Category: Fish & Seafood

Fish & Seafood / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / Restaurant Classics

Stovetop Chongqing Kaoyu (烤鱼): Wanzhou Grilled Fish

Pan-searing a Modern Chongqing Specialty~~ I first ate Chongqing 烤鱼 (kǎoyú) in the underbelly of a Chengdu mall (real ones know it’s all about those random mall basement restaurants). That was back in 2015, and Chongqing’s explosive grilled fish scene has lingered in the back of my mind ever since. Buried between colorful layers of crunch, spice, fermented douban umami, fresh vegetables and sour paojiao, charcoal-grilled kaoyu takes the fiery flavor bomb of Sichuan hotpot and combines it with street food favorite 烧烤 (shāokǎo), Chinese barbecue. Naturally, Chongqing kaoyu is also known as 烧烤鱼...

Fish & Seafood / Restaurant Classics / Soups & Stews

One-Pot Weeknight Suancaiyu (酸菜鱼): Pickled Mustard-Green Fish Stew

Shortcut Suancaiyu~~ When it comes to weeknight 酸菜鱼 (suāncàiyú), spicy and sour Sichuan fish (yu) with pickled mustard greens (suancai), even devout cooks need the occasional shortcut. Like most fish dishes on the mainland, suancaiyu uses whole fresh fish. And try as one might, Ma simply won’t be found buying, killing and gutting live fish on a Tuesday. Not that there’s much live fresh fish to be found around those parts—what suburbs have in 4-bedroom family homes, they lack in specialty fishmongers. So, we use fish fillets. No, it’s not the...

Sichuan mala hot pot with beef tallow

Beef, Lamb & Game / Chinese New Year / Fish & Seafood / How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Chinese Spices / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Douchi / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / Plant / Restaurant Classics / Soups & Stews / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Sichuan Mala Hotpot, From Scratch (Mala Huoguo with Tallow Broth)

Hotpot Party at Your House Although this recipe for mala hotpot first published in early 2018 is the most popular recipe on our entire blog, we have revised and updated it as of November 2020. Why? Well, when I first developed it, there weren’t many recipes for Sichuan hotpot online in English—and none at all, that I could find, that included beef fat (tallow), a style of hotpot broth widely loved in Chongqing and Chengdu. There probably were Chinese-language online videos and recipes for it, but they were less accessible...

Three Umami Dumplings by No Sweet Sour

Bao & Dumplings / Chinese New Year / Fish & Seafood / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Non-Spicy / North (Shanxi, Beijing) / Pork

No Sweet Sour: Three Umami Dumplings in Emerald Jade Wrappers (Sanxian Jiaozi, 三鲜饺子)

Dumpling Lessons If you have followed this blog for long, you have probably noticed a conspicuous lack of dumplings. It’s not that we don’t like dumplings, but more that we’ve never mastered making them from scratch. We almost always use pre-made dumpling wrappers in our house, to less-than stellar effect. (Though we usually serve them in a Zhong dumpling sauce, which makes anything taste good.) Besides being less fresh and tasty, they are also drier and significantly harder to work with in folding and pleating dumplings than freshly made dough....

Clams in a Soy Sauce and Sichuan Pepper Oil Broth

Chinese New Year / Fish & Seafood / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Plant / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Clams in Soy Sauce and Sichuan Pepper Oil Broth

Chengdu Clams Fongchong and I have had a variation on this modern Sichuan clam dish twice in Chengdu. I can’t remember exactly what they were called, but they both had clams and a crunchy green veg counterpoint (once cucumber and once celtuce), and a simple but distinctly flavored sauce in which the high notes were soy sauce and green Sichuan pepper oil. Both times we ordered it from the picture menu and were slightly surprised when it arrived. The first time, in summer 2018, it surprised us by being a...

Wok-Fried Snapper in Chili Bean Sauce

Chinese New Year / Fish & Seafood / How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Cooking With Pixian Doubanjiang: Wok-Fried Fish in Chili Bean Sauce

Fish, A Wok-Fried Wonder A few years ago I posted a similar recipe to this wok-fried snapper for fish in chili bean sauce (doubanyu), but with the rather odd point of view of someone who struggled to make it, made a lot of mistakes, and put it on view anyway as proof that it ended up tasting good despite the mishaps. I have now made this popular Sichuan dish enough times that I don’t make all those errors. But instead of updating and replacing that post, I’ve decided to leave it....

