Dan Dan Mien

I haven't shared a new recipe in an inexcusable amount of time. I don't have any new excuses, but I do have this: a FANTASTIC recipe for my favorite Sichuanese street food dish - Dan Dan Mien.

I've talked before about going to Chengdu to cook, hopeful that taking a two week cooking immersion would meet all of my gluttonous dreams. Before I left, I had a list of 15 Sichuan dishes I didn't want to come home without learning to make myself. I learned all of them but one (La Zi Ji, Chongqing Spicy Chicken), and that was due to a translation error when I explained what I wanted to the chef.  The dish at the top of my must-learn list was also the dish I most fell in love with from the street vendors we'd visit every day at lunch: Dan Dan Mien.

The recipe I learned to make at the school was unlike anything I'd had at Sichuan restaurants here. It didn't involve peanuts or sesame (There is a different noodle dish we learned to make which highlighted these ingredients). The meat was a garnish, not a big component like we see here. And it was hot. VERY hot. I came home and made this dish for friends. I made it for David and myself when we wanted some fiery comfort food. I made it for myself when I had a bad day at work and wanted to sit huddled in a corner, rocking back and forth. I always have a vat of homemade chile oil ready to go and I never tire of this dish. It's better than anything I've ever tried in any restaurant.....but as I've mentioned before, when I signed up for the classes I promised not to blog the recipes. I've honored that. This recipe is not that. This recipe is something I found on the LA Times website when I was searching for something completely different. And. It. ROCKS.

This recipe is from Sang Yoon of Lukshon (I've posted one of his recipes before, and it was one I'll make until they put me in the Home). His Dan Dan Mien is much more complex and the flavors more fully developed than the simple street dish I learned to make in China. I prepared it for our friends to eat during the football game last weekend when Seattle stomped the 49ers to go to the Super Bowl. Consensus was it that was even better than the more "authentic" version. The sesame sauce adds depth and complexity. The Sichuan flavor base...well....be warned: It is totally fucking hot. Set-your-lips-into-a-tingly-inferno hot. But the depth of flavor is amazing. If you don't like spicy food, stick with your Italian bolognese. If you can take it, try this Sichuan classic. I think it's one of my favorite dishes I've ever tried.

Some comments: Don't be too put off by the number of steps here. There isn't that much active work time, and the sauces come together relatively quickly. I doubled the sauce quantities because I know we'll be eating a lot of this for a while. All of the ingredients listed in this dish can be found in an Asian market. Prickly ash oil is sichuan peppercorn oil. Everything else should be pretty self-explanatory, but feel free to mail me if you're stuck on an ingredient. And ENJOY! 

Dan Dan Noodles

30 minutes. Serves 8

Oil

1 pound ground pork

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon chopped garlic

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon chopped ginger

2 to 4 cups Sichuan flavor base, to taste (recipe below)

Cornstarch slurry (2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons each cornstarch and water, mixed)

1/4 cup prickly ash oil

1/4 cup chile oil

2 cups dan dan sesame sauce (recipe below)

1 1/2 pounds wheat noodles, cooked

Black vinegar

Crushed peanuts for garnish

1. In a wok heated over high heat, add enough oil to lightly coat the base of the wok. Add the ground pork, chopped garlic and ginger, stirring until the pork is browned, 3 to 5 minutes.

2. Reduce the heat to low and stir in the Sichuan flavor base (add msore or less depending on desired texture and heat). Cook the base with the pork to marry the flavors, then add the cornstarch slurry. Return the heat to high, and cook until the liquid comes to a boil and thickens, stirring constantly.

3. Pour over the prickly ash oil and chile oil and remove from heat.

4. In each of 8 serving bowls, ladle one-fourth cup dandan sesame sauce. Divide the noodles evenly among the bowls. Spoon over the pork and drizzle over a little black vinegar to taste. Garnish with crushed peanuts and serve immediately.

