Growing up, this was a super special occasion dish that was never, ever cooked at home. There was a Chinese restaurant in Mason, Michigan, where by total coincidence, the chef there was ethnically Chinese but had grown up in Korea. Whenever we would go to this restaurant, the chef would make this for my parents even though it never appeared on their actual menu. Jjajangmyeon is a Korean dish modeled after a Northern Chinese dish with a similar sounding name: Zhajiangmian. Just as General Tso’s chicken (just watched an interesting documentary on the origins of that dish) originated in Taiwan and was adopted all over the United States, jjajangmyeon is a ubiquitous dish sold in Chinese restaurants all over South Korea. It’s comfort food at its finest, and up until last week, my mom had me convinced that making it at home was a complex affair, not to be undertaken by the faint-hearted. And so for much of my adult life, I would make the pilgrimage to Yu’s Mandarin in Schaumberg, IL whenever I would start jonesing for this dish. Luckily, for most of my adult life, I have lived within 2-4 hours of Schaumberg, IL, so scheduling my visits there, especially nestled around trips into and out of O’Hare, were not an issue. Well, this year, with my routine visits to Chicago and O’Hare curtailed, I decided the time was ripe to finally conquer this complex dish at home. Guess what I found out? Making it is…super. easy. It’s not a great discovery, because now I’m just going to want to make it all the time, and that’s probably not the most nutritionally deft decision. But man oh man, it was delicious. I love seeing that steam rise up off the black bean sauce in the photo, which was taken about two seconds before Min and I polished them off for lunch. He loved it, and I felt a sense of accomplishment when he too pronounced it delicious, as I felt like I had successfully passed down my jjajangmyeon obsession to the next generation.
Ash and Prairie 