EatingAsia

Dumpling Knots (麵疙瘩)

Dumpling knots (mian geda in Mandarin) are a staple in this house, a dish I've been cooking and adapting for almost a quarter of a century (!!).

This version of the dish is basically a Sichuanese pork and dumpling stew. As a recipe it's near perfect.There are few ingredients (Sichuan peppercorns and crushed dried red chili being the most "exotic"), it requires minimal prep time, and the result delivers big, satisfying flavors with a high comfort quotient.

I first encountered dumpling knots on a wiltingly humid afternoon in August 1984, shortly after I moved to Chengdu. On my second or third day in town a grad student friend from the history department took me to a shed with two rickety wooden tables and a big cauldron of soup set over a charcoal-fired brazier by the entrance. We were served large bowls of broth packed with bits of pork, lengths of pea vine and uneven knots of dough about half the size of my thumb. At the table we added spoonfuls of chili oil and sprinklings of ground Sichuan peppercorn. The pasta was rough-textured and chewy, manna to a noodle lover.

Though that meal made a big impression I never went back. I was in a fog in those early days, everything new and confusing and overwhelming. I had no idea where the shop was, and I didn't remember to ask. Each day in Chengdu brought scads of unfamiliar, delicious dishes, outrageously good meals. Dumpling knots receded to the back of my mind.

It was 18 months before I ate them again -- in Michigan -- when I prepared the dish from a recipe in a Sichuan cookbook my mother-in-law-to-be gave me. I fell right back in love with dumpling knots all over again. I've been making the dish, often, ever since.

In the intervening years I've adapted this recipe so much -- subsituting one ingredient for another, adding Sichuan peppercorns and dried chilies in at the beginning, increasing the amount of cabbage so that it resembles more a stew than a thick dumpling soup -- that it bears scant resemblance to its original form. But I have to give credit and high praise to Ellen Schrecker, the author of Mrs. Chiang's Szechwan Cookbook. Dumpling knots are not the only gem in that volume, which is worth seeking out for its home-style dishes that always remind me of those early years of simple eating and big flavors in Chengdu.

Dumpling Knots -- Mian Geda (Adapted from Mrs. Chiang's Szechwan Cookbook by Ellen Schrecker)

Makes about 4 servings (when it's just the two of us I halve the dumpling recipe)

Think of this dish as pork, cabbage, and dumpling stew with Sichuan flavors. The original recipe calls for much less cabbage, cloud ear mushrooms instead of oyster mushroom, and boneless pork. I like the way the additional extra cabbage thickens the soup and the oyster mushrooms and bone-in pork (I use short ribs) flavor the broth. You could certainly go with more meat, or less, or use a different mushroom (or add some slivers of dried shiitake) or skip the mushrooms altogether. What is essential is the chili oil and ground Sichuan peppercorns to add punch at the end -- and black vinegar, for those who like a bit of sourness.

The dumpling technique is super simple and will be at least somewhat familiar to anyone who's made spaetzle. Just be sure not to overwork the dough and to keep the dumplings small, certainly no bigger than the first third of your forefinger.

This stew-soup keeps well and the flavors really intensify with an overnight in the fridge.

2 Tbsp peanut oil or other cooking oil

Optional: about 5 dried red chilies, snipped in half  and 1 tsp of Sichuan peppercorns

8 scallions (white plus a couple inches green part), cut into 1-inch lengths

.3 kilos (about 9-10 ounces) pork ribs, preferably cut into short lengths (substitute boneless pork if you prefer)

2 Tbsp soy sauce

1 large head cabbage, shredded

2 handfuls of fresh oyster mushrooms, cleaned and torn into largish pieces (or left whole if small) -- leave the stems on if you like

For Dumplings:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup water (approximately)

For serving:

4 scallions, white part only, thinly sliced

4 tsp sesame oil

To place on the table, for diners to add as they wish:

sandy chili oil (see "recipe" below), ground Sichuan peppercorns, black vinegar, and soy sauce

