I haven’t had much experience with curing, souring or fermenting things at home – I tried making preserved lemons once but it didn’t work particularly well – and it’s something I’ve been wanting to learn more about. Hunanese salted chiles, a key ingredient in the cookbook I’ve been working through, sounded like a good way to ease into things – sort of a lazy girl’s kim chee. It’s nothing but chiles and salt, does not need special attention or preserving techniques, and is very good to eat. It ages for two weeks in a cool place – I just stuck the jar on a pantry shelf in my basement, which stays near 55° all winter – then keeps indefinitely in the fridge. Although I can tell our jar of chiles isn’t going to have the opportunity to stick around very long.

It really is a simple recipe. The hardest part by far was actually getting hold of a pound of ripe red chiles in the middle of winter. We had to wait until we made a trip to the produce section of Uwajimaya in Seattle, where they had an excellent selection of what they called “red jalapeños” but most stores just refer to as Fresno chiles. They’re not an extremely spicy pepper but they’re very sweet and fruity, and all these flavors really came out in the preserving process. The final product is actually quite spicy, but also sweet and surprisingly silky in the mouth. I think they’re wonderful – hot, sour, salty and sweet, all in one condiment. This will become a pantry staple for us.

Hunanese chopped salted chiles

from Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook: Recipes from Hunan Province by Fuchsia Dunlop

• 1 lb fresh red chiles
• 1/4 cup salt

Cut off the stem and tip of each chile and coarsely chop them, including the seeds.

Combine the chopped chiles in a bowl with 3 ½ tbsp of the salt, mix well, place in a very clean glass jar and top with the remaining salt. Seal and put in a cool place for a couple of weeks before using, then refrigerate once opened. Will keep for months.

What to do with the chiles once they’re done? As far as I can tell, anything that you would use either fresh chiles or chile paste for. I used them in place of fresh red chiles when I made red-braised tofu a couple of weeks ago, I threw a spoonful into a bowl of dan dan noodles, and last night I made a Hunanese dish of pork and tofu that really showcased the chiles.

I’ve made this recipe twice so far. The first time I didn’t have the salted chiles so I doubled the chile bean paste (as Dunlop suggests), and I used fresh shiitakes instead of dried. This time I did use dried mushrooms, and was frankly amazed at the flavor they gave to the sauce. I’ll need to keep dried shiitakes on hand from now on. And while the recipe was good with just the chile bean paste, it was worlds better with the salted chiles – more depth, sweetness, heat and just generally tastier. I nearly licked out the wok.

Homestyle Bean Curd

adapted from Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook: Recipes from Hunan Province by Fuchsia Dunlop

• 2 dried shiitakes
• 1 block tofu, cut into slices or cubes (whatever type of tofu you like – I only use silken these days)
• 1 boneless pork loin chop, cut into thin slices
• 1 tsp Shaoxing wine or sherry
• 1 Tbsp chile bean paste
• 1 Tbsp chopped salted chiles
• 1 Tbsp chopped garlic
• 1 cup stock
• 1/4 tsp soy sauce
• spoonful of cornstarch mixed with two spoonfuls of cold water
• 3 scallions
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• peanut oil or lard

Soak the mushrooms in hot water 30 minutes. Drain, remove the stems, and thinly slice.

Mix  the sliced pork with Shaoxing wine in a bowl. Set aside.

If you want the tofu to be a bit firmer, fry the slices until golden in a bit of peanut oil or lard. Set aside. I sometimes skip this step if I’m in the mood for soft-textured tofu.

Heat a bit of oil in a wok until very hot. Stir-fry the pork until the pieces separate, add the chile paste and salted chiles and stir well, then the garlic and mushrooms. Pour in the stock and bring to a simmer.

Add the tofu and soy and bring the liquid to a boil. Stir in the cornstarch mixture and cook until it begins to thicken, then add the scallions and sesame oil. Serve with plenty of rice to soak up the sauce.

Our last trip to Seattle’s International District yielded a number of interesting ingredients, many of which I have yet to try. I did pull out the package of deep fried bean curd last week, and tried out another recipe from – can you guess? – Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook. It was extremely delicious, even though I have a feeling the fried tofu I bought somehow isn’t quite the right kind.

It was in the refrigerator case at Uwajimaya, next to the bean curd sheets. It seemed to be the right product until I opened it, but instead of puffs, the tofu was sort of in layers. It had a way cool chewy texture, though, and nice bean curd-y flavor. We were also really pleased with the sauce, which was completely simple to make and had a surprisingly rich taste, with lots of zing from the ginger and chile. It was rather soupy and made a delicious porridge in the bottom of our rice bowls. I totally want to do this again with the puffy tofu, if I can find it.

