For any avid followers of the good stuff (surely all of you?), you may find some irony in the fact that last Friday I attended an actual Christmas Party.
However for the third post in a row (see Christmas Gimp Fest and A Stickler For The Rules), I am saying really that’s quite enough with Christmas now Sam, and so I won’t go into it any further except to say that - yes - it felt as vastly inappropriate as you’d imagine a Christmas party to feel in late January, and that also I now hold the world-record for being Whammed earliest in the year, coming in with an impressive January 25th.
And with that confession expelled, I’d like to get back to more serious matters; namely, why are you avid followers not cooking my food?
Yes I’m talking directly to you, my fans, you whom I used to refer to as my friends, but alas with the great success of this newsletter the dynamic of our relationship seems irreversibly altered. I bump into you often and you adorn me with words on how much you enjoy my writings, and me, still having time for the little people, lend my ear sympathetically.
However I cannot help but notice these adornments often end with the same concluding statement:
“…but I still haven’t actually cooked anything from it”
This was something I ignored at first, but what started as a conversational quirk began to beat with the slow steadiness of the calendar’s social affairs until suddenly it was pulsing in my mind and I couldn’t help but glare into the obvious and find myself finally asking the simplest of questions…
“Wait… why?”
Some deep soul searching has since occurred, and as any wiseman would conclude after a bout of intensive meditation, I have observed that the problem of course does not lie with myself, but everyone else.
For the stuff in Sam’s good stuff is good (stuff). I have evidence to prove it; observe exhibit A, the feedback from one mum after cooking hospital lasagne:
Friends, family, foe… don’t you see? This could be you. You are only one Sam’s Good Stuff recipe away from having a plate attached to your face by your tongue.
But I get it. You are successful people with jet-set existences. You see the recipes, and you know them to be good, and you know them to be true, but you are unsure when you have the time.
So I have done the soul searching for you. I have asked myself what is it that I make most often? What is it that offers its hand in my hour of need? What is it that renders any time the time.
And the answer could well have been pasta with tomato sauce or a ploughman’s with some apple wedges fried in a little butter, but this comprises only the surface, and scratching deeper, pawing at the truth, howling at my innards, I found the verified lunch engine behind my working week’s grind…
担担面
Dan dan noodles.
Tingly, hot, creamy from tahini, and with all flavours pulled from the pantry and tossed together in the blink of an eye.
They’re such a favourite of mine that I’ve made a video on them (and of course I did not just decide on this recipe so I could self promote more content, don’t be such a pessimist).
The video gives the showstopper edition recipe with all the trimmings. I’ve wanted to revisit it though as it shows a younger, less mature cook, one who has not understood the art of feeding people something good without suffering by the stove.
Today’s older, more mature cook works in tech and so is constantly exposed to meaningless jargon and overly laboured efficiency paradigms. One of which is the 80:20 rule, by which you can expect to get 80% of the desired effect with 20% of the effort. Questions come to mind about whether you can quantify effect and effort so exactly into fifths, and why it was 80 and 20 that was decided upon rather than 90:10 or 75:25, to which the only answer seems the innate assonance and rhythm to eighty twenty, so it’s nice to see there is at least some degree of poetry to these techies’ logical inner workings.
Unfortunately for our cynicism however, the principle can actually be quite useful, as proven by today’s recipe being for an 80:20 dan dan noodles. If the above video shows the full whack, cento per cento, the big kahuna, well today’s rendition is getting most of the bang and, I’m sure if I quantified the steps, reducing precisely four fifths of the effort.
That’s only 20% effort, and 80% results, and we’re talking results of a dish that I believe has 150% flavour so the maths is now beyond me and I’m not really sure what more I can give you.
How about it then? Let us meet next time and say that you have recreated the good stuff.
Head to the asian grocer, heed my tips and lick your plates.
80:20 Dan Dan Mian
Some tips;
Don’t fear the ingredient list, it may be long, but I assure that execution is short.
If you’ve watched the video, this is the same process but minus the mushroom topping and fancy treatment of the spring onions.
Go to the Asian grocery once and buy a kilo of dried noodles, a few big jars of chilli oil and plenty of packs of ya cai, so you are always in stock
Fresh noodles (pictured) are better still, so if you can find some add those to your basket too (they also freeze well).
Make your own chilli oil if you can one day. I make about 2L batches every half year following this recipe and using korean chilli flakes which are less spicy.
Sichuan pepper oil can save you the labour of having to crush sichuan peppercorns each time.
Ideally you are eating alone, at most there are two of you, forget about it if there are three.
Experiment with the amount of noodle cooking water you add to the bowl. Less creates an oily sauce and more creates a creamier one, both approaches are valid.
Ingredients (per bowl)
Sauce
1-3 tablespoons of chilli oil (learn how much you like as you go)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tsp of lard (optional)
1 tsp chinese vinegar
1/2 tsp tahini or Chinese sesame paste
Toppings
1 chopped spring onion
Some coriander
heaped teaspoon of ya cai
ground sichuan pepper or sichuan pepper oil (or you can skip this if you use homemade chilli oil with sichuan pepper already in it)
Optional extras: a julienned cucumber of chinese greens like bok choy or choy sum.
Noodles
~100g noodles
I’ve made this in five minutes so do not put off by the ingredient list.
Instead start boiling some water.
In the meantime put all the sauce ingredients in a bowl and mix lightly, it will be vivid red and your hunger should be supremely aroused by its sight alone. Start cooking the noodles in the boiling water, if you are having Chinese greens add them to the same boiling water when the noodles are almost done (they only need a minute). Chop your spring onions. Add a couple of tablespoons of the noodle cooking water to the sauce bowl (see tip above), drain the noodles when the are soft, place in the sauce bowl and finish with your toppings.
I had dinner last night with an experienced cook who earlier in the week had heeded this call and was amazed at the result - although she had not been able to source one ingredient. You were right to identify the ingredients list as perhaps the most daunting part of the dish, at least for those friends/fans yet to tred the streets of ChengDu.