Category: How to Cook With Dried Chilies

Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Poultry / Restaurant Classics / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Gongbao Chicken With Cashews (Gongbao Jiding, 宫保鸡丁)

Chengdu Challenge #27: The Do’s and Don’ts of Kung Pao The Mala Project (now The Mala Market blog) turns two years old this month. It hasn’t made me rich or famous (far from!), but that wasn’t the goal. The immediate goal when I started it was to be a better mom to my immigrant daughter by being a better Sichuan home cook. I did it in blog form because I thought that if I committed publicly I’d be far more likely to stick with it. And it worked! Two years on,...

How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / Plant / Poultry / Restaurant Classics / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Mala Dry Pot Chicken (Ganguoji 干锅鸡/Mala Xiangguo 麻辣香锅)

Chengdu Challenge #21:  Dry Pot, My New Favorite Meal “This is my new favorite restaurant!” my friend Carla used to proclaim almost every time we ate somewhere new in New York. That could be construed as fickle, but really it was just enthusiasm. I feel the same sometimes about these dishes—every one I cook is my new favorite. But this one, particularly, truly, is my new favorite recipe and is likely to stay that way for a while. Why? Because it’s more a method than a recipe, and because it’s easily and...

Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Huajiao / Poultry / Restaurant Classics / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Chongqing Chicken With Chilies (Laziji, 辣子鸡)

Chengdu Challenge #17: Chongqing Hot Chicken Below is a photo of the very first plate of Chongqing chicken—sometimes called 辣子鸡 (làzǐjī), or just chicken with chilies—I ever had. It was in Chengdu in 2007, in a famous, upscale restaurant. When the server put it down on the table, my husband and I broke into nervous laughter as we saw chunks of fried chicken sitting under an avalanche of dried chili peppers. If we were sweating now, we thought, wait until we try to polish this dish off so as not...

How to Cook With Dried Chilies / Plant / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan) / Vegetarian

Making Hongyou #2: Crispy Shallot Chili Oil

Mala Sweet Hot My pursuit of the perfect chili oil leads me to the conclusion that there is not just one. I like a pure, chili-flavored chili oil for most cooking, but after consuming so much Laoganma Spicy Chili Crisp and similarly fancy artisan chili oils I  bought from a street  vendor in Sichuan, I’ve decided I need to up my game with homemade chili oils. So here I give you Crispy Shallot Chili Oil. It packs a ton of flavor, but still not so much that it can’t be...

Shui Zhu Beef

Beef, Lamb & Game / Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Restaurant Classics / Sichuan Pantry Compatible

Sichuan Water-Boiled Beef (Shuizhu Niurou, 水煮牛肉)

Chengdu Challenge #12: A Sichuan Outlaw 水煮 (shuǐzhǔ), or “water-boiled” dishes, may be Sichuan’s most notorious food—feared and loved in equal measure. Shuizhu’s reputation as a dish for the daring precedes it. But those brave enough to dip into its sea of málà—chili peppers and Sichuan peppercorn—to fish out a piece of buttery soft beef (or pork, or fish) are rewarded with the realization that shuizhu is not nearly as lethal as its reputation. It was a shocking sight the first time I saw Chef Qing Qing make 水煮牛肉 (shuǐzhǔ niúròu),...

Mapo tofu

Beef, Lamb & Game / Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Douchi / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Huajiao / Plant / Restaurant Classics / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

The Queen of Mapo Doufu Recipes (Mapo Tofu)

Chengdu Challenge #10: The Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine’s Mapo Doufu Recipe Best tofu dish in the world? Mapo doufu, without a doubt. You may be thinking that’s not saying much. But it is. In fact, forget that it features tofu. I’ll put this beefy, spicy, doubanjiang chili bean dish up against your favorite American beef-and-bean chili any day. I’ve been making mapo doufu—“pock-marked mother’s bean curd”—for years. It was one of the first dishes I learned from our brilliant chef Qing Qing back when I organized cooking classes for travelers...

Beef, Lamb & Game / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Sichuan Hot and Spicy Beef (Xiangla Feiniu, 香辣肥牛)

Chengdu Challenge #6: A Spicy Beef Challenge in More Ways Than One “This is the only dish that’s spicy enough for girls’ night,” said my 15-year-old daughter, Fongchong, as she dove into Hot and Spicy Beef. She may be right. Though I’ll be working hard in this blog to disabuse readers of the notion that all Sichuan food is spicy, some dishes are indeed fiery. And out of all the spicy Sichuan dishes I regularly cook, this one is the spiciest. As a result, we generally save it for Wednesday...

How to Cook With Dried Chilies / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan) / Vegetarian

Making Hongyou (Chili Oil Recipe, 红油)

 Facing Heaven in a Jar of Chili Oil Chili oil is a must-have ingredient for Sichuan cooking, and particularly for sauces that go on “cold dishes,” such as noodles and chicken, that are some of the cuisine’s most loved snacks and starters. It doesn’t make sense to buy your everyday chili oil (and for my family it is every day) when you can so easily make it yourself and control the type of oil, the quality and heat of chili flakes and the freshness. Just do a taste test of this...