Sichuan Flavor Base

30 minutes. Makes about 1 quart

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (6¼ ounces) chili bean sauce (doubanjiang)

2 tablespoons (1¼ ounces) hoisin sauce

1 1/2 tablespoons (1/3 ounce) ground red Sichuan peppercorns

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (3/8 ounce, or around 22 chiles) dried red chiles

1/2 cup (4 ounces) shaoxing wine

2 tablespoons (1 ounce) Chinese sweet soy sauce

3 tablespoons (1½ ounces) Chinkiang black vinegar

1/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons (3½ ounces) chile oil

2 1/2 tablespoons (1¼ ounces) prickly ash oil

Peanut oil, as needed

2 tablespoons (1 ounce) finely minced ginger

1/2 cup (3 ounces) finely minced garlic

1 1/3 cups (10½ ounces) chicken broth

Cornstarch slurry (2 tablespoons each cornstarch and water combined)

3 1/2 tablespoons (1¼ ounces) fermented black beans

1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper, or to taste

1 1/2 tablespoons (5/8 ounce) sugar, or to taste

1. In the bowl of a blender, combine the chili bean sauce, hoisin sauce, Sichuan peppercorns, red chiles, shaoxing wine, sweet soy sauce, Chinkiang black vinegar, chile oil and prickly ash oil. Blend to a smooth paste.

2. In a large sauté pan heated over medium heat, add enough peanut oil to coat the bottom of the pan and add the minced ginger and garlic. Sauté until aromatic. Add the mixture from the blender and stir well to combine with the garlic and ginger. Continue to cook, stirring frequently, until the raw flavor of the garlic and ginger is cooked out, about 5 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, bring the chicken broth to a boil. Whisk in the slurry and cook until the broth is thickened.

4. Stir the thickened chicken broth and black beans into the sauté pan. Season with the white pepper and sugar. The base will keep, covered and refrigerated, up to 1 week.

Dan Dan Sesame Sauce

35 minutes. Makes about 1 quart

Shallot-Chile Jam

3 tablespoons oil

1 pound shallots, peeled and sliced into very thin rounds

1/4 cup sugar

Powdered red chile, to taste

In a heavy-bottomed saute pan, combine the oil and shallots over medium heat. Cook, stirring frequently, until the shallots soften and start to color, 20 to 30 minutes. Stir in the sugar and continue to cook until the shallots are caramelized, an additional 10 to 15 minutes. If the shallots begin to dry out, drizzle over a little water to moisten. Remove from heat and add a pinch of powdered red chile, or to taste; the final "jam" should be a mixture of sweet (from the shallots and sugar) and heat (from the chile).This makes about one-half cup jam.

Dan dan Sesame Base

1 tablespoon peanut oil

2 tablespoons (¾ ounce) minced garlic

1 teaspoon (¼ ounce) minced ginger

Heaping ¼ cup (2½ ounces) shallot-chile jam

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (3 ounces) shaoxing wine

Heaping ¾ cup (4¼ ounces) toasted peanuts

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (5¾ ounces) sesame paste

1 tablespoon plus scant 1 teaspoon (5/8 ounce) dark soy sauce

1 tablespoon (½ ounce) light soy sauce

2 cups chicken broth

Ground white pepper

Salt

1. In a large sauté pan heated over medium-high heat, add the peanut oil, garlic, ginger and shallot-chile jam. Cook until aromatic and the mixture begins to form a fond (flavor base) at the bottom of the pan. Deglaze with the shaoxing wine, scraping the flavoring from the base of the pan, then pour the mixture into the bowl of a blender.

2. Puree the mixture with the peanuts, sesame paste, dark and light soy sauces and chicken broth (do not overfill the blender; this can be done in batches and combined).

3. Pour the sauce back into the sauté pan and simmer the sauce (careful not to boil or burn) for 10 to 15 minutes to cook out the raw garlic and ginger flavor. Season to taste with pepper and salt. The sauce will thicken as it cools; loosen with a little water before using. The sauce will keep for up to 1 week, covered and refrigerated.

