The Mala Market | Inspiration & Ingredients for Sichuan Cooking Blog

Tiger skin peppers

How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Douchi / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Plant

Tiger Skin Peppers (Hupi Qingjiao)

Chengdu Challenge #23: A Tiger on the Plate You can see in the photo above why this dish is called 虎皮青椒 (hǔpí qīngjiāo), or tiger skin peppers: The peppers are seared in the wok on both sides until the skin is puckered and striped with black char like a tiger. While this side dish is seriously delicious, it does not take itself too seriously. It is yet another example of a whimsical, poetic Chinese name for a fairly simple food. (The Chinese must find the tiger a whimsical animal, because...

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...

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...

Restaurants, Travel & Interviews

San Gabriel Valley Sichuan Restaurants Part 2: Hot Dishes

Inspired by the San Gabriel Valley: The Best of the Best I promise I’m going to get back to cooking and sharing recipes soon, but I have to entice/torture you one more time with the best dishes I had during my summer in Los Angeles. I picked up Fongchong from summer school everyday and we headed straight for the San Gabriel Valley, a miniature China with the widest array of regional Chinese cuisines to be found in this country. I know this fact thanks partly to the fantastic reporting of...

Cold Dishes / Restaurants, Travel & Interviews

San Gabriel Valley: Best Sichuan Cold Dishes in the U.S.?

Inspired by the SGV: The Only Minority in the Restaurant By way of explanation for the paltry number of recent posts, I mentioned last time that Fongchong and I are living in Los Angeles for the summer. Or Pasadena, to be exact. I also noted that we are spending the majority of our time eating our way through the San Gabriel Valley, the epicenter of Los Angeles’s Chinese community and the vanguard of Chinese food in America. Several of the SGV’s cities are majority Chinese, so the only minority in the restaurant is...

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...

How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Douchi / How to Cook With Tianmianjiang / Pork / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Stir-Fried Bacon in Sichuan Bean Sauces (Chao Larou, 炒腊肉)

Chengdu Challenge #20: Once-Cooked Pork Stir-fried bacon in Sichuan bean sauces is a cousin to 回锅肉 (huíguōròu), or twice-cooked pork, and in many ways, the more appealing cousin, because A) you only have to cook it once; and B) it’s bacon! It may be the less popular cousin in Sichuan, but it’s definitely a Sichuan native, and I’ve had it there several times, made with the highly smoked, supremely rich local bacon (larou). For authentic twice-cooked pork, you have to boil a pork belly, chill it, slice it and stir-fry it. For...

Cold Dishes / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Noodles / Poultry

Jisi Liangmian (鸡丝凉面): Cold Noodles ft. Shredded Chicken

Chengdu Challenge #19: Jisi Liangmian, White Cloud in a Perfect Storm Fongchong’s latest obsession is these 鸡丝凉面 (jīsī liángmiàn), Cold Noodles With Shredded Chicken. It’s a regretfully boring name for something so singularly, aggressively tasty, so you’ll have to take my word for it—you really want to try this. Liangmian with chicken totally deserves a more poetic name, like Ants Climbing a Tree, another beloved Sichuan noodle. Something like, perhaps, White Cloud in a Perfect Storm. Or maybe not. But just don’t let the boring name fool you. Especially since cold...

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...

Miscellaneous

We’re in The (Awesome) Cleaver Quarterly

Did you know there’s a great new(ish) print magazine about Chinese food and Chinese food only? The Cleaver Quarterly comes out of Beijing, but it’s written in English, because, as the founders note, Chinese food is a global phenomenon. I am happy and proud to be included in Issue #4, which just came out. The editors take a wide view of Chinese cuisines and culture, which means they published my quite long, very personal and slightly political essay about my daughter’s first trip back to her village in China since her...

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...