Grilled cold noodles

Grilled cold noodles, called kǎolěngmiàn in Chinese, are a street snack from the northeastern Chinese province of Heilongjiang. They are cooked from paper-like sheets of starch noodle with egg, onion and other additions and seasoned mainly with sweet bean sauce or gochujang. They are sold at night markets and roadside stands rather than in restaurant chains, and are also eaten as a side dish. Three cooking styles are traditional: grilling in a basket, frying, which is popular mainly in Mishan, and teppanyaki, the most common, which cooks the noodles on a griddle with onion, egg and sausage. Despite the word cold in the name the dish does not derive from Korean naengmyeon; it grew out of the cheap, mass produced starch noodle sheets made in the region for Korean style cold noodles, which street vendors began to grill on charcoal stoves or iron griddles. Mishan and Mudanjiang both claim to be its birthplace, and a legend names a snack seller called Gai Guofeng who sold it behind a Mishan school. Its chewy texture comes from gluten.