Thank you, Maggie! I made it like you recommended, and it worked perfectly. I love your book, btw, it’s so beautiful and of such great quality. One more question, please: It’s really difficult for me to find either of the two chili oils you mention in your book, and Chinese chilis for making my own oil are also not to come by. Everything here (central Texas) in relation to chilis is always just heat (the more the better), not any of the complexity of chilis you describe. We don’t like spicy food. Do you by now have any other brands you could recommend? Thank you!!!

After mixing the noodles with the sauce, you can heat it up in the microwave. The sauce might become a bit sticky, which you can always use a little water (or even better, chili oil) to thin it out. I think it works better to heat up the noodles after mixing than just heating up the sauce.
PS. Just want to emphasize that you should always rinse the noodles with running tap water after boiling them, even if you need to heat up the noodles later. The rinsing is very important – it removes the starch from the noodles, so they have a nice texture after mixing with the sauce. Without rinsing, the noodles will become very gummy and stick together after mixing the sauce.

So happy to hear that you had a successful dinner party and thanks for the shoutout for my blog! 🙂

It just makes the sesame paste slightly easier to blend in the liquid and get a smooth texture. It is totally fine to pour everything in, but sometimes I found it might take a bit longer to mix and there might be small pieces of undissolved sesame paste floating around.

The sauce stays well in the fridge for a couple of days. If you want to store it longer, you can also freeze it.