Chilled shirataki noodles with black gomadare sauce

And advantage of shirataki (konnyaku noodles) is unlike other noodles, you don’t need to boil them again then chill. All you need is rinsing them in clear water.

The 4 elements of my dish.

A : rinse the shirataki noodles.

B : cut cubes of fresh tofu.

C : prepare veggies like bell pepper, red chili, goya, onion and coriander.

D : make the dressing.
Gomadare is the classic sesame dressing. Today it’s black as I’ve used black sesame and the black douchi :

Douchi, Chinese fermented black soy beans.

Fruity duo wok

What you can’t see is this chunky sauce has a charming complex flavor of two fruits.

2 fruits ?

Let’s start with the actual fruit : yuzu lemon. Then kabocha pumpkin and mushrooms are like Autumn’s fruits…

These small chilis are not very strong… if you stay away from the seeds, that is. They have an incredible fruity flavor. I can’t tell… something between litchee and cherry.

The classic basic with ground meat. The fragrant mirepoix mix of garlic, onion, ginger is completed with yuzu rind. The sauce is kochujang, douchi (fermented beans), a little sochu (sweet potato alcohol) and yuzu juice. The kabocha is added mid-way. Later the mushrooms.

Later tofu. And Sichuan pepper.

Serve with rice noodles. Top with more chili and sesame seeds.

Voila !

“Sichuan huiguorou” styled chicken

The basic recipe is of 回鍋肉 huiguorou. Meat returning into the pan. That’s Sichuan ‘s twice cooked pork.
Today, it’s chicken.

The idea is to cook the meat twice to have it more tender. First it is slowly boiled. Then let cooled, and cut. And stir-fried.

douchi, fermented black beans are one of the traditional seasoning. There should be chili sauce and bean sauce with it.
I made my mix of chili paste, harissa and these pasted beans. Of course, garlic and ginger.

The ingredients ready to stir-fry. There is a cup with 2 dry shiitake mushrooms, so I added them and also their broth.

With a little fragrant sesame oil, chili mix and Shichuan pepper.
That’s really delicious and tender. That seems dry on the photo but I had some liquid sauce under.
There was enough for 2 meals.

Served with sage walnut pesto rice noodles.

2 days later : reheated stir-fry of the l.o. of noodles and chicken. Double yummy !

Asari and douchi hot duet (black bean shellfish sauce)

A superb sauce to change my plain old pasta.

I have enjoyed the shellfish and douchi sauces in Singapore. I don’t have their recipe, so I invented mine.

Chili and douchi Chinese fermented black beans.

Onion, tomato, a few douchi (they are VERY salty), chili…simmered in a little oil. Slightly mixed.

Added Chinese aged “wine”, then the asari clams.

Cal 364.1 F10.8g C54.6g P14.3g

Oops and douchi… a kitchen blunder transformed into a new dish.

The initial idea was to do a simple “Chinese” sauce for tofu and mushrooms. A kind of black bean sauce.

I decided to make it from scratch… well from these… no, no, it’s not rabbit’s…
It is douchi, the Chinese dried black natto, well dry salted fermented beans.
Salted, write that down, don’t forget.

So start stir-frying those beans with garlic, ginger, onion, a hot chili, a few veggies… Like here ?
NO.
Don’t imitate that photo. Read further.

Ideally, you add a cubed aubergine, tomato puree, water, you simmer longly… all that melts. You have your sauce. You can pass briefly the mixer to have it perfectly smooth and velvety.

BUT

I had forgotten how salty were the douchi. I said salted ? That was not a joke. That was way too salty… I should have used 1 tablespoon only, not 4.

So I’ve added tons of veggies, more tomato, broccoli stalks, celery stalks, carrot, even a baked sweet potato. Re-simmered. That gave me a huge amount of veggies to reach the proper seasoning. My wok was full.

I took 1/4 th of the veggie mix, added mushrooms, cubes of tofu and a few “niboshi”, small dried fish.

Negi leeks to refresh this. Then that was great ! No regret, except for the quantity.

Cal 376 F12.4g C46.9g P26.1g

Epilogue :
I put the lest-over of veggies in the rice-cooker, added one more sweet potato, and set it for 15 hours of crock-potting.
I obtained a thick a soup like this :