I Am Not A Foodie

I grew up eating Zha Jiang Mian (black bean sauce noodle) pretty much since I could remember. It’s one of my favorite summer dishes, and I always thought my mom made the best sauce, even though it might not have been 100% authentic old Beijing style. It’s actually the perfect food for a person living alone. You can make a big batch of sauce ahead of time, and then it’s good for a couple of weeks in the fridge. When you want to eat it, just boil some noodles and cut up some veggies and you are good to go. When you have the noodle in Beijing in restaurants, they can have up to eight different types of cut up veggies to go with the noodles.

To make a good sauce, you gotta start with a good base. I love LiuBiJu brand dry bean paste sauce. LiuBiJu is a famous Chinese brand that’s been around for roughly 500 years. They are know for making sauces and pickled veggies. If you can’t find this, you can find other black bean paste in metal tins or even Korean style black bean sauce works too.

Ingredients:
For the sauce:
1 bag Bean Paste Sauce
1/2 pound ground pork (the fattier kind if you have a choice)
1 stalk green scallion, julienned
1 tbsp. oil
1 glove of garlic

To serve the noodle:
1 serving of noodle
1/2 cucumber, julienned
handful of bean sprouts
1 glove of garlic

To make it:

1. Heat up oil in pan on medium high heat, put in the scallion, cook until fragrant. Add the ground pork, break it up while cooking, and cook on medium heat until the pork is almost cooked.
2. Add in the bean paste sauce, add 2 cups of water, stir to dissolve cook on medium heat until it start to boil.
3. Turn the heat down to low and simmer the sauce for about 10 minutes or until the sauce thickens to a pasta sauce consistency. Make sure you stir it constantly so the sauce doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan and burn. Add some pressed garlic at the end and stir.
4. Boil the noodles, and also blanch the bean sprouts. Run both under cold water.
5. Put the noodle in a bowl, put in some sauce, put in the cucumber and some pressed garlic. Mix and enjoy!

LiuBiJu dry bean paste sauce. I found this in a Chinese supermarket in NJ. You can find this in many stores. They also have a wet version, which is more runny. If you are using that just make sure you aren’t adding as much water when cooking.


Cooked Pork

Cooked sauce. This picture’s color is a little off, the sauce is a dark brown color.

This is the noodle I like. It’s a Korean brand freshly made noodle. Make sure you buy the wide one. They also freeze well. I normally will portion them and put them into zip lock bags and they keep in the freezer for a line time.

Serve with some cucumber and bean sprouts, and I like to top off with fresh garlic and some Chinese black vinegar.

Mix and slurp!