Recipe: Two Ingredient Gluten Free Jelly Noodles
Noodles to mend a broken heart. Apparently.
A confession. I am not dough literate. I don’t have the patience for kneading, I can’t get the right consistency, I never follow exact instructions and I don’t care enough about the aesthetic result. It means my loaves are a little lumpy and my dumpling skins are never thin enough (you say uneven; I say rustic). So the idea of noodle making has always sparked little interest in me — particularly with the abundance of all noodle types under the sun here in London. However, I do make an exception for one kind of noodle which can only be made at home: liang fen.
The following recipe is for mung bean jelly noodles, which is technically a firm jelly that can be hand cut many ways. One truism about Chinese cuisine is that anything can be made into a jelly and anything can be made out of a jelly! I love these healthy noodles because they are gluten free, low in calories and high in protein and fibre.
Liang fen, meaning ‘cold powder’, is typically found in western Chinese provinces such as Sichuan or Yunnan. Hand cut into noodle shapes, it’s served as a cold dish in summertime, where scorching temperatures can push on 40C. There is a famous spicy dish called ‘heartbreak jelly noodles’, so called because if you eat it when you’re sad, the spiciness will overpower all your emotions, leaving only a spicy aftertaste. Sounds like an excellent cure for a broken heart!
Let me know if you try this recipe and share your results on Instagram with #CelestialPeach.
Ingredients (serves 4)
1/2 cup mung bean starch
3 cups water + additional 1/2 cup water, set aside
Instructions
Add the mung bean starch to the 1/2 cup of water and mix into a smooth paste.
Bring the remaining water to just under a boil, add the paste and reduce the heat to low/medium.
Stir continuously. After a few minutes the mixture will suddenly thicken. When it’s smooth and somewhat gloopy, remove from the heat and pour into a flat–bottomed container.
Allow to cool and set in the fridge. After a few hours the jelly is ready to cut.
Note 1: You need to find mung bean starch, not flour, which enables the jelly–like setting.
Note 2: I find that a ratio of 1:7 for the starch to water makes a firm jelly, but you can up this all the way to 1:10 if you’d like softer noodles.
Serving ideas
Spicy salad: cubed and topped with a dollop of chilli oil, drizzled with black vinegar and soy sauce, sprinkled with chopped scallions, chives, fried garlic and coriander.
Sesame noodles: cut into long noodles and toss with sesame sauce (my recipe here), chopped green beans, edamame and sesame seeds. For an even easier solution, replace the sesame sauce with a tablespoon of peanut butter.
