Jiao Zi inspired Dan Dan Noodles

I first cooked this rather lenghtly named dish in university as I was trying to make Jiao Zi,  or dumplings, from scratch but I must have ran out of time or mucked up the dumpling skin. So we just ate the filling with rice.

Now, I've recently discovered Dan Dan nooodles which is actually usually in a spicy oily sauce and I really like the texture of the noodles, so I've just combined my two likes. (*u*)

Ingredients

500g Dan Dan noodles, uncooked. Less quantites is ok but not more without doubling the rest of the ingredients.

500g pork mince

500g Chinese Cabbage, thinly sliced (Wombok as it's know in Australia)

5 spring onions, thinly sliced

1 thumb of ginger, thinly sliced

100ml of Chinese (Xiao Xing) wine

Dark Soy

Light Soy

Sesame Oil

1 tablespoon brown sugar

Method

I throw all the ingredients in together, except the dan dan noodles, and stiry fry. You could fry the ginger and the pork and the veggies then add the sauces if you wanted as usual but my way is quicker (!) .

Make this meat sauce quite flavoursome or else there won't be enough oomp for the noodles. Just add more sauces until you like the taste. Then set aside to cook the noodles.

Dan dan noodles cook like spagetti, in boiling water (no salt needed) and really swell up like spagetti. The packet says 3 minutes toncook, but do test for al'dente-ness. Drain the noodles and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking process; you don't want it to cook into slush.

What should be done is each person gets a bowl with a serving of noodles and the meat is spooned prettily on top, and any remaining sauce is poured over. Some corriander, chili oil or red vinegar would go lovely as a garnish on top. However, this being practical family eating, I sometimes just toss it all together like pasta.

Whichever way you choose, you must eat this straight away, it goes kinda gluggy if you leave it too long.