Also, this was our first foray into the jar of salted chiles I’ve had fermenting over the last couple of weeks. They were excellent – I’ll tell you more about them soon. You don’t need them for this recipe, though, it actually just calls for fresh hot chile.

Zhangguying red-braised bean curd puffs

Adapted from Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook by Fuchsia Dunlop

Dunlop mentions that the recipe could be started by stir-frying pork slices in the wok before continuing with the other ingredients. I bet a little ground pork would be excellent here as well. But it makes a great meat-free meal.

• 2-3 Tbsp lard or peanut oil
• 9 oz deep fried bean curd puffs (or whatever kind of deep-fried tofu you can find)
• 3 garlic cloves, sliced
• 1 inch ginger, sliced
• 3 cups stock (I used homemade chicken stock)
• soy sauce (to taste)
• 1 fresh chile, sliced (I substituted a spoonful of salted chiles)
• 5 scallions, cut into lengths
• 1 tsp cornstarch and 2 tsp water

Cut the tofu into bite-size chunks. If it’s very oily, pat it a bit with paper towels.

Heat peanut oil or lard in a wok, add the garlic and ginger and stir-fry briefly, then pour in the stock. Bring to a boil and add some soy sauce and the tofu. Reduce and simmer gently for 5-10 minutes. Add the chile and scallions and cook for just a moment more. Taste for seasoning and adjust if necessary.

Mix the cornstarch and water in a small bowl, bring the sauce in the wok to a full boil, and swirl in the cornstarch mixture. When the sauce has thickened slightly, remove from the heat and serve with rice or noodles.

The past few days have all been surprisingly full of pork and sunshine – both very good things.

On Friday we went for a walk out at Washington Park near Anacortes. The sun was out but the wind was howling across the water and through the trees on the headland. It was fresh and deeply invigorating. We went home and made steamed bao, stewed kale and a pork roast marinated and braised with hoisin sauce, loads of garlic, scallion and ginger.

The pork was remarkably flavorful all the way through. We sliced it thinly and made little sandwiches with the pork and kale on sliced bao, with the sauce from the pork as a dipping jus. I may have eaten too much of this.

New Year’s Eve was Neapolitan-style pizza with friends, featuring spicy coppa and bits of leftover Christmas ham. We drank many bottles of Prosecco, Cava and homemade cider. I made onion dip and it turned out really, really well. A good time was had by all.

New Year’s Day is when we make cassoulet. I did a simple one, based on the version we learned at Duckfest. White beans, brined overnight then cooked with onion, bay, garlic and epices rabelais. Toulouse sausage from the Paris Grocery in Seattle, and a package of duck confit from our co-op. I got a great crust on it this year (still no breadcrumbs, mind you). A salad of baby arugula and a bottle of St Cosme made for a perfect, low-key evening.

Our fridge still seems to have a lot of pork in it.

Another recipe from the Hunan cookbook I’ve been working through. It was quite a lot blander than I had expected, with very little vinegar kick – maybe I need a rice vinegar with more oomph? But we’ve been trying to eat lightly during the week and this certainly fit the bill. One nice side product was the broth from poaching the chicken. Part of it went into the final stirfry, but I also used it to cook chard for a side dish, which made for wonderfully flavorful greens. I also froze some of it to use later.

This struck me as a good “gentle” dinner to make when you’re feeling a bit frail.

Dong’an chicken

from The Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook by Fuchsia Dunlop

• 4 chicken thighs (bone in, skin on) or one small chicken cut into pieces
• 2 inch piece ginger, cut in half
• 3 scallions
• 1 fresh hot chile
• 3 dried chiles
• 2 tsp Shaoxing wine or sherry
• 2 Tbsp rice vinegar
• 1/2 tsp whole Sichuan pepper  or Sichuan pepper oil
• salt to taste
• 1 tsp cornstarch stirred into 2 tsp cold water
• 1 tsp sesame oil

Bring a quart of water to a boil and add the chicken pieces, half the ginger and one scallion (lightly crushed). Reduce the heat to a simmer and poach 10 minutes. Remove the chicken from the liquid and cool, then shred/cut into long pieces with the grain. It won’t quite be cooked through. You can add the bones and skin back into the poaching liquid to make stock.

