Category: How to Cook With Yacai

Sichuan Steamed Pork Belly With Yacai

Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Douchi / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / How to Cook With Yacai / Instant Pot-Friendly / Non-Spicy / Pork / Restaurant Classics / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Sichuan Steamed Pork Belly ft. Yacai (Xianshaobai, 咸烧白)

Sichuan’s Ninth Great Bowl I rarely eat in my dreams. Even when I have been capable of lucid dreaming, I never recall eating. I do daydream, however—constantly—about the creamy, succulent slices of pork belly layered like so many perfect pleats across a steaming bed of Yibin yacai in traditional Sichuan 咸烧白 (xiánshāobái). Xianshaobai is a prayer sung in pork fat (too much lean meat and the magic disappears): classic, class-defying comfort food. No one is above xianshaobai. Xianshaobai is regional, like dumplings and 粽子 (zòngzi): The exact composition and style...

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...

Yibin Ran Mian

How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Chinese Spices / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Yacai / Noodles / Plant / Restaurant Classics / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Yibin Ranmian, 燃面 (Burning Noodles From Yibin, Sichuan)

Noodles via Chinese Cooking Demystified I am so happy to report that I have finally conquered Yibin ranmian (燃面, ránmiàn), a noodle I’ve been longing for and one of the best noodles you have probably never heard of. I’ve been promising to develop this recipe for many years, ever since the first time I had Yibian ranmian in Chengdu. It was 2014, but I remember it like it was yesterday. We (Craig, Fongchong and I) had just eaten a full meal at a famous restaurant that we had nonetheless found...

Cold Dishes / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Yacai / Plant / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan) / Vegetarian

Sichuan Cucumber Three Ways: Hot-and-Sour, Mala and Sesame (Paihuanggua)

Cool as a (Spicy) Cucumber Sichuan knows how to treat a cucumber: with spice! Here are three cucumber preparations, using three different forms of chili pepper, and resulting in three very different tastes. The first is hot-and-sour and similar to a Western quick pickle with the addition of pickled or fresh red chilies. The second is mala, the smacked cucumber smacking strongly of that incomparable toasty chili and tingly Sichuan pepper taste that makes mala so addictive. And the third is so flavor-packed with chili oil, sesame paste and yacai preserved vegetable that it...

How to Cook With Yacai / Poultry / Restaurant Classics / Sichuan Pantry Compatible

Chengdu Taste’s Chengdu Fried Rice (Chaofan, 炒饭)

Inspired by the SGV: Fongchong Can Cook Of the many things that inspired us on our many visits to the famed Chengdu Taste in the San Gabriel Valley this past summer, the simplest—and simplest to recreate—was their Chengdu Fried Rice. It has just three main ingredients: eggs, scallions and yacai. Their version took our favorite style of fried rice—loaded with lots of big chunks of egg—and supercharged it with lots of yacai, Sichuan’s go-to preserved vegetable. Yacai doesn’t have the sour bite or texture of a pickle, like the better...

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...

Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Yacai / Non-Spicy / Plant / Pork / Restaurant Classics / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Sichuan Dry-Fried Green Beans (Ganbian Sijidou, 干煸四季豆)

Chengdu Challenge #16: Frying, Old-School vs. New Yes, I know it seems wrong to deep-fry green vegetables, but oh, it tastes so right. 干煸四季豆 (gānbiān sìjìdòu) actually means dry-fried green beans, but almost everyone nowadays quickly deep-fries them. That’s how the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine teaches the dish, and that’s how I’ve always done it. But when I was researching the dish, I found that the recipe for ganbian sijidou in Mrs. Chiang’s Szechwan Cookbook calls for dry-frying the green beans the old-school way, for more than two hours,...

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...

Dan dan mian

How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Sesame / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / How to Cook With Tianmianjiang / How to Cook With Yacai / Noodles / Restaurant Classics / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Sichuan Dandanmian ft. Yacai (Dandan Noodles, 担担面)

Chengdu Challenge #1: First Love Dandanmian was the first real Sichuan dish I ever had, when Grand Sichuan International, the first real Sichuan restaurant in Manhattan in decades, opened close to my home in Chelsea in the mid-’90s. I’ll never forget the moment when they sat it on the table. It looked like a plain bowl of boiled noodles with some ground pork on the top, but then I realized I needed to stir it up myself and began to turn the noodles and crispy pork  over in the pool of...

How to Cook With Yacai / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Sourcing Yibin Suimiyacai (Preserved Mustard Greens, 芽菜)

Yibin Yacai: The Queen of Sichuan Pickles Preserved 芽菜 (yácài) is another one of those only-in-Sichuan ingredients. All of China loves a preserved vegetable, but this particular example—fermented mustard green stems—is made only in Yibin, a county in southern Sichuan Province. Yibin yacai is used most famously in dandan noodles and ganbian sijidou (dry-fried green beans), where it is absolutely indispensable. But it also provides a deep veggie essence to all kinds of sauces and dishes in Sichuan cooking. I have never made it to Yibin, but my friend Jessie...