Heat &#38; Knives &#187; Chinese Cuisine

Chinese Boiled Beef in Fiery Sichuan Broth

Heat & Knives — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 06:08:38 +0000

This dish has hot chiles all over the place: in the broth and scattered on top

From my series of Chinese dishes, this one is most satisfying in the middle of the dark, dismal New York City winter.

It has a thick broth, thin cut slices of beef, strips of celery for a little crunch, and tons of hot chile flavor. This dish will warm you up and clear your sinuses. Have a lot of beer on hand for this one.

Set up and ready to go

The fiery hot broth is just stock mixed into stir-fried chili bean paste, thickened with cornstarch, and balanced out with a little soy sauce. The only Sichuan chili bean paste I could find is very high in sodium, so I mix just a little of it into some Korean chili paste, which has much less sodium. I checked several brands of chili paste and bean paste before buying them, looking for sodium content and devil ingredients like MSG.

Flank steak is tough so cut it thin and against the grain.

There are more steps in the assembly of this dish than in a stir-fry dish, but as long as you’re ready with your mise-en-place, it’s a very easy procedure. So read through the recipe a couple times to understand what’s going on.

Toasting the chiles and peppercorns to release their potency

Be sure to get some good quality, spicy-as-all-get-out dried chiles for this dish, as that’s kind of the main idea…

Simmering the beef and infusing it with spiciness

Heat & Knives

The Recipe

Source: Land of Plenty by Fuchsia Dunlop

1 head of celery (about 1 pound)
4 scallions, white and green parts
a small handful of dried chiles (8-10 chiles)
about 1 pound lean beef (flank steak is good)
salt
1 tablespoon Shaoxing rice wine or medium-dry sherry
about 1/3 peanut oil
2 teaspoons Sichuan pepper
3 tablespoons chili bean paste
3 cups chicken stock
2 teaspoons dark soy sauce
4 tablespoons potato flour mixed with 4 tablespoons cold water, or 6 tablespoons cornstarch mixed with 6 tablespoons cold water

Clean and remove the fibrous outer edge of the celery stalks. Chop each stalk into 3 or 4 sections, then slice these lengthwise into 1/2-inch sticks. Gently crush the scallions and chop them into 3 sections to match the celery. Wearing rubber gloves, snip the chiles in half, discarding as many seeds as possible. Remove any fat from the beef and cut it, against the grain, into thin slices about 1 inch by 2 inches (you should have about ¾ pound of beef after trimming). Add a ¼ teaspoon of salt and the Shaoxing rice wine, mix well, and leave to marinate while you prepare everything else.

Heat 3 tablespoons of oil in a wok until hot but not yet smoking. Add the chiles and Sichuan pepper and stir-fry until they are fragrant and the chiles are just beginning to brown (take care not to burn them). Then immediately slide the spices out into a bowl, leaving the oil in the wok. When they have cooled down a little, move them onto a cutting board and chop them finely with a gentle rocking motion, using a cleaver taken in both hands or a two-handled chopper. Set them aside to use later.

Return the oily wok to the stove and heat over a high flame. When it is smoking, add the vegetables and stir-fry for a minute or two, adding 1/4-1/2 teaspoon of salt to taste, until they are hot and just-cooked but still crunchy. Then pour them into the serving bowl.

Heat another 3 tablespoons of oil in the wok over a high flame, until just beginning to smoke. Turn the heat down to medium, add in the chili bean paste, and stir-fry for about 30 seconds, until the oil is red and fragrant. Add the stock and the dark soy sauce, season to taste with salt, and return to a boil over a high flame. Then add the potato flour or cornstarch mixture to the beef and stir well in one direction to coat all the pieces. When the sauce is boiling vigorously, drop in the beef slices. Wait for the sauce to return to a boil and then use a pair of chopsticks to gently separate the slices. Simmer for a minute or so, until the beef is just cooked, and then spoon it onto the waiting vegetables. Pour over the sauce.

