Sauteed chicken Chengdu style 成都子雞

from PM’s CC Vol I. This is pretty much a solo act for the chicken, with very minimal trappings to take away the spotlight. A slew of seasonings gives the meat a very complex flavor, beginning with the sweet-sour taste of Chinkiang vinegar and ending with a blast of heat from the hot peppers.

成都 cheng2du1 — city in China

子雞 zi3ji — chicken! well, 雞 is chicken. 子 can mean child, or nothing at all.

The big bag in the middle is the Szechuan peppercorns. And that is clearly not half a chicken in the dish but boneless chicken thigh.

This dish was actually pretty straightforward, and I didn’t end up changing much. PM calls for us to chop up half a raw chicken, but whole chickens really aren’t something I have on hand since I only cook for one person (me). Ideally one would substitute something like a whole chicken leg, thigh and drumstick, with bone. I, however, also lack the knife power to chop up chicken bones. I chose instead to use boneless thigh meat because of all the spiciness in the recipe; the fattier thigh should balance nicely with the heat.

When PM says “shred”, she really means “fine julienne”, maybe 1/8″ thick. I don’t think you’re supposed to mash up some scallion into your grater, or even use it on the celery. The photo shows a big stalk of celery, but I actually ended up using a few stalks from the heart of the celery bunch, saving the rest for use with hummus.

In step 4, PM’s version actually calls for adding a whole cup of water, covering, simmering 5 mins, and then thickening the sauce with cornstarch. I’m not a huge fan of cornstarch-thickened sauces, so I added less water, kept the heat on medium high, turned the exhaust fan on, and stirred to keep the meat moist. Most of the water evaporated, leaving a thick sauce that I could stir the scallion and celery into.

Time spent: 30 mins

Difficulty level: not so bad. Some fine vegetable chopping, but meat is in larger chunks.

Ooh look, everything's so beautifully shiny.

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Stir-fried shredded chicken vegetarian style 炒素雞絲

from PM’s CC Vol III. There’s no chicken in this recipe, just “vegetarian chicken”, which is a rolled up sheet of wheat gluten. I used to hate that stuff when I was a kid because it had this strange rubber-like consistency and off-putting blandness. Big surprise, then, when I tried PM’s version for a couple vegetarian friends and it was so tasty I didn’t want to let it out of my reach. The gluten is unrolled and cut into very thin strips, then stir fried into chewy noodles. The bamboo, mushrooms, and peppers give this dish a world of textures: soft mushrooms, crunchy peppers, crispy bamboo. And not at all bland.

炒 chao3 — stir-fry

素雞 su4ji1 — vegetarian chicken, aka wheat gluten stick. There’s also vegetarian duck, which might be different in some way but I sure can’t tell how so. These sticks are often sliced into coins, mingled with soy sauce, sesame oil, etc and eaten as a cold appetizer. Find them in a bucket of water at your Asian grocery, and store them in your fridge in a bowl covered with water.

絲 si1 — thin, shred-like strips. Everything in this recipe is cut into this shape.

The creepy, larval-looking objects in the metal bowl are the wheat gluten sticks. The yellow-brown thing behind the bell peppers is the bamboo shoot. To the left of the chili peppers huddle five dried mushrooms that have yet to be soaked. Sesame oil is not pictured.

The gluten sticks get blanched for a little bit before everything is stir-fried together in one hot mess.

As usual I fiddled with the main ingredients a little…six gluten sticks is really too much to deal with (see next paragraph), and I thought an extra bell pepper would be great. In retrospect, it really tilted the balance a little too far on the pepper side. I’d recommend sticking with two peppers, particularly if you’re also cutting back on the gluten.

In step 1, PM says oh-so-casually to unroll the wheat gluten. This is actually really tough, since the sheets are delicately thin and tear easily. The first time I tried this, I was frustrated like crazy and felt like hunting down PM to give her a piece of my mind. Now that I’ve had a little practice, it’s not so bad…but not so good that I’d unroll more than 3 of these in a day.

My best unrolling attempt. You don't get to see the worst, hah!

As for how thin the shreds should be, I’d recommend an eighth of an inch. This goes for everything else, really, but the mushrooms can be a little thicker.

Dealing with a fresh bamboo shoot can also be a bit of a pain. There’s all that outside crap to cut off

On the right we have a puny naked bamboo heart. On the left we have a mountain of bamboo outerwear, soon to be compost.

and you’re left with a mini-heart to chop up. I read somewhere that you have to boil bamboo for 30 minutes or else it’s poisonous and will kill you. Not sure if this is true or a kitchen myth, but I sure don’t want to die of bamboo poisoning ( I’d prefer ice cream overdose) so I go ahead and do it.