1. Heat a wok or large heavy Dutch oven, Le Creuset, etc over high heat. Add the oil and swirl it around the pan, then throw in the Sichuan peppercorns and dried chilies, if using. Stir-fry for 20 seconds or until the chilies start to color. Do not let them burn. Add the scallions and stir-fry another 30 seconds.
2. Add the pork ribs and stir-fry until the pink color disappears, then add the soy sauce and stir-fry for another minute.
3. Add the cabbage and mushrooms and stir-fry until the cabbage is wilted, 4-5 minutes. Add water to just barely cover the meat and vegetables and bring to a boil. Partially cover the pan, reduce the heat to a medium simmer, and cook until the meat is tender, about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. (At this point you could turn the stew off and leave it for a couple hours, or refrigerate it overnight and reheat it, before adding the dumplings.)
4. In the meantime, prepare the dumpling dough: in a medium bowl mix the flour, salt, and water together with a fork until the dough is blended and as free of lumps as possible. The dough should be very sticky with a tiny touch of liquidity; it should barely move, slowly and sludgily, when the bowl is tipped.
5. When the meat is done add the dough to the simmering liquid, either by tipping the bowl and "grabbing" a bit of dough at the edge with two chopsticks or even a fork and dunking it in the bubbling liquid to dislodge it -- or by dipping up some dough with a spoon and using another spoon to dislodge it directly into the liquid. Be sure not to make the dumplings too big (though they needn't all be exactly the same size) -- no more than the first joint of your forefinger. Do not try to push the dumplings into the liquid right away --- let them float on top until you're finished with the batter, then replace the lid and let them cook for a minute or two. At that point, gently stir them under and into the stew. Let the dumplings cook for at least ten minutes.
6. In the meantime, divide the chopped scallions between four bowls and drizzle each with a teaspoon of sesame oil.
7. When the stew is ready ladle it into the bowls, on top of the scallions and oil. Serve and let diners add chili oil, ground Sichuan peppercorn, black vinegar, and soy sauce to taste.

Sichuan-style Sandy Chili Oil -- La Jiao

A Sichuan pantry essential, this chili sauce/oil takes many forms. This is the simplest. Make a heap -- it keeps forever (in Malaysia's humidity I keep mine in the fridge) and if you're a chili hound you may soon find yourself drizzling it on scrambled eggs and adding it to salad dressings. The heat of your chilies will determine the potency of the oil. 

1/2 cup ground dried chilies, preferably Sichuanese

1 cup peanut oil (preferred) or other chili oil

1. Place a small pan over low heat and add the oil. Slowly heat the oil. Meanwhile, have the dried chilies ready in a jar, measuring cup, or other heatproof container that will hold both them and the oil.
2. Watch for the surface of the oil to begin to shift -- not boil! Test its readiness my dropping in a flake or two of chili -- it should sizzle, move about, and give off a little red color. If it blackens the oil is too hot -- turn off the heat and let it cool down.
3. When the oil is ready pour it over the chilies. Stir with a chopstick to make sure all the chilies are exposed to the oil. Leave aside, uncovered, to cool completely. Then cover and store in a cool dark cupboard or in the fridge (if storing in the fridge let the oil come to room temperature before using).

Note: A commenter on the EatingAsia Facebook page says his family makes another version, also with pork, mushrooms and cabbage but in a tomato-based broth. Makes me wonder how many types of mian geda are out there. Does your family make it? Leave a comment!

Another Thing Mr. Zhang Taught Me

No Garlic. Not as in, "Never ever cook with garlic, ever," but as in "When stir-frying greens skip the stinking rose."

(If you're wondering who Mr. Zhang is and what else he's taught me, go to our first post in this very sporadic series, here. And while we're at it, here's an article on Mr. Zhang's place, and other Chengdu eateries like his, that we did a while back for the South China Morning Post: Page 1 and Page 2)

Common knowledge says when you're stir-frying green leafy veggies in the Chinese manner you want to throw in some chopped garlic. But beginning wok jockeys -- heck, even myself on occasion -- often find that the garlic browns too quickly, or burns as it's being tossed with the greens once they're in the pan. One way to deal with this occasional issue is to fry the garlic, remove it from the wok, fry the greens, and then add the garlic back in.

But like many Sichuanese cooks Mr. Zhang has a better, easier way of adding in flavor to those stir-fried veggies: skip the garlic in favor of suan miao.

Suan miao, or leeks, show up in many Sichuanese dishes. A properly made mapo dofu gets its jade-green accents from the green part of suan miao. They're stir-fried with la rou (Sichuanese bacon), pork slivers and black beans, eggplant, pressed and dried tofu, and all sort of other ingredients. They're heaped in mounds in Chengdu markets, tucked into shopping bags, and bundled home under arms.

