Fuchsia Dunlop’s Emergency Midnight Noodles
Fuchsia Dunlop trained as a chef in China’s leading Sichuan cooking school and possesses the rare ability to write recipes for authentic Chinese food that you can make at home. Her James Beard Award-winning cookbook Every Grain of Rice is inspired by the vibrant everyday cooking of southern China, in which vegetables play the starring role, with small portions of meat and fish. This recipe for Fuchsia’s emergency late-night noodles, or fu xia fang bian mian 扶霞方便麵, makes for the perfect quick-fix meal.
A physiological peculiarity I’ve inherited from my mother and grandmother is an inability to sleep without eating a starchy snack in the evening. If I’ve been out and haven’t eaten enough starchy foods at dinner, I come home ravenous and in need of a midnight feast. In these circumstances, my top two choices for a nibble are melted cheese on toast and spicy Sichuanese noodles. The exact noodle recipe is different each time: sometimes I desire more chilli oil; in hot weather I might add more refreshing vinegar. Here, anyway, is one version, but feel free to improvise. I also eat these noodles for breakfast or lunch with a fried egg or two on top.
This recipe serves two people.
7 oz (200g) Chinese dried wheat or buckwheat noodles, or 11 oz (300g) fresh noodles
2 spring onions, greens part only, finely sliced
For the sauce
3–4 tbsp tamari soy sauce
2 tbsp Chinkiang vinegar
4 tbsp chilli oil with its sediment
1 tsp sesame oil
Optional extras
An egg or two for each person
Spoonful of “olive” vegetable
Combine all the sauce ingredients in a serving bowl.
Cook the noodles. Rinse, drain and put in the serving bowl. Scatter with the spring onions. Mix well before eating.
If desired, top with eggs, fried on both sides, and a spoonful of “olive” vegetable, as shown in the photograph.
Reprinted from Every Grain of Rice. Copyright © 2012 by Fuschia Dunlop. Photography copyright © by Chris Terry. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
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