### Intro This is one of my favorite dishes to cook. My version is inspired by the (now-discontinued) shiitake jjajang served at MPocha in Durham, NC. Making this dish requires a decent amount of patience -- there are a lot of steps and the final outcome is quite sensitive to errors (e.g., if you don't fry the chunjang enough, the dish will come out bitter). It took me a few tries to get the process right. The current recipe takes about at hour to cook solo, but the process is quite parallelizable and may take only 30ish minutes if cooking with a partner (if competent). The recipe results in a hearty dinner-coded meal of fresh chewy noodles wallowing in a rich savory sauce with a hint of spice. ### Setup There are 3 separate workstreams for this dish: 1. **Tofu workstream** (involves breading and deep-frying tofu in a wok) 2. **Sauce and veggies workstream** (involves washing and cutting veggies, blanching bok choy, frying chunjang, working the sauce) 3. **Noodles workstream** (involves boiling water, timekeeping, straining noodles when done) If cooking solo, do workstreams in order listed above. If working with a sous chef (esp. a child), give them workstreams 1 and 3 (in that order). ## Process (30-60min, serves 2) #### Workstream 1 -- Tofu Set up your *mise en place* with the following: `200g` Tofu (super firm) `some` Sunflower oil `1/2 cup` Cornstarch (adjust as necessary based on the size of your tofu strips; should be proportional to desired surface area) - Get a bowl, your tofu, and some cornstarch - Cut the tofu as you like it (I do half-inch-thick strips to optimize crispy surface area) - Put half a cup of cornstarch into the bowl - Throw your tofu strips into the bowl and toss them around until covered - Get a wok (or frying pan; I personally use a wok because it requires less oil to deep fry) - Fill it with sunflower oil (or another high-smoke-point oil) until the pool is ~1 inch deep - Fire up your burner to the max - Wait for the oil to start shimmering - Grab some tongs and set up a bed of kitchen towels near your stove - Transfer a few tofu strips into the wok (be careful, the oil may splatter) - Wait for the strips to brown a bit, then take them out one-by-one using the tongs and transfer them onto the drying bed - Repeat until all tofu strips are done (no need to change oil, even if it gets cloudy) - Turn off the heat and put wok aside. Do NOT pour water onto this hot oil (it will start an unpredictable process that might put you in an ER) - Wait 5ish minutes for the oil to cool down, then add some dish soap to it and drain it down the sink. Ignoring this step can have unintended consequences #### Workstream 2 -- Sauce and Veggies There are a lot of moving parts in this theater of action. My general approach is to compartmentalize the steps as much as possible, and keep the *live choreography* limited to only those steps that truly need it. In practice, this means we will blanch the bok choy and fry the chunjang separately, and only then work the sauce. Set up your *mise en place* with the following: `3 tbsp` Soy sauce `2 tsp` Rice vinegar `1 tbsp` Cornstarch `3 tsp` Garlic, minced `1 tsp` Ginger, minced `some` salt and pepper `some` sunflower oil `3 tbsp` chunjang (fermented black bean paste; called as such because of its color--black beans are not an ingredient) `100g` Shimeji mushrooms (white) `3` Scallions, chopped `1 medium-sized` Red onion, chopped `2 heads` Baby bok choy, disassembled (i.e., each shard broken out from the head) To start off, wash the mushrooms, scallions, and baby bok choy (rub each shard under warm water, dirt usually accumulates near the bulbous white part on the inner side of the shard). ##### Blanching and frying - Start ~500ml of water boiling (ideally in an electric kettle); heavily salt this with half a handful (it seems like a lot, but it ain't) of granulated sea salt (guaranteeing rapid dissolution) - Get a wok (or frying pan), lay down a splash of oil, and fire it up to the max - Once oil is hot, add 3 tbsp chunjang to the wok and press down with a spatula to flatten the saucy mass from a glob into a pancake. Lightly salt this pancaked glob and let it fry for 3ish minutes on medium-high (taking care not to let it burn or get flaky) then transfer out to a heat-safe container - Grab a pot or bowl, open the freezer, and throw down some ice cubes into the pot or bowl--we are talking 20+ cubes--finish by adding a similar volume of cold water - By now, the water from the first step is likely boiled (assuming you dutifully deployed an electric kettle as suggested). Drop in all the bok choy you can muster and poke it with your spatula (essentially waterboarding it) for two long minutes--this is just a fun thing to do as you wait - Once the two minutes are up, pull out your tongs and start grabbing the bok choy and transferring it into the ice cold bath you prepared earlier. With this temperature shock, you have successfully blanched the bok choy. Drain the ice and water after 30 seconds ##### Working the sauce - Get a pot and add 4 tbsp sunflower oil, fire it up to the max and wait until oil starts to shimmer - Add onions, ginger, garlic, and scallions to the pot and stir continuously - After ~60 seconds, add 3 tbsp soy sauce (keep stirring) - Throw in the mushrooms and cook for a few minutes on medium-high until they start to brown --- To be completed -- stay tuned.