Swiftly rinse out the wok and dry it well. Heat another 3-4 tablespoons of oil in the wok until smoking. Sprinkle the chopped chiles and Sichuan pepper over the beef dish and then pour over the smoking oil, which will sizzle dramatically. If you move quickly, the dish will still be fizzing when you bring it to the table.

This was printed from: Heat & Knives
The site URL: http://www.heatandknives.com
The Title: Chinese Boiled Beef in Fiery Sichuan Broth
The URL: http://www.heatandknives.com/2009/01/chinese-boiled-beef-in-fiery-sichuan-broth/

A bed of celery strips for the beef. Nice contrast of tastes and textures.

I’m writing this in the middle of winter in NYC. This dish would be equally well in the summer time. It’s actually a very pleasant feeling, eating from a fiery hot broth on a hot and humid dog day evening. That’s what I did when I visited Chengdu, capital of Sichuan, in 2005, in the middle of a dreadfully humid summer. Tour around all day seeing the giant pandas and the holy Daoist mountain temple, then kick back at night in one of the city’s countless hot-pot joints, drinking a brew, mopping sweat off my brow as I cook my own food in a simmering broth full of chiles and Sichuan peppercorns, on a gas burner right on my table, my eyes watering from the intense spicy flair.

Other Chinese recipes:

Chinese Spicy Sesame Noodles With Tofu

Heat & Knives — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 10:07:49 +0000

A colorful bowl of noodles

A thick sesame and chili sauce glazes these noodles and flavors the tofu, while preserved vegetables, scallions, and peanuts provide a scattering of funkiness, freshness, and crunch. It’s a simple noodle dish, a street food from Sichuan, China, and it’s easy to put together at home, but it has a beautiful combination of contrasting flavors and textures. The sweetness of the sesame paste and oil contrasts the spicy chili oil in the sauce, while the crunchy peanuts contrast the soft tofu in the topping.

The recipe calls for Sichuan preserved vegetables. Asian supermarkets sell tons of preserved vegetables, but I didn’t see any labeled as Sichuan. I used instead a mixture of sauerkraut and bamboo shoots pickled with soy sauce, sugar, and chili oil, sold by a brand called Oriental Mascot Brand, from Taiwan. Nice funky flavor, very Chinese. When buying things like preserved vegetables, check the ingredients and the sodium content. Some of them contain some nasty stuff.

Scattering and sauce

These noodles make a great light lunch, and somehow they’re also pretty good for breakfast too.

Heat & Knives

The Recipe

Source: Land of Plenty by Fuchsia Dunlop

1 pound soft bean curd
10 ounces dried Chinese flat noodles

For the Sauce:

3 tablespoons sesame paste
3 tablespoons chili oil
2 tablespoons light soy sauce
2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
2 teaspoons sesame oil

For the Scattering:

¼ cup Sichuanese preserved vegetables
3 scallions, green parts only
¼ cup deep-fried or roasted unsalted peanuts

Set the bean curd to simmer very gently in a pot of lightly salted water

Rinse the Sichuanese preserved vegetable and chop it finely. Finely slice the scallions. Combine all the sauce ingredients in a large serving bowl.

Cook the noodles according to the instructions on the package. Then drain them well and place them in the serving bowl. Drain the bean curd and place it on top. Scatter with the peanuts, preserved vegetables, and scallions. Serve immediately.

This was printed from: Heat & Knives
The site URL: http://www.heatandknives.com
The Title: Chinese Spicy Sesame Noodles With Tofu
The URL: http://www.heatandknives.com/2009/01/spicy-sesame-noodles-with-tofu/

Other Chinese recipes:

Hot-and-Numbing Dried Beef & Sesame Beef – Sichuan Chinese Crispy Beef Slivers

Heat & Knives — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 07:55:56 +0000

Hot-and-Numbing Beef, with chili oil, ground chiles, ground Sichuan pepper, and sesame oil

These crispy beef slivers are often eaten as a snack in Sichuan, China, similar to jerky. They are cooked by the “Zha Shou” method (炸收, literally translated as fry and take in), in which the meat is deep fried until crisp, then simmered in an aromatic liquid, which flavors and coats the meat as it reduces.

