Cooking Sichuan with "Land of Plenty" by Fuchsia Dunlop

[liuzhou]

Living in China, I do find it somewhat odd to see Ms Dunlop's recipes plated up western style. Yes, Chinese food (as served in China) is not really suited for single people, but still, for two or more, it would be rare to serve just one dish. As heidih says, Chinese food "is meant to be eaten in small amounts with lots of other flavor balancing dishes"

I eat most lunches with my Chinese sister-in-law and there is never, ever just rice and one dish - and certainly not on one plate. (I doubt sis-in-law possesses a plate, as such.) Usually we have three or more dishes. What we don't eat (which is seldom much) gets re-served at the next meal.

I'm sure Ms Dunlop did consider this - she explains clearly how food is served from the Sichuan kitchen - both at home and in restaurants. At home, she says "A very low key dinner will have at least one dish per person..."

As to the laziji recipe. I don't see it as being over chillied at all. But I am lucky. I can get the right chillies.

Edited February 21, 2011 by liuzhou (log)

[Chris Hennes]

The thought of making three (or more!) dishes every night for dinner is disheartening. I feel fortunate when I have the time and energy to cook two! The cultural divide may simply be too much for me.

[jmolinari]

I'm with Chris, making 3 dishes would be TOUGH...2 is tough enough.

How does one make multiple dishes without them cooling off and losing their "wok hei"?

[sheepish]

I generally aim for 1 meat and 2 veg when cooking from this, or the Revolutionary Chinese book - I frequently combine the two for a single menu. But I have often made quite a few more - especially veg dishes. All the prep is done in advance, then I just try and work out what is likely to hold in a low oven the best. Veg and fish I try to do after meat. Where dishes need deep frying and then braising in a sauce I do the deep frying first and make and stir in the sauces as close to final plating as I can. I'm not sure how much "wok hei" I lose but I don't notice much difference. My hob isnt big enough to take more than a single wok. I will sometimes be frying something like green beans in a frying pan whilst using the wok to cook other stuff.

[nakji]

The thought of making three (or more!) dishes every night for dinner is disheartening. I feel fortunate when I have the time and energy to cook two! The cultural divide may simply be too much for me.

I only ever cook two dishes plus rice on a weeknight for two people. It takes about 45 minutes end to end, but I'm fast with my knife and I have a good mental layout of how things will go. It's no worse for me than cooking a baked potato, a vegetable, and a chicken breast. Those are technically three different dishes. (Although to be fair - you just bung them in the oven and walk away.)

I don't find wok hei dissipates, but heat often can. I usually cook my green or pure veg dish first, because it mucks up the wok less, and then transfer that to a lidded dish on a warmer. Then the protein.

[Chris Hennes]

Dry-Fried Beef Slivers (gan bian niu rou si) (pp. 228–230)

I was a little nervous about just how long the beef was getting cooked here: "dry-fried" indeed! That said, the dish was actually very good, and I enjoyed the texture of the beef.

I've cropped the photo close to disguise the fact that I only made two dishes

[Will]

I'm with Chris, making 3 dishes would be TOUGH...2 is tough enough.

How does one make multiple dishes without them cooling off and losing their "wok hei"?

I will rarely do more than two dishes for two people, but I pulled off 4 or so dishes in about an hour and a half (had some help on the actual cooking of one dish), and I'm not as fast with a cleaver as I'd like to be. The trick is mostly to have some simple dishes in your back pocket that are quick to prep and quick to cook, and not to try to do too many really complicated dishes in one meal. I prep everything and pre-mix sauces first, and we've got a pretty hot flame, so it's not too much of a challenge to then cook all the dishes right before serving - in this way, you can cook 4 dishes in about 12-15 minutes max. Making some dishes that can be made ahead and served cold or at room temperature also helps (cucumber "salad", Shanghai style kau fu, Sichuan style pickled yard beans, bean sprout salad, and so on). And of course, soup can sit in a pot on the stove until it's ready to be served.

