"Zha Jiang Mian" minced pork noodle

Hi Folks! Exams are over and it's been a really long time since I last blogged about food. Haven't had the time to do so till now. My friend Benny and I were quite bored and decided to experiment on making our own kind of zha jiang mian while we were in Launceston. Of course you can't compare it to the types you get in restaurants or anything but I think the taste is still pretty good. This was a real experiment as we just threw in all kinds of sauces and substituted the noodles with somen.

Ingredients:

Minced pork
Shitake mushrooms (dried or fresh should be fine)
Somen noodles
garlic, minced
Sweet dark soy sauce (or normal dark soy sauce, just add some sugar)
Light soy sauce
Sesame oil
corn flour
chilli powder (if you want a bit of spice)

1. Heat up pan and add oil. Fry garlic till a bit brown then add in minced pork and continue frying till colour changes.

2. Add in dark and light soy sauce to taste. The first time we made this I think we also added in a bit of powdered chicken stock and fish sauce (might not be so important though). Also add in sesame and chilli powder if you like. Add in some water for the sauce.



3. Throw in mushrooms and continue to stir the mixture. Allow the sauce to bring to a boil and let it boil for a while. Mix some corn flour with water and add it to the sauce to thicken it, making sure that you continue to stir the sauce while mixing in the corn flour. Concurrently while you're doing this you should be boiling water to cook your somen noodles.



4. Once your noodles is cooked and the sauce has thickened, mix your noodles with a bit of sesame oil, then pour the meat sauce mixture over it and serve.