Category: Sichuan Pantry Compatible

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. Which just goes to show that If you stick with wok cooking...

Crispy Sichuan-Pepper Pulled Pork by The Mala Market

How to Cook With Huajiao / Non-Spicy / Pork / Sichuan Pantry Compatible

Sichuanish BBQ: Crispy Sichuan-Pepper Pulled Pork

Sichuan BBQ Pork Candy Here’s the extent of this Sichuan-ish BBQ recipe for crispy Sichuan-pepper pulled pork: Get a pork shoulder with a nice fat cap; score the fat in a diamond shape; rub the whole thing generously with kosher salt, sugar and freshly ground Sichuan pepper; put it in the oven at very low heat, and leave it there. Take it out many hours later, pull it apart with some forks, and marvel at its perfect mix of moist, tender meat and crispy, spicy fat. Really, there’s not much...

Sichuan beef stir-fry

Beef, Lamb & Game / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / Poultry / Sichuan Pantry Compatible

Cooking With Pixian Doubanjiang: Sichuan Sauce for Stir-Fry

A Quick-Mix, Good-With-Everything Sichuan Sauce After we launched a famous brand of handmade, 3-year-aged, Pixian chili bean paste into the U.S. market in August [2018], many, many of you reported back that you love its spicy and soulful flavor. But after making the best mapo doufu you’ve ever made, and perhaps a stellar twice-cooked pork, some of you are stumped for further ways to use it. So I’m embarking on a series called Cooking With Pixian Doubanjiang that will hopefully make it easier to utilize this super versatile burst of...

Chinese New Year / Cold Dishes / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Noodles / Plant / Restaurant Classics / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan) / Vegetarian

Liangfen of Happy Tears (Shangxin Liangfen, 伤心凉粉) From NYC’s Málà Project

Great Sichuan Restaurant Recipes: Tears of Joy or Heartbreak?  A Controversial Jelly Noodle Have you ever been to a Sichuan restaurant and seen a bowl of something that looks like big fat noodles but on closer inspection is actually jiggly strands of jelly? Ranging from translucent to opaque white or yellow, they usually glow with a chili-oil sauce and fresh and crunchy garnishes. When you manage to capture these slippery guys with your chopsticks, they slither down your throat so easily. They are an enigma, at once hot and spicy...

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...

Chongqing Chicken

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 Like It’s Made in Chongqing

The Truth About Sichuan Food There vs. Here At last I’ve eaten Chongqing Chicken in Chongqing, and not only was it delicious, it was revelatory. This new recipe for the dish is based on the version I had there. It won’t be for everyone—a main ingredient is crispy fried chicken skin!—so I’m not replacing my previous recipe, which I created in 2015 based on memories of Chongqing chicken I had eaten in Chengdu, where it is known as laziji (chicken with chilies). I still like that version, but I want...

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

Mala Dry Pot With Cauliflower, Snap Peas and Bacon (Ganguo Caihua)

Weeknight Dry Pot I’m not sure y’all believed me the first time I shared a recipe for dry pot (ganguo or mala xiangguo), back in September 2015. Perhaps I did not convey how delicious it truly is. Or perhaps it seemed like too much effort. Or perhaps you’d just never heard of it—which is highly possible if you live outside China, where it’s been trendy for years. But dry pot is making its play in the U.S., moving out of the San Gabriel Valley to other places on the trending...

How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / How to Cook With Tianmianjiang / North (Shanxi, Beijing) / Pork / Sichuan Pantry Compatible

Eddie Huang and Tianmianjiang Pork (Jing Jiang Rousi, 京酱肉丝)

On Immigrants and Chinese Food: ‘No Coupons’ The National Immigrant Integration Conference came to Nashville this past weekend, and one of my favorite immigrant writers showed up to give the opening talk. The one and only Eddie Huang—Taiwanese-Chinese American chef, author and provocateur  of Fresh Off the Boat and Huang’s World fame—was in fine form (and even wore a suit!), giving a speech he wrote called “No Coupons.” I dragged my little Chinese immigrant along with me, hoping she would take to heart what he had to say.  He talked about...

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...

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,...

Yu Xiang Pork

How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / Pork / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Yuxiang Pork (Yuxiang Rousi, 鱼香肉丝)

Chengdu Challenge #25: This Is Not Pork in Garlic Sauce Yuxiang pork is often translated in the U.S. as pork in garlic sauce. But yuxiang is so much more than a garlic sauce. It’s sweet-and-sour-and-chili-and-garlic sauce. To me, it is what sweet-and-sour sauce should be, but more intriguing and deep. It’s got the tang of dark vinegar just barely tamed by sugar, plus the trinity of garlic-ginger-scallions. But garlic does not dominate, it is just perfectly balanced with the slightly sweet-and-sour and the spicy chili element. The literal translation of...