A few simple dishes that don't take too long to prep: leafy green vegetables with garlic (or fermented tofu), tomato and egg, vegetarian kidney and basil, potato strips (so many interesting regional variations on this). Washing and completely drying greens can be almost the slowest part for me about making leafy greens; I use a salad spinner, but if it's possible to wash them ahead of time, you can save yourself some time this way.

My girlfriend's parents (Chinese) often cover dishes with saran wrap after making them, or, if it's something that can handle being put in a low oven, you can keep the dish warm that way. But I've found that

I know that Grace Young claims that wok qi disappears quickly in her book; personally, I'm happy if I can get a little of that flavor in my dishes at home, and I've got a pretty high flame. Either way, I agree with others here that the flavor doesn't really seem to go away as much as she's saying.

Edited February 22, 2011 by Will (log)

[Chris Hennes]

Yes, I'm sure that having some standby dishes that you can whip together quickly is a big part of the key. I am making every dish you see here for the first time: it takes easily twice as long the first time as the tenth, in my experience, so there are a lot of gains to be made by making the same dish many times. Of course, that's not how I cook, so I never achieve that level of proficiency with any one dish! So, two dishes plus rice is it for me.

[Chris Hennes]

Tai Bai Chicken (tai bai jin) (pp. 245–247)

Zucchini Slivers with Garlic (chao nan gua si) (pp. 303–304)

Pickled Vegetables (si chuan pao cai) (pp. 71–72)

Look, three dishes! I even served them separately instead of plating them all together. Of course, this was made possible by the addition of the pickled green beans. Unfortunately, I had intended to use those green beans for a pickled green bean and pork stir-fry, so they pickling procedure was a little different: it did not work at all as just a pickled vegetable, because they never fermented. Basically they were just very very salty green beans, not my cup of tea. The zucchini is a very simple stir fry of zucchini and garlic, pretty tough to screw up, it tasted pretty good. But the star of the show was clearly the Tai Bai Chicken, which was fantastic. I have nothing bad to say about it: it was spicy as hell, but not unexpectedly so, and not unbearably so, and it was balanced well by the sweetness of the dish (and a lot of rice!). I will definitely be making this again.

[nakji]

Nice work! (clapping)

How was the zucchini? And what do you think went wrong on the green bean front? I had that recipe tagged to try.

[CFT]

A balanced/rounded meal would not just consist of wok dishes. So disappearing wok hei should not be a problem. A "typical" family meal consisting of "3 dishes + 1 soup" could have 1 stir fried dish, 1 dish of veg., 1 steamed dish (e.g. fish, meat), 1 oven dish, etc.

Leafy greens I usually just blanch with garlic etc., splash of oil, in a big saucepan.

If I do 2 stir fried dishes, I do the meat or veg. ones first and keep warm in top oven. Seafood ones 2nd.

[Prawncrackers]

Nice Chris, you know this kind of Chinese food kinda just looks right presented this way rather than piled up all on one plate. It's purely psychological I know but I can see myself holding a bowl of rice to my mouth and eating those dishes now.

[liuzhou]

A balanced/rounded meal would not just consist of wok dishes. So disappearing wok hei should not be a problem. A "typical" family meal consisting of "3 dishes + 1 soup" could have 1 stir fried dish, 1 dish of veg., 1 steamed dish (e.g. fish, meat), 1 oven dish, etc.

Not in my experience of living in China.

At a typical family dinner there would normally be one soup (made in a wok), one stir fried dish (made in the same wok), the veg would also be stir fried (same wok). Steaming is relatively rare in home cooking (maybe some fish) and no one I have ever known in my 15 years in China has ever possessed an oven.

Edited February 24, 2011 by liuzhou (log)

[Chris Hennes]

How was the zucchini? And what do you think went wrong on the green bean front? I had that recipe tagged to try.

There was not much to say about the zucchini: if you like zucchini and you like garlic, you'll like the dish. there's really not much to it.

