Sesame Noodles
This matters to me because...
At my parents' restaurant, my all-time favorite dish was sesame chicken. The delicious, crispy, double-fried chicken pieces, then topped by a sweet and slightly tangy sauce made it such an irresistable dish to eat. One day, a customer wanted to have sesame noodles, which is not something found on the menu, so I was intrigued to try it out. Turns out, the flavors were much different; it had an actual nutty taste to it. Only now do I realize that there is actual sesame paste in a sesame sauce.
Ingredients
- Chinese wheat noodles
- Tahini
- Peanut butter
- Chinese black rice vinegar
- Soy sauce
- Sesame oil
- Sesame seeds
- Scallions
- Sugar
- Garlic
2 Comments
- I didn't have Chinese sesame paste, but I had tahini when I was trying to make hummus. I'm not sure if there was a huge difference, but the "nutty" flavor from the tahini definitely came through. I even added some peanut butter in the mix to make it have a thicker, nuttier texture.
- I can really get behind the concept of just creating a sauce, then tossing it in some boiled noodles. The idea that the noodles slowly soak up the sauce as you eat it makes it for a quick, low-effort weeknight dinner. It was so fun to make too! It was almost like a "choose your own adventure," where I could improvise and make it my own kind of sauce.
2 Learnings
- Adding nuts to a sauce is amazing! Adding some acidity in the form of a vinegar makes it for a really delicious sauce. I think it's actually extensible to other foods too. I'm thinking of creating a peanut sauce to add to my chicken breast that I usually eat every day. It'd definitely help with spicing up an often boring, mundane dish.
- I feel like it's pretty difficult to have too much sauce in this dish. Because the noodles will continually soak up the sauce, it helps add to an additional layer of coating and even leads to better a better texture. Kind of like Italian pasta, where you can't have too much meat sauce.
References
NYT Cooking recipe I followed: link