Kevin Cooks: Dan Dan Noodles
I clearly recall my trip home to China when I was thirteen. It was painful. The flight from Chicago was 14 hours long. Unable to sleep for 14 hours straight (although, I can no longer complain after going through medical school) while being forced to sit upright in a crammed quarter was torture. The vile smell of the prepared airplane meals gave me nausea I had never experienced before. I exhausted my genre of movies (shoutout to the Hangover) so the final hours felt like I was in purgatory. When we finally landed at the Beijing airport, my extended family were excited to pick us up. The traffic that piled on the way into Beijing further delayed my destiny of finally laying supine.
My aunt graciously hosted us in her Beijing apartment and bought us baozi or bao - steamed buns with meat filling. I ate it quickly and went to bed. The next morning, I threw up. The combination of a long journey and regurgitated bao gave me food aversion, a rarity for me. I craved nothing that China could offer, even its American chains of Pizza Hut and McDonalds. My involuntary hunger strike continued for days.
One night we went to a Chinese restaurant with a large private room. These were very common in China, at least in my experience. My family or my family’s friends would make reservations on a few nights at various restaurants for one of these dining rooms where several friends/family could come and we’d all have one large shared meal. These rooms were grand. A large circular table would be at the center of all of them with several seats and a lazy susan in the middle. The wait staff would bring in only one menu. Someone would order off of that menu for everyone, and then the food would come one by one as it was prepared. We’d slowly spin the lazy susan around as we piled our dishes high with cuisine that spoke to us.
My family tried their best to order food they’d think I would eat. Peking duck, fried rice, even their version of orange chicken, did not suit my palate. But on our lazy susan came around one dish that caught my eye. A blended bowl of white noodles covered with chunks of pork and peanuts. I tried a bite and ate the rest of the bowl, sharing none of it. Luckily, my family didn’t care and only were excited to see me eating again. That dish, I later learned, was Dan Dan noodles.
I remember encountering traffic like this as we passed through one of the tolls on the way from the Beijing airport back into Beijing. After being awake for more than 24 hours, this was more than a nightmare.
Private dining rooms for large parties with a lazy Susan were common in China. They were a fun time to share large meals with your friends and loved ones and be rambunctious without worrying about other customers.
Ingredients:
Package of noodles
Bok choy for health
Peanuts for garnish
Scallions for garnish
For the Meat
1 lb of ground pork
2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
2 tablespoons shaoxing wine
Five spice seasoning (few dashes)
Minced ginger
Minced garlic (4 cloves)
2 tablespoons of fermented black bean paste
1 teaspoon of sugar
For the Sauce
2 spoonfuls of Chinese sesame paste or tahini
2 tablespoons of soy sauce
1 tablespoon of sugar/honey
Five spice seasoning
4 gloves of minced garlic
As much chili oil you want
1 teaspoon of rice vinegar
some black pepper
Directions:
Begin by boiling a pot of water and add your noodles when ready. Save some of the water.
For the meat, combine the meat and the marinade together and then fry it in a pan. Once finished cooking, set aside. Blanche the bok choy.
In a separate bowel, combine all the sauce ingredients.
In the same bowel that you assembled your sauce, combine all ingredients together and mix. Add bok choy, crushed peanuts, and scallions for garnish.
