I’d been craving a Szechuan spiced noodles street dish called Dan Dan Mian and deliberately defrosted ground beef—burgers for dinner a deux one night and multiple bowls of Dan Dan Mian for me after early evenings at the gym.
This was my third time making this "instant" mixture to top ramen noodles from Lady and Pups, and I'm noticing that she's tweaked the recipe since I saw it on a Food 52 blog because she's allergic to sesame. And she's also added douban chili bean paste--a couple tablespoons! Okay I didn't do that this time around, but next time I will and will have to alter how much soy and fish sauce I add because of the saltiness of that black bean paste (and hey I've got it for when I make mapo tofu, which is another dish I need to be cooking as I've got a couple packages of tofu in my fridge). However, I'm not omitting the tahini or sesame seeds from my version because I'm not allergic to the nut though I've been using 3 instead of 5 tablespoons of Szechuan chili flakes because I'm a lightweight like that.
Let's begin. Into my bowl of a half pound of ground beef, I put fish sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, ginger, cornstarch, ground white pepper, and crushed Sichuan peppercorns. Set the meat aside and then chop jarred jalapenos finely. I fried those chopped jalapenos in grapeseed (I didn't have any canola) oil and drained them from the oil. Don't toss that oil!
In that oil, I fried scallions and crushed garlic on a low heat. While those aromatics were slowly frying, I crushed the star anise in my mortar with my pestle and then added ground coriander, the little remainder of ground cumin, some garam masala because I didn't have the whole teaspoon of cumin, Madras curry powder, sesame seeds, and this time for good measure, 4 tablespoons of Szechuan chili flakes instead of 3 as well as more Sichuan peppercorns. My tolerance for spice is leveling up.
I removed the green onion and garlic and discarded. WhY? I wonder, are they too bitter? Have they imparted all their flavor into the oil? Anyway I then moved the contents from my mortar into that flavored oil and then let it deepen in color before removing it into my mixing bowl. With the chili oil done, I then started to brown the spiced ground beef. I was going to try to let it brown to crispy bits to get some texture into my meat sauce.
While the meat was slowly browning, I mixed the sauce: tamari (oh yeah, I used that earlier in the ground beef because I ran out of soy sauce), tahini (couldn't find my jar of Asian sesame sauce), brown sugar, chicken powder, balsamic glaze (ran out of balsamic vinegar), and peanut butter. My ground beef was as brown as I could get it, and so I mixed it with the sauce and the chili oil, which all then went into a large Mason jar and into the fridge.
That was one hot and sweaty endeavor, but I tasted the mixture and knew it would be worth the effort.
After hip hop dance and swimming last night, I was starving. I took out the Dan Dan mixture and sliced a zucchini on the bias which I then simmered in my tiny cast iron fry pan in homemade bone broth for a couple minutes before moving zucchini in its bone broth into my noodle bowl. If it was winter, I'd be adding bok choy or other Chinese greens, but our summer garden is producing squashes. By the way, I add no salt to my homemade stocks or broths. I chopped scallions--gotta have green onions as a garnish on EVERYTHING. I spooned a couple tablespoons of my Dan Dan mixture with the broth and zucchini and zapped that for a couple minutes in the microwave.
In the meantime, I was boiling a couple eggs and in its last minutes of cooking, I slid the Asian noodles into the pot for exactly 3 minutes minus 20 seconds for that al dente texture--the noodles then sop up enough of that soupy meaty mixture to get sauce and glossy but are not mushy.
I then peeled and sliced my hard- and soft-boiled eggs, topped them with chili sauce, and scattered the scallions all over the noodles.
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