This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com
Toronto’s restaurants may as well exist in two different hemispheres.
One is populated by cooks from all over the world who speak fluent English and have been trained in some form of European style of cuisine (or a country colonized and therefore influenced by the British, French or Spanish). They are easily accessible to me, to call or text for a recipe.
The other Toronto is staffed by equally hard-working cooks from all over the world who do not speak English and have been trained in non-European cuisines. Their sons and daughters often work in the restaurants, translating for locals who don’t read Cantonese, Vietnamese, Hindi or Tamil. George Brown cooking students don’t come to apprentice. The cooking techniques don’t cross-pollinate around the urban core’s trendy restaurants. And I need an interpreter to break the barrier of asking for a recipe.
That’s how I come to be sitting in the subterranean, neon-lit Chinese Traditional Bun restaurant with owner Gaoliang Ma. My friend Jennifer Yang translates between Mandarin and English.
Ma’s dan dan noodles are a favourite and I’m here to learn how to make them.
The food here is northern Chinese, with a dominant influence from Shaanxi province, where Ma comes from. The former engineer lost his job repairing Russian airplanes after 9/11, and came to Canada with his wife and young daughter. The family had a restaurant background, so he opened a cafeteria-style business above a grocery store on Spadina Ave. A year later he took over the current location (536 Dundas W.), where they’ve been since.
“We survived SARS. We survived the construction. And we survived the incident that we are aware of,” says Ma, referring to a December 2011 altercation in which a cook allegedly stabbed a manager, who later died of her injuries. It’s only now coming to trial.
“There have been a lot of challenges. We have a dedicated clientele. During the difficult times they’ve stuck by us.”
The ambience is not why people come here. Customers are loyal to the food, the most brilliant item being the dan dan noodles.
The name, says Ma, means “pole,” which back in China would be hung with buckets of noodles and spicy sauce and balanced on the vendor’s shoulder.
In the kitchen, Ma has arranged the ingredients for the first of two sauces — packages of roots and herbs I’ve never seen before: fruit of villous amomum, root of Chinese angelica (Angelica dahurica), rhizome of galanga resurrection lily. He toasts them in the oven, grinds them in a blender, combines them with chili powder and hot oil steeped with onions, dunking a handful of sesame seeds for a minutes before fishing them out. That’s the first sauce.
For the second, he blanches bamboo shoots, fries garlic, ginger, chilies and ground pork in a wok, using his knee to adjust the control dial, sending flames shooting up a couple feet in the air. Before adding them to the wok, he shows me the labels on containers of fermented bean paste and unnamed dried fungus so I can find them later in Chinatown.
One of his cooks is 64 and says he’s been making noodles since he was 17. He dazzles us with technique while Ma explains the process.
Flour, water, oil and salt are mixed without measuring. It then goes through the rolling machine to produce a firm dough. Portions of 280 grams are rolled into 6-inch cylinders, lined inside a storage container and brushed with oil. After five hours they’re rolled out to 12 inches, put back in the container and brushed with oil. They’re then rolled out to the thickness of a pen, many feet long, and coiled in a large, circular container, brushed with oil and rested for another 10 hours. After that they’re braided between two hands and whipped like a skipping rope, smacked against the table with each motion.
I do make the sauces at home. It takes me an afternoon wandering around dried goods stores in Chinatown, showing them pictures on my phone and Jennifer’s notes in Mandarin. The shopkeepers laugh at my requests, as if I were a child asking for a sip of wine. I find all the ingredients and now I know a place to go for dried lizard to treat asthma.
There are a lot of less common ingredients in this recipe. But I found pretty much everything I needed at Kyu Shon Hong Co. (439 Dundas St. W.). The Pixian doubanjiang, a spicy bean paste, I got at Oriental Harvest (310 Spadina Ave.).
After making the meat sauce, I want to put it on everything, not just noodles. But it will freeze well. Making it is preceded by the pleasure of roaming through Chinatown and discovering how close we are to these mysterious ingredients.
“Food isn’t just something to eat,” says Ma. “It’s also cultural. Some of these things are 1,000 years old. Some of these things look so simple because it’s been passed down many, many times over many generations. This is your job, to communicate.
“I like teaching people,” he says, serving me a bowl of deceptively simple noodles. “In our family it’s not a secret. Everyone knows how to make it.”
1 strip of angelica dahurica root
4 pieces rhizome of galanga resurrection lily
8 dried fruit of villous amomum
2 dried tsaoko amomum fruit (a.k.a. black cardamom)
1 1/2 cups (375 mL) red chili powder
4 cups (1 L) vegetable or grapeseed oil
On a baking tray, use a heavy-bottomed pot to crush the angelica dahurica root, alpinia officinarum, rhizome of galanga resurrection lily, cassia peel, fructus piperus longi, fruit of villous amomum, tsaoko amomum fruit, Sichuan peppercorns, star anise, bay leaves and cloves. Toast in oven until room smells like a spice store, about 10 minutes.
When spices are cool, grind in a spice grinder or blender. Sift through mesh screen (should make about 1/2 cup, 125 mL). Combine with red chili powder.
In a heavy-bottomed pot, heat oil on medium heat. When hot, add scallions and onions and fry, stirring, until onions yellow, about 5 minutes. Strain. Add oil to spice mix a little at a time, stirring. Using a fine-mesh strainer, steep sesame seeds for 2 minutes. Cool and store at room temperature.
Sauce #2 (pork/bean/chili sauce)
1 tbsp (15 mL) Chinese cooking wine
4 tbsp (60 mL) light soya sauce
1/2 cup (125 mL) vegetable or grapeseed oil
8 bird’s eye chilies
1/2 cup (125 mL) Pixian bean paste (a brand of doubanjiang, fermented bean/chili paste)
In a bowl, pour hot water over dried fungus. After 30 minutes, strain and chop roughly.
In a large mixing bowl, blend pork with cooking wine and 1 tbsp soya sauce.
In a large pot of boiling water, cook bamboo for 2 minutes. Strain and set aside.
In a wok with oil on medium-high heat, fry chilies, ginger and half of garlic for 2 minutes. Add bean paste, stir and fry 2 minutes. Add pork, bamboo shoots and fungus. Stir and fry 5 minutes. Add stock, salt and sugar. Continue simmering for 5 minutes.
Add black vinegar, remaining soy sauce, raw garlic, water and 1/2 cup (125 mL) chili oil from Sauce #1. Set aside to cool.
Makes about 7 cups (1750 mL), at least 20 servings. Store in fridge for up to 5 days.
280g (weight uncooked) thick noodles
Add Sauce #1 and Sauce #2 to hot noodles. Top with bean sprouts. Stir. This is a single serving at Chinese Traditional Bun. It is really big
Star-tested by Corey Mintz. If you know a great GTA restaurant recipe, tell him and he’ll ask the chef to share it. Email mintz.corey@gmail.com , twitter.com/coreymintz . Corey’s book, How to Host a Dinner Party, is now in bookstores.
Anyone can read Conversations, but to contribute, you should be registered Torstar account holder. If you do not yet have a Torstar account, you can create one now (it is free)
Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com