I’m always quite careful to remove all the seeds in the chili peppers since I’m a wuss when it comes to spiciness–the heat in this recipe is just about all I can take! But what with making this and the Chengdu chicken today, and chopping more chilis for a Chinese new year steamed fish yesterday, my fingertips are suffering first-degree burns!

Time spent: 1 hour

Difficulty level: lots and lots of chopping, plus surgeon-level steadiness of hands for unraveling gluten sticks.

Coulda chopped the green peppers a little thinner...but aren't the colors lovely?

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Sliced beef with broccoli 玉蘭炒牛肉

from PM’s CC Vol II. Ever had beef with broccoli at a cheapo Chinese takeout place, where the beef chews like it’s descended from Victorian-era boots, and when the tough mass slides down your throat you hope you won’t need the Heimlich? This dish is nothing like that. The beef is tender enough to melt in your mouth, and the vibrant green leaves of the broccoli hold oodles of mildy beefy, savory sauce. Straightforward and simple, this is something I regularly make and bring to work for lunch. With a bit of brown rice and a piece of fruit, you’ve got a complete meal.

玉蘭 ü4lan2 — jade broccoli, a fancy name for what I’d call 芥蘭 or 唐芥蘭: Chinese broccoli.

炒 chao3 — stir-fry, basic cooking technique where you heat a bit of oil very hot, throw in some stuff, and cook while stirring it around.

牛肉 niou2rou4 — beef

Blue bag sugar for marinating beef; large crystal sugar for seasoning sauce.

This recipe follows the basic steps of a PM stir-fry. Marinate sliced meat; quickly stir-fry over high heat and remove; cook vegetables, stir-frying with meat and seasoning sauce; remove and serve STAT.

Since meat is pricey and vegetables are cheap, I used 1/2 lb flank steak and slightly over 1 lb of Chinese broccoli (the whole bunch in the photo). The key to this recipe is slicing the beef very very thin—at most 1/8″ thick. It’s easier if the beef is a little frozen and you’ve got a sharp knife. This has been my job since I was a wee little girl (come home from school, start the rice cooking, and slice some meat very very thin! then read books and eat raisins) so I am pretty good at it. Bring it on!

The ginger should also be sliced very thin, and the scallion on diagonal. The vegetables should be blanched until tender and barely cooked—they should have a very slight crunch to them but not be mushy.

The beef cooks really fast on high heat (especially when it’s very very thin!) so be sure to keep stirring constantly, and remove immediately after the last bit of red is gone. Being half French, I enjoy my meat bloody, but here it’s good to have it a little pink at most.

As for the seasoning sauce, if you don’t have oyster sauce, no big deal. I’ve made this before with just soy sauce and it’s still plenty tasty. Oyster sauce is a little sweeter than soy, so adjust the sugar to taste.

Time spent: 1 hour, including marinating time

Difficulty level: slicing meat requires some skill; other stuff is relatively simple.

A closeup of the final product. Yum...

...so tasty!

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Sauteed bean curd sandwiches 鍋貼豆腐

from PM’s CC Vol II. These adorable little “sandwiches” feature tender pieces of tofu with a little pork, well, sandwiched in between. The sauce is a classic soy sauce-ginger-scallion combo, very fragrant.

鍋貼 guo1tie1 — literally, potsticker. also the Chinese name for–you guessed it!–potstickers.

豆腐 dou4fu3 — tofu. yum.

Ingredients for tofu pork sandwiches. Yellow-capped jar is chicken stock.

I was hovering over the bucket of fresh tofu at the Chinese grocery, careful not to puncture the delicate pieces with my metal tongs while rooting around for pretty-looking, uncracked pieces. They come in chunks of 2″ by 2″ squares, 1″ thick, so I needed 4 for this recipe. One, two, three…there I was, bag of tofu in one hand, candidate #4 held in tongs of the other, when my nose started itching. What a conundrum! I had to (1) not sneeze in the bucket of tofu (2) not sneeze on other shoppers and (3) keep my tong hand steady so its piece of tofu didn’t get squashed in my sneeze-spasm: for this recipe I clearly needed perfectly shaped tofu, and did this store have a “you squish it, you buy it” policy? I didn’t want to find out.

Safely home, I refrigerated the tofu in a deep bowl covered in water. Fresh tofu will usually keep for a day or two, no more than 3, this way as long as you change the water daily.

Slicing the tofu (step 2) requires some patience and steady hands, since the tofu is pretty delicate, but also quite enjoyable with a sharp knife sliding right through…

slicing real carefully, quarter inch thick...

