Zha Jiang Mian!

Zha jiang mian is a traditional Chinese way of serving noodles, typically involves plainly cooked noodles with sauteed ground meat with a salty bean sauce.

Here is my less salty and lighter take on it!

Ingredients
1. a hand full of noodles
2. 2 eggs
3. green onion
4. bok choy
5. cooked, peeled, frozen shrimp (just easier than cooking shrimps from scratch)
6. Chinese sausage
7. soy sauce
8. oyster sauce
9. pinch of S&P
10. pickled cabbage (zha cai) [optional]

Procedure
Cooking the noodles: (the noodles are JUST as important as the sauce, I cannot stress how important the noodles are)
1. rule of thumb, boil a litre of water per hand full of noodle (unless you have extremely large hands... then figure it out yourself)
2. place bok choy when you just start to heat the water (this way the choy is cooked right when water boils)
3. place noodle in, mix to prevent sticking to bottom, and cook for 1 min
4. add a cup of cold water, bring back to boil, cook for another minute, repeat this step (this will give you an "al dente" texture, so if you like soft noodles, increase cooking time on the last cycle)
5. drain noodle and bok choy in strainer and cool with water

Cooking the sauce: (~5-7 min)
1. heat oiled wok to med - med high heat
2. fry finely chopped green onion and diced sausage, then add eggs, beaten
3. season with salt and pepper (you season at this stage because egg is still runny and it's easier for the seasoning to evenly mix)
3. add in chopped shrimps and pickled cabbage just as egg starts to solidify
4. add soy sauce and generous amount of oyster sauce (this provides the thickness of the sauce and colour)
5. add in strained noodles and bok choy, mix and cook for another minute and serve!

Tips: add a fine balance of shrimp and sausage, along with the eggs you don't want a protein overload. Also, use you common sense when it comes to how MUCH sauce you want to make, there is nothing worse than having too little sauce, or too much sauce where you can't even taste the noodles.

Also this is just a rule of thumb when cooking. Cook ingredients that carry a lot of flavour in oil first before adding anything else. Oil is a flavour medium and can will pass the flavour of, in this case, scallion and sausage to rest of the sauce.

I LOVE noodles, and sometimes I just get tired of soup based cooking methods. This a great alternative that quick and delicious. Enjoy!