Sliver the fresh chile and remaining ginger and scallions. Heat a spoonful of peanut oil, add the fresh and dried chiles, ginger, and Sichuan pepper and cook until fragrant but not burning. Add the chicken and stir-fry, splashing wine around the edges, then add the vinegar, Sichuan pepper oil (if using) and salt. Pour in a half cup or so of the poaching liquid. Bring to a boil, turn down and simmer. Add the cornstarch and scallions, cook briefly to thicken, finish with the sesame oil and serve with rice or noodles.

Another recipe from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, and this one is really a keeper. We were introduced to cumin lamb and beef at our old favorite (and much missed) Chinese restaurant Szechuan Bistro, and ordered it nearly every time we went there, but never tried to make it ourselves. Since the Greenwood arsonist burned the place down, we haven’t been able to get it anywhere locally. Now, well…I may not be able to reproduce their spicy green beans with tofu as yet, but at least I can have cumin beef. Any time I want!

Part of why this was so successful was the beef. The recipe suggested sirloin, so I hunted out a package from the freezer, from our half-cow from Skagit Angus. All of the beef we’ve gotten from them has been spectacular, but this was particularly excellent – chewy but very very tender, with a full beef flavor and a nice amount of fat marbled throughout. One of the best tasting pieces of meat I’ve ever had. Dumping a lot of cumin and hot chiles on it didn’t hurt it at all, though.

We served this on Japanese-style white rice, with a lot of stir-fried kale on the side to cut the richness of the meat. I also used some of the leftover beef to make a sandwich with roasted peppers, which I can also recommend highly. God,  I’m making myself hungry.

Cumin Beef

adapted from the Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook by Fuchsia Dunlop

marinade:

• 1 Tbsp Chinese rice wine
• 1 Tbsp soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp cornstarch
• 1/2 tsp salt

stirfry:

• 1 pound sirloin, cut into thin slices
• 2 tsp fresh ginger, finely chopped
• 1 Tbsp garlic, finely chopped
• 2 hot green chiles, seeded and chopped
• 2 tsp dried chile flakes
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 2 scallions, finely sliced
• sesame oil

Combine the beef in a bowl with the marinade ingredients and mix well.

Original recipe instruction: heat 2 cups of peanut oil in a wok to 275°. Add the beef and stir gently. As soon as the pieces have separated, removed them from othe oil and drain well. Set aside. Pour out all but a few spoonfuls of the oil.

What I did: put a wok over high heat and add 1/4 cup of peanut oil. Add the beef in batches, stirfrying briefly until it begins to color and the pieces separate. Remove from the wok and set aside. Add a spoonful or two of fresh oil to the pan.

Then: Bring the wok back up to high heat and add the ginger, garlic, chiles, chile flakes and cumin. Fry briefly until fragrant, then add all the beef back in and stir well. When it’s cooked as much as you want (I left my beef a little rare), add the scallions, pour in a bit of sesame oil and serve with rice.

Last week, after Thanksgiving, I absconded with my father’s copy of Fuchsia Dunlop’s Hunanese cookbook. I gave it to him for Christmas last year but don’t have a copy myself, so I spent the holiday sighing over the recipes until he offered to let me borrow it for a while. Ha!

I adore Dunlop’s Sichuan cookbook and make stuff from it constantly, but I’ve been intrigued by the spicy, yet more subtle flavors of Hunan. Some of the recipes use pungent ingredients like preserved vegetables, fermented tofu and salted chiles, but many are very simple and lightly flavored with soy, rice wine and aromatics. It seemed like the perfect type of food to make in the inevitable detox weeks after Thanksgiving.

The first thing I cooked, after we got home and I was feeling a bit frail, was this lovely chicken and mushroom stir-fry with rice noodles. The recipe called for dried shiitakes, which I don’t have, so I used the excellent fresh shiitakes that are grown locally. I was also delighted to find thin-cut chicken breasts at our Co-op, which made it easy to sliver the chicken. The dish was very good, full of vegetables, and refreshing after a long week of heavy eating, with just a little kick of spice to keep it interesting.

Stir-fried rice noodles with chicken and mushrooms

adapted from Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook

• 1 lb chicken breast, cut into slivers
• 1 Tbsp soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp rice wine
• about 10 fresh shiitake mushrooms, sliced
• 1/2 pound rice noodles
• 2 tsp fresh ginger, finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
• 2 tsp salted chiles (I haven’t made these yet, so I used Thai pickled chiles)
• 1 package bean sprouts
• 3 scallions, cut into 1 inch lengths
• soy sauce
• sesame oil
• sweet chile sauce (optional)

Combine the sliced chicken in a bowl with the soy sauce and rice wine, mix well and set aside.

