Land of Plenty – Challenger #1

Everyone loves a contest! You may remember that last April I put out a Sichuan challenge to Eat It, Atlanta readers and I quickly found two people up to the challenge. This week I received the post and pictures from Sarah E.

A guest post where someone cooks something different, using unique ingredients, is very much in the spirit of this site – hopefully it will inspire you to get out there and cook up something you’ve never tried before. Thanks Sarah!

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For my Land of Plenty challenge, I chose to make Spicy Cold Noodles with Chicken Slivers (p. 95) and Dry-Fried Green Beans 2 – Vegetarian Version (p. 290). The first thing I did was get all of the ingredients ready.  From reading Jimmy’s posts, I assumed the actual cooking would go quickly and I would want to be ready. I boiled the chicken breasts and then Ben made them into nice slivers by first mashing the breasts with the meat pounder, then slicing them along the grain.

Here is everything for the noodles ready to go, except the noodles themselves.

I cooked the noodles and, following the recipe, spread them out, sprinkled some peanut oil over them, and tossed to coat.  This prevents them from getting sticky while they cool.

While the noodles and chicken were cooling, we made the sauce by mixing all of the ingredients together.  Said ingredients include tahini, soy sauce, Chinkiang (black Chinese vinegar), sugar, garlic, ground Sichuan pepper, chili oil with chile flakes (ours had peanuts in it too), and sesame oil.  The rest of the noodles dish is simply layering everything.  First, I placed the bean sprouts at the bottom of the bowl (as seen in the first picture), then placed a layer of noodles over those.  Here is everything mid-way through the layering process.

I spooned a generous amount of sauce over the noodles.  Lastly, I placed the chicken and some chopped chives on top.  Here is a close-up of the noodles ready to eat.

For the beans, first I cut the ends off the beans, then I sliced the scallions, ginger, and garlic, and cut the chilies in half.

To cook the beans, I heated the peanut oil in a skillet (a wok would be ideal here) and cooked the beans over medium heat for about eight minutes.

I set the beans aside, wiped out the pan, and heated some fresh oil.  Then I added the scallions, ginger, garlic, chilies, and Sichuan pepper.  I stir-fried those briefly then added the beans back in.  After adding some salt, they were ready.

The finished products were very yummy looking.

There was definitely a lot of heat in both dishes.  Once we got past the heat…or more correctly, before the heat set in, the noodles were quite fantastic.  We both said that we taste the many different flavors in the sauce, and that it was a great combination.  The description in the cookbook calls this dish distinctively Sichuanese, so I was glad that we both enjoyed it so much.  We ate the leftovers for lunch the next day.

For me, the green beans were a small disappointment.  They tasted like exactly the ingredients – the beans, the peppers, the garlic and the ginger.  I wonder if I did not "dry fry" them enough, because they didn’t look wrinkly like in the cookbook.  I did cook them longer than the recipe called for, but perhaps I should have kept going.

Overall I was pleased with the results and we were both satisfied after our delicious dinner.  Just to mimic Jimmy’s great style, I should mention that we paired our meal with Sweetwater 420.  And lastly, here is Holden, the most amenable food critic around…

Sourcing

I found all of the ingredients either at Publix or the Buford Highway Farmer’s Market. This was my first trip the Farmer’s Market and it was a great experience.  While it may appear slightly sketchy, it is very well organized, and most of the Chinese products have translations.  The prices are good, and I loved their enormous tea selection.  I felt that Ben and I had to be the preppiest suburbanites in the store, given that we were dressed for dinner at Watershed afterwards.  On our way home, after eating our gourmet southern meal, I kept talking about how I love that Atlanta represents so many different cultures but still retains the best of the south.