Chinese New Year / Fish & Seafood / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Huajiao / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Laziji-Style Chongqing Lobster (Longxia, 龙虾)

A Mala Fish Fry We all know what it’s like to get inspired by a dish in a restaurant and feel you have to figure out its secrets for yourself so you can make it anytime the craving hits. My latest such obsession is Chongqing Lobster—though in this case I didn’t even eat it, but merely read about it in a review of New York’s new DaDong restaurant. But when I read this idea—Chongqing chicken where the chicken is replaced by lobster—I couldn’t get it out of my mind. How...

Shui zhu yu (water-boiled fish) from The Mala Market

Chinese New Year / Fish & Seafood / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Restaurant Classics / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Soups & Stews / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Water-Boiled Fish With Tofu (Shuizhuyu, 水煮鱼)

Swimming Fire Fish Shuizhuyu, translated literally as water-boiled fish, may be the most misleadingly named dish ever. Far from swimming in a sea of water, the fish fillets float in a luxurious bath of mala spicy broth. Restaurateurs in the U.S. often give it a more fitting translation, the most creative I’ve seen being “swimming fire fish.” And yet, as I previously discussed when I published a recipe for shuizhu beef, shuizhu dishes are not as explosive as they appear at first sight. Yes, the main ingredient shares space with...

Braises / Chinese New Year / Fish & Seafood / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Doubanyu: Fish in Pixian Doubanjiang (Chili Bean Sauce), 豆瓣鱼

Doubanyu, Fish-Fragrant Fish As you can see in the photo of 豆瓣鱼 (dòubànyú), fish in Pixian doubanjiang (fermented chili bean sauce), this long, lithe Spanish mackerel didn’t fit on my serving tray. Nor did it fit in the wok; even though I finally wrestled it into the wok, I had to be content to let its steely silver tail pop out from under the tin wok lid. But Fongchong likes her fish “to have taste,” so we always opt for mackerel over the shorter, easier-to-handle, milder red snapper (the only two fresh...

Fish & Seafood / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Douchi / How to Cook With Yacai / Sichuan Pantry Compatible

Mala Crawfish Boil (Mala Xiaolongxia, 麻辣小龙虾)

Chengdu Challenge #18:  Let the Good Times Roll It’s crawfish season in the U.S. South, and that can mean only one thing (to me): It’s time to try the Mala Crawfish (麻辣小龙虾, málà xiǎolóngxiā) recipe in Sichuan Cuisine in Both Chinese and English. I love a good New Orleans-style crawfish boil—where they boil the crawdads in a spicy broth, mound them up on a newspaper-covered table and invite you to dig in for the feast—so I figured Sichuan crawfish had to be just as fun and delicious. Enter: Mala Crawfish Boil. While Louisiana farms...

Braises / Chinese New Year / Fish & Seafood / How to Cook With Yacai / Pork / Restaurant Classics / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Dry-Braised Shrimp ft. Crispy Pork (Ganshaoxia, 干烧虾)

Chengdu Challenge #11:  Unusual Juxtapositions Bring Unusual Compliments In America, everything’s better with bacon on it. In Sichuan, everything’s better with browned pork bits. You might think, as I did, that big fresh shrimp don’t need the added attraction of a pork topping. But you’d be wrong, as I was. This is a fantastic combination in 干烧虾 (gānshāoxiā) dry-braised shrimp, bumped up by earthy-salty yacai (pickled mustard greens) and pickled hot chili peppers. It’s really like two dishes in one. First, you get your hands in there to remove the...

Fish & Seafood / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Good-Luck Fish Head Recipe (Kaimenhong Yutou, 开门红鱼头)

Chengdu Challenge #4: Lucky in Fish, Unlucky in Friendship “I have a weird request for you,” I said to Hobo Mike, a commercial fisherman and the head fishmonger at my local Whole Foods.  “I need a giant fish head. No body. Just head.” “That’s not weird,” he replied. “Lots of people ask me for fish heads. I’ll put you on the waiting list.” “Cool,” I said. “But in that case, I’d like to place an order, because I don’t want just any old little snapper or salmon head. I need...