Mystery Ingredients

[Lisa Shock]

black licorice?

[liuzhou]

15 minutes ago, Lisa Shock said:

black licorice?

 

No.

[liuzhou]

Time to put you out of your misery and reveal all.

 

 

This is 蕨根粉丝 (jué gēn fěn sī).

Brake Root Vermicelli  - aka Fern Root Vermicelli. Popular in Sichuan and neighbouring Shaanxi province. Usually served cold. The noodles are made from the starch extracted from the brake fern roots (the same plant that gives us fiddleheads), along with some sweet potato starch and oil.

 

Here is the information printed on the back in Chinglish:

 

More info and recipes:

Black Noodles

Mark Hix recipes: Our chef gets creative with pasta and spring vegetables

Slurping Shanghai I: Fern Root Noodles at Dunhuang Xiao Ting

Fern Root Vermicelli With Chicken And Dried Enoki Mushrooms

[Duvel]

Thanks - as unusual as interesting. Please let us know how it turns out as a final dish ...

 

As for the noodles' bracken fern origin: a rather long time ago while doing my PhD thesis in organic chemistry I developed a synthetic pathway to certain chemical structures that are very closely related to Ptaquiloside, a glycodside found in bracken fern and related plants. The major interested in those structures was that they are very reactive and react with DNA in living cells (good if you can target specific cells, bad if you alkylate just anything as the ptaquiloside does). My methodology never really produced anything workable, but I read the entire literature on bracken fern toxicology back and forth. And have not eaten it since then ... maybe your noodles might be a worthwhile (re)start.

 

Further reads: http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/ptq/ptqh.htm

Edited October 4, 2016 by Duvel (log)

[liuzhou]

Well, the vermicelli was too obscure, it seems. This one may be too easy!

 

 

Guesses?

[liuzhou]

On 04/10/2016 at 2:07 PM, Duvel said:

Thanks - as unusual as interesting. Please let us know how it turns out as a final dish ...

 

Here

[Lisa Shock]

Date sugar?

[liuzhou]

8 minutes ago, Lisa Shock said:

Date sugar?

 

No.

[chileheadmike]

Tamarind paste?

[andiesenji]

bingpiantang ?

[liuzhou]

1 hour ago, chileheadmike said:

Tamarind paste?

 

No.

 

30 minutes ago, andiesenji said:

bingpiantang ?

 

No.

[Alex]

Fossilized dinosaur scat?

[Yiannos]

These sort of remind me of those century eggs, but I am thrown off by the shape.

[quiet1]

1 hour ago, Alex said:

Fossilized dinosaur scat?

 

'I think it looks vaguely like parts of the bones I've bought for my dog, the ones in pet stores that have been coated in some mystery sauce and dried, but I wasn't going to say it until this comment.

[Shalmanese]

12 hours ago, liuzhou said:

Well, the vermicelli was too obscure, it seems. This one may be too easy!

 

 

Guesses?

 

They look like Mexican Piloncillo sugar.

[Kerry Beal]

Brown sugar candy?

[Okanagancook]

Some kind of dried fruit, like a plum?

[Shelby]

Taro root?

[Anna N]

Something that makes use of 1000 year eggs?

[anzu]

Dried abalone

[heidih]

Looks sugary so I thought persimmon but those are usually flatter

[liuzhou]

A few people have been very close. I'm not saying which just yet.

 

No eggs involved.

[FrogPrincesse]

Crystallized figs?

[Okanagancook]

I agree, they are figs

[Tere]

I think it's a sweet thing since they look like a giant fruit pastille. Candied Chinese hawthorn?