Guo Kui - 锅盔

I am obsessed with Chinese food. Especially “real” (authentic) Chinese food. Not that I don’t love the Americanized Chinese food, fried and covered in globby sauces bragging neon colors not found in nature. Come on, admit it, you like it. You don’t want to admit it, but you do. My friend Henry says, “Even bad Chinese food is better than no Chinese food at all.”  I completely agree.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time in China over the years thanks to a job that has enabled me to manage business relationships in Southeast Asia. Of all the places I’ve been lucky enough to experience, China is the place that feeds my passion. I love visiting the big cities like Shanghai and Beijing. Seeing the Great Wall for the first time, shopping in the food and hawker markets, trying to bargain for the perfect souvenirs to take home—all of these are so different than what I had in my mind as my “normal.” I just couldn’t get enough. Getting outside of those cities to see daily life in more rural areas is absolutely stunning.

A few years back, David and I decided to take a trip with an Australian tour company called Intrepid Travel and explore the country for a few weeks. They had tours tailored for 4-star dining and foodies all the way down to “Roughing It” packages. These packages were significantly cheaper, guaranteed you “Chinese 4-star” hotels and had a higher physical rating. We opted for this both to save money and to experience as much of the real deal as we could. We’d never done an organized tour before and feared the visual we had in our heads of blue-haired grannies with oxygen tanks being carted from tacky tourist spot to tourist spot in an air-conditioned bus. The tour was NOTHING like we expected. We had the time of our lives and made some life-long friends. In spite of the hotels being a bit rougher than we expected, they were clean. We navigated the language barrier and had a good laugh staying in places where we were forewarned about getting a call at 10:30 p.m. from downstairs asking if we wanted “special massage.” Tempting as that is for some, we passed on the opportunity to have our Happy Ending.

One of my favorite stops was Xi’an, home of the famous Terra Cotta Warriors. The warriors are magnificent, but it was the street outside the Muslim mosque area that completely grabbed my attention. This was Chinese street food unlike anything I’d ever tried: Crispy pastries filled with lamb, Sichuan peppercorns, chiles and aromatics. Mutton soup with hard crumbs of bread soaking in and absorbing all that richness. Hand-made noodles in the most aromatic and comfort-food-happy broths. I was in heaven.

This past year, I had the opportunity to return to Xi’an for a work meeting and I was determined to learn to make some of the dishes I kept talking up to my friends and the team. I arranged for us to take a private dumpling and hand-pulled noodle making lesson at our hotel with the chefs from their main restaurant. I bargained my way behind the counter of one of the street food stalls to learn to make the dish I loved.

I bought every English-translated cookbook they had at the city’s main bookstore -- and a few Sichuan and Hunan cuisine books that weren’t translated. (The advantage of having a bunch of bossy Chinese women in your life is that they’ll gladly help with translations and will even MORE gleefully tell you how and why everything you are doing with the recipe is WRONG WRONG WRONG!!!!!!!) The problem is, there aren’t many English recipes for the street food dishes I loved the most. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even know what my absolute favorite was called until I read about it in Fuchsia Dunlop’s memoir, “Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper,” chronicling her time at the Sichuan Culinary Institute in Chengdu. I’m re-reading the book now, because I’m heading there in a couple of weeks for an intensive two-week cooking course at the same school.

I mentioned this dish, “Guo Kui,” to a Chinese colleague who lives in Singapore and lamented that there are no English recipes out there for the version I remembered. He offered to check some Chinese language websites and sent a few links (with pictures) to me to see whether any of them linked up with my memory of the dish. One did, so I copied the recipe and sent a plea for help to my bossy ladies. My friend Kairu offered to assist and had her mother translate the recipe for us, taking great glee when her mother asked if I knew what it meant to “fluff meat.” No, really, it’s an English translation of a real cooking technique. “Bitch, please,” I replied with an instant eye-roll. “I know how to do BOTH versions of that expression.”

Last weekend we gave it a try, made a few tweaks and came up with a version pretty identical to that which I remember. There are many versions of Guo Kui in china. Some are thicker and doughier, served as a large heavy roll to accompany dishes. Some are cut and filled with braised meats or vegetables, making a “Chinese Hamburger.” This version is the one I remember most fondly though, and is the one Fuchsia Dunlop references in her book (I checked with her on twitter and she was kind enough to confirm). TRY this dish. It’s very simple and quite delicious and I guarantee you’ve never had anything like it before.  And if you like this type of food, don’t miss the opportunity to try more authentic Chinese cuisine from Fuchsia Dunlop’s other books. They’re some of the most used and most referenced books in my collection.

