You and your oven are tired, make Gochujang Sesame Scallion Noodles
Gochujang Sesame Scallion Noodles Image by Carly Pildis
By Carly Pildis October 14, 2020
#tweetyourshabbat is a global movement founded by Carly Pildis, celebrating the struggle and joy of getting Shabbat on the table every week. This is a place for real dinners and real conversations about Jewish life. Join us at Forward in sharing what you’ll be eating and how your feeling this week at #TweetYourShabbat
The High Holidays are done! We did it! We made it through!
The Holidays were rough this year. We did Kol Nidre alone. We built and ate in our Sukkah alone. On Simchat Torah, the most joyful of days, I couldn’t stop tears from coming during live streamed services. I felt desperate to be in a community with hundreds of people celebrating the Torah. My husband turned this darkness into pure joy, cajoling me into dancing with him on our patio while blaring the livestream from Adas Israel on Simchat Torah. His sheer determination that we would feel joy caused him to spin me around and around, jumping and clapping like he’d been possessed by Reb Nachman himself. Finally, I laughed.
Every home cook I know is exhausted. This year was especially rough. Beyond the loneliness, isolation, and stress of COVID-19, the ongoing pandemic meant that many cooks had no break. No kiddush lunch or dinners in other people’s sukkahs, just an endless parade of holiday meals, all requiring love, dedication, and a degree of specialness. We missed our families and cooked for a thousand — but then we had to eat the leftovers.
This week, even I’m not excited about Shabbat cooking. I am tired of cooking and cleaning. I just want to sleep this Shabbat!
Enter one of every mom’s closest frenemies —guilt. I love cooking for my family and they look forward to Shabbat all week. I am so lucky that my family is together and healthy, what kind of a jerk am I that I can’t pull it together to roast a chicken and make a pot of soup?
The specialness of Shabbat doesn’t necessarily mean standing over the stove for hours. A complex and flavorful dish can come together quickly. This dish, inspired by many hours spent watching David Chang cook, is designed to wake you from your post-Simchat Torah stupor and invite you back into the kitchen for something bold, spicy, and vegetable-forward. Nothing gets me back in the kitchen faster than the promise of fresh lo mein noodles topped with a runny fried egg.
This dish is rich, warm, spicy, and acidic. Bright raw vegetables and lime juice pair with gingery gochujang and scallions for a complex and flavorful bite. If you’re looking for a beautiful Shabbat dish that comes together quickly, this is it. Plus, it’s vegetarian, so you can serve coconut or green tea ice cream for dessert. Give yourself and your oven a rest! Shabbat Shalom!
How was your week? How are you spending Shabbat? Let us know at #tweetyourshabbat! Everyone is welcome at this table! Come hungry.
Spicy Gochujang Sesame Scallion Noodles
I love Korean food, and this dish is heavily inspired by Korean ingredients. It is not particularly authentic and I would never want to lay claim to the rich history of Korean food, which is wonderful and I urge you to eat!
16 ounces fresh lo mein noodles (can be frozen. Udon would also work well here. If you can’t access either, dry bucatini is a good substitute)
1½ cups scallions, plus a few reserved for garnish
2 cups onion
2 tablespoons diced fresh ginger
2 cups broccoli slaw
1 cup carrot matchstick
1 cup diced kimchi
1 cup cooked defrosted peas
3 tablespoons of gochujang( Adjust up and down for your spice level)
Half a lime
Salt
Toasted oil
Sesame seeds
Soy sauce
Vinegar
8 eggs (This assumes two fried eggs on top of the noodles per person and 4 servings. Can be adjusted to one)
Drizzle two tablespoons of toasted sesame oil and bring to high heat. Cook onions, scallions, and ginger in 2 tablespoon of toasted sesame oil on high heat. Drizzle with soy sauce. Cook until soft, but still maintaining some crunch. In the meantime cook the lo mein. While waiting, toss carrots and broccoli in vinegar. This will help maintain crunch and brightness.
Once the onions are tender add kimchi and peas, another tablespoon or so of soy sauce, and gochujang. Once the noodles are cooked, drizzle with sesame oil, soy, and salt. Toss together, lightly like you would a salad, raw vegetables, fresh-squeezed lime juice, cooked vegetables, into one yummy integrated dish.
Fry eggs in sesame oil. Cut the remaining scallions on a diagonal. If frying that many eggs feels onerous, try 6 minute hard boiled eggs, for jammy runny eggs you can do all at once, or poached eggs in the microwave. Ultimately, you want rich runny yolks all over your spicy noodles – that’s the goal.
Now to put the dish together. Spoon out the noodles. Sprinkle with sesame seeds (no need to measure but about a tablespoon). Top with the eggs and those pretty scallions you cut. There you go! A beautifully elegant and easy Shabbat dinner in less than an hour. Enjoy!
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