Cooking with Fuchsia Dunlop's "The Land of Fish and Rice"

[Chris Hennes]

@Smokeydoke, I'm looking forward to your posts. I really love Dunlop's books and am curious what others are cooking from them.

[Chris Hennes]

Stir-fried rice cake with scrambled egg and dried shrimp (p. 250)

 

This is a simple stir-fry of bok choy, dried shrimp, egg, and rice cakes. I used a chicken stock as the basis (the recipe suggests either stock or water). There are a lot of dried shrimp in there, so make sure you like them before adding the full amount! Their flavor is the bulk of the seasoning in the dish.

 

[Chris Hennes]

On 11/9/2016 at 11:36 AM, MelissaH said:

I might be way off base here, but it's hard to tell from a picture. How similar are those to the Korean rice cakes called dduk or some other spelling that may or may not be along those lines? I can buy them ready-made at the Korean supermarket in Syracuse. If they're at all similar, this would be a super-easy comfort food type of dish.

 

I don't think they are a drop-in replacement for the dumplings, which are much softer and more glutinous. Though maybe one they have been in the soup for a bit they get that way? I've only had them this one time, and they were only steamed to warm them through before eating, the didn't really rest in the broth for any length of time.

[Chris Hennes]

Cold chicken with spring onion oil (p. 73)

 

I cheated on this one and used already-cooked chicken breasts from last weekend's stock-making. Actually, several of Dunlop's other cold-chicken recipes from Every Grain of Rice (the Clay Bowl Chicken and Cold Chicken with a Spicy Sichuanese Sauce) are my usual uses for the chicken breasts I end up with most weeks, so this was a nice change. It's a very different recipe from those two. My wife described it as "deconstructed chicken and rice soup" -- it's just a sauce of spring onion greens (I used chives) and ginger in a chicken broth, poured over cold chicken. 

 

[heidih]

I think that would be great with Chinese garlic chives - I'm growing some and they re such a flavor bomb

[Chris Hennes]

Speaking of Chinese chives...

 

Shaoxing "small stir-fry" (p. 99)

 

The recipe is roughly equal amounts of pork, Chinese yellow chives, bamboo shoot, and preserved mustard tuber. My chives are green: my understanding is that if you grow them deprived of light they turn yellow, but I haven't done that, and haven't ever seen yellow chives for sale here either. Can someone who has comment on if it would be worth growing a batch in the dark next year? There are more chives than pork in this particular stir fry, so if the flavor matters anywhere I'd expect it to matter here.

 

[chefmd]

I tried yellow garlic chives in Peking Gourmet restaurant in Falls Church, VA.  It is a very popular local restaurant, the walls are lined with photos of famous people dining there.  They are known for their ducks!  Yellow chives are milder, think white and green asparagus.  I would probably reduce the amount of chives slightly if you are using green vs yellow chives.

 

http://www.pekinggourmet.com/menu/

[liuzhou]

Yellow chives (韭黄 jiǔ huáng) are my preference, but I'm lucky in that they are easy for me to find. I agree with @chefmd about them being milder in taste (in a good way) but they have a more powerful aroma. I would definitely recommend trying to grow a batch and see how you like them.

 

 

I wouldn't say that this dish is particularly Jiangnan style, though. The dish seems very similar to the dish 韭黄肉丝 (Pork slivers with yellow chives) in her Sichuan book, where she does say that there are many variations.

 

Incidentally, she gets the first character wrong in the Sichuan book. Does she give characters in the new one? (Mine hasn't arrived yet.)

Edited November 29, 2016 by liuzhou (log)

[Chris Hennes]

For the Shaoxing "small stir-fry" she gives 绍兴小炒. I think it would be fair to describe this as belonging to the same family as the recipe from her Sichuan book.

[Chris Hennes]

Dai Jianjun's vegetarian "crabmeat" (p. 125)

 

This is essentially scrambled eggs flavored with ginger, white pepper, and Chinkiang vinegar. I fear I probably over-mixed them while cooking and lost some of the marbled effect she was going for in the recipe, but there's no picture of this one so I don't quite know what it was supposed to look like. 

 

[Chris Hennes]

Zhoushan fish chowder (p. 148)

 

A quick fish stock is made from the bones of the fish, plus ginger, spring onion, and Shaoxing. Into this you add tomatoes and potatoes, simmer until the tomato is cooked, then add bite-size pieces of fish (I used red snapper).

