Zha Jiang Soba

Tonight is one of those nights that I have to “improvise” again, cooking something by using whatever ingredients that are left in the fridge. There are some beef mince left from the Meat Loaf I baked over the weekend, so decided to use the left over and cook one of my favorite noodle dish – Zha Jian Mian (lit. “fried sauce noodle”). Since I don’t have thick wheat noodle which are normally used for this dish, I decided to use the last bundle of Soba (buckwheat noodle) in the pantry instead. I stir fried the mince beef with some shitake mushroom, shredded carrot, ginger and some chilli flakes, and then served the noodle with some boiled baby bak choy, you seriously can’t go wrong with these few simple steps. I guarantee you it taste hundred times better than your hazardous MSG instant noodle.

Ingredients

1. roughly 1 fistful of beef mince
2. 2 cloves garlic – chopped
3. 3 slices ginger – chopped in thin strips
4. 1 small bowl of shredded Carrot
5. 4 shitake mushroom – cut in strips
6. 1 bundle of dry soba noodle (you can use the instant noodle, but discard the MSG!)
7. 1 tsp sesame oil
8. 1 tbsp soy sauce
9. 1 tsp dark soy sauce
10. 1 tbsp sugar
11. 2 tbsp XaoShing rice wine
12. 1 tsp dried chilli flakes
13. 1 tbsp chilli sauce (hot one, not sweet chilli)
14. 1 tbsp cornflour
15. one cup of water

Method

1. Fill half of a saucepan with water, put shitake mushroom inside and bring to boil. Then lower the heat down to simmer.
2. Heat up a pan with olive oil, fry the beef mince until cooked and juice reduced.
3. Add garlic, chilli flakes, ginger, and give it a stir.
4. Add sesame oil, soy sauce, dark soy sauce, sugar and XaoShing sauce. Stir and mix well.

5. Now, take out the mushroom from the saucepan, keep the hot water. The water is now infused with mushroom flavour, add the soba noodle in and let it cook for no more than 3 minutes.
6. Act quick, put the mushroom under cold water, rinse, then squeeze out all the water.
7. Cut the mushroom in strips, discard the stalks.
8. Add the mushroom and carrot into the mix, and keep stirring.
9. Add the corn flour in a cup of water and mix well.
10. Pour half cup of corn flour and keep stirring. The sauce will start to thicken. Add more corn flour water if thicker sauce if desire.

11. Put the baby bak choy in a sieve.
12. Now back to the Soba in the saucepan, drain the hot water over the sieve, this way the hot water will cook the baby bak choy at the same time.
13. Get the soba noodle out from the sieve and put it in the middle of a plate. Use chopsticks and twirl the noodle to form a twirly mount.
14. Top the noodle with the beef mince mix.
15. Serve with steamed baby bak choy on side.

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