Cooking The Books

The Food of Xi'an

Heading northwest from Chengdu one reaches a city called Xi'an.  It is most famed for the discovery of the marvellous Terracotta Army, thousands of buried terracotta soldiers set out in battle formation ready to guard the soul of China's first Emperor Qin Shu Chang - which is a thorughly impressive site.  Archealogy aside there's also lots to please the intrepid gastronome.  Xi'an is home to a large Hui (Chinese muslim) population and whilst they may not differ genetically from the Han Chinese a visit to the Muslim quarter shows their diet does, not least through the Chinese staple meat of pork.  I've heard it said that the pork issue was the biggest barrier in China to the spread of Islam and with its central place in Chinese cuisine, and the importance of cuisine here, I can well believe it.  The religion spread pretty well in these parts though so in Xi'an the sheep plays a big role.  I'm a it behind on the blogging so will have to do another list style post, I'm sure I'll do another format some day soon though.

Sichuan Main Courses

Whilst I mainly ate xiao chi we did have the occasional main course over our 5 days in Chengdu.   I wasn't going to bother blogging these but Sichuan food seems popular so I will. 

Fish Fragrant Aubergine - this dish is one I've made at home, as have afew folk I know through food forums.  A deep frying turns the aubergine into melt in the mouth buttery goodness, the ubiquitous chili (through the umami laden fermented chili bean paste) turns it into one of the greatest aubergine dishes known to man.   I'd rather be writing about cooking it than eating it in a restaurant, helping out with a recipe, but as I'm stuck here I highly recommend Sunflower's recipe, go the whole hog and deep fry though.

Kong Pao Chicken - the coated chicken with masses of sauce of some English versions of this dish bear little resemblance to the real thing, which in typical Sichuan fashion had oil as an integral part of the dish, with a little sauce clinging to the juicy morsels of chicken.  The restaurant we ate this in took the liberty of toning it down for tourist tastes without asking us, much to my displeasure - it could have done with far more dried chillies.  Whilst I'm pointing folk to recipes I've had great success with this one.

Pig's Trotter with Seaweed - no idea if it's Sichuan food but I ate it in Sichuan.  Tender pig's trotter sat in a plain but meaty stock with such mouthfeel that you know it would have set to a firm jelly with the slightest drop in temperature.  Crunchy seaweed (the thick kind, no laver here) added some veg and welcome vitamins.

Cold Beef with Chili - in a quest to find the UK takeaway favourite shredded beef with chili's true form I came across this dish when a restaurant opposite Chengdu's very interesting Jinsha Museum said they had something similar.  Whilst not overly similar (it did contain beef and chili) it was Sichuan through and through, cold beef slices and crunchy vegetables (celery and spring onion) were coated in masses of ground dried chili and Sichuan pepper.  Reach for this tissues as this was hot, hot, hot.

Unknown Aubergine Dish - this strange one was grabbed from a table of dishes outside a restaurant, a popular method of displaying what's on offer in Chengdu eateries.  Cold, soft aubergine sat with sliced green chili, onion and garlic.  Hao chi (good eat i.e. tasty).

 

Shredded Beef with Chili (or gan bian niu rou) - this dish was finally tracked down and was surprisingly similar to the UK, even if there were some noticeable differences.  The batter was thinner, so less batter more beef.  There was a strong hint of Sichuan pepper, both in the beef's coating and as whole peppercorns in the sauce.  Said sauce was the main difference too, gone was the sweetness and stickiness relpaced with - you guessed it - oil, which had been turned red with the addition of some chili bean paste.  I made extensive notes on this dish so am hoping to recreate it whenever I choose to return home.

Suan La Tang (sour hot soup) - I wanted to track down hot and sour soup like I eat in the UK but couldn't find anything similar, although I know it exists over here.  I did end up with this fine dish though.   Egg and tomato soup (and scrambled egg with tomato) is eaten everywhere over here and this had been transformed to a sour and hot version with the addition of pickled green chilies, the chilies providing the hot and their vinegar providing the sour.  Very tasty and, I imagine, very easy to replicate even without a recipe.

