Noodling Around

Other than breakfast cereal, I'm really not a fan of instant stuff, especially noodles. But the other day my roommates convinced me otherwise. I caught a bite of their instant noodles (though they insisted it wasn't instant), called Silver Line Noodles by Wu Mu. They mixed it with this awesome soybean veggie ja-jiang sauce, sliced in some sausages and eggs and made a light, delicious, 5-min meal out of it.

So I decided to give it a shot too.

Silver Line Noodle

I tweaked the original recipe a little bit by sprucing up the noodles with chicken stock. You can use any kind of stock you like, or stick with plain water. Here I used 2/3 water and a 1/3 stock. The noodles are done after the water boils. For softer noodles, you can turn the heat down to a simmer for another minute. But careful not to leave it there too long because the noodle tends to get soggy quickly. 

I put in a batch of noodles (they come in 5 batches), which was enough for hubby and me (of course that is assuming you eat like a bird like I do). After the noodles finished cooking, I scooped it up with a strainer and put it in a bowl. I used the rest of the stock to heat up my left-over spinach.

Being ambitious, I decided to concoct my own peanut-sauce for a taste comparison. I melted a tablespoon of peanut button, added in a dash of soy sauce, half a tablespoon of vinegar, and a teaspoon of sugar. You can spice it up if you like by adding a dash of peppercorn. 

Noodle Sauces

And of course no ja-jiang noodles would be complete without some palate-cleansing cucumbers. They were pretty hard to slice perfectly into slivers, so I'm on the look-out for a good food processor or vegetable slicer.

Aftermath of the eggsplosion

Unfortunately I didn't hard-boil the eggs enough, so I decided to microwave it. And what ensued 40 seconds later was the mega eggsplosion. Note to self - do not put eggs into the microwave, or if you do, do it in intervals of 5s. 

Food prep

I sliced up some sausages and prepared a similar soy-sauce vinaigrette for the cucumbers (see above for details). The noodles were getting a little stuck together at this point, so mixing it was kind of difficult. I used about 3 large tablespoons of the pre made soybean sauce for half a cup of noodles. Then I scooped up what was left after the egg-tastrophe, put in ham and spinach and voila!

Finished product

I gave hubby the soybean sauce noodles, and I had a bowl of the peanut noodles. I thought my peanut noodles was pretty tasty (perhaps biased in my own creation), but hubby thought the pre-made sauce was better.

I couldn't finish my bowl because the peanut butter got a little sickening after a few bites, so I saved the rest for later. Next time I'd like to try my newly minted sesame sauce. 

While taking a leisurely walk later that night, we passed by a raman noodle shop. We peeked in to see the stereotypical raman customers, and I said to hubby, "I'll bet mine is much better." 

Thankfully, he agreed.