Dan Dan Noodles
A specialty from Sichuan, a province in the southwest of China, vendors once balanced baskets of noodles and sauce on their shoulder poles and cried out “dan dan mian!” to hawk their wares. Dan dan refers to those bamboo shoulder poles and mian means noodles, but there’s no one way to prepare them. Nowadays in the Western diaspora, the dish is associated with a few essentials, namely chile oil and sesame paste, but another is worth adding: preserved vegetables. Salty and a little sweet with the sour oomph of fermentation, pickled mustard greens give the soothing noodles an umami zing. These noodles are especially rich with sesame, but you can adjust all of the seasonings to your taste. Toasty and salty, tangy on the cliff of funk, chewy with pops of peanut, dan dan noodles are a bowl of contentment.
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