Last week I made J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s Chinese American Stir-Fried Lo Mein with Shiitake, Chives, and Charred Cabbage recipe from The Wok cookbook.

Kenji calls for fresh lo mein noodles, thick like Chinese American lo mein.

The sauce is a mixture of roasted sesame oil, light and dark soy sauces, Shaoxing wine, white pepper and sugar. As has been my habit, I subbed sherry for the Shaoxing wine.

After the noodles are cooked “until not quite al dente and separated, about 1 minute,” they get tossed with some oil and spread on a baking sheet.

For the stir-fry, first napa cabbage is charred and transferred to a second baking sheet. Then mushrooms are stir-fried until browned. Scallions are added until they wilt, then the mushroom scallion mixture is added to the cabbage.

Kenji has the option to use his wok hei trick of using a kitchen torch to go over the noodles and vegetables. I skipped this part because we don’t have a kitchen torch.

After the wok hei segue, garlic and ginger are barely fried in oil in the wok before adding the noodles and then the vegetables. Then the sauce is added and everything gets tossed until the sauce “coats the noodles.”

At this point, my noodles tasted a little under cooked, so I add some water and kept tossing until the water absorbed. I did this about 3 times before the noodles tasted the right texture to me.

We ate these noodles while watching a movie for family movie night, so feedback was not at the forefront of anyone’s mind. I thought the white pepper came out strongly, but otherwise the noodles were just okay. I asked Megan about them later, and she thought they were immemorable and didn’t even notice the mushrooms or the cabbage. The cabbage really did disappear into the dish.

I probably won’t make this one again.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.