Cook the rice noodles in boiling water until just done, drain and rinse. (I know everyone always says to just soak them, but I’ve tried this and I’m tired of crunchy noodles)

Put a large wok over high heat and add a couple spoonfuls of peanut oil. Add the chicken and fry until the pieces separate, then add the mushrooms, ginger, garlic, and chiles. When the mushrooms are soft, add the bean sprouts and cook for a moment, then add the noodles and scallions and mix it all up. Add a bit more soy sauce and a little sesame oil to taste. Serve as is, or with additional soy sauce or Thai sweet chile sauce (what we call “sauce for chicken” in our house).

When you buy squid or shrimp in the grocery store around here (even at the fish market), it’s usually bagged frozen stuff that the shop has just thawed that day. This is why we usually buy big bags of it ourselves, so we can thaw it out in small quantities as we want it. We never have any lack of ideas for the shrimp, but somehow the squid wasn’t getting used very quickly. I spent some time hunting out recipes for pre-cut rings and tentacles, especially Chinese, which I thought would be particularly well-suited. I found surprisingly few Chinese recipes for squid, but lots for clams, and it occurred to me that if clams in black bean sauce was such a fixture, why not squid in black bean sauce? Why not on noodles? And a dinner concept was born.

So far I’ve been making it up as I go along each time, but maybe at some point I’ll settle on a particular recipe – or maybe not. I tend to cook by the “spoonful of this, spoonful of that” method in any case. If you have squid in the house, and you can remember to thaw it in time, this is a fantastic, blazingly-fast weeknight dinner – certainly no more than half an hour from start to finish, if you prep while the noodles are cooking. And you could use considerably less chile than I do, if you don’t happen to like having your sinuses cleared by your dinner. But what I really love is the contrast of texture between the squid and the noodles, and the saltiness of the black beans. Everything else is flexible.

The way I’m doing this at the moment (subject to change as I experiment, but this is way tasty): first I cook and drain the noodles – we’re really liking udon with this, but any kind of slithery noodle would work – and toss them in a large bowl with some of the sludge from our homemade hot chile oil and a splash of soy sauce. Then I get all my condiments, squid and vegetables ready to go, as none of this takes any time at all to cook. I heat peanut oil in the wok, and toss in chopped garlic and scallions. As those sizzle, I add a spoonful of chile-garlic sauce and a spoonful of fermented black beans. Then I add the squid and start stir-frying briskly, adding a splash of rice wine. As soon as the squid turns opaque (perhaps a minute), I turn it out into the bowl of noodles. Then I put the wok back over the heat and toss in a bunch of chopped greens, like bok choi or beet greens, and stirfry with a bit of soy sauce until wilted, then scrape those into the noodles as well. Serve hot. Slurp.

We’ve been in the mood for Chinese food a lot lately, but were wanting some new ideas. Opening some Chinese cookbooks at random led me to a chicken recipe in Land of Plenty that I’d never noticed before. It’s called Tai Bai, apparently in honor of the poet Li Bai. It’s easy to put together and involves very little chopping, which is a real selling point some nights. It has no garlic or ginger – the primary flavors are chiles, both dried and pickled, plus Sichuan pepper. It’s moderately fiery, so I wouldn’t recommend this one if you don’t have much spice tolerance. We think it’s delicious.

The recipe lets you substitute Thai pickled chiles for the Sichuan variety, which was lucky for us as we happen to have a large jar of Thai peppers that we bought on a whim last year, but it also tells you to add a spoonful of pickled chile paste to support the flavor. I used sambal oelek.

The first time I made this I had some fresh chicken stock on the stove that hadn’t been defatted, so the final dish was good and schmaltzy. The second time it was less oily, but still delicious – the chicken gets really tender and infused with flavor. We also tried steaming broccolini and then stirfrying it with the chicken at the very end so it would absorb some of the chile flavorings. Rice is a must with this – we particularly like it with slightly sticky sushi rice.

