Category: Restaurant Classics

Chinese New Year / Cold Dishes / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Sesame / Poultry / Restaurant Classics / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Mouthwatering “Saliva Chicken” (Koushuiji, 口水鸡)

Chengdu Challenge #22:  You Know You Want It: Saliva Chicken Which name do you prefer for Sichuan cold chicken in red-hot chili oil? Saliva chicken (let’s translate it as “mouthwatering” chicken)?  Bobo chicken? Bon bon chicken? Bang bang chicken? From what I can tell from multiple Sichuan restaurants, cookbooks and the Web, the names are almost interchangeable, and there’s no real consensus on the ingredients and proportions in each. They are all based on homemade, high-quality chili oil (hong you), of course, and from there include varying proportions of soy...

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...

Cold Dishes / Restaurant Classics / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Quick Sichuan Pickled Vegetables (Sichuan Paocai)

Paocai Inspired by Manhattan’s Cafe China Life has gotten in the way of serious cooking recently. And of blogging too, you may have noticed. You know how that it is, I’m sure, when there’s little time to do even the things you most love to do. For me over the past month, there was Fongchong’s graduation from middle school, multiple family birthdays, a trip to New York and, finally, a temporary move to Los Angeles. Not that I’m complaining! A summer in L.A. brings infinite eating rewards—especially since we’re staying only minutes...

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...

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,...

zhongshuijiao

Bao & Dumplings / Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Chinese Spices / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Pork / Restaurant Classics / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Chengdu Zhongshuijiao (钟水饺) Concocted Soy/Red Oil Dumpling

Chengdu Challenge #15: It’s All About the (Zhong) Sauce If you’ve ever had 钟水饺 (zhōngshuǐjiǎo) dumplings in red oil at a real Sichuan restaurant then you know it’s all about the sauce. While every Chinese cuisine can claim a wonton, jaozi or siumai of its own, only Sichuan floats its famous zhongshuijiao in a sweet-hot special sauce. As such, it kind of blows all other dumplings out of the water. It’s hard to guess exactly what’s in that special sauce, besides chili oil, but you know it when you taste it. You also...

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),...

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...

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...

Bao & Dumplings / Non-Spicy / Plant / Restaurant Classics / Vegetarian

Steamed Bao (Foldover Buns, Guabao, 割包)

Chengdu Challenge #9: Bow to the Bao In my constant quest to fatten up my daughter without resorting to junk food, bao has been a go-to recipe. As a child who shuns all fried foods, most dairy and anything sweet, about the only fattening thing she loves is soft, yeasty bread. We discovered this at her first Thanksgiving dinner, when the only things she put on her plate were turkey and the Sister Schubert yeast rolls. She dug out the middle of the rolls, leaving the crusty exterior behind, and ate through...

Twice-cooked pork (hui guo rou)

Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Douchi / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / How to Cook With Tianmianjiang / Pork / Restaurant Classics / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Chengdu Huiguorou, Twice-Cooked Pork (回锅肉)

Chengdu Challenge #8:  Pork Belly, The Secret to a Long Life Though 回锅肉 (huíguōròu) is actually quite easy to make, it challenged me more than any other dish so far. I had to test it so many times that “twice-cooked pork” became dozen-times-cooked pork before I got it right. But just as I did, I was rewarded with this news story about Sichuan’s oldest living resident, a 117-year-old woman who attributes her longevity to three meals a day of huiguorou. Pork belly and Pixian doubanjiang is really all it takes to make...

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...