Ingredients 配料
1 kg of very lean pork like loin of pork - cut into small pieces - lijirou 里肌肉
Traditionally, Chinese people use very fatty meat like belly of pork 五花肉
However, I prefer to use lijirou 里肌肉 because it is tender, if you know how to cook this meat, it has a melt in your mouth texture
1 kg of meat will feed about 6 - 8 people
1 large red onion - diced
1 Echalion shallot - diced
4 - 6 garlic - minced or finely chopped - depending on taste
2 inches of ginger - diced
1 leek - julienne
2 stalks of celery - julienne
3 medium size carrots - julienne
3 ripe tomatoes - segment
Sauces
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| tian mian jiang 甜麵醬 |
half a bottle of tian mian jiang 甜麵醬 - see bottle above
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| Huang Dou Jiang 黃豆醬 |
Alternatively, you can use doubanjiang 豆瓣醬 - but I find this bean sauce very salty and I prefer using Huang Dou Jiang like people from BeiJing.
If you want it chilli hot, then add two tablespoons of chilli bean sauce as well like the la-doubanjiang 辣豆瓣醬 above.
See picture above
4 - 5 tablespoons of tomato sauce - 番茄醬 fanqie jiang - I learnt this from watching cooking shows from Beijing and I never used to add tomato sauce until I saw the cooking show and I never looked back.
2 - 3 tablespoons of Chinese black vinegar
2 tbsp of sugar - when Italians make the pasta sauce with tomatoes, their secret ingredient is sugar. Similar with zhajiangmian sauce, you too need this secret ingredient
stock cubes - I added two stock cubes
half a bottle of lager or cider
No salt, no pepper if you adding the la doubanjiang.
sesame oil - as much or as little as you want - which is added at the end
garnish - cucumber julienne
of course cooking oil
Noodles of course - I use YangChun Mian 陽春麵 but you can use any noodles you fancy - like lamian 拉麵 that is if you know how to pull noodles. The amount of noodles you require depends on your appetite. I think two rounds of YangChun Mian per lady and for man, I would give them three rounds each. The packet in the picture has 8 rounds of noodles.
WoW! I got through all the ingredients
Method
sauté the ginger, then add onion and shallots and continue to sauté until the onions are soft
Then add the carrot, celery, leek and garlic and continue to saute
When the above vegetables have softened, then add the tomatoes and continue to sauté
When the tomatoes have melted, add the sauces and cider or lager
Add the stock cubes and sugar and give it a good stir
This sauce suppose to be salty!
When the sauce is ready, then add lean pieces of pork loins and turn the heat down to gentle simmer. Cook the pork for a short while, cover, switch off the heat and leave it until you are ready to eat. Add a few dashes of sesame oil before you cover your pot.
Cook the noodles as per the instructions in the packet.
On each bowl, add some noodles
Then ladle some zhajiangmian sauce + meat on top of the noodles
Then add some garnish - in the North of China they add julienne of cucumber. You can add shredded lettuce too!
I really do not mean to blind you with Chinese. However, I have been thinking about these blessed bean sauces. In English, there are all bean sauces. However, for Chinese people we have lots and lots of different types of bean sauces. Whatever you do, do not buy Southern Chinese sauces to make zha jiang mian. This is a northern Chinese dish and we need sauces from the north. The guest today said could she use yellow bean sauce. Well - if you buy Southern Chinese yellow bean sauce like those from Amoy - they it will be really zaogao 糟糕!
You can google and find out what zaogao 糟糕 mean! ^_~
This is a really delicious noodle dish and now all my friends who have eaten this dish in my home can go away and cook this dish.
I have watched lots of Chinese cooking shows, read lots of Chinese recipes and reviews to come out with my own version. I mainly copied Beijing recipes because I think they cook very delicious zhajiang mian.
Enjoy! Bon appetit!
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