The Mala Market | Inspiration & Ingredients for Sichuan Cooking Blog

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...

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...

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...

Bao & Dumplings / Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Huajiao / Non-Spicy / Plant / Pork / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Zuzu’s Savory Sichuan Zongzi (粽子)

Five Generations of Zongzi In the national Chinese battle of sweet vs. savory 粽子 (zòngzi), my family’s heirloom Sichuan zongzi recipe straddles a different border of savory. It’s nothing extravagant—six ingredients including rice, salt and oil. (A far cry from the mouthwatering cured egg yolk, meat-stuffed, nut-filled, mushroom-frequenting zongzi beloved in some savory southern regions). But one bite and anyone could guess its origin: Besides unassuming red bean and a touch of wind-cured pork belly, the sole flavoring is freshly ground 花椒 (huājiāo), the mouth-numbing and citrusy “Sichuan pepper.” Growing up sprinkling...

Bao & Dumplings / Chinese New Year / East (Jiangnan, Shanghai) / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Non-Spicy / Plant

Changzhou’s Small Foot Zongzi (Xiaojiao Zongzi, 小脚粽子)

Duanwu Jie with a Taste of Jiangnan This Duanwu Jie, we are introducing two special zongzi stories: Changzhou’s small foot zongzi and Sichuan’s savory zongzi. You may sense a theme in our blog with this entry, because after starting it as a mother-daughter effort in 2014, we brought on Kathy Yuan and Mala Mama to contribute their family recipes from Sichuan in 2021 and are now welcoming Zoe Yang and her mom, Iris Zhao, to share their stories and recipes from Jiangnan—the area south of the Yangtze River, including Shanghai...

Bao & Dumplings / Chinese New Year / East (Jiangnan, Shanghai) / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / Non-Spicy / Plant / Pork / Poultry / Soups & Stews

Danjiao (蛋饺) Egg Dumplings ft. Pork and Ramps

Taste of Jiangnan: Egg-Skin Dumplings 蛋饺 (dànjiǎo), or egg dumplings, have long been a mainstay of Chinese New Year banquets across the southeastern regions of China. Elders will tell you it’s because danjiao look like lucky gold ingots/”sycees”(金元宝, jīn yuánbǎo). I think the practical reason is that they demand so much attention and time! See, to make danjiao, you basically have to make a tiny omelet in a ladle, lay a tiny quenelle of pork filling in the middle, and then oh-so-gently fold one edge of the omelet over the...

Vegan mapo tofu

How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Douchi / Plant / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan) / Vegetarian

Vegan Mapo Tofu: Chengdu Inspired! (麻婆豆腐)

Meatless Mapo ft. Dried Flower Shiitake This one’s for the tofu-loving vegetarians and vegans out there! Mapo tofu is so beloved, it’s one of the few Sichuan dishes that make it directly into colloquial English without translation. So many regions have their own variations of the dish now too. It’s only natural that vegan mapo tofu has become popular on its own, so this recipe is for Chengdu-inspired mapo tofu with dried shiitake mushrooms. In Sichuan mapo tofu, ground beef (not pork!) is more a flavoring agent than the undiscerning...

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

Wood Ear Salad ft. Pickled Chili (Liangban Mu’er, 凉拌木耳)

Introducing Cloud Ear Fungus~~ If I ever make a Chinese dinner spread with more than 4-5 dishes, 凉拌木耳 (liángbàn mù’ěr) wood ear salad is probably on the table. It’s served at room temperature, meaning I don’t need to time the cooking and plating. It’s fast to prepare on its own, so I can even get away with it as an afterthought. And it relies almost completely on shelf-stable pantry ingredients, so I always have them on hand. As a side dish, wood ear salad is sufficiently different to complement anything...

A white bowl of dunjitang served with wontons and mushrooms and greens

How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / Instant Pot-Friendly / Non-Spicy / Poultry / Soups & Stews

Clarified Old Hen Soup (Dunjitang, 炖鸡汤)

All-Purpose Golden Broth for Soup, Noodles, Chaoshou and More Documenting my mother’s recipe for 炖鸡汤 (dùnjītāng), stewed chicken soup, made me wonder what you can tell about someone from how they process a whole bird. It all starts with deducing a person’s qualities from the kind of chicken immediately at stake, a brand of kitchen table checkers I cherish. Someone who already had what they needed in the freezer is likely not just a regular cook, for example, but also a confident one—they don’t need to know the fate of...