That's it for Sichuan folks.  Seeing them all laid out in these few posts, and knowing I've not blogged everything I ate, I think I've done pretty well for just 5 days in province.  Bye bye Sichuan, you will be missed.

A Chengdu Market

There's been so many market posts on here I've run out of words to describe them.  It's easier just to look at the pictures.  I still can't get pictobrowser to work though so it'll have to be a link to flickr instead and one shot as a teaser.

Chengdu Market - Just South of People's Park

Sichuan Xiao Chi

It's a bit of a lengthy post this one.  The Chinese have a wonderful name for snacks 'xiao chi', or little eat, and Sichuan is famous for them, whether it's small bowls of noodles, dumplings, breads or fried things.  Here's a selection of the xiao chi I ate in my few days there.  It's nearly the end for Sichuan on here so fans of the cuisine should lap it up while they can.

Noodles

On top of the dan dan mian and tian shui mian I also had.

Cold rice noodles with vinegar - much like a salad dressing the black vinegar and chili oil really lifts the rice noodles, cucumber (quite nice in this dish) and torn tofu.  Available all over the place and a fine packed lunch for a train journey.

Sichuan Hotpot

If you're trying to work your way through the gamut of archaetypal Sichuan dishes there's no way you can forget the hotpot.  As with any hotpot meat and veg of your choice are dropped into simmering liquid and given a few minutes to cook at the table before being removed and eaten.  Where the Sichuan hotpot differs from most is its choice of liquid, the common one being an obscenely fiery mix of stock, oil, dried chillies and Sichuan pepper.  It's so spiced and fiery that drinking it is out the question, the drops that cling to the morsels, let alone a mouthful of it, being enough to bring a tear to your eye.  For those of a less fireproof disposition you can get your hot pot ying yang, half hot and half plain stock.  By the end of the meal spillage tends to render the plain stock a tad spicy too though.

Since earlier epsiodes of near impossible ordering in restaurants I've taken to studying the English Chinese dictionary and have learnt a fair few Chinese symbols for food.  There's a big long list of meats and veggies that I now recognise so at least I have some idea what I'm ordering.  Most of the time I've no idea how it will be prepared but at least I know I'm getting pork and bak choi, and not more cucumber.  My dining companions knew this and so I was given full charge of the menu, a position I relish.  If they were close friends they'd have been in trouble (I've memorised a fair few bits of offal in Chinese too) but as they were poeple I'd only met a few hours before in the hostel I was pretty kind, just one bit of animal inside in the form of brown (she said she had a green one too?) tripe.  Joining the tripe was pork, beef, lamb, Chinese cabbage, beancurd skin, water spinach and bamboo shoot.  The waitress pushed me towards some fish and I went with her on it, even though my lack of fish symbol knowledge left me fairly clueless as to what we would receive.

We cracked on and it all went down remarkably well, even the tripe was eaten by everyone.  The pork was already battered and cooked, the coating going wobbly with simmering and soaking up lots of the fiery liquor.  The beancurd skin came in rather chopstick unfriendly pieces, probably 20cm long and a complete nightmare to navigate into the mouth once cooked.  We'd all had quite a good fill by the time the late arriving fish made an appearance.  I was expecting some finely trimmed fillets, bite-sized portions perfect for a quick dip and nibble.  I couldn't have been further from the truth as an entire catfish, probably weighing near a kilo turned up. 

They'd had the decency to fillet it, and split the head in half for those wanting a ferret around inside the skull, but bite-size it wasn't.  Luckily a waitress spotted our bewildered faces and came over to the do the cooking of it for us.  I'd heard catfish was muddy tasting but here no hint of mud was going to get past the crimson broth, a broth so spicy that by the end of it the numbness in my lips had spread half way across one cheek where I'd been wiping my mouth dry with the back of my hand.