And, in Mr. Zhang's kitchen at least, the greenest part of suan miao substitute for chopped garlic when he stir-fries rape, mustard and other green leafy vegetables.

We can't find suan miao here in Kuala Lumpur, so I substitute scallion greens. And since returning from our last trip to Chengdu I have been turning out some pretty fantastic chao qing cai (fried green veggies). These stir-fried greens (choy sum/flowering mustard, usually) find their way to our table two or three times a week. For our Sichuan-leaning palates, they're best with a few Sichuan peppercorns and dried chilies thrown into the mix, a la Chez Zhang.

Thanks Mr. Zhang!

Mr. Zhang's Stir-fried Leafy Greens (A Recipe of Sorts)

I understand there is a raging debate among Asian cookbook authors whether or not one should dry one's greens before stir-frying. If I had a flame like Mr. Zhang's (see above) I never would dry my greens. But all I've got is a regular gas burner with a pretty unimpressive BTU. I find that spinning my greens dry a few times after washing makes for a much more successful stir-fry. Experiment or, to err on the safe side, dry those greens.

Cooking oil (rapeseed oil gives that Sichuan flavor; if that's unavailable, peanut oil is preferred)

OPTIONAL but authentically Sichuanese: a heaping tsp or two of Sichuan peppercorns, whole and unroasted AND a heaping tbsp. or two of dried red chilies, snipped in half crosswise

About 1 lb. / one half kilo sturdy greens (Sichuanese rape, mustard greens/choy sum, gai lan leaves, bok choy, etc) -- sliced into 1-inch/3-cm shredds, washed and if you prefer, spun dry

a good handful of scallion greens, washed and snipped into 2-inch/4-cm lengths

salt

a Tbsp or two of stock or water

1. Set a wok or big frypan over high heat, and add a good glug or two of oil. Swirl the oil over the surface of the wok/pan and heat till not quite smoking.
2. Toss in chilies and Sichuan peppercorns, give a good stir but don't let the chilies blacken.
3. Start adding greens by the handful, stirring and tossing as you go. When the last of the greens are in add a few pinches of salt (less if you're using salted stock). Stir-fry for a minute or two, tossing to expose all green to the heat.
4. Add just a bit of stock or water (you don't want a pool in the bottom of your wok/pan, you just want to moisten the greens a bit to create a little steam) -- this may not be necessary if you haven't dried your veggies, toss, and cover the pan.
5. Check after a minute or two. The veg stems should still be fairly crunchy. Now, throw in your scallion / leek greens, toss for a minute or so, and turn the lot onto a plate.

 

What Mr. Zhang Taught Me

Mr. Zhang taught me many things. Let's start with this: No Soy Sauce.

In September we ate, over the course of 5 days, seven or eight meals at the Chengdu "fly" restaurant of Zhang Lingchen and his wife. One thing I love about these low-key establishments is the accessibility of their kitchens. Want to learn how to cook a few local dishes? No need to sign up for a class. Just find a fly restaurant serving food you that strikes a chord and hang out in the kitchen.

Granted, some cooks will be more receptive than others to close observation and note-taking. When we asked, Mr. and Mrs. Zhang opened their door wide.

We had some wonderful meals at Mr. Zhang's table. They all came from a kitchen that justifies use of the  over-used adage "less is more".

A cement floor, a single window, two doors, a small refrigerator. Two gas burners (I only ever saw one used at a time),

a simple shelf holding wok-ready fresh ingredients,

and a wok-side table displying Mr. Zhang's mise en place.

Left to right, top to bottom (disregard the bowl at the very upper left; it's a dish in progress):

sliced green onions, Pixian chili bean paste, soy sauce, black vinegar

sliced green chilies, sugar, MSG, salt, chopped ginger

salted black beans, cornstarch, chopped garlic, thickly sliced garlic.

Not in the photograph are a bowl of chopped tomatoes, whole dried red chilies (2 varieties, one for fragrance and one for heat), and whole hua jiao (Sichuan "peppercorns"). On a shelf under the table, pickled ginger and pickled red chilies, and sliced local leeks.

Mr. Zhang's restaurant shares a narrow alley with a couple of others. His is always busy, even when his competitors are quiet. Many of his customers come from nearby construction sites and run tabs that they pay when they receive their salaries. But others come from beyond the neighborhood. After a couple of visits we saw familiar faces. We're not the only ones who like Mr. Zhang's food.

