Jap Chae Korean Noodles

I used to live next to a Korean church on Bloor Street in Toronto. It was on the edge of Korea Town and my 3 years of living and going to school in the area introduced me to the wonders of pork bone soup, 24 hour amazing (and awful) BBQ, steamed walnut red bean dough balls, and decent (and, again, awful) sushi. It wasn't until my last summer in the area that the church started having weekly yard sales. Besides buying a $1 Disney puzzle of Tokyo, I would often stop by to look at the older ladies cooking omelets and some kind of sesame noodle dish. Fortunately, the convenience store down the road also had take-out noodles that looked about the same, so despite our language differences, my timid inquiries of "Jap chae?" were well-received. Unfortunately by then I'd basically stopped eating pork, and that was one word not in my Korean vocabulary. Without knowing what was in the noodles, I avoided, and avoided...until I caved. Of course I caved. The key to avoidance is 'out of sight, out of mind' and when you walk past the yard sale every week it's hard to put that into practice. Crossing a major intersection with my eyes closed didn't seem like the best idea.

So when the fine people at Food & Drink put out a complimentary magazine through the LCBO (Ontario liquor stores), I was pleasantly surprised to find a large selection of really interesting recipes. This was not the Kraft recipe magazine sponsored by Our Compliments that comes in the mail and you should promptly throw out. They had a full section on "Asian fare" that went far beyond adding soy sauce to rice with chicken. The recipes weren't even that dumbed down. Sure they skimped on the hot sauce, but how many free magazines come with a recipe for pickled carrots and daikon? Kim Chi dumplings (mun doo) or beef bulgogi with 16 ingredients. This was not a "go to a Korean grocery store and buy bulgogi sauce" cop-out.

Jap Chae is really simple, and with a good sesame oil, or, with enough of a good sesame oil and brown sugar, it's addictive. Don't like spicy? Don't add a lot of chili paste. My only complaint is that their recipe didn't call for any rice vinegar. I'm not sure if that's traditional, but I thought the noodles needed a little kick. Fortunately I made them with a marinated Japanese mackerel dish that had more than its fair share of acid. It worked out perfectly, even if the combination was less than authentic than the individual recipes.

Ingredients:
200 grams sweet potato or yam noodles (these are supposed to be a bit sweeter than rice noodles, but they follow the same quick-soaking rice noodle concept seen in a lot of Thai dishes. I substituted rice noodle vermicelli and it worked fine)
2 tbsp vegetable oil (not sure why this is vegetable oil and not sesame oil...)
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 onions, thinly sliced
1 cup carrots, cut into matchsticks
1 red pepper, thinly sliced
6 shiitake mushrooms, thinly sliced, stems removed (I didn't have any. Obviously it's better with, but it's a stir-dry so it's not the end of the world to leave things out or substitute, as long as you know that the end result will not be the same, and you're not drastically changing the recipe and expecting the best results. Don't get angry at the recipe when it's not a great meal)
1 bunch (4 cups) fresh spinach, stems removed (I used a container of organic baby spinach. Wasteful packaging, but all that was available)

Sauce:
3 tbsp soy sauce (or tamari)
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp Korean red pepper paste, or 1/2 tsp Asian chili sauce (I used 1/2 tsp of my Guizhou Chili Paste. Not Korean, no, but incendiary)
1 tbsp sesame oil (toasted would be a stronger flavour, I think)

2 tbsp cilantro, chopped
1 tbsp sesame seeds, toasted (I left them out, but they do add a lot to the dish)

Every recipe says to cook yam noodles and rice rice noodles a different way. This one worked well, and I think I'll keep it as my standard. Add the noodles to boiling water and boil 5 minutes. Drain and refresh with cold water. Drain again. Simple. I didn't end up with chewy noodles.

The sugar, chili paste, soy sauce and sesame oil got combined in a small bowl to wait while the vegetable oil got heated in a large frying pan.
Now the stir-frying fun. The garlic got added to the hot oil. 30 seconds later the onion and carrot went in. 1 minute later the red pepper and mushrooms. 2 minutes later the drained noodles and the spinach. 1 minute later the combined sauce from the small bowl. 2 minutes later it was poured into a large platter, topped with cilantro and sesame seeds (not mine, but yours can be) and devoured (both mine and yours). So quick. The nice thing is that if you don't like the final seasonings, you can adjust them. More soy or chile paste. Or serve with a vinegar. Chinese would go with black vinegar probably, but for Korean I wouldn't know what to do. I just knew it needed something. Without it it's just a simple, sweet dish. Some people like that, I hear.