Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking (40 page)

For the sauce

¾ cup (200ml) chicken stock (or noodle cooking water)

2 tsp light soy sauce

¼ tsp salt

1 tsp Chinkiang vinegar

2–4 tbsp chilli oil with its sediment, to taste

4 tbsp finely sliced spring onion greens

5 tbsp Sichuanese
ya cai

Put the oil in a seasoned wok over a medium flame and swirl it around. Add the meat and stir-fry until it changes color. Add the Shaoxing wine, stir a few times, then add the sweet fermented sauce and stir-fry until you can smell it. Season with the soy sauce, and salt to taste, and press the meat against the wok with your scoop or ladle to encourage it to separate out into little morsels. When the meat has separated and is fragrant but still juicy, remove from the wok and set aside.

Bring a panful of water to a boil and, in a separate pan, reheat the stock, if using.

Boil the noodles to your liking in the water. While they are cooking, place all the sauce ingredients except for the stock in a serving bowl.

When the noodles are ready, drain them in a colander (reserving some of the cooking water if you are not using stock). Add the stock or noodle cooking water to the sauce. Place the noodles in the bowl, top with the pork and serve. Before eating, give the noodles a good stir until the sauce and meat are evenly distributed.

CHEF CHEN DAILU’S SPICY SESAME NOODLES
CHEN SHIFU HONG YOU SU MIAN 陳師傅紅油素麵

This is a recipe taught to me by Chef Chen Dailu of the wonderful Chengdu snack restaurant Long Chao Shou. I was interviewing him for a feature for
Saveur
magazine and I asked him to tell me about his favorite food. To my surprise, he came up with this scrumptious but blindingly simple vegetarian recipe.

This serves two people.

2 tsp sesame paste

1 tbsp light soy sauce

½ tsp dark soy sauce

½ tsp Chinkiang vinegar

1 tsp finely chopped garlic

Good pinch of ground, roasted Sichuan pepper, or a dash of Sichuan pepper oil

1½ tbsp chilli oil with sediment

7 oz (200g) Chinese wheat or buckwheat noodles

Handful of pea shoots, green bok choy or choy sum leaves (optional)

1 tbsp finely chopped spring onion greens

Combine all the ingredients—except for the noodles, greens, if using, and spring onions—in a serving bowl and mix well.

Cook the noodles. If you are using the greens, toss them into the cooking water for the last minute to blanch them. Drain the noodles and greens and add to the serving bowl. Scatter with the spring onions, mix well and serve.

BASIC NOODLE SOUP
QING TANG MIAN
清湯麵

Think of this as a master recipe that will enable you to make many different kinds of soup noodles. The basic process—arranging some seasonings in a bowl, ladling in some hot stock and adding freshly cooked noodles—is common to a multitude of recipes. The flavor, of course, depends on the quality of your stock: with a rich, homemade chicken stock, the basic noodle soup alone will be most satisfying, regardless of any topping.

You might like to crown your noodles with a spoonful of yesterday’s red-braised beef or stewed chicken, simply reheated; with some juicy ground pork, pre-fried in a wok with a few seasonings; a few pieces of poached or stir-fried seafood; stir-fried mushrooms or another straightforward stir-fry that takes your fancy. If you keep small packages of stock in your freezer, this is an incredibly quick dish.

The recipe serves two.

7 oz (200g) dried noodles, or 11 oz (300g) fresh noodles

2½ cups (600ml) chicken stock

Salt

Ground white pepper

4 tsp lard, rendered chicken fat or cooking oil

½ tsp sesame oil

2 spring onions, green parts only, finely sliced

Handful of bok choy, choy sum, pea shoots, lettuce leaves or other greens

Bring a pan of water to a boil for the noodles. Set the noodles to cook in the boiling water. Reheat the stock in a separate pan.

In each of two deep serving bowls, place ¼ tsp salt, a generous pinch of pepper, 2 tsp lard or oil, ¼ tsp sesame oil and half the spring onions.

When the noodles are nearly cooked to your liking, divide the hot stock between the two bowls. Then use a slotted spoon to dunk the greens in the boiling water to wilt. Scoop out the greens and divide them between the bowls. Do the same with the noodles, mix well, and serve.

VARIATIONS

Ground pork noodle soup
Stir-fry some ground pork, preferably from the shoulder, adding a dash of Shaoxing wine. Add a little stock and salt and pepper to taste and simmer until tender to make a meat sauce. Spoon this over your plain noodle soup and mix well before eating.

Mushroom noodle soup
A vegetarian version of ground pork noodle soup: stir-fry finely chopped mushrooms of your choice with garlic and salt to taste. Spoon them over your plain noodle soup and mix well before eating.