One of the restaurant's most popular dishes is corn and edamame stir-fried with sliced green chilies and sometimes, la rou -- pine bough-smoked and air-dried pork belly.

If you visit Chengdu you must eat la rou. And if you live somewhere with lax customs and visit Chengdu, you must pack at least 3 vacuum-packed kilos of la rou home with you. That's what we did in September, and we're wishing it had been 5 kilos.

One night I watched first Mr. Zhang and then Mrs. Zhang, when the Mr. disappeared on his motorbike for half an hour, make yumi huangdou larou pian (corn with edamame and la rou slices). As with many of Mr. Zhang's dishes this one contains no soy sauce. In fact, other than the la rou it incorporates no ingredients explicitly "Chinese".

This is one of a few things that I took away from Mr. Zhang's kitchen -- salt is used as often, perhaps more often, than soy sauce. I don't think I once saw him add soy sauce to a vegetable dish. Which, if you've ever gawped at the vegetables on display at a market in Chengdu, makes perfect sense.

When you're working with ingredients as beautiful as those which Mr. Zhang has at his disposal seasoning beyond salt would be overkill.

Mr. Zhang's Stir-fried Corn and Edamame with Sliced Bacon

This is not a difficult or time-consuming dish (that can be said for most everything from Mr. Zhang's kitchen, actually). After you've gotten your ingredients together -- which may be very quick indeed if you're using frozen veggies -- it will take all of three to five minutes to cook.

La rou is probably not available where you live -- substitute a really good quality bacon (smoked is best, but it doesn't have to be), or maybe guanciale, or any other super porky cured meat. Don't cut off the fat! And don't overdo it with the protein -- there's plenty of meat here, but it shouldn't overshadow the flavors of the vegetables. Instead the meat's saltiness and the smokiness of the wok should enhance them.

What makes or breaks this dish is a pan or wok hot enough to give a little smokiness. I've successfully stir-fried on an electric stove using a flat-bottomed non-stick frying pan, and I make do now with a wok and a crappy gas burner. The secret is letting your pan get so hot that a drop of water sizzles and evaporates on contact.

This is a great, easy anchor dish for a Chinese meal -- paired perhaps with something spicier and a plain soup. It's also wonderful topped with a fried egg!

1 or 2 long green chilies, sliced about 1/4-inch / 1/2-cm thick

1 to 1 1/2 cups each corn kernels and edamame -- if using frozen, do not defrost

1 1/2 - 2 inches/3-5 cm of bacon (or other cured pork product) sliced about 1/8-inch/ 1/4-mm thick

Salt

Cooking oil -- preferably rapeseed or peanut oil

1. Heat your pan/wok to very hot. Test by flicking in some water -- it should sizzle and evaporate.
2. Add a glug of oil, pick the pan/wok up and swirl the oil over its surface.
3. Throw in the green chili and bacon/pork. Stir-fry for 1 minute.
4. Add the corn, the edamame, and a pinch of salt. Stir-fry for 1-3 minutes. How long will depend on whether you're using fresh or frozen veggies and how hot your wok is. You only want to barely cook the vegetables. The corn should not be soft.
5. Taste a bit of vegetable for salt and add a bit more if necessary.
6. After one final stir, plate and serve, preferably with rice and maybe a simple soup or another stir-fry.

Delicious, Despite the Presence of Foreigners

There's a piece of food-ish traveler's wisdom that says: If you're in Asia and looking for authentic/delicious/truly local (fill in the blank) food, avoid any stall or restaurant frequented by foreigners.

We say: BS. Believe it or not, some of us actually know good local grub from crap.

The veracity of this assertion was proven to me (again) on our visit to Chengdu in September. Before we left KL Dave picked up an assignment from the New York Times to shoot a food story. (Read the story and see the slideshow here; view some out-takes from the shoot -- one particularly stunning styled image in particular -- here.)

The assignment afforded us the opportunity to sample the offerings at a couple of upscale establishments; both experiences were great, and the food often quite good. But in the end we are jiachang cai (home-style food) folks. So it should come as no surprise that we most cottoned to the vittles that came out of the kitchen at the least pretentious establishment featured in the write-up: Yang Yang.

The thing is, if we subscribed to that 'avoid the places where foreigners eat' traveler's adage above and had arrived at Yang Yang under our own steam, we would never have set foot in the place. There were foreigners, lots of foreigners occupying tables on Yang Yang's front porch, and more inside. More foreigners, in fact, than we've ever seen at any of the places we frequent here in Malaysia.

