Cold Sesame Noodles

Nothing like heat and humidity to make you crave anything and everything cold. This also happened to be perfect timing when our A/C broke for the first time given the minimal stove-top prep. Other than boiling the pasta and cooking the eggs, everything else was heat-free. 

These noodles are a Beijing classic and a common vegetarian-friendly dish in noodle houses. I first tried them in Chinatown and was immediately hooked. While there's a time and place for the fatty salty broth of beef rib soup noodles, any day is perfect for refreshing sesame noodles, especially given the evergreen climate of Houston. 

Aside from the easy prep, these noodles are great for gatherings as they're a DIY dish allowing individual adjustments to taste. As such, there really isn't much of a recipe, but rather an assortment of toppings and sauces in addition to the trifecta of cold noodles, sesame paste and cucumber. For this rendition, I used a combo of wide pumpkin and seaweed (more color than flavor) noodles paired with spicy pickled vegetables, egg strips, cucumber, carrots and green onion. For sauces, I included sesame oil, black rice vinegar, soy sauce, miso paste (大奖/da4jiang4) and 'sweet noodle sauce' aka 甜面酱/tian2mian4jiang4. This is meant to be a reference, feel free to include more or less sauces/toppings! To keep things interesting and nutritionally complete, try to have a balance of protein and vegetables and some element of crisp and crunchy to contrast the chewy noodles. 

Going a bit more in detail about the sauces, all of which can be found at a local Asian grocery store, but also quite likely at any grocery store with an 'international' aisle. 

• The Chinese sesame paste (芝麻酱/zhi1ma2jiang4) is made of ground black sesame seeds and is thus darker than the white sesame seed equivalent--tahini. Both work equally well! To make it into noodle sauce, just thin with water to the consistency of a good Alfredo sauce and season to taste with salt. 
• Chinese miso paste can sometimes have a bit chunkier texture than Japanese miso, but has the same salty savory flavor
• Sweet noodle sauce is a flour-based dark fermented paste that is both sweet and salty with a pleasant umami punch thanks to the fermentation process--no funky smell, just pure black gold. 

To assemble, top your desired amount of noodles with your preferred combination, plating however aesthetically or *un-aesthetically* as you please, because the next step is to MIX it all together! 

...And eat! Despite how well-suited this meal is for the heat, we were lucky to enjoy these in the comfortable air-conditioned home of a fellow small group couple.