FRIED EGG AND TOMATO NOODLES
FAN QIE JIAN DAN MIAN
番茄煎蛋麵

This easy and colorful dish was one of my regular lunches as a student in China: simple, nourishing and delicious. There, they would always fry the eggs on both sides until they were golden and their yolks just set, but you can leave the yolks runny if you prefer. Eggs and tomatoes are a particularly delicious combination, but the noodles are good with a fried egg alone.

This recipe serves two.

2 bowls of
Basic Noodle Soup
, with or without the blanched greens

2 tbsp cooking oil

2 eggs

1 tomato, sliced

Salt

When your noodles are ready and sitting appealingly in their bowls of soup with green leaves, heat a seasoned wok over a high flame. Add the oil and swirl it around. Separately, fry each egg on both sides until golden, scoop it out and lay it on a bowl of noodles.

Return the wok to the stove over a high flame, add the tomato and stir-fry until the slices are hot and tender but still intact, adding salt to taste. Divide the tomatoes between the bowls of noodles. (This dish looks pretty if you place your blanched greens, if using, on one side of the egg and the tomatoes on the other.)

VARIATIONS FOR EASY SOUP NOODLES

Noodles with mixed mushrooms
Stir-fry some mushrooms (tap
here
) and add them to a bowlful of Basic Noodle Soup.

Stewed chicken noodles
Top your Basic Noodle Soup with some of the chicken from the
Simple Chicken Soup
, having used the soup as your noodle broth. (Add a few reconstituted dried shiitake mushrooms to the chicken as it cooks to make this even more delicious.)

Braised chicken with shiitake mushrooms on noodles
Use any leftovers from this dish (tap
here
) as a Basic Noodle Soup topping.

Red-braised pork or beef noodles
Top Basic Noodle Soup with a spoonful of reheated, leftover
Red-braised Pork
or
Red-braised Beef
.

Slow-cooked beef brisket noodles
Use leftovers from this dish (tap
here
) as a Basic Noodle Soup topping.

BUCKWHEAT NOODLES WITH RED-BRAISED BEEF
NIU ROU QIAO MIAN 牛肉蕎麵

This is my attempt to recreate a fabulous noodle dish served at a little snack shop called Granny Wang’s Buckwheat Noodles, which has a branch just opposite the Qingshiqiao food market in the center of Chengdu. At this modest but glorious little eaterie, they make their own buckwheat noodles on the spot, using an old-fashioned wooden press to shoot strings of buckwheat paste directly into a wok of boiling water. (They also make bouncy, transparent sweet potato noodles and the best
ye’er ba
—leaf-wrapped glutinous rice dumplings—I can remember having eaten.)

For this recipe, you will need to make some red-braised beef in advance, or have some leftovers hanging around in the refrigerator or freezer. At Granny Wang’s, they serve the noodles topped with red-braised beef with dried bamboo shoots; Red-braised Beef with Tofu Bamboo, with or without the tofu, tap
here
, also works very well. You can use pure buckwheat noodles if you wish, but they tend to fall apart during cooking if they are not freshly made, so I tend to use wholewheat noodles with buckwheat, which are more elastic and which I buy in a wholefood shop or a Chinese supermarket.

Vegetarians can make the same dish without the beef: just increase the quantities of celery and chilli oil and cover the noodles in the serving bowl with some of their piping hot cooking water. A handful of crisp, fried peanuts or a sprinkling of toasted sesame seeds makes a delicious addition to this vegetarian version. This recipe serves two.

Good ladleful of leftover
Red-braised Beef
, with or without the tofu “bamboo”

1 cup plus 2 tbsp (300ml) chicken stock (or noodle cooking water)

1 tbsp light or tamari soy sauce

2–3 tbsp chilli oil with its sediment

7 oz (200g) dried wholewheatnoodles with buckwheat

¼ tsp ground roasted Sichuan pepper, or to taste

3 tbsp finely sliced spring onion greens

Handful of finely chopped celery, including leaves (Chinese celery is best, if you can get it)

Bring a large pan of water to a boil. Bring the leftover beef to a boil, then simmer gently to heat through. Reheat the stock, if using. Put the soy sauce and chilli oil into a serving bowl.

Cook the noodles, then shake dry in a colander, retaining some of the cooking water if you wish to use it instead of stock. Briefly rinse the noodles under the cold tap.

Pour the stock or noodle-cooking water into your serving bowl. Add the noodles and top with the beef stew. Scatter with the Sichuan pepper, followed by the spring onions and celery. Mix well before eating.

FUCHSIA’S EMERGENCY MIDNIGHT NOODLES
FU XIA FANG BIAN MIAN
扶霞方便麵