That said, there were plenty of locals too. The point is -- everyone was there for the same thing: truly delicious renditions of (mostly) Sichuanese favorites.

We were somewhat restricted in what we could order in that Dave needed photogenic dishes. I think we did OK.

Pictured above, 'water-boiled' beef, pig intestines deep-fried and then fried again with fresh green and dried red chilies, and pao cai, or pickle. A hint: wherever you eat in Chengdu, whether it be at a noodle stall or a restaurant like Yang Yang, order pao cai. Every place makes its own, and they're all different.)

Not pictured, because they weren't pretty enough: spinach stir-fried with dried red chilies and hua jiao (Sichuan 'peppercorns'); liang ban zhu er gen (aka fish mint) -- an appealingly astringent, citrusy leaf -- tossed with chili oil-black vinegar-sugar dressing; and what the restaurant calls 'Japanese dofu' (the type of soft, smooth bean curd sold in a plastic tube) in sweet and sour sauce.

The latter dish was Yang Yang's only misstep, clearly designed for foreign palates, cloyingly sweet and just all around meh.

The others, however, would make a Sichuanese grandmother proud. We assured the waitress that yes, we chi la (eat spicy), and the kitchen delivered.

Though the deep-fried intestines were too rich to allow more than a few bites, we loved the contrast of the super fatty, pungent offal with the still-crisp fresh green and the dried red chilies -- a perfect balance. The water boiled beef, perched on a bed of mustard leaves, mostly submerged in a pool of ferociously ma-la oil, and crowned with a golfball of pulverized garlic, qualifies as a dream dish in our books.

More innards (L) and cabbage stir-fried with pork and pickled red chilies

Was this the absolute tastiest meal we had on this last trip to Chengdu? No. But it came darned close, and wecan't wait to mine Yang Yang's menu on our next journey to the land of ma-la.

We'd even be willing to sit next to a table of foreigners.

Yang Yang, 32 Jin Yuan Xiang, Wu Hou District; 86-28-8523-1394.

 

 

Innards Lovers Alert: A Noodle Not to Miss in Chengdu

 

To my mind there are few Sichuanese pasta dishes as delicious as dandan mian . But Chengdu boasts many other noodle specialties well worth keeping your eye out for. There's these comforting shouzhuang mian, for instance. And on a warm day (or even a cold one) it's hard to beat a well-tossed liang mian.

And then there's feichang fen. Unlike the aforementioned dishes this one may not be for everyone. The wonderfully elastic noodles, made of sweet potato flour, are utterly accessible. But the main ingredient, pigs' large intestines, might just give some pause.

Not far from Chengdu's Xin Nan bus station is a shop selling guokui -- both the griddled version, like the greasy-good ones in this post, and the 'tandoor'-baked pita-like version eaten stuffed with your choice of filling (to be honest, here they're not as tasty as the ones we swooned over in this post). In an adjacent room, it's all about feichang fen.

The sweet potato noodles for this dish are made steps from the shop's bubbling pot of innards broth. It's a quick and simple procedure: thickish batter is pushed through a sieve directly into boiling water and after a few minutes the noodles are spooled onto a pair of chopsticks, then transferred to cool water to stop the cooking. There they remain (top photo) until made into a dish.

Proving once again that one can do almost anything while smoking

Like most any Chinese noodle dish feichang fen is made-to-taste fare: spicy or not, with or without bean sprouts or intestine pieces (or with an extra portion of innards). Also available here: xin fei tang, or heart and lung soup.)

For our order the noodle master placed chopped scallions and Chinese celery, la jiao you ('sandy' chili oil), garlic, vinegar, a dash of soy sauce and MSG in bowl.

He placed bean sprouts together with noodles in a long-handled strainer and submerged that into the guts broth, leaving it there just long enough for the sprouts to wilt and the noodles, which are already fully cooked, to heat up

He then dumped these on top of the condiments, topped it all up with a little broth, and added pieces of intestine.

The verdict?

Dave, long an innards lover, truly enjoyed this dish. I eat intestine and other bits and bobs on occasion, but to my palate the broth was over-the-top funky to the point I couldn't bear more than a few sips. (Dave was happy to finish our shared bowl all by his own self.)

