Brush watermelon wedges with a mixture of honey, lime juice, and cayenne pepper, then grill quickly, just till the wedges show grill marks. It's so simple and such a creative way to enjoy the most summery of fruits, the juicy watermelon.
Perhaps the biggest key to making excellent dan dan noodles is to make your own roasted chile oil. When done right, it gets a rich, fruity, smoky flavor that none of the store-bought stuff can touch. It's really quite simple. Toasted Sichuan peppercorns have a sweet, citrus-like aroma with a mouth-numbing quality, while roasted chile oil brings on the heat.
If you've eaten a typical dish of takeout orange chicken any time recently, you might recall an orange-tinted sauce with very little resembling fruit flavor. Here, we create better, more complex flavor in our orange sauce by incorporating citrus three ways: fresh orange juice, grated zest, and dried peel. That last ingredient adds a depth that you can't get from fresh juice and zest alone.
Preserved mustard root like this (often labeled „Sichuan Preserved Vegetable“) can be found in cans or jars in your Chinese market. Once opened, they'll last for months in a sealed container in the fridge. You don't need much to add big flavor to dishes.
Our original attempt at real-deal Chinese kung pao chicken , adapted from a recipe by a Sichuan chef working in Boston, gets its mouth-numbing heat from Sichuan peppercorns. So does the kung pao chicken from Kenji's book , based on the version he tried in Sichuan Province. This Chinese-American take, meanwhile, is much less spicy, with cubes of chicken in a thick, slightly gloppy sauce, permeated by a gentle heat. It's a quick and easy recipe, too: Just stir-fry marinated diced chicken with roasted peanuts, diced celery and peppers, ginger, and red Chinese or árbol chilies, then coat it all in a mixture of soy sauce, chicken broth, vinegar, sesame oil, sugar, and cornstarch. Dinner's on the table in 30 minutes.
Stir-frying is a very quick cooking technique, so it works well with thin cuts of meat . Skirt steak satisfies that requirement and brings the added benefit of a loose texture that's perfect for soaking up marinades. This stir-fry—which takes only half an hour, including the marinating time—pairs the beef with snap peas, oyster sauce, chicken broth, Shaoxing wine, sugar, sesame oil, and soy sauce for a super-fast and flavorful dinner.
If you only ever eat cucumbers raw or pickled, you aren't using the vegetable to its full potential. Salting and lightly cooking cucumbers tenderizes them, turning their crunch into a meaty bite. One of our favorite ways to cook cucumbers is in this easy stir-fry, seasoned with marinated ground pork, soy sauce, and sesame oil.
Return pot of water to a hard boil and add noodles. Cook, stirring regularly to prevent noodles from sticking to each other or the bottom, until barely cooked through with a springy bite, about 4 minutes. Drain, reserving 3/4 cup of cooking liquid. Add cooking liquid to bowl with sauce and stir to combine.
They don't always get as much attention as the noodles , stews , or barbecue , but stir-fries are a major part of Korean cuisine. If you need an introduction to Korean stir-fries, try this spicy-sweet dish made with pork shoulder marinated in gochujang (Korean chile paste) and gochugaru (Korean dried-chile powder).
Garbanzos con espinacas, the Spanish stew upon which this stew is based, usually relies on smoky chorizo or rich morcilla (blood sausage) for its flavor. This vegan version keeps those bold flavors by simmering the chickpeas and their liquid with aromatics like garlic, onion, bay leaf, ginger, and smoked paprika.
Spring rolls are great, world noodle dishes|https://Noodleinsight.com/ as are the flavors of bánh mì, so why not stick 'em together? These rolls are stuffed with pickled carrots and daikon radish, cucumber, jalapeño, and cilantro. The sauce is made with a mixture of homemade vegan mayonnaise and spicy chili-garlic sauce. Creamy, spicy, crispy, tangy, and a little greasy, they hit all the notes you want in a game time snack.
The second great thing about making dan dan noodles—it's an exceedingly simple dish to make. Once you've put together your roasted chile vinaigrette (which holds for months in the fridge, by the way), it's just a matter of cooking your noodles, frying your chopped pork, and throwing everything together.
(Image: https://p0.pikist.com/photos/931/475/sea-beach-sunset-sunrise-piano-spielerin-piano-music-water-sand-thumbnail.jpg)There are all kinds of variations on the dish that you'll find in Chinese restaurants in the U.S. Some go the ultra-authentic, hardcore traditional route, while others remove some or even all of the heat from the dish, instead replacing it with a creamy sesame (or even peanut butter!) based sauce. To me, picking one version of dan dan noodles as the best is kinda like choosing my favorite Beatles album: It's a constantly shifting debate, even with myself. Best plan is to just pick a path and run with it. This time I'm going for the more traditional approach. Obviously, modifying it for my vegan needs is going to alter that approach in practice (though not in spirit).
