Category: How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine

Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Chinese Spices / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Non-Spicy / Pork / Restaurant Classics / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Jiujiu’s Sichuan Tangcu Paigu (Sweet and Sour Spareribs, 糖醋排骨)

Not Your Strip Mall’s Sweet and Sour Pork Everyone has That Dish they dream of reverse-engineering for themselves from a favorite restaurant or dinner party: Mine is this one, my dajiujiu’s 糖醋排骨 (tángcù páigǔ), or sweet-and-sour spareribs. I recall the vinegar-blackened, syrupy-sweet pork of a kind I’d never tasted in my mother’s economical, health-conscious cooking. I didn’t know ribs could be like this, glazed and decadent and sour-bright from the tang of aged vinegar. You’d be at a loss to find a gastrique as storied as my jiujiu’s in Paris....

Chinese New Year / East (Jiangnan, Shanghai) / Fish & Seafood / How to Cook With Sesame / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / Non-Spicy / Noodles / Plant / Pork / Poultry / Restaurant Classics / Soups & Stews

Yangzhou Dazhu Gansi (Simmered Tofu Noodles, 大煮干丝) | Zoe Yang

A Jiangnan Test of Skill There is no dish more exemplary of Jiangnan cuisine than the Yangzhou classic 大煮干丝 (dàzhǔ gānsī), simmered tofu noodles. Every ingredient is an homage to the Yangtze River Delta—duck gizzards, miniature river shrimp, slivers of chicken and rich Jinhua ham, baby greens, fresh mushrooms and, of course, the tofu itself. I didn’t know all this on the first day of cooking school in Nanjing, 12 years ago, when I came to class dutifully toting the above ingredients. In fact, the other reason—perhaps the main reason—my...

Braises / How to Cook With Chinese Spices / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Instant Pot-Friendly / Non-Spicy / Pork / Restaurant Classics

Beer-Braised Pork Trotters (Zhuti, 猪蹄) ft. Dried Tofu Skin

Pig Feet, a Lip-Smacking Delicacy I took braised pork trotters for granted, once. This delicious phantasm of a previous life startled me into remembrance after an estranged adulthood. Its irreplicable mouthfeel transported me somewhere: that barely-there bite through gelatinized skin; the TempurPedic-like fat layers, soft and plushy yet bouncy with just a little give; oozing with juices and draped in a coat of dark, sticky soy sauce. Lip-smacking, if lip-smacking were a single dish. But where had I eaten it? Who made it? When? For the life of me, I...

Chinese New Year / Cold Dishes / How to Cook With Chinese Spices / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Non-Spicy / Plant / Poultry / Restaurant Classics / Vegetarian

How to Make Chinese Tea Eggs (Chayedan, 茶叶蛋)

Marbled Tea-Boiled Eggs A skill I’ve gradually accepted as necessary in my life is learning how to make Chinese tea eggs. These fractured “tea leaf eggs”, 茶叶蛋 (cháyèdàn), continue brewing through an overnight marinade of black tea, aromatic spices and soy sauce that seeps into each crack, creating its beautiful stained glass veneer. Soy saucey and tea-fragrant without being overpowering, chayedan previously came to me by the dozen (if not hundred). Out of stockpots, massive vats of never-ending tea egg, volunteer aunties might dole one out on our post-service Sunday...

Bao & Dumplings / How to Cook With Chinese Spices / How to Cook With Furu / How to Cook With Sesame / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Non-Spicy / Pork / Restaurant Classics / South (Guangdong)

Chasiubao (叉烧包) BBQ Pork Buns: From Scratch

Red Chasiu Without Red Yeast Rice Powder or Food Dye Guangdong’s famous 叉烧包 (chāshāobāo/caa¹siu¹baau¹), aka chasiubao or “char siu bao,” are a dimsum staple!  Soft, fluffy buns envelop the chasiu—barbecue/roast pork—in these steamed bao that ooze with juicy filling. Although I didn’t grow up in a family that made or ate chasiu, we always bought chasiubao from Chinese bakeries. (Especially the “pineapple” bun version that took me 25 years to figure out had no pineapple whatsoever.) At home, Ma’s humble 包子 (bāozi) enclosed minced cabbage/chive and pork, a typical filling,...

Yu choy with furu sauce

How to Cook With Furu / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Plant / Vegetarian

Stir-Fried Yu Choy With Fermented Tofu (Furu Yu Choy)

The Versatility of Chinese Cheese Furu, or fermented tofu, is at first mysterious. Little cubes of noticeably fermented, yellowy beige or gray tofu come packed in shelf-stable jars with a flavorful brine. To the uninitiated, it can be scary. But those who have tried it know that furu is yet another in the vast Chinese cupboard of ultra-umami condiments. Furu is a product and flavor that Fongchong introduced me to not long after she became my daughter in 2011. In the first few months of her life in America communication...