The seasoning was perfect, however -- we asked for 'extra spicy' and very vinegar-y and the noodle master delivered on both fronts (thumbs up always to Asian food vendors who take our caucasian selves seriously when we say we want it spicy) -- and the noodles divine. More substantial than rice noodles, not as heavy as wheat noodles, pleasingly elastic, utterly slurpable, sweet potato noodles may just be the ultimate pasta.

An absolute Do Not Miss for any pasta and guts loving traveler headed to Chengdu.

Jin Tang Jiu Long Guo Kui (look for red characters on a white sign), corner of Xin Nan Lu and Nan Tai Lu, Chengdu. Morning to evening.

 

In Chengdu, the Not-Hot Pot Hot Pot

Let it be known that you are headed to Chengdu and you will be told: "Don't miss the hot pot!"

"Make time for hot pot!"

"Be sure to eat hot pot!"

"You gotta have hot pot!"

"I hear the hot pot's amazing!"

Hot pot hot pot hot pot hot pot hot pot hot pot hot pot hot pot.

The truth? Sichuan-style hot pot, a variation on Mongolian hot pot or steamboat that replaces the boiling water in which various items are cooked with oil floating chilies and spices, is not Chengdu's culinary superstar.

Even though it was allegedly invented in Chongqing, hot pot is all over the place in Chengdu. Some streets are lined with what seems to be nothing but huge hot pot emporiums.

A variation on the hot pot theme is chuan-chuan. The name refers to the wooden sticks that ingredients are threaded on. The larger chuan-chuan restaurants are equipped with big walk-in refrigerators, from which you select from 30 or more skewered ingredients, piling the laden sticks up on cafeteria-style plastic trays. At the end of the meal your table is charged according to how many used sticks have accumulated in the container next to it.

Chuan-chuan is fun -- the perfect lazy-meal way to pass an evening with friends -- and it can be tasty and quite cheap. It's good post-bar hopping food, the way a Burger King whopper can be. But in the end, even if the ingredients are stellar, you're cooking them in a big vat of oil. And sometimes that oil has sinister origins, so when it comes to hot pot and chuan-chuan you really need to be careful where you eat. 

Still, the idea -- your own personal selection of ingredients cooked in liquid imbued with chilies and Sichuan peppercorns and other characteristic Sichuanese spices -- does hold great appeal.

Enter mao cai.

Think of mao cai as a single-serving personalized hot pot. The mao cai vendor -- like this woman, working out of a several meter-by-several meter shop in an alley in Chengdu -- has three essential pieces of equipment: a big-ass burner (here, fashioned from an oil drum), an equally large pot, and a handled sieve.

In the pot:broth topped with a thin skim of oil. This lady boils chilies, Sichuan peppercorns, cassia, bay leaves, false cardamom, ginger and other bits for two hours before opening shop.

Stacked on shelves inside the shop, a choice of ingredients:

sliced dried dofu - cucumber - winter melon - oyster mushrooms

bok choy - blood 'pudding' - konnyaku slices - rice 'jelly' noodles

bean sprouts - potato - lotus root

sweet potato noodles - strips of sea vegetable - wood ear fungus

Assembling your meal is as easy as pointing. She grabs a handful of whatever you choose to add to your mao cai, places it in her handled sieve, and lowers it -- each ingredient separately, to get the cooking time right -- into the bubbling cauldron, then deposits it into a bowl. At the end, it's all doused with a few ladles of fragrant broth. Black vinegar, soy sauce, and chili oil at the table are yours to add as you wish.

The end result is hot pot-ish but better. The same big flavor, the same unique-to-you selection of ingredients, but less greasy and easier to eat.

Heading to Chengdu? Skip the hot pot. But do learn to recognize the characters for mao cai:

 冒菜

 

 

 

Tofu and Chilies and Veggies, Oh My!

While in Chengdu last January we spent a few mornings at a small but fabulous wet market (you can read about it here). When we returned to the city last month we found that the market had become a construction site. In many Chinese cities this would be cause for sadness. But Chengdu is bucking general trend away from traditional wet markets and even building new ones in the center of the city. We found that our little market had been moved up the street and around the corner into a big, new, covered home.

(Its copious traditional wet markets, by the way, were just one reason cited by UNESCO when the organization named Chengdu Asia's first City of Gastronomy.)

So we spent a few more mornings there. And wrote and photographed all about it for Zester Daily. Read the story and see the mouthwatering slideshow here.

