Tibet · 5,5 h · Vegan · Starter · For confident cooks
Laping
In German: Kalte Mungbohnennudeln mit Essig-Knoblauch-Sauce
For 4 servings · US units
Cold mung bean noodles in a garlicky chilli sauce — slippery and hot
Laping is Tibetan street food: mung bean starch cooked into a slab, chilled until firm, then cut into long translucent ribbons that soak up a sharp sauce of garlic, soy and chilli. It's eaten cold or at room temperature, either as a snack on its own or alongside meat and vegetable dishes. There's very little work involved — you just need patience while the slab sets.
Ingredients
- 4⅔ ozbase for the noodle slabA fine white starch made from mung beans that, cooked with water, sets into a clear, firm and slightly springy jelly.Substitute: Pea starch comes closest and gives a similarly firm, clear jelly. Potato starch sets softer and more rubbery, tapioca starch turns chewy and sticky, and cornstarch stays cloudy and too soft to slice; none of them is a good substitute for cold starch noodles or jellies, though any will do for simply thickening a sauce.Read more
- 5⅛ cupsWaterfor mixing the starch
- 5 clovesGarlicfinely minced, for the sauce
- 2spring onionschopped, for the sauce
- ½ ozcorianderchopped, for the sauce and to garnish
- 3 tbspSoy saucefor the sauce
- 3⅓ tbspfor the sauceOil pressed from sesame seeds, either pale and mild from raw seeds or dark and strongly nutty from toasted ones; the dark kind is usually on the Asian shelf of the supermarket, the pale kind more often in health food shops or Asian grocers.Substitute: Pale sesame oil can be replaced with a neutral vegetable oil, losing only the faint nutty note; dark toasted sesame oil has no equal substitute, though finely ground toasted sesame seeds in neutral oil come closest to its aroma.Read more
- 2 tspfor the sauceA mild, slightly sweet vinegar made from fermented rice.Substitute: White wine vinegar or cider vinegar, diluted with a little water and softened with a pinch of sugar, comes close; the result is a touch sharper and fruitier.Read more
- 3 tbspCrushed dried red chillicoarse, amount to taste
- 1 tspSaltfor the sauce
- 1 tbspSesame seedstoasted, for sprinkling
- 1 tbspGingergrated, for the sauce (optional)
- ½ cupVegetable oilpoured hot over the chilli flakes to make chilli oil (optional)
- 15 ozFlouralternative base: starch and gluten are washed out of the dough (optional)
- Turmerica pinch, for the yellow colour of the sheets (optional)
- 1 tbspbloomed in the oil for the chilli oil (optional)Dried husks of a citrus-family shrub, not a true pepper. Lemony and floral, with a tingling, numbing effect on the tongue.Substitute: Timur and Sichuan pepper stand in for each other well. Black pepper with a little grated lemon zest roughly matches the aroma, but the tingling and numbing are lost entirely.Read more
- Peanutscrushed, for topping (optional)
Method
- Mix the starch slurryWhisk the mung bean starch with some of the cold water until completely smooth, then stir in the rest of the water. If you want yellow noodles, add a pinch of turmeric now.
- Thicken the mixtureCook the mixture over medium heat, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom of the pan. Once it comes to a boil, lower the heat and keep stirring until the mass turns translucent and is almost too stiff to stir — 8 to 10 minutes.
- Pour into the dishPour the hot mixture into a shallow heatproof dish and smooth the surface flat.
- Leave to setLet it cool, then chill for 4 to 5 hours, until the slab is firm all the way to the middle. Alternatively, leave it out overnight at room temperature.
- Make the sauceFor the sauce, stir the garlic, spring onions and coriander together with the soy sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar, crushed dried red chilli and salt until the salt has dissolved. Grate in ginger if you like.
- Make the chilli oilIf you'd like chilli oil to drizzle over the noodles as well, keep back part of the crushed dried red chilli and mix it in a heatproof bowl with a little salt and a few of the sesame seeds, saving the rest of the seeds for the end. Heat the vegetable oil — infused with Sichuan pepper if you have it — and pour it over the chilli while hot.
- Cut the slab into stripsTurn the set slab out and cut it into long strips with a moistened knife. In Tibet it's usually shredded coarsely on a large grater instead.
- Assemble and servePile the strips into shallow bowls, spoon over the sauce, drizzle with the chilli oil if you made it, and scatter with the remaining sesame seeds and the coriander. Toss only just before eating and serve cold or at room temperature.
Tips and variations
Mung bean starch is sold in Korean and other Asian grocery shops. Potato starch can stand in for it and gives softer strips, while mung bean starch makes the firmer noodles. The Nepali street version starts from a dough of flour: the starch and gluten are washed out, the starch is steamed into thin sheets and the gluten steamed separately and diced, then the sheets are brushed with chilli oil, filled with the gluten cubes, rolled and sliced. Laping rolled like this with nothing but chilli oil is known as dry laping, while wet laping, like the recipe above, has the liquid sauce poured over it. You can also build the sauce from garlic-ginger water, lemon juice and chilli oil. As a salad, laping is good with cooked mung bean glass noodles and strips of cucumber, carrot and pepper; crushed peanuts on top add crunch.
Allergens
Contains: Cereals containing gluten, Sesame, Soybeans
May contain if you use the optional ingredients: Peanuts
These notes follow from this recipe's ingredient list. Ready-made products and brands may contain further allergens — please check the packaging yourself.
Something not right?
This recipe was put together from independent sources and checked before publishing. Even so, a mistake can slip through — an amount that does not add up, a step that does not work as written. If you spot something, write to us: we will look into it and put it right.
