This is one of the hardest dishes to replicate to people's taste, afaik. Friends who moved to Boston years ago are STILL looking for a replacement for what they used to eat here.
The first one I found in Craig Claiborne and Virginia Lee's
The Chinese Cookbook for 2 to 4 servings, from 4 ounces of fine egg noodles, calls for:
- 1/4 cup sesame paste
- 3 T brewed tea or water
- 2 T hot oil (Optional, but if he wants spicy, it's got to be there)
- 3 T light soy sauce (that is, the regular kind)
- 3 T red wine vinegar
- 2 tsp sugar
- salt
- 1/4 tsp MSG (optional) [this recipe dates from 1972!]
- 1/4 cup peanut oil
- 2 T chopped garlic
- 1 T sesame oil
It also includes 1 whole chicken breast, poached and shredded, but that's not necessary.
Another one in
The Art of Chinese Cuisine by Hsiang Ju Lin and Tsuifeng Lin includes sesame oil, peanut butter, water, soy sauce, vinegar, red pepper oil, sugar, [MSG], and black pepper, and mixes in bean sprouts marinated with sugar and slivered ginger.
Pei Mei's Chinese Cook Book (from Taiwan) has Cold Noodles Sze-Chun Style with both chicken and bean sprouts, and a sauce of sesame paste, soy sauce, vinegar, hot oil, [MSG], sugar, chopped scallion, chopped ginger, chopped garlic, "brown pepper corn powder" (which I presume to mean ground Sichuan peppercorns, which I think are available again), and sesame oil, with chopped roasted peanuts sprinkled on top.
Corinne Trang's
Essentials of Asian Cuisine sounds good but a little far afield: it includes fermented bean curd and its brine, scallions, bean sprouts, finely ground peanuts (NOT peanut butter), fermented black bean and garlic sauce, light soy sauce, Chinese white rice vinegar, sesame oil and hot oil.
Edited to add: some places call this dish Dan Dan Noodles; maybe you could look under that name, too?