A Chengdu Street Food Survivor

It's a challenge to find genuine street food in Chengdu. Last year, in a bid to have Chengdu declared China's most wenming (cultured, civilized) city the municipal government initiated a campaign to sweep food vendors from its roads. It seems to have worked pretty well, at least in the center of town.

But one local specialty has survived the purge: dou hua.

Malaysians will recognize dou hua as tau foo fah; it's also known as bean curd custard. In one incarnation (I'll get to the other in a bit) dou hua is silky-smooth soft bean curd that holds it's shape when scooped but jiggles nicely and gives way with the slightest pressure of a spoon. It's eaten warm -- here in Malaysia, most often with a slug of white or palm sugar syrup but in Chengdu,with all of the condiments that make Sichuan food so wonderfully addictive. (Children often eat it with only granulated sugar).

"Dou hua liang mian dou huaaaaaa! Dou hua liang mian dou huaaaaa!" (Dou hua cold noodles dou hua!)

That's a cry you're guaranteed to hear if you set for a spell at the tea garden in the park that runs along the north bank of the Jinjiang River east of Renmin Nan Lu. Several bike-riding female dou hua sellers share the territory, parking one at a time near the the tea garden's entrance, making the rounds shouting their douhua come-on, kicking back for half an hour or so, and then making another effort to rustle up business before hopping on their bikes and moving elsewhere. Within 15 minutes the next seller arrives.

Dou hua is completely personalize-able. I ordered one for Dave and I to share, and after the vendor scooped a bean curd cloud from her plastic bucket and slid it into a paper bowl, answered "yes" to ground Sichuan peppercorns, la jiao (chili flakes in oil), chopped scallion greens, chopped preserved vegetable, black vinegar, soy sauce, and white sugar (just a wee bit). I declined MSG. (I would have ordered cold noodles too but we'd just eaten lunch.)

I suppose that for those not fond of bean curd dou hua might seem a strange and unappetizing snack. All I can say is that the bean curd in Sichuan is delicious (as is the bean curd in Malaysia) -- mildly earthy and well, beany in a way that bean curd made in large factories never can be. It's a fantastic flavor carrier, in this case a vehicle for ma-la (hot and numbing), sour, salty, and sweet.

 

I find almost anything with a custard-like texture to be comforting and the thing about dou hua is that even though it's served hot it's a perfect warm-weather food (believe me, we had some balmy days, weather that made Malaysia seem downright cool, while in Chengdu). It's satisfying and energy-giving, but also quite light.The perfect thing to reverse the effects of heat so hot it sucks the strength right out of you.

Dou hua may just be one of the world's perfect foods.

 

It's also suited to cold weather, as we found last January.

 

An aside -- custardy dou hua is not to be confused with a firmer sort of dou hua with an almost cottage cheese-y texture that's usually available at kuai can ('quick eats') places and restaurants specializing in rice-steamed meat and other steamed dishes.

Kept warm in big bowls of hot water, the firmer version has a slightly sour-ish flavor -- not at all unpleasant -- crumbles wonderfully into rice, and is usually eaten with a heap of one or another type of chili-basd condiment: fermented black beans mixed with chili flakes in oil, salt, and chopped green onions, for instance, or a cooked almost Mexican salsa-like concoction made with fiery long green peppers.

Sadly, we missed out on the latter type of douhua this last trip -- something we'll be sure to make up for in spades on the next.

Chengdu: Fire in the Kitchen

Well, that was quick -- or so it seems, anyway. We're back in Kuala Lumpur after ten days in Chengdu, more convinced than ever that this southwestern Chinese city deserves to be the next gastronomic "it" destination. (In March UNESCO awarded Chengdu the designation of City of Gastronomy.)

On this trip, thanks to an assignment Dave was working on, we had occasion to sample the food at a few of the city's finer (and more expensive) restaurants. We sat at beautifully laid tables, were treated to a few breathtaking presentations, and dined on some very well-prepared dishes.

I'm thankful for the opportunity. But those kind of places just aren't where our hearts lie.

This is what thrilled us when we visited Chengdu last January, what drew us back this time, and what has us already planning our next trip: a low-slung structure of unfinished bricks capped with a corrugated metal roof, on a quiet alley lined with iron rice bowl-era low-rise apartment blocks. Inside: a lone cook making magic one dish at a time.

His equipment: a single wok, a spatula and a ladle, and one burner.

