A Dish with No Rules

Although I am by no means a world-famous chef in Beijing, I pretend like I am one when standing before the stove at home. A stack of straight noodles stand like popsicle sticks to my left, and to my right, crab meat, scallions, and two bottles of soy sauce lie ready for action at any moment. The stage is set. 

What I’m making is Lo Mein. The Oxford Dictionary holds no definition for Lo Mein, but Wikipedia describes it as: a Chinese dish with wheat flour noodles. It often contains vegetables and some type of meat or seafood, usually beef, chicken, pork, shrimp or wontons.

In my eyes, no Lo Mein is eaten without seafood. I fully believe that everything tastes better with some tangy crab meat, succulent shrimp, or tasty mussels. And to top it off, an American twist on this Chinese dish by adding Siracha to the dish once it is finished. I call it…Chen’s Spicy, Seafood Combo, with Lo Mein! Now, let’s get started:

• First, set the fire on the stove to its strongest and pour the cooking oil into the pan along with a few drops of mushroom soy sauce. Let it all simmer until they begin to crackle and pop. That’s the starting signal. 
• Secondly, drop your ingredients into the pan—the crab meat, the mussels, the scallions, whatever vegetables you want, and maybe even some beef. Stir them well. You should hear the pan roaring like a lion at this point.
• The third step is the most crucial—drop your bowl of previously-boiled noodles into the frying pan and break them up, making sure each inch of each strand gets a chance to taste the fire from the stove. 
• Stir all ingredients well, especially the seafood you choose to use; it must be cooked thoroughly. Keep stirring for a straight five minutes. After that, the act has come to a close. When the meal is done, pour everything out onto a separate plate.
• Finally, make a smiley face on top with Siracha. Then mix it into the noodles until you cannot see the red sauce anymore, but only smell it through the spicy, nostril-filling aroma it gives off. 

The result? I enjoy the meal every time, perhaps more so than if I had eaten at a five-star restaurant. A fraction of my satisfaction comes from the fact I made the dish myself; the other portion of my giddiness comes from Lo Mein’s dynamic nature. The dish’s main criteria consists of the noodles, but after that, one can add anything to it. Seafood. Meat. Oyster Sauce. Although my style is to combine noodles with seafood, I appreciate how different the meal can be depending on who the cook is. 

Creativity in changing meals, taking risks (in my case, through adding seafoods of all kinds along with Siracha), and being “hungry” for new tastes and attempts has composed this dish over the years. Even through something as simple as Lo Mein, the combinations are still infinite. One day, I may choose to use the Louis Kemp crabmeat sitting in the fridge, and the next day, I could choose to use leftover scallops from a night out at a restaurant…

But I never know until the minute I start cooking.