Tai Bai Chicken

From Land of Plenty: A Treasury of Authentic Sichuan Cooking by Fuchsia Dunlop

• 1 lb chicken thigh meat, boneless or bone-in, cut into 1½-2 inch chunks
• 1/2 cup peanut oil
• small handful dried red chiles, cut in half and seeds shaken out
• 4 Sichuan pickled chiles, or 6 Thai pickled chiles + 1 tsp pickled chile paste
• 5 scallions, white and green parts separated and cut into 2 inch pieces
• 1 cup chicken stock
• 1 Tbsp rice wine or sherry
• 2 tsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp Sichuan pepper (recipe calls for whole, but we used ground as I find biting into a whole Sichuan pepper a bit daunting)
• 1 tsp sugar
• pinch of salt
• 2 pinches white pepper
• 1 tsp sesame oil

Heat the oil in a wok over a high flame. Watching out for spattering, add the chicken in batches and stir fry about a minute, until it turns white but not cooked through or browned. Remove and set aside.

Remove all but 3 Tbsp of oil from the wok. Set over medium heat and add the dried chiles. Cook until fragrant but not too dark, then add the pickled chiles and paste. Stir fry briefly, then add the scallion whites and fry a bit longer. You don’t want any of the ingredients to burn, so go easy on the heat.

Add the stock, chicken, rice wine, soy, Sichuan pepper, sugar, salt and white pepper. Bring to a boil and simmer gently about 20 minutes, so the chicken cooks through and the sauce evaporates. Ideally you want just spiced oil coating the chicken by the end of cooking. You can remove the dried chiles at this point and discard them.

Just before serving, toss in the scallion greens (and steamed broccoli or other green vegetables if you want a one-pot dinner) and stir it all together. Drizzle in the sesame oil and serve with rice.

After a long hiatus, we just made it back to our current favorite Chinese restaurant, Peaceful in Vancouver B.C. After a mighty emotional struggle, we decided not to get noodles this time. Instead we got Jon’s favorite beef rolls (rich fried bread rolled around thin slices of beef, raw scallion and hoisin sauce, OMG theyaresogood), an order of Sichuan greens and ma po tofu. I burned my mouth and ate way too much and have no regrets whatsoever. The ma po was really good – remarkably like the version we make at home, but with pork instead of beef, loads of Sichuan pepper, and very fresh wobbly tofu – but it inexplicably arrived in a Pyrex pie pan, which made me feel like a complete hog. Not that that’s a bad thing.

We recently made hot and sour soup for the first time, and I can’t imagine why I waited this long. It was prompted by the annual advent of scallion-chive flatbreads, since the chives are shooting up in the garden and we happened to have a bag of cilantro in the fridge, and nothing goes better with these breads than soup. We just picked up a used copy of The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen by Grace Young, and I pulled this recipe out more or less at random. It looked simple and fast, useful features when you’re also making involved flatbreads.

I followed it pretty closely, while leaving out the lily buds, adding a bit of extra pork, and using the pre-shredded black fungus that we’ve become addicted to instead of whole cloud ears. The soup is heated with white pepper and soured with cider vinegar, and the main complaints we had were the lack of salt (fixed with a dab of soy sauce after serving) and the dullness of the vinegar flavor, apparently due to adding it early in the cooking process. When we ate the leftovers I added a bit of fresh vinegar and it was much peppier. But other than that it was really good – soothing and very textural, and the breads (which I made with hot chile oil and plenty of salt) were fantastic dipped into it.

I think we’ll try a variation on the recipe soon – maybe Barbara Tropp’s version which uses rice vinegar and soy. Does anyone have a recipe for hot and sour soup they really like? I think this could become part of our regular rotation.

Hot and Sour Soup

Adapted from The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen by Grace Young. Serves four.

• 1 quart chicken broth
• 1/4 cup dried black fungus
• 1 block silken tofu, cut into cubes
• 6 ounces pork (or less), sliced thinly
• 1 small can slivered bamboo shoots, rinsed and drained
• 2 Tbsp cornstarch
• 2 Tbsp cider vinegar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 bunch scallions, sliced thinly
• pinch of sugar
• 1/2 tsp white pepper

Soak the fungus in cold water for half an hour or until softened. Drain.

Stir together the cornstarch and vinegar in a small bowl with one tablespoon of water.

 Bring the chicken broth to a boil in a saucepan.

When the broth is boiling, add the fungus, tofu, pork, and bamboo shoots, and bring back to a boil. Add the cornstarch mixture and continue to cook at a boil, stirring, until the soup thickens. Remove from the heat and stir in the beaten egg, scallions, sugar and pepper. I would also add another splash of cider vinegar at this point, to taste.

Ladle into bowls and serve with soy sauce and hot sauce, with flatbreads or buns. Also good ladled over leftover rice.