[BOOK] Flavor Profile #2: Sesame paste

Northern-style Sesame sauce (麻酱)

Introduction

What peanut sauce is to Fujian, sesame sauce is to Beijing. And just like how that Hokkein peanut sauce from the peanut noodle video relied on a thick, deeply toasted peanut paste, sesame sauce relies on… a thick, deeply toasted sesame paste.

Now, the ‘sesame paste’ that many people in the West are most familiar with is probably Tahini paste. But if you charge into these recipes with your Middle Eastern Tahini paste in hand, you’ll likely be disappointed in the outcome. While some Tahini pastes are made from toasted sesame seeds, they’re much, much more lightly toasted than their East Asian counterparts. If you can’t seem to find sesame paste, a natural peanut butter (which is deeply roasted) will actually be much closer than tahini.

Of course, sesame paste is used the country over – you can find the stuff in everything from Strange Flavor chicken in Sichuan to Liangpi Cold Skin Noodles in Xi’an.  This flavor profile here, Majiang, is more of less specifically from the North of China, and can be found around Beijing and Shandong. What makes this cool is that the sesame paste is often mixed with ‘shrimp oil’ – a traditional fermented shrimp sauce used in the Bohai region and along the provinces along the east coast – to make a rich sauce that’s often topped on noodles or greens. In the north, sesame paste is also often mixed with fermented tofu (Furu/腐乳) and Chinese chive flowers (Jiucaihua/韭菜花) for a even creamier taste and texture, which is often seen as a hot pot dipping in the north. Furthermore, it's even used in sweet snacks by adding browning sugar to it to make a sesame paste filling. 

Now, even though Chinese supermarkets in the West are stocked pretty full these days, that fermented shrimp sauce’ll probably still evade most of you. Luckily though, when it comes to taste… the stuff is more or less a dead ringer for fish sauce. There’s a sort of mellow ‘shrimpyness’ in the background that fish sauce lacks, but I promise that the effect’s super subtle. If you want to be truly obsessive, you could perhaps add the tiniest dollop of Thai shrimp paste in with fish sauce to mimic that undertone. But trust us that for this specific dish that it’s not needed.

---------- Two  Sesame Paste Recipes ----------

#1 Cold Sesame Noodles (麻酱凉面)

As a noodle dish, this’ll be quite flexible with how you want to serve it. If you want it to be a side for a larger meal, you can divvy this up into four smalls bowls to feed four people. Alternatively, two people could split this as a lunch or large snack, or you could just devour it all yourself if you’re feeling a bit gluttonous.

Now, traditionally this dish uses non-alkaline fresh noodles, either cut (in Chinese, called ‘shouganmian’) or pulled (‘chenmian’). But don’t feel obliged to embark on some sort of hand-made noodle project just for this dish – while I wouldn’t stop you, it’s far from required. In an ideal world, you’re just looking for noodles that are (1) fresh (2) non-egg and (3) non-alkaline. But this is far from a perfect world, and I know that noodles that fit those three criteria usually can’t be found at the supermarket.

So I mean, you’ve got some flexibility here. Feel free to sub in some proper Japanese ramen or somen noodles; or perhaps some packaged La Mian or thick Shanghai-style noodles (sometimes labelled ‘Yaka Mein’). And honestly? This sauce is also perfectly delicious over some Italian pasta – just be sure not to tell anyone from Beijing that we said it was ok.

At the  supermarket, sometimes you will see sesame paste labelled as ‘sesame sauce’ in English.

Ingredients

• Fresh noodles, 300g (preferably) -or- dried noodles, 200g
• Scallion (葱), 20g. Sliced into ½ cm sections.
• Garlic, 20g. Roughly three large cloves, finely minced.
• Cilantro (香菜), 10g. Roughly chopped.
• Cucumber, preferably an Asian cucumber (黄瓜), 100g. Julienned.

For the sauce:

• Sesame paste (芝麻酱), 50g
• Water, 25g
• Toasted sesame oil (麻油), 15g
• Whole Sichuan peppercorns, 1/2 tsp (花椒)
• Fish sauce (鱼露) -or- Chinese shrimp oil (虾油),1.5 tbsp
• Light soy sauce (生抽), 1 tbsp
• MSG (味精), 1/4 tsp
• Optional: Chili oil (辣椒油), 1 tbsp

Process:

For the Sesame Sauce:

First grab a metal (or otherwise heat-safe) bowl, and pour in the soy sauce. Set that aside.