锅盔 Guo Kui  

Ingredients:

Flour – 2 cups, plus more for dusting/rolling

Water – 3/4 cup (may need a little more, depending on your dough)

Lamb, ground – 1 lb.

Sichuan Peppercorn Powder – 2 tsp

Garlic – Minced - 1-2 Tbsp

Ginger, minced – 1 Tbsp

Ground cumin – 2 tsp

Dried Hunan (if you can find them) Chiles, or red chile flakes – 1 Tbsp

Chile Oil – 2 tsp

Scallions – 1 bunch, green and light green parts, thinly sliced into rings--as thinly as you can slice them.

Salt – 1 tsp

Soy Sauce – 2 Tbsp

Peanut oil, for frying and as needed

Lard (optional), as needed

Instructions:

Finely chop ground lamb with a cleaver for 5 minutes (or if grinding your own, use the finest setting and then chop with a cleaver until uniform).Add sichuan peppercorn powder (you can make this by lightly toasting sichuan peppercorns in a hot dry pan for 2-3 minutes until they pop, and blitzing in a strong blender or food processor. Strain through a fine mesh sieve to avoid the hulls) minced garlic, ginger, cumin, chiles and chile oil, scallions, salt, soy sauce and a teaspoon peanut oil to the chopped lamb.

Mix well with chopsticks, and toss meat against the side of the bowl for 2-3 minutes to “fluff” it, and create a lighter texture. (If you’re unsure how to do this, ask your mom. I can guarantee she’s a champion meat-fluffer from WAY back).

Mix flour and water in a stand mixer with a dough attachment (My lazy white man way) or mix by hand. You want the dough to come together and it should be quite soft. We used just over 3/4 cup of water for 2 cups flour. Knead until very soft and pliable. Add another tablespoon oil (or if you want to be authentic, a tablespoon of lard. Trust me--the flavor is great), knead again until the fat is incorporated into the dough, place in a bowl and cover with a warm towel. Let it rest for 30 minutes.

Knead the dough one more time, roll into a log about 2 ½ inches thick and cut into segments. The segments should be about 2 1/2-inches around and about an inch thick.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees Farenheit.

Lightly flour or oil your work surface and roll the dough into a rough rectangular or tongue shape. Brush with oil or lard and about a tablespoon of the lamb mixture. Starting at the short end, roll the dough down the length of the “tongue” until you have a small rolled bundle. Turn the bundle on its end and press it down flat. Roll into a thin pancake. (Don’t sweat it if some of the meat breaks through. You can dust with a little flour and when you cook it there will be no problem).

Heat a medium skillet over medium-high heat and once hot, add about 3 Tbsp cooking oil. Once the oil is shimmering, add the guo kui one at a time, flipping the pancake after about 2 minutes. It should be lightly golden brown on both sides. Transfer to a rack and place in oven to crisp and drain for 3-5 minutes.

Serve guo kui on its own or if you’re a chile freak like we are, with some chile oil on the side.

The Perfect Pad Thai

There are certain recipes I’ve spent years trying to make just…right: The perfect Bolognese (I’m about 95% of the way there), a flawless souffle (Thanks to Jerry Traunfeld, I’ve got that one down) and Pad Thai. I’ve made good Pad Thai. I’ve even made what I think is great Pad Thai. This is the recipe I think makes flawless Pad Thai. I tested it last week for David, and made it again for friends this weekend. It. Is. AWESOME.  Seriously, I think it is as good as the best Pad Thai I’ve had in any restaurant or even in Thailand.

The author of this book, is Thailand’s tv food celebrity. Born into the royal family, Chef McDang has cookbooks, tv shows, and lucrative consulting gigs for Thai food companies. His cookbook is broken out into basic Thai ingredients and dives deep into the spice pastes that form the core of Thai cooking. He discusses the regional differences and how they affect food, and then provides recipes to demonstrate the basic cooking techniques of boiling, grilling, salads, dips, stir-frying, deep-frying, steaming, curries and (my bane) desserts. In addition to the Pad Thai recipe, I’ve also made his Pad Grapao Nuea (Stir-Fried ground beef with chili, garlic and Thai holy basil) and it came out perfect. Again, as good as anything I’ve had in a restaurant or during my visits to Thailand.

