Australian Lamb Zhajiangmian
At Win Son, a Taiwanese restaurant in the Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood of Williamsburg, chef and co-founder Trigg Brown coats Australian lamb shoulder and shank meat in a combination of garlic, ginger, sesame seeds, and chile flakes and lets it chill for eight hours.
At the same time, he simmers the bones from the shoulder and shank with black peppercorns, cardamom, star anise, cinnamon, coriander, garlic and scallions for eight hours to make a broth.
He sears the lamb in a neutral flavored oil in a heavy bottomed pot, removes the lamb and then simmers garlic and chopped rehydrated shiitake mushrooms. Then he adds tianmian sweet bean paste and red miso paste. Then he returns the lamb to that pot and pours in the water he used to rehydrate the mushrooms along with the lamb broth thickened with a little cornstarch and some soy sauce. He simmers that covered for three hours and then uncovers it and continues simmering it to let the liquid reduce to a thick sauce.
He boils thick Asian wheat noodles and tosses them with shiro dashi, chile flakes, sesame oil and a sweetened sauce of puréed cilantro, mint, sugar and corn syrup. That’s platted and topped with cucumber, scallion, fried shallots, and cilantro and then topped with the lamb sauce.
Price: $26