 

[cyalexa]

On 11/18/2016 at 7:05 PM, heidih said:

I'm growing some

Be careful, I find them to be invasive and hard to control.

[Smokeydoke]

Golden scrambled eggs with shrimp p. 121

Shanghai fried rice with salt pork and green bok choy p.243

 

Both dishes are very simple and easy to make. The scrambled eggs is a matter of frying the shrimp in an egg white, then adding it to the eggs and spring onions. It is delicious in its simplicity.

Shanghai fried rice is basically pancetta (I used bacon) with onions and chopped bok choy, then fried with rice and some pantry staples. Very basic, a bit bland for my Westernized taste, it tastes just like the fried rice they serve at dim sum restaurants. Interesting to note, there's no egg and no soy sauce. It is seasoned with sesame oil, salt and pepper.

 

 

[Smokeydoke]

This is my first time cooking from a Fuchsia Dunlop cookbook and I just wanted to comment that her recipes are simple and elegant, most are not hard and they don't require many ingredients outside of a decently stocked Asian pantry.

[liuzhou]

28 minutes ago, Smokeydoke said:

Interesting to note, there's no egg and no soy sauce.

 

Soy sauce is seldom used in fried rice in China. Egg, sometimes. Egg fried rice is but one type of fried rice dish.

Edited November 24, 2016 by liuzhou (log)

[Smokeydoke]

Just now, liuzhou said:

 

Soy sauce is seldom used in fried rice in China. Egg, sometimes. Egg fried rice is but one type of fried rice. dish.

 

Interesting. This is the second fried rice from this book I've tried and both have been very different than their American counterpart. The Chinese fried rice tastes much healthier and lighter.

[liuzhou]

11 hours ago, Smokeydoke said:

both have been very different than their American counterpart.

 

That is true of Chinese food in general. Chinese Chinese food and American Chinese food are seldom the same. Two different cuisines.

 

I know which I prefer.

 

[heidih]

On 11/23/2016 at 4:49 PM, cyalexa said:

Be careful, I find them to be invasive and hard to control.

 

They are in a pot - I have seen them out of control in the ground

Along with young radish greens they elevate eggs instantly to lovely quick meal

[Chris Hennes]

Hangzhou late-night noodles (p. 261)

 

Fresh wheat noodles stir-fried with pork, spiced tofu, Sichuan preserved vegetable, oyster mushrooms, and Chinese chives. I can't get the alkaline noodles here, and didn't have time to make them, so I just used plain wheat noodles. I actually liked the texture of this brand better than the last one I used.

 

 

 

[rustwood]

@Chris Hennes - great posts and photos, both here and in previous Cooking with Fuchsia Dunlop threads.  Amazon has delivered Land of Plenty to us so I hope we will soon find time to start following your lead.

[Smokeydoke]

Green pak choy with dried shrimps

You can find the recipe here. 

 

This is a very basic recipe. This is my second time making it, I'm having a hard time getting the pak choy to cook the way she wrote it (recipe asked for quartered pak choy). Maybe American pak choy is too big? The leaves got withered but the stems would not cook through unless it braised for a few minutes. I admit, it looks nothing like her photo. I ended up removing each stalk, then quartering the big ones. They seemed to cook faster.

I'll be honest, not too impressed with the recipes. This might be it for me. I know I should try the harder ones, but I'll let other post before I invest more time.

 

 

Edited November 29, 2016 by Smokeydoke (log)

[Chris Hennes]

@Smokeydoke I use baby bok choy for that dish, and only halve them. I like them just barely cooked, though, so it may just be more to my taste anyway.

[Chris Hennes]

Hangzhou "blanched slice" noodles (p. 262)

Snow vegetable (p. 331)

 

Wheat noodles with bamboo shoot, pork, and snow vegetable (homemade, in this case, from the recipe in the book). The broth, which is hiding under the noodles in my photo, is just water and a little light and dark soy sauce. I used less water than she did, so I did not end up with as much broth as in her photo. 

 

[Chris Hennes]

Green soybeans with snow vegetable (p. 180)

 

I used up all the rest of my homemade snow vegetable here, there is almost as much snow vegetable as soybean. It's also got a bit of pork and bamboo shoot, but that's basically it. Ten minutes, tops.

 

[Chris Hennes]

"Springtime" noodles (p. 260)

 

Just noodles in chicken broth seasoned with light and dark soy and sesame oil. As usual I replaced the spring onion greens with chives because I have them (for another week or so, judging by the forecast!).