Recipes

Sichuan Dried-Fried Green Beans

dianakuan — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 07:13:47 +0000

Dried-fried green beans is one of my favorite side dishes to order in Sichuan restaurants. In contrast to crisp haricot verts or mushy microwaved diner-style beans, Sichuan-style green beans are blistered and well-cooked without being bland. With Sichuan peppercorns and dried chillis adding spice and smokiness to the flavor profile, this dish becomes positively addictive.

However, no matter how many times I tried to recreate the dish at home, I ended up either burning the green beans before they got cooked, or dumping some water in order to save the beans, the latter which defeats the purpose of dry-frying. For help, I finally emailed Kian from Red Cook. He said that his method is using a ton of oil and constantly stirring the beans to get them cooked without burning. Almost like deep-frying. No wonder the green beans in restaurants taste so good.

My good-enough-for-publishing recipe in this post can be considered vegetarian, depending on whether you consider dried shrimp meat. (Or maybe I'm just turning incredibly Chinese: "Oh, you don't eat meat? Don't worry...it's just chicken.") Some versions use minced pork in addition to dried shrimp, and some avoid both. For dried shrimp, make sure to get the kind that's bigger, pinkish, and more expensive, not the cheap itty bitty gray ones.

Rose Tea Dessert Soup

dianakuan — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 04:07:14 +0000

I'm sure most Westerners who have ever dined with a group of Chinese are familiar with the the following scenario. After a ___-course lavish banquet, you look forward to something nice and sweet to cap off a great experience. Your Chinese hosts inform you that you'll love the dessert; all Westerners love dessert. This one is a Chinese specialty. Anticipation mounts. Then the long-awaited dessert arrives...in the form of red bean soup. You take one sip, utter an "Mmm!" with all the false bravado you can muster, and wonder if anyone will notice you "watering" that plant close by.

Yes, it is well known that most Chinese desserts are merely tolerated by Westerners. While I personally don't mind red bean soup or other sweet dessert soups every once in a while, other people, like a certain significant other of mine, have developed an intense fear of them. It's understandable. While in the West we crave and lust after rich chocolates, cakes, and pies, the Chinese palate can tolerate only moderately sweet things. Thus, Chinese desserts never seem sweet enough, but anyone living or traveling extensively in China can't help but encounter them again and again.

Not long ago I picked up an outdated Chinese cooking magazine from the bargain bin of a magazine stand. I was enamored of the existentialist thought-provoking photos inside, such as this gem:

Pea and Shiitake Dumplings

dianakuan — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:05:01 +0000

When Jacob and I lived in New York, we were frequent patrons of the "$1 for 5" fried dumpling places in Chinatown and the Lower East Side. Those quick meals of crisp pork dumplings satisfied both sudden hunger pangs and skinny wallets. Then we discovered the dumpling joints also had bags of frozen dumplings for sale, even cheaper at $7 for 50, and multitudes better than the factory brands at Chinese supermarkets. So every month, Jacob would ride his bike 150+ blocks down to lower Manhattan and come back with about 15 pounds of frozen dumplings in his messenger bag.

I didn't subsist completely on Chinatown dumplings, but they were definitely handy when working full-time, freelancing on the side, and too tired to cook.

Now that I'm in Beijing, southern-style dumplings are almost non-existent. Northern-style jiaozi are wrapped in a thick doughy skins, and the dinky amount of filling per dumpling usually makes me feel somewhat cheated. (Exceptions, of course, exist.) There are die-hard Beijing jiaozi afficionados out there, but I'm not one of them. I craved--no, needed--dumplings whose skins didn't overwhelm the savory morsels of meat and vegetables inside.

Plum and Ginger Soda

dianakuan — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 11:28:43 +0000

Ever since the calendar switched over to August, a miraculous thing has happened. Beijing has clean air.

No, really. And honest to goodness blue skies. The city promised clean air for the Olympics, and lo and behold, it actually has been ridiculously clear for the past 3 days. Maybe it's because of fewer cars on the road, or closed factories, or just the luck of 8. Whichever case it may be, I love being able to breath again.

So when the sun is able to shine directly onto the city, the temperatures get just a smidgeon hotter. And when temperatures get hotter, my brain starts to churn out more ideas for cold drinks.

Like this plum and ginger soda. I had seen various recipes for lime and ginger soda, and I did have a bag of ripe plums from the new fruit store down the street. And if plum and ginger make a good sauce for duck, they would surely be find flavors for a soda.

Digression: This aforementioned fruit store, by the way, began renovations last Monday, finished on Thursday, and opened on Friday. The pace of construction in China continues to astound me. I wouldn't be surprised if the owners came up with the business proposal on Sunday.

Sweet and Sour Pork

dianakuan — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:43:08 +0000

I grew up with two kinds of sweet and sour pork. Like any American child living in close proximity to a Chinese take-out, I ate a good amount of Ping-pong ball-sized pork laced with red food coloring and accompanied by canned pineapple. At home, my mother would also prepare her version, using bone-in chunks of pork encased flavored with a subtler orange-vinegar sauce.

In Beijing, I once took a home-style cooking class in which the teacher revealed that her secret ingredient for sweet and sour pork, also what "the better restaurants in Beijing use", was a bottle of locally produced ketchup. Why not the American brand Heinz? Too sweet.

Sweet and sour pork is thought to have originated in Guangdong province. But now that the Cantonese have flung themselves afar, each place they have landed has its own local variation. I'm sure Canada, the UK, Austalia, and other immigration hot spots have slightly different sweet and sour composites.

