My cousin loves to cook and experiment with recipes. He doesn’t take notes so he has no exact recipe of what he has done. One time he cooked Jap Chae and we all loved it but he didn’t have the recipe so my nephew and I just decided to look for a recipe on the net. We found one, tried it and it’s good. It was an impulse act so as always our ingredients weren’t complete. We didn’t have spinach and scallions, so, we just skipped the scallions and replaced the spinach with kangkong (water spinach or water glorybind). It needs a little more tweaking but the recipe is good enough already. Next time, we’re thinking of putting a little more soy sauce and sugar and we’ll add beef sirloin. You can buy the noodles from Korean grocery store for about PH P190 per 1 kilo pack, that’s roughly US $4. Here’s the recipe:

Jap Chae / Chap Chae / Korean Glass Noodles

1/2 pound dried Korean sweet potato noodles
2 1/2 teaspoons sesame oil, divided
1 tablespoon cooking oil
3/4 cup thinly sliced onions
2 carrots, cut into matchsticks
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
3 stalks scallions, cut into 1″ lengths
1/2 cup wood ear mushrooms, thinly sliced (soak in warm water for 15 minutes then drain)
1/2 pound spinach, washed well and drained
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons sugar (mix with the soy sauce)
1 tablespoon sesame seeds, toasted

Fill a large pot with water and boil. Add the dried noodles and cook for 5 minutes. When noodles are done, drain and rinse with cold water. Drain again and toss with 1 teaspoon of sesame oil so they won’t stick together. Set Aside.

Put the cooking oil in large saute pan. When it is hot already, add the onions and carrots and fry until softened. Add the garlic, scallions and mushrrooms and fry for aboolut 30 seconds. Then add the spinach, soy sauce and sugar, and the noodles. Stir fry everything for about 2-3 minutes until the noodles are cooked through.

Turn off heat, toss in sesame seeds and the remaining sesame and oil and serve.