Zhajiang Mian is a famous noodle dish across northeastern China as well as South Korea. I learned to make Vegetarian Zha Jiang Mian several years ago from a former student from Henan province. She’s a great cook, and intuitively adjusted the recipe to make it vegetarian for me. Scrambled eggs mixed with tofu were her authentic vegetarian swaps. In the US you can utilize Beyond Meat or another plant-based meat instead of the tofu and/or eggs.
Note that this is Henan province style, and is lighter in color that the famous very dark Korean Zha Jiang Mian.
Soon after I learned this dish, my parents were visiting me in Nanjing, and I had a few students over to help make homemade noodles and this sauce for them. When I told my parents all of the ingredients in this sauce, they said it sounded bizarre, with too many competing flavors. However, when they took the first bite, their eyes lit up. They immediately asked if I could make it for my grandparents when I went home that summer. And could I also make it for church? I admit, the combination of ingredients initially sounds strange, and honestly the final product has a murky color that isn’t very pretty, but it smells wonderful and tastes delicious. The predominant flavors here are ginger and fried peanuts. If you like the combination of ginger and peanuts like me, these noodles are for you.
I was recently in Shandong province visiting a former student. Her mom is a professional noodle-maker, and at one meal she made the noodles, and the student asked me to make the Vegetarian Zha Jiang Mian sauce because she and I had made it together several times when she was a student here in Nanjing. In fact, when we made it for my parents, she was the student who made the homemade noodles for that meal. Because this sauce comes from a different province, her mom didn’t know it, and she was learning it from me that day. I sometimes find myself teaching Chinese regional dishes to Chinese friends from different provinces, which seems strange.
I use Chinese yellow bean sauce for this, but you can use a Korean daenjang or a Thai fermented yellow bean sauce.
This version of the recipe has carrots and garlic shoots. You can substitute most any other vegetables instead of the carrots. I recently used spinach and taro roots in their place. It might be difficult for you to find garlic shoots, and if that’s the case, you can double the amount of green onions.
Ingredients
- oil
- 3/4 cup peanuts
- 6 eggs
- 1 block soft tofu
- 1/2 head garlic
- an equivalent amount of ginger
- 1 bunch green onions, white and green parts
- 2-3 tablespoons yellow bean paste
- 2 tomatoes
- salt
- ground dried red chili, to taste
- ground Sichuan peppercorns, to taste (optional)
- 2 carrots
- splash of soy sauce
- 1 bunch garlic shoots ( or substitute an additional bunch of green onions)
- 3-4 tablespoons cornstarch
- fresh wheat noodles
Instructions
- Start by making sticky rice. She made this before I arrived. Sticky rice requires a good deal less water than regular steamed rice.
- Mince several mushrooms and woodear mushrooms, AKA black fungus. That day she also added minced carrots and a local Shanghai wild green called “jicai.” You could substitute a little minced spinach other another green if you want to add a little green nutrition.
- Next, scramble several eggs and add them to the mixture. To make Chinese scrambled eggs, heat oil in a very hot wok. Beat the eggs with a little salt and a splash of shaoxing wine. When the oil is almost smoking, pour in the eggs. They will make a loud whoosh sound because of the high heat. Stir gently until cooked. Add the scrambled eggs to the rice and mushroom mixture and stir well.
- Next comes the soy sauce. Shanghai’s cuisine is known for dishes braised with soy sauce, and Shanghai folks have several types of soy sauce in their kitchens for different uses. She used a heavier variety of soy sauce used for braising, and boiled it a bit in a wok before adding it to the rice mixture. Nothing was measured, but I would guess it was about a cup of soy sauce.
- Once it was all mixed, as I mentioned before, she tasted it and determined it was too salty, so she scrambled 4-5 more eggs to dilute the flavor.
- Now it’s time to fill them. Because shaomai come from Shanghai, which is considered southern China, there isn’t a “flour” tradition like northern China. This means that folks in southern China don’t make dough from scratch at home. Shaomai wrappers are all purchased at the market. Same thing goes for wontons, which are also from Shanghai. Shaomai wrappers are circular, and are slightly larger than dumpling wrappers.
- The sticky rice filling is quite sticky so it’s easy to use chopsticks to fill the shaomai. Use about 2-3 tablespoons of the mixture per shaomai. Gather the edges up and make uniform pleats. Then press the top of the filling down into the center. You want the bottom to bulge, “like a fat tummy, ” she told me. After pressing the filling down and encouraging the lower belly of the shaomai to swell, you might add another teaspoon of filling on top. Rotate the shaomai in your hands almost like you are working on a pottery wheel to shape it.
- She repeatedly told me they are easier to make than wontons, but hers were consistently prettier than mine. I need more practice with the muscle memory of rotating and the art of getting the perfect shaomai shape. Our tops were also wider than the ones sold outside.
- Arrange all of the shaomai on a board.
- Steam the shaomai in a steamer. If you don’t have a nice steamer, you might have a simple vegetable steamer that could work. They steam about 20 minutes, or until the wrappers have changed in color, and are a bit translucent.
- Because shaomai have soy sauce in the filling, they have enough flavor to be enjoyed plain. They’re also often eaten with a splash of good dark vinegar. They can be served as a snack, or as the starch component of a larger meal, paired with a few simple vegetable dishes. That day at lunch we also had stirfried bamboo with water chestnuts, and a simple soup of vermicelli noodles and slivered taro root.
