Addicted to Noodles

We (I) cook a lot here Chez RosenBum, as you know. We've got some favourites that pop up a couple of times a month, but we also like to experiment with new recipes. What often happens with new recipes is that I read about a food, or try something in a restaurant, and get obsessed with replicating it.

A couple of weeks back, I started reading a blog that reviews restaurants (mostly Asian) in Southern California. Random, I know. Anyways, one of the dishes mentioned was dan dan/dandan noodles, and I needed to eat them. After an afternoon spent trying to find restaurants in Toronto that serve them (not our Hakka place, sadly), I moved on to trying to find a recipe. Having never actually eaten them before, I was basing my recipe requirements on what sounded tasty and do-able at home. I ended up discovering that America's Test Kitchen had a recipe, but of course ATK won't let you access their recipes without a membership. I have no issue with paying for content, and had been contemplating an ATK membership, but I wanted these noodles NOW. Luckily, someone has (probably illegally) posted the recipe on Food.com, and it can be found here.

We're lucky that we live in a neighbourhood with a huge Chinese population, thus our No Frills has lots of speciality ingredients that might be hard to find elsewhere. Over the years we've amassed a pretty broad collection of Asian sauces, so I didn't have to buy anything extra for those, but I did really want fresh noodles. Fortunately, No Frills had options, and I opted for the thing that looked tastiest. The recipe calls for chinese rice wine or dry sherry, but I just used the Harvey's Bristol Cream I had on the bar cart. Otherwise, it's a really simple recipe that came together in less than 30 minutes.

And it's DELICIOUS. Everything I ever wanted in a noodle dish. I had a huge bowl and was beyond jealous that David got to eat the leftovers.

Now this was on Saturday. Last night, I needed to make dinner, and all I could think about was dan dan noodles, so I made them again. This is the first time that I have ever made a recipe twice in one week. I was shopping at our IGA instead of No Frills, so used fresh linguine instead of Chinese noodles. I also used the full amount of chicken broth (I only used 1 cup on Saturday) and it made for a saucier sauce. I think I liked it better that way.

What was the last thing that you made that was so delicious you immediately needed to make it again?