hand pulled happiness

 Friends! Let me share my instantly-impressive-to-others, dinner-for-one "hack" with you.

Hand-pulled noodle blocks.

I led my team to Ox 9 Lanzhou, which had became just a tad nerve-wracking because I wasn't sure where everyone's palette landed. There are people who truly eat anything, and there are people who say they eat anything but may not eat everything. Also it was at the eleventh hour that I even saw they had a vegetarian option.

This was a small scale simulation of how I feel about planning and decision making in general:

pros: I get to pick exactly what I want to do (or eat)

cons: I shoulder the blame and guilt if other people don't enjoy it

Is it higher or lower stakes if it's your coworkers?

Whatever, it doesn't matter because lunch was delicious and everyone thought so. I should know better than to question the power of hand-pulled noodles.

I got the soupy pork ribs with large flat noodles. The larger the flatter the chewier the better, I say.

We tried our hand at hand-pulled noodles a few years ago. Back in the Jack London apartment days. It was... not easy. But since then, I got the Xi'an Famous Foods cookbook and inherited a few bags of noodle and bun flours so I've imposed a no-buying-noodles-until-the-flour-is-used-up rule on myself. Which has just resulted in 1.5 weeks of noodles every night.

The key is to make a double batch of dough and cut it into rectangles to keep them oiled in the fridge, so that you can come home from work, take a couple rectangles out to come to room temp while you unwind, change from your outside clothes to your inside clothes, heat up a pot of water, make a quick sauce, and then pull them too order for yourself.

Sauce #1 (which lasted me like noodle 3 meals) was the zhajiang sauce Jennie carted back with her from Florida. Her mama made me and David each a bag that I kept in my freezer stash for a moment like this

Sauce #2 was simple - sesame oil, garlic, salt. Topped with mushrooms. Perfect carby accompaniment to fresh steamed whole fish in soy sauce and doenjang.

Sauce #3 is not pictured creamy sage bechamel sauce with extra ranch seasoning because I had Christy over for dinner, and whenever she comes over, I remember I have that Costco bottle of ranch seasoning in the other spice cabinet. Mish mash of Western and Chinese in the best way. Side note: made with a batch of test pumpkin noodle dough, which didn't taste strongly of pumpkin but did provide a lovely orange color. Accompaniment to roasted chicken thighs and bok choy.

Sauce #4 was also simple - soy sauce, fermented chili, garlic, sesame oil with easy steamed eggplant and a couple Indonesian satays from Matthew and Cathy (mmmm).