I Am Very Tall

Food porn, Noodle edition

One more round of weekend cooking. I made Fuchsia Dunlop's version of dan dan mian, a semi-spicy noodle dish whose contents seem to change drastically from restaurant to restaurant. Wikipedia defines dan dan noodles as

...a classic dish of Chinese Sichuan cuisine. It consists of a spicy ground peanut and sesame sauce over noodles, usually very garlicky, and often served with cold sliced cucumbers.

The same sauce is frequently served over poached chicken (called Bon Bon or Bong Bong Chicken), and on steamed, meat-filled dumplings in another Sichuan dish called Suanla chaoshou.

The name is also used for another dish that eschews ground peanuts.

A variety of English spellings are used. The first word may be either Dan, Dun, or Tan. There may or may not be a hyphen between the first two words. The last word may be Mein, Mian, or Noodles. The name refers to a type of carrying pole (a dan dan) that was used by ambulatory vendors who sold the dish on the streets.

Well, the dish that I made had no peanuts in it. In fact, the recipe didn't call for anything that remotely resembled a peanut. It was mainly ground pork, ya cai (pickled vegetables, a bit on the salty side), various soy sauces, chili oil and a generous amount of ground Sichuan peppercorn. Here's how it came out, just before mixing:

And after mixing:
It came out ok, but as Pudge put it, the flavoring was a little "monochromatic." I'm not sure why she chose to put it in terms of color, but the gist of it was that the flavor was pretty much overpowered by the salt. The numbing flavor of the Sichuan peppercorns had a subtle effect, but that was about it. I'm guessing that next time, a bit of ground peanut or something might make it a little more interesting.