As you know, we are all about culinary literacy. I believe you need to know how
to cook the tent-poles of culinary wisdom from cultures around the world.
I also think you want, you need, you desire, to be able to replicate your favorite
dishes that you eat out in the world at home. And some of them seem sort of
overwhelming how do I possibly replicate this classic Chinese dish of scallion noodles?
What I've done is create a very simple recipe for you, that doesn't
forgive any honesty or authenticity. It has all the hallmarks of the classic
Shanghai style scallion oil noodle,
with all of the hallmarks of the Japanese
izakaya charred scallion,
and tsukemono, Japanese pickle
accented noodle.
And there's a master sauce within this recipe,
that you will use on everything.
I have a cup and a half, two cups of chopped scallion.
I'm going to add my
grated ginger, this is grated through a micro plane.
You can see that juice very important.
We're just gonna lay that in there.
Some grapeseed oil, salt, vinegar,
and soy sauce. We're just gonna stir this up.
So we're gonna refrigerate this for
about an hour, and let sort of those flavors come together while we take care
of some of our other ingredients.
We've charred our scallions, and we've charred a serrano chili. The seeds of a
serrano are very citrusy, and lemony, it's completely delicious, so make sure you
throw the whole pepper in there. Just gonna add a little more salt.
Some people like to turn this into a paste, I like it where it's got a little
body to it, and it sort of marries with the scallion mixture that's got the
ginger in there. And then we combine these two mixtures together.
I'm just gonna put in a splash more vinegar,
what I'm tasting for is the balance between
the oil, and the acid.
Yeah, this right here is the stuff that takes chilled
noodles and exalts them, burnishes them to a beautiful golden sheen, and makes
them eminently craveable.
Before we build our noodles, I got a whole bunch of
different pickles these are all in the Japanese category of what is called tsukomono.
This is a pickled radish, this is a oshinko or takuan,
it's a pickled daikon radish that's also been colored.
This is, right here, this
exact same product, sliced really thin, and seasoned with a little bit of
hanakatsu smoked bonito flakes.
Shibazuke, my favorite, little tiny
eggplant and cucumber, that is pickled with shiso leaf,
perilla plant, beefsteak plant,
which is what turns it purple.
These are pickled cucumbers, I'm gonna
make my portions right in this bowl, because I'm not gonna have any left over
scallion sauce. If you want to use a
Japanese, thin, buckwheat noodle, or you
know, heaven forbid some leftover pasta,
Italian pasta, go right ahead.
I happen to like Chinese and Japanese noodles for this, and this is a classic
Chinese thin egg noodle,
that's just wide enough to hold some of that sauce.
These were just cooked to al dente, rinsed in cold water, and we put a tablespoon of
grapeseed oil over them. And that looks about right to me.
And then all I want to do, is just turn these in the sauce.
Put an appropriate portion
of noodle into each bowl, we don't want an overwhelming amount of
noodle, this is a nice light lunch, or a noodle dish that's part of a larger meal.
Set up the noodle and I, you know, grab a little bit of that scallion mixture, so a
little bit of black sesame,
and just a little bit of the togarashi, which is a
chili seasoning.
And then we can decorate with our pickles.
Right there is a lovely lunch for two people, chilled noodles, charred ginger
scallion sauce, Shanghai meets Shibuya. Call it whatever you like.
I really should not be eating pasta this early in the day, but I'm going to.