Now toss some toasted sesame oil in a small saucepan. Move it over to the stove and heat over a medium flame. Leave it going until the oil reaches about 180 centigrade, or until you can start to see faint wisps of smoke. Swap the heat to low, add the Sichuan peppercorns.

Give the peppercorns a very brief stir in the oil, about five seconds. Then pour the oil and peppercorns into the reserved bowl of the soy sauce. There will be some sizzling. It will be satisfying.

Once cool, remove the Sichuan peppercorn and add in the fish sauce, the MSG, and the optional chili oil.

Now in a separate bowl, gradually add the water into the sesame paste. Mix for about a minute, or until thoroughly combined.

Pour the soy sauce mixture into the sesame paste mixture and mix well till smooth. Sesame sauce, fin.

To make the noodles:

Slice the scallions, chop the cilantro, mince the garlic, julienne the cucumber.

Cook your noodles according to the instructions on the package. Once your noodles are finished cooking, remove and rinse them under running water to stop the cooking process. Strain well.

Place the noodles in a bowl, or divide them between bowls. Pour over three tablespoons sesame sauce (or even more to taste), then arrange the scallion, garlic, cilantro, and cucumber in the bowl as shown.

Serve, mix well, devour.

#2 Spinach with Sesame Sauce (麻酱菠菜)

This is a classic cold dish in Beijing. Spinach is blanched, rinse, squeeze, and cut, an almost identical treatment as you’d see in the Korean Japchae. It’s loaded with the richness from the sesame sauce, but remains its refreshing quality as a salad.

In addition to this savory version, there’s also an sweet and sour sesame sauce that’s used on crunchy uncooked vegetables, which we’ve covered in our Patreon only recipe #14 Two Homemade Sauces for Your "Cold Dishes" (Link here: ). The sweet and sour version is more suitable for a hot summer day, but this classic savory sauce is great all year round.

Ingredients

Main components:

• Spinach, (菠菜), 300g
• White sesame, toasted, about 1 tbsp, (熟白芝麻), 10g

For the sauce:

• Sesame paste (芝麻酱), 50g
• Water, 1 tbsp, 15g
• Light soy sauce (生抽), 15g
• Dark soy sauce (老抽), 15g
• Vinegar, rice or dark, (米醋/陈醋), 20g
• Yellow mustard (黄芥末), 1/2 tsp, 2g
• Sugar 1/2 tbsp
• Salt 1/8 tsp

Process:

For the Sesame Sauce:

Dilute the sesame paste by gradually adding water into it, stir well till relatively smooth.

Mix in all the other seasoning: soy sauce, vinegar, mustard, sugar, and salt. Mix well till creamy and smooth, set aside.

Handling the spinach:

Blanch the spinach. It’d be easier to squeeze and cut later if the bottom part is neatly aligned during blanching, so that it doesn’t turn into a mess later. When blanching, put in your bundle of spinach, don’t stir, just press it down and let it submerge in water. Blanch for about a minute, or until it just turned into that signature dark green.

Take it out, quickly strain, soak in ice water to stop the cooking process. Or if you don’t have ice water handy, rinse it in a big bowl under running water till it doesn’t feel hot when touching, remember to keep it stay relatively aligned as a bundle.

Once cooled, take out the spinach, gently squeeze out the water.

Place on chopping board, cut it into about 2-inch sections.

Plating:

Take a third of the spinach, gently squeeze out some more water, place one layer on a plate, scoop on about a third of the sauce. Repeat the process, 1 layer spinach + 1 layer sauce.

After finishing layering the spinach, sprinkle on some toasted white sesame. And done.

Note:

• Garlic is often added in this flavor profile. You can mix in minced or pounded garlic directly in the sauce. Use 1 big clove for this amount of sauce, or up the garlic level according to your garlic enthusiasm.
• For a creamy sauce with garlic flavor, sub the water used in diluting with garlic water. To make garlic water, finely mince or pound 1 big clove (or more ) garlic, soak in 1 tbsp of hot water, let it sit for a five minutes, strain and use.