Noodle Time!

I met for the first time a few weeks back at the reunion one of my cousin's wife. She is Chinese and shared with me some of her spicy noodles that she'd been eating. She was generous and excited when I accepted her offer to sample the noodles. When I showed my appreciation for how awesomely hot they were---profuse sweating for half an hour---she went to their room and brought me some stuff. 

The first was this big bag of yellow gear:

The Liuzhou Luosi style noodles is a river-snail broth, very hot, with fermented bamboo shoots and crisp tofu squares. In reality, the broth is both river-snail and pork bone, but you get the idea. Would you like the spicy river-snail noodles?

Umm...yes!

Inside that big yellow bag is a bag of rice noodles, and the following other smaller bags:

The directions go something like: cook the rice noodles until mostly done. When nearly there, get another two-cups of water boiling and add all of the smaller packs. Then drain the finished noodles and add them to the working broth. It was two servings, Camille wouldn't sit next to me because she said it smelled bad (that was the fermented bamboo shoots), and I felt like I had to put forth a heroic effort to finish them and not stink up the house. The spice is not like a Mexican hot sauce, not like a Louisiana hot sauce (fermented peppers), nor was it like a Thai chili heat. It was Szechuan pepper, which is more like a tingling. But I'm sure there were traditional hot peppers used somewhere.

Holy hell, it was good.

But that wasn't all I was gifted.

They also gave me a box of "Hot Dry Noodles:"

I didn't know what to make of it, but I accepted it and thanked her profusely. Inside were two individual servings: two bags of rice, two bags of chili oil, two bags of sesame puree mix, two bags of seasoned broth, and two bags of fermented green bean pieces.

Like the other stuff, you cook the noodles, drain them, and start putting in the stuff. The bags are numbered and I did it that order: chili oil, sesame, seasoned sauce, fermented green beans. They were dry, because rice noodles will absorb a ton of liquid. Normally, these are the kinds of noodles you cook, then drain, then pend a few minutes rinsing with cold water so you can handle them when they'rte cooled down and no longer crazy sticky with starch. 

This dish was also SO good, but not nearly as spicy as the river-snail noodles.

Now I'm looking for these, or reasonable facsimiles...