Every Chinese restaurant in NYC offers Cold Sesame Noodles, variations on the same theme that are usually predicable with an occasional encounter of awfulness and even rarer instances of excellence. In other parts of Western civilization its cousin Bang Bang Chicken, recipe included here, is the popular equivalent.
No doubt about it, this is comfort food. Hearty, rich, salty and sweet. Not too spicy, though always feel free to add hot sauce for the degree of heat that's going to fix what ails you. Not that hot sauce aficionados need permission.
Wheat-based lo mein noodles are the default choice of the American versions. Clear bean flour noodles (a.k.a. glass noodles) are at the heart of Bang Bang. They are thinner, slippery and kind of translucent. A nice change of pace.
Circling back to where we started, Cold Sesame Noodles are such a mundane afterthought for every dine-in or take-out Chinese meal, even the simplest homemade recipes are always better than this no-longer-a-delicacy commodity dish.
So if you're going to do it, do it up right. Make it special with Cold Sesame's exotic relative, Bang Bang Chicken.
Click here for the recipe for Bang Bang Chicken.