The problem with the green beans was my owned damned fault: the recipe for the stir-fried pickled green beans says to use the normal pickling brine, but to only "pickle" them for three days, and do it in the refrigerator. Of course, for that short time and at those low temps, the beans don't "pickle" at all, in that there is no fermentation. So you just end up with brined green beans. I didn't really think about that when I changed my mind and decided to just serve them as a pickled vegetable: they weren't pickled! Doh.

[liuzhou]

Actually, when I think about it, I've never been served soup at a family dinner in China. In restaurants, yes.

[nakji]

Really? I have. Pretty much every time I've eaten at a Chinese friends' place. Maybe it just depends on how ambitious the cook is?

[liuzhou]

It might just be where I am in China -a regional thing. My sister-in-law is a very ambitious cook. I've never seen her make a soup.

[Dejah]

In my Toisanese family, for as long as I can remember, we've always had soup. It can be simple like watercress, melon, or chayote in pork stock, or a long simmered soup. So when my Mom came for supper, there is always a soup, a stir-fried vegetable, and a steamed dish.

Maybe in China, people are not so obsessed about a "pot for everything", so much of the meal is prepared in the wok. Me? I have a soup pot, a wok or two, and a steamer. I use 'em all...IF I don't have to do clean-up!

[CFT]

Soup made in a wok? Never heard of that before.

[Snadra]

I finally got this book last week, and on Friday spent some time picking up a few ingredients. A few basic stir fries and master stock dishes are the extent of my expertise, so this whole boom is quite exciting.

Tonight I cooked my first dish from this, Twice Cooked Pork. For once I followed the recipe exactly (other than subbing green onions for leeks) but we found it overwhelmingly salty. It was quite simple to put together once the pork had its first cooking, and I'd like to try again, but before I waste another hard-to-access free range pork belly on it, does anyone have suggestions on how to tone down the salt? All the sauces list salt as an ingredient - maybe I've purchased the wrong ones?

[rarerollingobject]

IIRC, I found this recipe very salty too, and added way more sugar to balance it out.

Couple of thoughts:

* Did you rinse the black beans? Assuming the ones you got were the dryish ones, rinsing the salt off is a usual first step.

* Not sure if you got 'sweet wheat paste' or the 'sweet bean paste' alternatives the recipes talk about, but if you happened to get 'brown/yellow bean paste' instead, that is much saltier than the sweet wheaten paste (which itself is already about the saltiness of Vegemite, IMO).

Or, more sugar!

[Snadra]

Thanks, RRO! Just what I needed!

I did use the dry beans, and didn't rinse, so I will do that first. I used sweet bean sauce, as I didn't see the sweet wheaten paste at the shop I went to. However, I'm going to another one over the weekend for a few bits i forgot last time, and will see if they have it.

It's a start. I also suspect I was a bit too zealous in the initial fry stage and let a little too much fat render, but that wouldn't cause saltiness. It's a good job I didn't follow my instinct to salt the cooking water, eh?

And the additional sugar is a good idea for next time. And I wonder if I should drop the dark soy as well...

[jo-mel]

Soup made in a wok? Never heard of that before.

Somewhere, in one of my Chinese cookbooks, there was mention of "Wash the Pot Soup". It was a matter of not letting anything go to waste. The wok used for cooking, simply had some water added to it. The remainders of whatever was cooked in the wok was mixed into the water, heated --- and you have a VERY simple soup! I did it, with water, but it was better with chicken broth.

[patrickamory]

Those of you who have made the red-braised pork - is there a conflict between braising it at an extremely low heat and having the sauce reduce?

I'm over an hour in and still have a ton of sauce in the wok at a gentle simmer. It doesn't seem like it's going to mostly reduce.

Safe to turn up the heat, or will I dry out the meat?

[patrickamory]

I ended up letting it cook for almost 3 hours till the sauce was about 1/3 the original size. The meat was soft & meltingly tender.