Now that I have my pantry stocked and ready to go, I’m ready to rock with the Land of Plenty series. I wanted to start simple, so it makes sense to start at the front of the book in the first recipe section, entitled Noodles, Dumplings, and Other Street Fare.
The very first recipe is for Dan Dan Noodles, but I saw Fuschia offered a different version titled Xie Laoban’s Dan Dan Noodles, so I decided to go that route as I’ve had the traditional dan dan noodles before.
First things first, I needed to prep some of the ingredients commonly needed for these recipes. Homemade chili oil is used often in Sichuan cooking so that’s where I started.
I threw some chilies in my food processor and heated up some corn oil with a large piece of ginger in it. I took the oil off the heat and once it had cooled down to the specified temp, it was mixed with the chilies.
Next up, ground peppercorns. I still need to buy a mortar and pestle so I used my coffee grinder. I read that this powder will lose its aroma and flavor after a few days, so no need to grind a ton of this.
Here I have thrown some carrots and ground pork in the wok. Her recipe calls for ground beef here, but the traditional dan dan recipe uses pork and that’s what I had in the refrigerator. The recipe also calls for some or Tianji preserved vegetables, but that’s the one thing I couldn’t find on the pantry list. I realize carrots aren’t even a close substitute, but I wanted to add a vegetable and they added nice color.
However, a reader has informed me that you can find the preserved vegetables at Ranch 99 on Buford Highway.
Above you can see the close-up of the meat topping. You don’t want to overcook it, but you do want it slightly crispy. It is seasoned while cooking with just a bit of soy sauce and salt and it has a great flavor. One notable comment about cooking with the wok and sauces in this book – the sauces are generally not added until right before you are done cooking the meats and/or vegetables. Maybe just a bit of vinegar, rice wine, or soy sauce, but that’s about it.
Here is the final dish plated. I used some fresh Chinese noodles, topped it with the sauce (which can be viewed in the gallery below) and the meat topping, then garnished with a bit of cilantro and scallions. The scallions are cut in the “horse ear” shape Fushia describes, where you cut the vegetable at a steep angle 1 1/2 inch long.
This dish is served as such, but then should be mixed to incorporate the sauce and the topping into the noodles. The sauce in this version of dan dan was quite different than what I have had in the past. Instead of primarily being made with chili oil, this sauce used sesame paste, which is similar to tahini. The sauce was quite thick, and with the dense fresh noodles, the whole thing was a bit too dense for my tastes. Also, I think less pasta would be better (it calls for 1lb of fresh pasta) as the sauce to pasta ratio was quite low.
This dish did have significant kick, and a lot of flavor, and I actually enjoyed the leftovers more the next day. If you have had the traditional dan dan, this is an easy and different version, so give it a try.
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