豆角面
One of my favorite dishes growing up as a child. This dish is similar to 蒙古面 purely from the ingredient list, but it has a very different feel to it -- it's a significantly lighter dish. Simple and delicious!
Active Time: 15 min
Total Time: 20 min
Ingredients
> noodles
> green beans (3/4 lb)
> ground pork (1/2 lb)
> green onion, garlic
> soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil
Instructions
Preparations:
1. Trim the ends and remove the tough fiber off the green beans. Cut into ~1cm cubelets.
2. Smash, peel, and roughly mince several cloves of garlic.
3. Roughly chop several stalks of green onion
4. Bring a large pot of water up to a boil over high heat (we'll use this to cook the noodles)
Cooking:
1. Heat oil in a wok or saute pan over high heat. Stir-fry the ground pork for a minute or two, until about halfway cooked. Add the green onion and garlic, and stir-fry for another minute or so.
2. Add the green beans, a glug of soy sauce, a spoon of sugar, and little bit of water. Cover and continue to let cook for about 5-10 minutes, or until the green beans are almost fully cooked.
3. In the meantime, cook noodles in the pot, stirring frequently and adding cold water as necessary to prevent the water from overflowing. Once almost fully cooked, drain and rinse with some cold water to remove some excess starch from the noodles.
4. Put the noodles back into the wok with the green beans and pork, and stir for about half a minute until well-combined.
5. Serve into two bowls (the ingredient amounts are enough for two), and drizzle some sesame oil on top. Enjoy with a spoon + chopsticks.
Notes/Tips:
> This dish is conceptually quite similar to 蒙古面, except without tomatoes and significantly lighter. The excess starch from the noodles is important to achieving the desired soup texture for 蒙古面, but it's important to remove some of that excess starch here. If you're using dried noodles, you can probably skip that step.
> Cutting the green beans into cubelets is important! It gives them a similar shape to the ground pork, which makes for a much more pleasant eating experience.
> Adding the noodles back into the wok with everything helps the noodles absorb the flavors and seasoning better. Without that step, the noodles can be fairly bland and everything else flavorful.