Tan Tan Noodles

Again, I'll let the recipe intro describe the dish: "Delicious meaty miso with sweet, sour and spicy sauce, served on top of smooth Chinese noodles". Sounds lovely, doesn't it, except it's a bit odd to describe miso as "meaty", but whatever.

Tan tan noodles is one of my husbands favourite dishes. It's a spicy dish, the noodles are served with a fried spicy minced pork mixture laying in a sesame and chilli spiked broth. In "Noodle Comfort" there are two version of this dish, one where the noodles are served in warm broth and one served with cold sauce. We've tried the cold version, but, after some trial and error, we've found that we like it better when the sauce is heated, to resemble soup.

In our version, the pork is fried quickly with garlic, spring onions, ginger, and sesame oil. The real work lies in the sauce, a miso based mixture containing sesame paste, sesame oil, vinegar, soy sauce, sugar and chilli paste. As we've made this dish a few times and every time the sauce has turned out somewhat different, so now I just keep adding whatever I think it needs until it starts to taste like I remember it from Japan.

In the soupy "hot broth" version the meat mixture is a little more elaborate. The meat is fried with schezuan peppers, shiitake mushrooms, bamboo shots, bean sprouts and sesame paste. Then any type of "soup mix" broth is poured onto the noodles and meat. I'm sure this will turn out great as well, as long as a decent quality of soup mix is used.