Dan Dan Noodles with Chicken & Baby Bok Choy

Chinese cuisine is as old as the emergence of civilisation on the Asian mainland. Over the span of millennials of trade, conquest, and cultural exchanges, Chinese cuisine today has infiltrated almost all global culinary pockets and, in many cases, overtaken local recipes to gather an ever-increasing fandom for its resplendent dishes. One such authentic Chinese preparation that finds a definite mention anywhere Chinese recipes are prepared is the Dan noodles, often prepared in contemporary recipes with chicken and baby Bok Choy.

There is a multitude of ways in which the recipe can be prepared, and each method appears to be inferior to none. But to replicate the authentic flavours of the traditional Chinese recipe, it is important to ensure a few things that stay common in all recreations of this age-defying dish. Despite the temptation of using any readily available noodle in the market, it is essential to stick to Chinese flat noodles or linguine for the best texture. The main magic rests in using peanut oil and a traditional Chinese wok to bolster the smoky and peppery aroma and flavours. It is also important to use a mixture of soy sauce, sesame oil, chilli oil, Chinese black vinegar, and hoisin to create the most delectable flavour combination truly deserving of a dish so meticulous in its methodology. A potage of the end product, with tender but intact noodles, soft and flavour-soaked chicken chunks, crisp baby Bok Choy, and a spicy burst of pepper and smoke is sure to satiate the hungriest of souls.

Dan Dan noodles or dan dan mian is an essentially Sichuan concept and traditionally uses preserved vegetables and pork for the utmost projection of its flavours. It is believed that these noodles originated as a street food in China. As far as the story goes, Sichuan hawkers specialising in the dish used to carry the ingredients and cookware in two baskets attached by means of a pole. This collective memory of the people lent the dish its name Dan Dan noodles, the Chinese transliteration of which yields ‘pole-carrying noodles.’ In all probability, the noodle was created by a hawker Chen Baobao in 1841 in the town of Zigong. Through word of mouth and the hawkers’ ventures to other nearby provinces, the dish reached the city of Chengdu which became globally famous as the epicentre of the iconic dish.

As for the choice of Bok Choy in the dish, the vegetable has been in cultivation in the fertile Yangtze River basin for nearly 3500 years and is extremely nutritious owing to its high selenium content.