Category: Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Sesame / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Plant / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Foolproof Sichuan Tofu Pudding (Douhua, 豆花)

From Soy Milk to Douhua Tofu Pudding in Minutes (No GDL/Gypsum!) If you’ve eaten street foods in China (or Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and many others I’m missing!), there’s a good chance you’ve had 豆花 (dòuhuā), tofu pudding—or 豆花儿 (dòuhuā’er), as it’s called in Sichuan. Jiggly blocks of soy “pudding” cleave readily with just a spoon, each douhua bite as tender as the silkiest tofu. Fresh, just-barely-set douhua is backdrop to savory sauces and pickles in the North, sweet syrups in the South and spicy dressings in Sichuan....

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....

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

Mapo Eggplant Noodles ft. Dried Knife-Cut Noodles

Mapo Eggplant Ragu for Your Noodles Mapo eggplant noodles came to me in the dark of COVID yesteryear, when many restaurants were still shuttered and even outdoor dining required proof of vaccination. My roommate had generously invited me along to sample the hype of a long-time Sichuan establishment in Manhattan—my initial cause for skepticism. “It’s supposed to be good,” she assured me. “I just want to try it out.” In our rustic COVID cabana (that staple of hastily-assembled wooden sheds replacing sidewalks and bike lanes with bare-bones seating for undaunted...

Beef, Lamb & Game / How to Cook With Sesame / Noodles / Plant / Restaurant Classics / Soups & Stews / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Sichuan Malatang Recipe: DIY Personal Hotpot

Making Malatang Personal Hotpot at Home Malatang (麻辣烫, málàtàng), “spicy hotpot,” is an easily recognizable food trend from Sichuan beloved by on-the-fly diners, especially during the cold, damp winter. Whereas regular hotpot around a communal broth requires assembling whole groups for a 1-3 hour self-cooking affair, malatang vendors cook ingredients to order for you, then serve everything in a personal serving bowl with the piping hot hotpot broth. Notable for operating out of cramped stalls and carts on narrow streets, malatang shops allow you to choose ingredients (pre-skewered, for speed...

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...

Chinese New Year / Fish & Seafood / How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Huajiao / Plant / Restaurant Classics / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Stovetop Chongqing Kaoyu (烤鱼): Wanzhou Grilled Fish

Pan-searing a Modern Chongqing Specialty I first ate Chongqing 烤鱼 (kǎoyú) in the underbelly of a Chengdu mall (real ones know it’s all about those random mall basement restaurants). That was back in 2015, and Chongqing’s explosive grilled fish scene has lingered in the back of my mind ever since. Buried between colorful layers of crunch, spice, fermented douban umami, fresh vegetables and sour paojiao, charcoal-grilled kaoyu takes the fiery flavor bomb of Sichuan hotpot and combines it with street food favorite 烧烤 (shāokǎo), Chinese barbecue. Naturally, Chongqing kaoyu is also known as 烧烤鱼...

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...

Fish & Seafood / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Huajiao / Plant / Restaurant Classics / Soups & Stews / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

One-Pot Weeknight Suancaiyu (酸菜鱼): Pickled Mustard-Green Fish Stew

Shortcut Suancaiyu When it comes to weeknight 酸菜鱼 (suāncàiyú), spicy and sour Sichuan fish (yu) with pickled mustard greens (suancai), even devout cooks need the occasional shortcut. Like most fish dishes on the mainland, suancaiyu uses whole fresh fish. And try as one might, Ma simply won’t be found buying, killing and gutting live fish on a Tuesday. Not that there’s much live fresh fish to be found around those parts—what suburbs have in 4-bedroom family homes, they lack in specialty fishmongers. So, we use fish fillets. No, it’s not the...

Chinese New Year / Cold Dishes / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Sesame / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Pork / Restaurant Classics / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Homestyle Suanni Bairou (蒜泥白肉): Sichuan Garlic Pork

A One-Night Homestyle Special Consider this classic Sichuan dish the next time you want to impress a table: 蒜泥白肉 (suànní báiròu), thinly sliced pork (“white meat”) smothered in a red-oil garlic-paste concoction. The hardest part of suanni bairou is slicing the meat, and even then, the tantalizing red oil dressing hides any number of shoddy knife-work sins. Balanced by the fresh crunch of raw cucumber—or my favorite, spring celtuce, pictured above—your guests will be too busy sopping up every last drop of sauce to notice how simple suanni bairou really...

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...

sichuan chili oil liangmian in white porcelain dish with black backdrop

Chinese New Year / Cold Dishes / How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Sesame / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Noodles / Restaurant Classics / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Ma’s Sichuan Liangmian (四川凉面) Spicy Cold Noodles

Ma’s Signature Potluck Dish If there’s one dish my mother is known for at potlucks, it’s spicy Sichuan 凉面 (liángmiàn), “cold noodles” in translation. The nature of this beloved 小吃 (xiǎochī) snack in Sichuan is such that everyone knows the dish on sight—and taste. Chewy but not sticky, springy and not slick, sour and spicy and cooling and fragrant all at once, a simple bowl of Sichuan liangmian makes my mouth water just thinking about it. If you host often, bringing nothing but cold noodles as your contribution to a...

How to Cook With Huajiao / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

How to Grind Sichuan Pepper (Huajiao, 花椒)

No Mala Without Huajiao Many recipes on this blog include ground 花椒 (huājiāo), Sichuan pepper, but the steps are so simple we’ve always included how to grind Sichuan pepper as a recipe note. Yet it’s worth taking extra care to get the most of our premium, single-origin Sichuan pepper offerings—from the gorgeous six-petaled, flower-shape “Da Hong Pao” to Hanyuan’s supremely potent and citrusy “Qingxi Gong Jiao,” famously collected by the emperor as tribute. When you’re using just-harvested huajiao from the tiny Sichuan village that is world capital of huajiao quality—with...