For an early dinner tonight before meeting a friend out for drinks later was a dish I’ve had on my to-make list for years and finally got around to – DaPanJi / Big Tray Chicken.
Used the NYT recipe as a roadmap, but one cannot trust any recipe that does not insist that readers who have not had the pleasure of eating the original dish make sure they have noodles to sop up the insanely delicious sauce. (In fact, it says something as dumb as “Spice Village gives you the option of including hand-pulled ones, which is a fun kind of overkill, but I preferred rice.” Umm NO. Stop it, Mark Bittman. Stop making me question every other recipe of yours I have ever used. Also, he forgot the ginger in the recipe, so 
.)
Anyhoo. My “responsible” self didn’t allow me to buy the fresh noodles for this in Chinatown a few days ago because “I have too many noodles”. So I used dry knife-cut noodles instead, which did an admirable job of standing in. (But DUH to me on not buying the actual noodles for the dish when I was planning to make it.)
Let’s talk about the potatoes. Oh my these potatoes. They sop up and concentrate all the myriad flavors that make this dish so good.
It is so gratifying when something turns out close to the flavor of the real thing with the application of a scant few ingredients.
For the leftovers, I’m going to heat up some parathas to stand in for the flaky pancake that most places that offer this dish also have on the menu to sop up the sauce.
