spicy! Or at the very least, I didn't immediately start sweating when I had my first bite. It might be because I didn't add enough chili oil or peppercorns. Also, looking at videos and recipes online, they all suggested making your own chili oil. Perhaps in the future, I should consider making my own chili oil.
2 Learnings
- The "anatomy" of a dan dan noodle dish is honestly very easy and straightforward and something that I look forward to doing more in the future. I would just mix a combination of different sauces together, which would then be mixed in with the cooked noodles. It's very similar to sesame noodles, but the ground pork stir fry on top gives a unique soury taste that I really appreciated. I can get behind making these toppings and using it as part of a dish.
- As with almost all flavorings, the more of something you the stronger the flavor. This is trivial, but it became more evident when I was using Sichuan peppercorns for the first time today. I thought sprinkling just a small amount would've led to my sweating, but I realized that because I only added a miniscule amount, things were mild. This realization has made me excited to use Sichuan peppercorns more frequently--just in small amounts.