Places like this are called "fly" restaurants. The term isn't much used outside of Chengdu, and it refers to the less-than-hygenic kitchens and dining areas of places like this. But we didn't find fly restaurant conditions to be any more distasteful than those at your average casual southeast Asian eatery or street stall. 

What fly restaurants do have is plenty of soul. These are the places to find real, honest-to-goodness jiachang cai (home-style cooking).

This is Mr. Zhang in his fly restaurant kitchen. Mr. Zhang prepared many meals for us; on some days we ate both lunch and dinner at his place. We hung out by Mr. Zhang's side, watching and listening and peppering him and his wife with questions. Mr. Zhang's been working his single burner for 11 years. He's a master.

Our first taste of Mr. Zhang's prowess:

 

La rou (Sichuanese pine bough-smoked and air-dried pork belly) with Chinese leek shoots and black beans, dofu gan (dried bean curd) with leeks, dried chilies, and Sichuan peppercorn, and qingjiao roupian, slices of pork stir-fried with fiery green chilies and garlic shards. Each dish was so deeply flavorful it could have stood on its own, accompanied by nothing more than rice.

And this was just Meal Number One. It only got better.

  

Now You See It, Now You Don't

In a couple of days we'll be heading back to Sichuan. I've been going through my notebooks from our January trip, and today I'm thinking about a lunch we ate in Chongqing.

Chongqing was a spur-of-the-moment sidetrip inspired by tales of deliciousness, and just plain curiosity. We never made it to Chongqing when we lived in Chengdu in the mid-80s (we never cruised up the Yangtze, either). But as a doctoral student in the late nineties I spent hours in a drafty archives building in Nanjing, reading scratched microfiche of documents which emanated from the city, which served as the provisional capital of the Guomindang-run Chinese Republic from 1937 to 1946. From these documents, and my readings on Republican China during its Chongqing era, I had a vision of an industrial coal smoke-saturated city tumbling down steep hills to the mighty Yangtze.

I wasn't too far off the mark. The air is probably better now than it was then, but the city -- or at least the part of the city that we stayed in -- appears to be permanently covered in soot. It was January, cold and grey and rainy and its streets, which really do wind down steep hillsides, were slick and uninviting.

Chongqing is re-developing rapidly and, as with most other Chinese cities, unattractively. But by accident we ended up staying near one of the Chongqing's oldest neighborhoods, whose twisting lanes and alleys hide a late Qing-era post office and a Republican customs house, among other historical treasures. And that's where we spent much of our two days there.

Two hours after dropping our bags in our hotel we found ourselves at a little shop on the edge of the neighborhood. I doubt that it had any pedigree, but it did boast a sort of ambassador, a friendly elderly busybody who'd been living in the neighborhood for decades. While we ate she drifted over to our table and away again, checking on our progress ("Oh, you really aren't afraid of chili, are you!") and then reporting back to the folks hanging out at the neighboring shops and to others who'd just been passing by when they noticed a couple foreigners feasting on noodles and stopped to investigate.

The lady running the shop was a superb cook, and the dishes on offer were just different enough from much of what we'd been eating in Chengdu to be interesting. We ate daoshao mian ("knife-cut" noodles) two ways: in a spicy broth with plenty of leafy greens and the same yellow peas we'd enjoyed with our "palm" noodles in Chengdu, 

 

and stir-fried with bean sprouts and chunks of lamb.

The noodles were a pasta-lover's dream: thick, uneven, and rough-textured with lots of elasticity and chew, fantastic in soup but even better stir-fried, having sucked up all the smoky flavor of the wok and the richness of the meat.

The food in Chongqing is said to be even more fiery than that in Chengdu. We certainly warmed right away to the lajiao (chili paste) served with our noodles. It was extra chunky with a definate roasted, almost burnt edge and a hint of black vinegar sourness. We added it to our noodles in pingpong ball-sized spoonfuls.

 

Over lunch Dave and I congratulated each other on this find. This little eatery, we knew, would be a place we'd return to on our next, hopefully longer, visit to Chongqing. The city, ugly on the surface, was seeming more and more intriguing.

 

As we were leaving I asked the shop's ambassador for a street address.

"It doesn't matter, this restaurant won't be here next week," she told me. "Didn't you notice that many of these buildings are vacant? The whole area is scheduled for redevelopment."

 

I suspect that if we make it back to Chongqing this time what we'll find in its place is a massive hole in the ground.

It's China: now you see a neighborhood, now you don't.