Dan Dan mian
The dan dan mian recipe serves four.
One tablespoon of dried shrimp,
Three quarter cups of hot water,
One quarter cup of sichuan preserved vegetables,
6 tablespoons of vegetable oil,
4 cups of chicken stock,
1 pound of Asian noodles
or 12 ounces of dried Asian noodles
(width between linguine or fettuccine)
Or 12 ounces of linguine.
Four green onions, Whole, one tablespoon of sesame seeds,
For the dan dan sauce,2 tablespoons of dark soy sauce,
2 tablespoons Of light soy sauce, 1 tablespoon of vinegar,
2 tablespoons of sesame paste,
1 tablespoon of chilli oil, 2 tablespoons of sesame oil,
1 tablespoon of granulated sugar.
Our next dish is dan dan noodles
so what we have here.We have our noodles,
we have our dried shrimp which we've reconstituted in hot water
We have our Chinese preserved vegetables,
chicken stock, dark soy sauce, light soy sauce,
We have our sesame seed paste,rice wine vinegar, sugar,
we have our chilli oil which is going to give it a nice punch
we have our shaoshing wine
and for our garnish we're going to use toasted sesame seeds
which we've already toasted earlier
And we have beautiful Julienne of green onions,
they look all curly like this
Because we Julienned them
and dropped them into a bowl of ice water
and they will naturally become curly and beautifully nice like this.
So we're going to begin the Process by blanching our noodles
and we're probably going to cook the noodles 90%
because what's going to happen is
we're going to blanch this we're going to drain them and
While this is draining we're going to start our sauce,
okay so we're going to blanch these right now.
We have boiling water here,
the water is slightly salted,
I always salt my water when I'm blanching noodles,
and we're just going to drop these right in...
Now my noodles you'll notice my noodles were rolled in a ball
so it takes about a minute or two before I can start breaking them up
I'm just moving them around right now,
There you go one just beginning to break up...
there we go
As you can see it's coming apart,
this other one is a little slower but it's getting there,
It's probably going to take 2...3 minutes then it should be ready...
almost there... Yep ready to go... turn this off..
I'll strain it right here, I have my strainer ready,
While this is draining we're going to start our sauce procedure,
okay, I've got my mixing bowl
so we're going to add our chicken stock, our soy, dark and light,
Our sesame paste...
this is gong to be a really flavourful sauce again
we've got our sesame paste, we've got our soys going,
we have our vinegar, spicy chilli oil.
So we've got spicy we have sour,
we have sugar, we've got the sweet going
Again you can see the theme of hot,sour, sweet, spicy,
we have our sesame oil... this is going to be a wonderful dish.
Better mix this well together...
our next step ,For our sauce we're going to begin by
stir-frying the shrimp and the preserved vegetables,
I'm going to drain the shrimp water,
it's going to give a lot of flavour to this,
The reason I'm draining the liquid
I'm going to stir-fry this it's going to splatter
if there's too much liquid in there,
alright so we're gonna take again the dried shrimp
You can see that they're dried,
these are the dried salted ones and by reconstituting them in hot water
They become softened and these are our preserved vegetables,
right,gonna take us over to our wok here,
get this wok nice and hot... I'm gonna get some oil,
Gonna add about two tablespoons,
we're gonna get this nice and hot...
See how it's nicely swirling around
the wok that's just about right, right here we go...
You can always smell the...shrimp and the preserved vegetables...
The shrimp give it a nice pungent aroma,
I'll get my sauce here and we're gonna add this right in,
We're going to let this go into a boil,
let it thicken a little bit,
Add our noodles to it then we're ready to go...
remember again the noodles are probably cooked About 90% of the way
and we're gonna finish cooking the 10% into the sauce now
that's why it's important
not to cook the noodles all the way prior to doing
This because you want the noodles
to cook in a sauce so the noodles will absorb
All of the wonderful flavours of the sauce
and if your noodles are cooked 100% at the beginning
When we add this to this to simmer in the sauce
they'd probably become overcooked,
Nothing worse than overcooked noodles
so again make sure your noodles are not cooked more than 90%of the way
and again if you're doing a large party
you can probably have the noodles cooked off the day before and
you could probably have this sauce somewhat cooked to maybe90%finished
and then when your party arrives
you could just heat your sauce combine your noodles
and finish cooking it, it's a quick dish
As you can see and wonderful,
this is one of those dishes
that I don't think I've...I've met very few people who don't like this dish,
even those who swear that they don't like dried shrimp
when they taste the dish they have no idea how wonderful
It all comes together, okay this is about right
so I'm gonna add the noodles to this right now...
And again it's good that we have our strainer here
because we want to strain our noodles get all the moisture out
because we don't want to add any unwanted liquid to this
Sauce to water it down,
we're going to let the sauce come to a boil again,
Let it stand for a minute then we're ready,
okay we're good now I'm going to bring us over to our plate, our bowl,
okay we're going to finish garnishing with out
Green onion and toasted sesame seeds,
wow this smells wonderful... you talk about a mouth-watering
Dish this is a mouth-watering dish
as I serve this up I can't wait to try it...
Traditionally served with a little sauce
we're going to take a little of our sauce here.
Our toasted sesame... our green onion
and if you want more green onion of course
You can add green onion but there you have it,
this is our dan dan noodles ready to go... enjoy!