A couple of notes on sourcing the ingredients: You need to have a good Asian grocery near you, or you will need to buy some of the more esoteric items (pickled turnip, pickled garlic, Thai chile sauce—not the sweet one) from internet sources. In Seattle, I found everything at Uwajimaya with the exception of the sweet pickled turnip, which I bought at Viet Wah. The base sauce recipe starts at about 6 quarts, and you reduce it down by half—it makes enough to last a while. The reduction took me a couple of hours, but then actually making the Pad Thai was an exercise of about 10 minutes. It’s well worth that initial time investment. You can use any protein in place of the shrimp. Because this was made as part of an asian meal already including a different shrimp preparation, I seared scallops instead.

If you’ve ever wanted to make Pad Thai, give this recipe a go. You won’t be disappointed. The measurements are metric, as this book was originally published in Thailand. Although a US Version has not been released, I found mine on Amazon.

Pad Thai Goong Sod

Adapted from The Principles of Thai Cookery, by Chef McDang

Serves 4

Ingredients:

60ml vegetable oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

250g prawns, peeled and cleaned (or other protein)

150g white bean curd, diced small

80g sweet pickled Chinese turnip (daikon), finely chopped

30g dried shrimp

300g dry Thai rice stick noodles (Chantaburi), soaked in cold water until strands are white, drained

230ml Pad Thai sauce (Recipe below)

2 eggs

150g bean sprouts

70g chives, cut into 1 ½ inch lengths

50g unsalted, toasted peanuts, chopped

Chili powder (for garnish), as required

4 lime wedges (for garnish)

Preparation:

1. In a wok, heat 2 Tbsp of the oil over moderate heat. Add garlic and stir-fry until fragrant. Add prawns and stir-fry until pink but not cooked. Immediately take out of the wok and reserve.
2. In the same wok, add a little more oil, then add white bean curd and dried shrimp. Stir-fry until bean curd browns.
3. Add the noodles and stir-fry to soften. Add Pad Thai sauce, a little at a time. Stir-fry to mix quickly. The noodles will soften further and absorb the flavors of the sauce. Taste.
4. If the flavors are not intense enough, add a little more sauce and allow it to seep into the noodles. Add the pickled Chinese turnip and more dried shrimp. Stir-fry to incorporate these ingredients.
5. Move the noodles to once side of the wok. Add the cooked shrimp and a little oil to the bottom of the wok. Raise the temperature and crack the eggs into the bottom of the pan.
6. Cover the eggs with the noodles. Reduce the heat a little and allow the eggs to cook.
7. Toss all the noodles together to spread the eggs. Mix in the bean sprouts, the chopped Chinese chives, and peanuts.
8. Serve the Pad Thai, garnished with fresh bean sprouts, Chinese chives, banana blossom and a lime wedge. If you like peanuts, add a few more to the side of the plate.

Pad Thai Sauce

Ingredients:

300g pickled garlic

100g fresh garlic, peeled and chopped

170g fresh Thai chile peppers

3 cups chili sauce (I used the Taste of Thai brand, but any chili sauce will work)

1 cup pickled garlic juice

1 kg palm sugar

375ml distilled vinegar

3 cups tamarind juice

3 Tbsp salt

½ cup fish sauce

3 liters water

Preparation:

1. Place all the ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth.
2. Transfer the mixture to the saucepan, stir to mix well and bring the mixture to a boil.
3. Reduce the heat and simer in order to allow the sauce to evaporate and thicken. Once the liquid is reduced almost by half and tastes sweet, sour and slightly salty, allow it to cool. Once cooled, transfer to an air-tight container and refrigerate ready for use when making Pad Thai.

Sauce will be enough for 12-15 servings.