Dongpo Pork

Chinese New Year / East (Jiangnan, Shanghai) / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Non-Spicy / Pork / Restaurant Classics

Ode to Dongpo Pork (东坡肉) | Zoe Yang

A Poet’s Ode to Pork and Hongshaorou Dongpo pork (东坡肉, dōngpōròu): pork belly cubes braised in soy sauce with ginger, scallions and other aromatics. If this is sounding a lot like red-braised pork (红烧肉, hóngshāoròu), don’t worry, it’s not just you. The number of Baidu search results for “difference between dongporou and hongshaorou” suggests that even Chinese people aren’t clear on the nuances. Here’s how I think about it: hongshaorou is your generic, workhorse pork braise. It can accommodate different cuts of pork; it can veer sweet, savory or spicy,...

How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / Non-Spicy / Plant / Poultry / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Sichuan Vinegar Chicken (Culiuji, 醋溜鸡)

A Fully Stocked Pantry, So You Can Make Left-Behind Dishes Newly added to our blog trove of under-appreciated mainland dishes is this recipe for 醋溜鸡 (cùliūjī), Sichuan vinegar chicken. Not red, not hot, not numbing nor loud, Sichuan vinegar chicken speaks to the range of regional cooking often left behind in the diasporic new world.  No one is at fault for this. If you only eat Sichuan a couple times a year, I’m sure you want your favorites—the quintessentially, exaggeratedly, unmistakably Sichuan flavors everyone associates with the province. And if you’re...

Shaoxing Drunken Chicken

Chinese New Year / Cold Dishes / East (Jiangnan, Shanghai) / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / Non-Spicy / Poultry / Restaurant Classics

Shaoxing Drunken Chicken (Zuiji, 醉鸡) | Zoe Yang

A Classic Jiangnan Cold Dish It’s a rare occasion that I get to write a Jiangnan recipe with zero familial baggage. Blame the Methodists who converted my family into teetotalers sometime in the late 1800s, but when I called my mother to ask about Drunken Chicken, she asked, “Is it made with 酒糟 (jiǔzāo)?” Close, but no. Drunken Chicken (醉鸡, zuìjī), a stalwart of the Chinese poached chicken oeuvre, is made by marinating cooked chicken in 黄酒 (huángjiǔ), yellow wine—most famously the huangjiu from Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province. Jiuzao refers to...

How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / How to Cook With Yacai / Noodles / Plant / Pork

Ants Climbing a Tree (Mayi Shangshu, 蚂蚁上树)

Another Homestyle Sichuan Dish In the anthology of childhood tastes, 蚂蚁上树 (mǎyǐ shàngshù) was long buried for me beneath louder crowdpleasers like 红烧排骨 (hóngshāo páigǔ) or 红油抄手 (hóngyóu chāoshǒu). “Ants climbing a tree,” its literal translation, are so named for the way finely minced accoutrements cling to the 粉丝 (fěnsī), gelatinous tendrils of mung bean starch noodles imitating tree limbs. Yet mayi shangshu took me years to miss, or even think about. It’s only now that its discreetness amid redder, oilier, spicier stalwarts appeals to me so highly. This is...

Toothpick Lamb From a Sichuan Master Chef

Beef, Lamb & Game / Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / Restaurant Classics / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Toothpick Lamb From a Sichuan Master Chef (Yaqian Yangrou, 牙签羊肉)

Finger-Licking Flavor Have you ever had the famed toothpick lamb at L.A.’s Chengdu Taste or Sichuan Impression? Or perhaps at another of the ever-growing list of stellar Sichuan restaurants in our land? If you have, you probably wish you could make these crispy lamb nuggets adorned with a cumin–chili–huajiao spice mix at home. If you haven’t, believe me, you want to make them at home. We’ve been chomping on these on every visit to Los Angeles for years, but I’ve never actually had them in Chengdu and never seen them...

Bao & Dumplings / Chinese New Year / East (Jiangnan, Shanghai) / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / Non-Spicy / Plant / Pork / Poultry / Soups & Stews

Danjiao (蛋饺) Egg Dumplings ft. Pork and Ramps

Taste of Jiangnan: Egg-Skin Dumplings 蛋饺 (dànjiǎo), or egg dumplings, have long been a mainstay of Chinese New Year banquets across the southeastern regions of China. Elders will tell you it’s because danjiao look like lucky gold ingots/”sycees”(金元宝, jīn yuánbǎo). I think the practical reason is that they demand so much attention and time! See, to make danjiao, you basically have to make a tiny omelet in a ladle, lay a tiny quenelle of pork filling in the middle, and then oh-so-gently fold one edge of the omelet over the...