I think I fit slightly more than 1 teaspoon of pork in each sandwich.

constructing sandwiches, very carefully!

For step 4, I really really didn’t want to deep fry the sandwiches. Instead I used a nonstick pan, pouring in just enough oil to cover the bottom, and fried all the sandwiches at once. I got impatient and probably didn’t wait long enough before flipping the sandwiches over, going more for “golden” than for “brown”. I was, however, pleasantly surprised at how easily they flipped: frying even one side firms up the whole sandwich enough that you don’t have to panic over the tofu falling apart as you pick them up. I was able to flip them using only chopsticks.

fry on one side until golden brown, then flip over

For step 5, 1 Tb of oil is more than adequate; you just need enough to moisten the scallion and ginger. Decide for yourself whether you need to add the 1/4 ts salt; I didn’t. I simmered uncovered for step 6, occasionally basting the tofu with the cooking sauce, until the sauce was reduced and thickcned by the flour coating on the tofu. PM suggests additional thickening with cornstarch paste, but I found that to be totally unnecessary.

Baste with sauce so the tofu is nice and moist.

Time spent: 45 minutes

Difficulty level: requires patience and a delicate hand with the raw tofu, and bravery in the face of sputtering hot oil when frying.

Here they are! So cute.

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Ma-Po’s Bean Curd 麻婆豆腐

from PM’s CC vol I. Tender cubes of tofu are set off by flavorful bits of ground pork, all drenched in a sizzling, spicy sauce. Great for warming up on cold days, or cooling off on hot nights via the spice-induced sweat method.

麻婆 ma2po2 — literally, “sesame (or numb) grandma”.

豆腐 dou4fu3 — tofu. My fave!

Very very famous, classic Szechuan dish. Read more about it here. Not having been raised in the spicy tradition, I actually have no clue how PM’s version stacks up in terms of authenticity, tastiness, etc.

Method:

1. cut bean curd into 1/2 inch cubes and deep fry in hot oil about half a minute. alternatively, blanch in boiling water for 2 minutes and drain.
2. heat 3 Tb oil in pan. add ground pork, fry, chopping to pieces, until done. add garlic, hot bean paste, soy sauce, salt if using, soup stock, and bean curd. boil 3 minutes.
3. thicken with cornstarch paste, reduce heat, mix well and add scallion and sesame oil. toss to combine, remove to plate, and sprinkle with peppercorn powder.

Lotsa bottles in this one, and a tired looking scallion. Naturally I will remove the tired bits from the scallion before using it. The mystery jar with the yellow cap contains chicken stock, and the white-capped jar is hot bean paste.

In a nutshell, deep fry (or poach) the tofu, stir-fry the meat with seasonings, add the tofu, mix well, sprinkle with powdered Szechuan peppercorn.

I used 1 lb of soft fresh tofu, and cut it into cubes a bit smaller than 1/2″ and a bit larger than 1/4″ (perhaps 1/3″?). I’ve done the half-inch cubes, and they’re ok, but I actually think the smaller cubes are easier to deal with in the pan when I’m trying to mix the pork and sauce with the tofu, and larger pieces of soft tofu seem to fall apart more easily.

Brown peppercorn is PM’s term for Szechuan peppercorn. The spice bottle I use actually calls it hot peppercorn; I went by the Chinese name, 花椒, to make sure I had the right thing. PM calls for these quite frequently, either whole or powdered. If you’re serious about Chinese cooking, I’d definitely recommend obtaining some.

I used chicken stock, which I happened to have on hand, but I’ve used water in the past as well and it’s been fine (might want to add a bit of salt to that one). 1 cup was a bit too much liquid, I think, especially if you’re going to omit the cornstarch paste; in that case, I’d go with as little as 1/2 cup soup stock.

I, of course, didn’t deep fry the tofu. Otherwise I followed the recipe pretty closely, other than omitting the salt. In step 2, PM says to boil (simmer) the mixture for 3 mins; with my 1 cup of soup stock, I needed more time to boil off enough liquid to reduce the sauce to reasonable volume. Against my usual inclinations I even added the cornstarch paste, but this is really quite optional (I usually don’t thicken my sauces because cold semi-solid cornstarched sauces are gross!).

With my 1 Tb or so of hot bean paste, the result was fairly spicy by my standards but definitely manageable (even more so when I eat it with rice). PM suggests, for the hard-core among us, adding chili oil for that extra oomph. I’d also increase the ratio of hot bean paste to soy sauce if you’re really going for a kick.

Time spent: 20 mins

Difficulty level: elementary, my dear. especially if you’re not deep-frying.

Grandma Sesame would be proud! Mystery black speckles are the peppercorn powder.

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