Udang Nestum (Cereal Prawns)

This week was one of those crazy work weeks where there was no time to breathe, the days were nonstop meetings, and by the end of the week I was absolutely fried. Staying focused for "strategic planning" meetings without cutting someone or hugging yourself and rocking back and forth in your chair, moaning “Bored…bored…bored…boredboredboredbored” isn’t easy! I know, I know--Those of you who have jobs outside the corporate world would drown in the corporatespeak overload. As much as you think you won't go there, you do! I catch myself spewing out words like "leverage", "ROI" and "value proposition" way too often. And yes, I hate myself for it every time those words tumble from my mouth. 

My friend Becky (I’ve told you about her amazing food before. Did you go get her cookbook yet?) and I had planned to have brunch together Saturday morning, because it had been a while since we’d hung out and caught up. Rather than going out somewhere we decided to make food for each other, drawing from our respective “death meal” lists.

If you’re someone who is focused on food and cooking, and can think of no better way to spend a Saturday than sitting on the floor with cookbooks scattered around you, interrupting one another when you find something you Want. To. Make. Now, then you probably have an idea of what I’m saying.  We all have our mental list of “this would be one if the food items I want included in my last meal on this earth.” Naturally, those lists are nuanced, depending on the person. Mine involves a naked Ryan Reynolds, assorted farm animals and a jar of peanut butter.

But I digress…

Becky and I have our own lists of favorites, and when we spend time together we inevitably get to, “Ohmygod I have to make _____________ for you!” Saturday, we picked a couple of the dishes we knew the other had never tried and gave it a go. Becky made the most amazing lamb and mint meatballs with a creamy tomato and fenugreek sauce. They were melt in your mouth gorgeous and reminded me of butter chicken, even though they didn’t have a ton of dairy in the sauce. If you ask her nicely, she may even give you her recipe.

For my contribution, I made a street food dish I tried during my last business trip to Singapore, called Udang Nestum, or Cereal Prawns. Fried prawns, mixed in a caramelized, buttery, chile-blasted, curry leaf spiked sauce with bits of Nestum Cereal. Nestum is a Nestle product sold in Southeast Asia, and is similar to cream of wheat. It has a vanilla-y, malted aroma to it. It sounds a bit strange but it will knock your socks off. It’s hard to find in the US (I’ve relied on friends traveling to and from Singapore on business to procure it), but I finally managed to find a link here and figured since the ingredients are obtainable, I’d share the recipe with you. For frying the shrimp, you can sub in other flours for the cornstarch. I prefer cornstarch because I think it adds more crunch to fried foods on its own than it does mixed with other flours.

Oh, I realize indian lamb meatballs and Indonesian cereal prawns aren’t the most traditional breakfast food, but we accounted for that too. Just make a pot of coffee, fry an egg and put it over your cereal prawns (I guarantee you will be a convert forever), and add some gossip. It’s brunch!

Thanks, Becky, for taking photos while we cooked! Thanks also for destroying my New Years diet.

Cereal Prawns

Serves 4

Ingredients:

1 lb. prawns (Note from Marc: Becky schooled me on this one: Try to find prawns from the US, wild if possible, to avoid all of the antibiotics and crap pumped into foreign and farm-raised shrimp)

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp white pepper

1 egg, lightly whisked

1 cup corn starch

2 tbsp butter

2 salted duck egg yolks 
(Note from Marc: You can buy salted duck eggs at any Asian market)

3 red thai chilies, sliced thinly, diagonally (Note from Marc: If you don’t love the heat, you can substitute milder Fresno chiles)

50 g curry leaves

2 Tbsp granulated or palm sugar

50 g Nestum cereal original

Peanut oil (for frying shrimp)

Directions: 

1. Peel and devein shrimp, leaving the tail intact.
2. Mix salt and pepper into the shrimp and let it marinate 30 minutes.
3. Heat cooking oil in a wok. Dip prawns in egg and dust with cornstarch.
Deep-fry prawns in hot oil for 3-4 minutes till golden.
Drain on paper towel and set aside for later use.
4. Melt butter in a wok. Add mashed salted yolks into hot butter. Stir-fry for a couple of seconds.
5. Add curry leaves, sliced chilies, sugar and Nestum cereal.
Quickly stir-fry for 2 minutes, till cereal changes color, getting somewhat light and crunchy.
Toss in fried shrimp. Mix well and remove from heat.