Patron Exclusive Recipe #13 Sesame Cold Noodles (麻酱凉面/Ma Jiang Liang Mian)

Sup guys. Again, appologies on being a bit late on Patreon recipe. We got a lot to catch up for the channel and everything after Chris is back from the U.S. Anyway, I'm on a noodle kick recently and wanna share the much requested sesame noodles recipe with you this week.
Let's get started.

  **Ingredients**  (Serves two as a main dish, you can complete a meal with some small sides)

1. Fresh noodles, 300g. It can be alkaline or non-alkaline. Or you can use dry noodles. The noodle choice here is very flexible.

2. Scallion, minced, about 20g.

3. Garlic, minced, about 20g.

4. Cucumber, jullienned, about 100g (I used about half of an Asian cucumber here).

5. Unseasoned toasted sesame paste, 50g.

6. Drinking water, cooled, 25g.

7. Toasted sesame oil, 15g.

8. Sichuan peppercorn, 1g, about 1/4 tsp.

9. Fish sauce, 15g, about a tbsp.

10. Light soy sauce, 10g, slightly less than a tbsp.

11. MSG, 1g, 1/4 tsp.

12. Optionally, some chili oil for heat (10g or 1 tbsp is about right).

  **Process**  

Note: This is a very simple dish, the most important thing is the sesame sauce, you can make it ahead and store in the fridge for up to 2 days.

1. Mix the sesame paste with the cool water, stir well and set aside.

2. Let's make the flavored sesame oil with Sichuan peppercorn. We need to move really fast here otherwise the peppercorn will burn.
In a tiny sauce pan, heat the sesame oil on medium to 180 celsius or when you start to see smoke coming out. Then turn the heat to low, toss in the Sichuan peppercorn. 

3. Give a quick swirl, heat off. Then immediately pour this very hot oil into the soy sauce. This step is to cook the soy sauce.
Some people would pour the soy sauce into the oil, but that splashes like crazy, so I opted the other way around. It'll still splash a bit when you pour the oil into the soy sauce, so it'll be ideal to use a deeper bowl than I did.

4. Scoop out the Sichuan peppercorn in the soy sauce if you don't bite into it.

5. Now we can mix the soy sauce, fish sauce, and MSG into the previously mixed sesame paste. Stir and mix well into a smooth paste.
This would be the time to add in some chili oil if using.

6. Now we have the sesame sauce. Since I don't know the salinity of your fish sauce (I'm using Vietnamese fish sauce here), you can taste it at this point. It should be slightly on the salty side. If it feels under salted, add in a touch more salt. You can jar it up and keep it in the fridge for up to 2 days. This can be used as a salad dressing too.

7. Now cook your noodles according to the pacakage instruction or the time required for the type of noodle you're using. I'm using fresh non-alkaline noodles, it took about 2 minutes. Once it's done, strain and rinse under cool water.
Some people in the north won't rinse it because they like the sauce to stick better. But since this is a cool noodle, rinsing makes it cooler and more refreshing.
If you're making this in cooler days, then you can just strain the noodles and mix in the sauce directly and no need to rinse, turning it into a warm noodle dish.

8. Now to assemble. You can either mix the scallion and the garlic in with the sesame sauce, or you can put them all on the plate, totally up to you.
Arrange things on a plate, then pour the sauce on it, your sesame noodle is done.

There you go, isn't it easy?

Have a great week ahead~~~