Lars and The Real Dan Dan Noodles.
I don't like Hetty McKinnon.
Or should I say, I don't like how I get to know Hetty McKinnon.
Initially, I thought she's a food writer in Brooklyn making Peddler, this beautiful magazine, sharing intimate stories, Asian stories, with beautiful photography.
And then I saw her picture, and found out she's actually Australian, from Sydney.
And also … Asian?
I thought she was white.
Nowadays she uses her full name, Hetty Lui McKinnon, with the proper Chinese character.
Maybe I don't dislike Hetty; I just dislike the system.
How an Asian needs to hide her Asian name to be taken seriously. And only when you’re successful, with the blue tick, then you can reveal your hidden identity.
Maybe I don’t dislike the system, I just dislike myself.
What I do like though, it's her Dan Dan Mian recipe.
I've written about Dan Dan Mian in a different life, a different food blog.
To summarise, if it's spelt 'Dan Dan’ with a 'd', it's referring to the Chinese style. There's hua jiao oil, there's sui mi ya cai (pickled mustard green), sesame paste (roasted ones, not tahini).
The Japanese came up with their own version and call it Tan Tan with a 't'. It's acceptable, because they Tarantino'd it by calling it a homage. They douse with Japanese chilli oil, they add soy milk to the broth, sometimes, you see pork belly on top, but definitely bean sprouts and bok choy, with a ramen egg.
Hong Kong will argue they're the first to make the 'soup' base Dan Dan Noodles, and Taiwanese will say it's a copy of their own 'Ta-a Mian', with shrimp on top.
And then there's Shop Ramen in Melbourne, adding beef brisket and American cheese to their 'Tan Tan Men', the equivalent of adding nuggets to pho, or doughnuts to a Margherita pizza.
They have the home-court advantage - it's the 'Melbourne' way of interpreting ramen. It's made for locals (white people), by locals (white people).
Through self-help and therapy, I get to bury that anger under 'acceptance', and hope this trend will go away.
Spoiler alert: it did not.
10 years later, present day.
Any food platform you follow, you'll find a Dan Dan Mian recipe.
Five-minute Tan Tan Men.
Tik Tok Tan Tan Men.
Vegan Tan Tan Men.
Everyone adding their own spin to this game.
Have you seen that Ryan Gosling movie - the one in which a man brought a blow-up doll home to meet his family? The premise sounds like a comedy, but overall it's quite sad because it deals with depression, childhood trauma, and intimacy issue. I’m the family going, what hurt you son? Why are you doing this to yourself?
Too abstract?
How about this, imagine Drake going:
Asian writer name? Nah.
Asian noodle name, we'll take two dozen, please.
So I started making Hetty's Dan Dan Mian out of spite.
Because she replaced minced pork with firm tofu.
I have a block of firm tofu in the fridge, I scoffed.
Let me show you how disgraceful this is going to taste.
Think you can trick me like your name?
Pop quiz: what does the 'dan' stand for in 'Dan Dan Mian'?
Times up - it refers to the poles vendors used to carry on their shoulders to sell the noodles in the olden days. On each side of the pole was a crate of noodles, and the other the sauce.
I doubt the influencers, the tiktok chefs, the celebrity chefs, the recipe writers, have this image in their mind when they make the noodles. ‘Dan Dan’ for them is just a catchy name. Something easy to remember. (Not to be confused with ‘Biang Biang’ noodle, the other popular noodle from Shanxi.)
To justify me sounding like crazy Italians gatekeeping their grandmothers’ pizzas and pasta on YouTube, I summoned the ghost of Chen Bao Bao, the creator of Dan Dan Mian.
I asked if it was ok for Dan Dan Mian to be made with tofu.
"First of all, where's the pork lard?" He asked.
Followed by "you need to fix your relationship with food."
"By the way, where's my royalty?"
Ok, that's enough for now, everybody, say bye to Mr. Chen.
He had a point.
What is the purpose of a brand name, if not to make money?
If using the name can push sales, or make the dish more accessible to others, if it makes people get off the couch and into the kitchen, and learn more about Chinese culture, what's the harm?
And you know what, this anger, it's against the creative spirit.
Can someone really own 'minced meat on noodles'?
I mean what's ragu, what's Zha Jiang Mian, what's Bak Chor Mee, Pad Kra Pao, if not a variant of minced meat?
“I mean, what do you want me to do - copyright Dan Dan Mian like the Italians with Parmesan, French with Champagne, Kobe with Beef? Who's going to do that for us in the 50s? We did it to make a living, not to think about legacy.” Chen's ghost reappeared from the corner.
“Besides, why can’t we rewrite our ancestral memory, to be a modern one?”
“Seriously, young man, you are talking to a ghost about noodles. What is the real problem here?”
He pressed on.
“How was the tofu Dan Dan Mian?”
I scrunched the tofu with my hands, stir-fried until they go brown.
Mixed with the sauce.
Add noodles.
It wasn’t bad.
It was delicious.
In fact, my wife asked me 'where's the tofu'?
She couldn't tell it wasn't meat.
The real problem was revealed from the very beginning.
Just like the person who I thought was white turned out to be Asian, this dish which I thought was really Asian is becoming white.
I am Ryan Gosling, and I’m wondering if it has to be a real girl for it to be real love.
Spoiler Alert: in the end, Ryan had to let his plastic girlfriend go.
The movie did have a really good quote about what it means to be a grown-up.
Gus: Well, it's not like you're one thing or the other, okay? There's still a kid inside but you grow up when you decide to do right, okay, and not what's right for you, it's what's right for everybody, even when it hurts.
So try the original one, try the Japanese one, try the Taiwanese one, even the tofu one.
Life isn’t exactly yellow and white.
I personally, am ok if the reason for using the 'Dan Dan mian' brand is to make it more approachable, more budget-friendly, like the dish intended to be.
But not when the recipe calls for a $20 plant-based meat, to make it more exclusive, more inaccessible.
I’m not ready for that yet.
Flexible Dan Dan Mian Recipe
This is for two, or one big adult.
Dice an onion, a stalk of celery, a carrot, into a medium-hot pan with 1 tbsp oil until soft. Squeeze and break a block of firm tofu with your bare hands, scrunch it up, add to the mix, and stir. Add another 2 tbsp oil, and cook for 15-20 minutes until caramelised. Until you think you're looking at browned meat.
Or, just brown 300g minced pork or chicken of your choice.
In the meantime, prep 2-300g noodles, cook them in hot water for 2-3 minutes, add bokchoy at the last minute, strain and rinse, and mix with sesame oil so they don't stick.
Whisk sauce:
2 tbsp soy
1 tbsp black soy
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp doubanjiang
2 tbsp sesame paste / peanut butter
1 tsp zhenjiang vinegar
2 tsp sugar
1-2 tsp Hua Jiao oil
1 tbsp water
Julienne cucumber, chillis, spring onions.
If you can find sui mi ya cai, great, if not, a pinch of zha cai, Japanese zasai, diced pickle, all good.
Prep crushed peanuts, bean sprouts.
You can either ladle 3-4 tbsp of the sauce in a bowl, then noodles, then mince, then bokchoy, bean sprouts and peanuts, and mix everything up.
Or simply toss everything in the pan like pasta, then serve.