Yes the color name.

meal preps should be locked up

I was disappointed, so I decided to eat up my lunch prep for the next day. It was Liangfen, a type of Chinese starch noodles. It’s mostly water anyway, I thought as I cut the transparent white chunk into strips. I made the whole chunk last night, at around the same time, 00:45, when somebody wasn’t replying to me as frequently as I expected. I thought I’d just make enough for my late-night snack, but I stretched it for three meals, well four, counting this Frankenstein Liangfen.

the “recipe”, more like ingredient list and a DIY guide

The recipe is quite simple, with the Liangfen ready in the fridge of course. I should write a blog post about it as well. One minced garlic, ideally Chinese vinegar—but I only had French supermarket Balsamic, so I added a bit of lemon juice for the tang, Korean spicy noodle sauce, if you don’t have it on hand, then a bit of sugar with a bit of MSG mixed with as much Laoganma as you can get from a pair of chopsticks. Be sure to get some peanut pieces for the reason I will explain later. I also crushed a spoonful of Sichuan Peppercorns and thank God I did, a bit of sesame oil, and voilà, there you have it.

I didn’t want to rinse my mouth because I wanted to savor the raw garlic flavor just until I absolutely had to wash it away before sleep, maybe in an hour. I never thought of developing recipes, simply because there are flavors and dishes I’m yet to learn. But making this Liangfen gave me an idea to go on with it. Not to create crazy new flavors like a teenager cooking for the first time, but as a sustainable means to stretch out my savings before I go into absolute debt. OK, I’m half joking, but the plan is to create an affordable meal menu that isn’t worse than Le Scossa (8 Pl. Victor Hugo, 75016 Paris), where I discovered the beauty of Tom Yum Fish, and the road to bankruptcy.

rethinking creaminess, i hate dairy, i think

I think what Le Scossa did and I almost never do is make asian food creamier. Maybe because we never used to do that at home hence it’s not natural to my palate, or maybe because of my toxic relationship with milk or any dairy product. But I think it’s the creaminess that gives food an extra dimension. That being said, I still am not a fan of most creamy, greasy food I have had in Paris, so far. But this simple idea has good potential to elevate my Asian-style cooking, even when it’s achieved not by adding milk or cream for the ew-factor, but with sesame sauce or peanut butter.

I am very much aware that I’m basically rediscovering Zhima Jiang in Hotpot, but hear me out. I gave up on that years ago when I started only mixing You Die (sesame oil + garlic + oyster sauce) for my Hotpot sauce. I ran away from it because it was just too rich for my liking, and I liked the garlic forward flavors cutting down the greasiness of sesame oil and the spices in cow fat. I always thought it was the garlic that gives whatever I had in my chopstick a second life after being boiled for, well, 15 seconds,I think it was the garlic-sesame oil combo that really did it for me. Though my midnight epiphany might sound bizarre, understanding why I’ve loved this flavor for years, to the point of dragging my colleagues afterwork to have it in my mouth for three times a week, feels almost liberating.

Salt, fat, acid, heat. I think I have overlooked this fat part. Maybe it’s not just the oil I use, maybe it is also the richness that comes with cream, béchamel, peanut butter, or sesame sauce. Maybe next time, when making a sandwich, I will make a sauce with all the ingredients I mentioned above, with a tiny chopstick full of sesame sauce.

That somebody still hasn’t replied to my message yet, but hey, now I have things to do with my life, like keep writing blogs for example. Maybe I never needed a WhatsApp penpal.