Korean Spiced Steak and Peanut Noodles

I love love love sesame noodles from my favorite Chinese restaurant in my hometown.  I have yet to find an equally satisfying dish at a Chinese restaurant near my apartment so I thought I would try and recreate these noodles by myself.  They came out well, although if you are trying to replicate the dish and prefer a heftier noodle, I'd recommend using spaghetti or venturing down to a Chinese or Japanese supermarket (or just good old M2M on 3rd avenue and 11th street) for some legit asian noodles.

I started with: creamy peanut butter, ground ginger, toasted sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, sesame seeds and sriracha sauce (not pictured, but you can use red pepper flakes as a substitution, if you want some spice).

The base of the noodles are really simple.  Put about a cup of peanut butter in a small pot and turn the heat on low.  Stir it constantly.  Add about a a quarter cup of soy sauce, and a dash of rice wine vinegar and toasted sesame oil.  Sprinkle some ground ginger and garlic, and then taste it as you go to add more if you like more spice.

 

There is no set recipe for these noodles because you can make them as hot or mild, as peanut-y or soy-y as you'd like.  Go crazy with the sriracha to make it spicy! 

Cook the noodles to your desired doneness.  Toss the noodles with the sauce and garnish with sesame seeds and if you like, chopped scallions.

These noodles are really good warm, better when they've cooled down, and best eaten the next day cold, possibly even for breakfast....

As for the meat portion of this meal, I saw some Korean spiced sesame marinated petite beef fillets on sale on freshdirect and bought them.  I (aka my grillmaster friend who does all the manly grilling--why is it a man's job again?) simply popped them onto my grilled pan and cooked them through to a medium rare.

The beef looks kind of nasty when its still rare.  It looks much better like this:

It looks even better on my plate, with some sesame noodles and a side salad made with romaine, tomatoes, cukes and a ginger miso vinaigrette I picked up from a nearby Japanese restaurant:

DELISH.

Leftover ideas on the next post...