Kung Pao Chicken, the Lunch of Champions

dianakuan — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 05:37:26 +0000

It's the end of July. Which means that journalists, foreigner tourists, and mainland Chinese alike have started flooding into town for the Olympics. In the next few weeks, many of them will probably eat their fair share of Kung Pao Chicken, which has been designated the official dish of the 2008 Summer Games.

Why not a native Beijing dish, like Peking duck? My guess is because Peking duck is labor-intensive, somewhat expensive, and suitable only for large groups. The humble Gongbao Jiding(宫爆鸡丁) from Sichuan province, however, is easy to prepare, cheap, and more filling than a Clif Bar if you're eating alone. Heck, the sporting venues could even sell it in the stands, as the Chinese equivalent of caramel popcorn or hot dogs. And since Kung Pao Chicken doesn't contain offal or an awkward English translation, Westerners absolutely love it.

From my post in May on Kung Pao Tofu:

"The origin of (Kung Pao Chicken) is much debated. One popular theory is that Ding Baozhen, a Qing Dynasty emperor, enjoyed eating it so much that the dish was named after his officlal title, Gong Bao. Most people believe it to be of Sichuan or Hunan origin, though this NYTimes article says otherwise. What is important, though, is the sensational salty, sweet, sour, and spicy flavors and mingling on the palate.

Black Pepper Beef Stir-fry

dianakuan — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 02:59:42 +0000

Flank steak is something I hardly ever cook in China, mostly because I am almost never in the vicinity of a good butcher. But last weekend, I decided to treat myself to a massage to help with a sore back. Walking out blissful and somewhat painfree, I realized I was near Boucherie Michel, the only place in town where I could find quality cuts of meat and imported cheeses and wine and pricey organic food. (How I miss the days when I could pop down to the Fairway in West Harlem for all my grocery needs.)

I bought 200 grams of flank steak and made a stir-fry with peppers and onions. The sauce is relatively easy: soy sauce, oyster sauce, sugar, sesame oil, and most importantly, a copious amount of freshly ground black pepper. In fact, the only thing tricky about this dish in slicing the beef thin enough, which is made easier if you pop the meat in the freezer for about 15 to 20 minutes beforehand. Then just slice at an angle, perpendicular to the grain; doing so shortens the muscle fibers and makes the meat less chewy when cooked.

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Black Pepper Beef Stir-fry

Serves 4 as part of a multi-course meal

Sweet Chili-Glazed Tofu

dianakuan — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 02:12:57 +0000

In the dead of summer in Sichuan province, folks regularly eat incredibly spicy, stomach-burning hot pot with the belief that sweating profusely will cool you off. It makes sense, then, that some of the world's spiciest cuisines (Mexican, Indian, Malaysian, etc.) hail from the hottest climates.

I cook and eat spicy food year-round, even if I have to pour myself an enormous iced drink and blast the fan to enjoy it. My latest dish from two nights ago is a simple but very addictive Sweet Chili-Glazed Tofu. If you're a fan of mapo tofu, like 99.5% of people who have ever eaten Sichuan food, this is another good tofu recipe to try. More tongue-tickling spicy than ma la, with a sweet kick and subtle fruity aroma from cider vinegar, this quickish stir-fry makes an easy one-bowl dinner. With lettuce wraps instead of rice, it also becomes a good backyard cookout appetizer.

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Other spicy tofu recipes:

Mapo Tofu
Kung Pao Tofu
Hunan-style Braised Fried Tofu
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Sweet Chili-Glazed Tofu

Serves 2

Lychee Rum Clafoutis

dianakuan — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 07:48:28 +0000

Cherries, of course, are the fruits used in the most classical French preparation of clafoutis. As recently as 2 weeks ago, black cherries were in abundance all over my local markets. I bought them for eating whole, for making black cherry iced tea, but not for baking. Now it's too late, and the only cherries left are rotten-looking and expensive.

Yesterday at the grocery store I grabbed some lychees, which still seem to be semi-abundant. Not best looking lychees ever, but good enough for Beijing. Lychees hold their shape very well when baked, so I just soaked them in rum and made tropics-influenced clafoutis with a coconut milk custard. They took longer to bake than I thought, because the deepness of my ramekins. But they did make my kitchen, and entire apartment for that matter, smell like lychees. Really, there is no need for scented candles or home fragrance sprays when you live with a baker.

Vegetable Fried Rice

dianakuan — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 02:26:13 +0000

I like to think of this as the Punky Brewster of fried rice dishes. While seafood and pork versions would easily get upstaged by lots of vegetables, vegetarian versions are as colorful as your market's produce section allows. Today I brought home green beans, purple cabbage, and red and yellow bell peppers to go with my blackish shiitake mushrooms. To my knowledge there are no blue vegetables in existence, or I would have gotten them too.

My recipe eschews the scramble egg that is so many other fried rices. It doesn't seem needed, with so many textures already, but you can certainly throw some in for protein. As for the vegetables, the only important factor is that they are chopped small to cook quickly. This is a good way to use up not only leftover rice, but also whatever produce is close to being tossed out.

As for the rice, I always use cold rice for stir-frying because it has the right stiffness. But if you don't have leftovers and absolutely must make this (I'm touched), try cooking your fresh rice with a little less water.

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Vegetable Fried Rice

Serves 2