{"id":3296,"date":"2016-08-03T19:32:20","date_gmt":"2016-08-03T23:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/?p=3296"},"modified":"2016-08-03T19:32:20","modified_gmt":"2016-08-03T23:32:20","slug":"noodles-with-dried-shrimp-and-scallion-oil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/2016\/08\/03\/noodles-with-dried-shrimp-and-scallion-oil\/","title":{"rendered":"Noodles with Dried Shrimp and Scallion Oil"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> During July, my kids go away to camp. So my wife and I have the opportunity to try new restaurants without having to drag the munchkins around. This year, we tried out a new chinese place in Manhattan, called Hao noodle house. One of the dishes we had was a simple noodle dish: noodles lightly dressed with soy sauce and scallion oil, and then topped with a scattering of scallion and dried shrimp.<\/p>\n<p> Dried shrimp are, in my opinion, a very undervalued and underused ingredient. They&#8217;re very traditional in a lot of real Chinese cooking, and they give things a really nice taste. They&#8217;ve also got an interesting, pleasant chewy texture. So when there was a dried shrimp dish on the menu, I wanted it. (The restaurant also had dan dan noodles, which are a favorite of my wife, but she was kind, and let me indulge.)<\/p>\n<p> The dish was absolutely phenomenal. So naturally I wanted to figure out how to make it at home. I finally got around to doing it tonight, and I got <em>really<\/em> lucky: everything worked out perfectly, and it turned out almost exactly like the restaurant. My wife picked the noodles at the chinese grocery that looked closest, and they were exactly right. I guessed at the ingredients from the flavors, and somehow managed to get them spot on on the first try.<\/p>\n<p> That kind of thing almost never happens! It always takes a few tries to nail down a recipe. But this one just turned out the first try!<\/p>\n<p> So what&#8217;s the dish like? It&#8217;s very Chinese, and very different from what most Americans would expect. If you&#8217;ve had a mazeman ramen before, I&#8217;d say that&#8217;s the closest thing to it. It&#8217;s a light, warm, lightly dressed noodle dish. The sauce is <em>very<\/em> strong if you taste it on its own, but when it&#8217;s dressed onto hot noodles, it mellows quite a bit. The dried shrimp are briney and shrimpey, but not overly fishy. All I can say is, try it!<\/p>\n<p> There are two parts to the sauce: a soy mixture, and a scallion oil. The scallion oil should be made a day in advance, and allowed to stand overnight. So we&#8217;ll start with that.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> one large bunch scallions <\/li>\n<li> 1 1\/2 cups canola oil<\/li>\n<li> two slices crushed ginger<\/li>\n<li> generous pinch salt<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ol>\n<li> Coarsely chop the scallions &#8211; whites and greens.<\/li>\n<li> Put the scallions, ginger, and salt into a food processor, and pulse until they&#8217;re well chopped.<\/li>\n<li> Add the oil, and let the processor run on high for about a minute. You should end up with a thick pasty pale green goo.<\/li>\n<li> Put it in the refrigerator, and let it sit overnight.<\/li>\n<li> The next day, push through a sieve, to separate the oil from the scallion pulp. Discard the scallions. You should be left with an amazing smelling translucent green oil.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p> Next, the noodles and sauce.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> Noodles. We used a kind of noodle called guan miao noodle. If you can&#8217;t find that,<br \/>\n      then white\/wheat soba or ramen would be a good substitute.<\/li>\n<li> 1\/2 cup soy sauce<\/li>\n<li>2 tablespoons sugar<\/li>\n<li> 1 cup chicken stock<\/li>\n<li> 2 slices ginger<\/li>\n<li> one clove garlic<\/li>\n<li> 2 tablespoons dried shrimp<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ol>\n<li> Cover the dried shrimp with cold water in a bowl, and let sit for 1\/2 hour.<\/li>\n<li> Put the dried shrimp, soy sauce, sugar, chicken stock, ginger, and garlic into a saucepan, and simmer on low heat for five minutes. Then remove the garlic and ginger.<\/li>\n<li> For each portion, take about 2 tablespoons of the soy, and two tablespoons of the scallion oil, and whisk together to form something like a vinaigrette.<\/li>\n<li> Cook the noodles according to the package. (For the guan miao noodles, they boiled in <em>unsalted<\/em> water for 3 minutes.)<\/li>\n<li> Toss with the soy\/oil mixture.<\/li>\n<li> Serve the dressed noodles into bowls, and put a few of the simmered dried shrimp on top.<\/li>\n<li> Drizzle another teaspoon each of the scallion oil and soy sauce over each serving.<\/li>\n<li>Scatter a few fresh scallions on top.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p> And eat!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During July, my kids go away to camp. So my wife and I have the opportunity to try new restaurants without having to drag the munchkins around. This year, we tried out a new chinese place in Manhattan, called Hao noodle house. One of the dishes we had was a simple noodle dish: noodles lightly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recipes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lzZS-Ra","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3296"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3298,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3296\/revisions\/3298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}