I tried two different dishes made by this method, Hot-and-Numbing Dried Beef, and Beef Slivers With Sesame Seeds. The recipes are from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Sichuan cookbook, Land of Plenty.

I’m not posting the recipes this time because they’re both rather long and involved. It’s a bit tedious heating deep fry oil and then mixing and heating the simmering liquid and simmering for half an hour, all for just an appetizer. But the beef has a unique taste and crispiness, so it’s worth the effort if you want to look for the book at the library or on Amazon.

The beef for sesame beef fried until crisp

Simmering in stock flavored with soy sauce, rice wine, star anise, and cinnamon

Beef slivers with sesame seeds

Hot and numbing beef simmering in aromatic stock with ginger, scallion whites, soy sauce, and peanut oil.

Other Chinese recipes:

Crisp & Spicy Sichuan Dry Fried Chicken Cubes

Heat & Knives — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 02:16:28 +0000

A little soy sauce turns it a darker red and balances out the flavor.

The Sichuan, China cooking method known as dry-frying turns chunks of tasty dark meat chicken in this dish into crisp, spicy, red-coated delicacies, contrasted with matching slices of celery and scallion greens.

Dry frying is a common cooking method in Sichaun cuisine. Meat is stir-fried until its excess moisture evaporates and it becomes slightly crisp, then chili bean sauce is added to the oil to coat the meat in rich, spicy redness. The vegetables are then added and stir-fried for a minute or two, and the remaining sauce ingredients are added.

Stirring in the chili bean paste

I created two dry-fried dishes from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Sichuan cookbook, Land of Plenty; the other one is a dry-fried beef dish with slivers of celery, ginger, and scallion whites.

Coating the cubes in redness

Heat & Knives

The Recipe

Source: Land of Plenty by Fuchsia Dunlop

2 celery stalks
about 1 pound chicken meat, preferably on the bone (about 2 chicken breasts or 3-4 thighs)
3 whole scallions
¼ cup peanut oil
6-8 dried chiles (about 1/8 ounce)
1 teaspoon whole Sichuan pepper
1 ½ tablespoons Sichuan chili bean paste
1 tablespoon Shaoxing rice wine or medium-dry sherry
1 teaspoon dark soy sauce
salt
2 teaspoons sesame oil

Using a knife, remove the fibrous outer bits from the celery stalks and cut them at a steep angle into 1/2-inch slices. Sprinkle with a few pinches of salt and set them aside while you prepare the other ingredients.

Cut the chicken as evenly as possible into 1-inch chunks. Cut the scallions at a steep angle into slices to match the celery.

Season the wok, then add ¼ cup of oil and reheat until smoking hot. Add the chicken and stir-fry over a high flame for 4-5 minutes, until it has lost much of its water content. (You can achieve this by deep-frying-rather quicker but more extravagant with the oil.) Turn the heat down to medium, add the chiles and Sichaun pepper, and stir-fry until they smell wonderfully spicy. Add the chili bean paste and stir as it releases its fragrance and stains the oil a red-orange color. Splash in the Shaoxing rice wine and stir in the dark soy sauce and 1/4-1/2 teaspoon of salt to taste. Keep stirring over a medium heat for 10-15 minutes, until the chicken is dry, toasty, and fragrant. Then add the vegetables and stir-fry for another minute or two until they are just tender, adding a little more salt to taste. Remove from the heat, stir in the sesame oil, and serve.

This was printed from: Heat & Knives
The site URL: http://www.heatandknives.com
The Title: Crisp & Spicy Sichuan Dry Fried Chicken Cubes
The URL: http://www.heatandknives.com/2008/12/crisp-spicy-sichuan-dry-fried-chicken-cubes/

Other Chinese recipes:

Sichuan Dry Fried Beef Slivers

Heat & Knives — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 03:35:35 +0000

The result: a mixture of crisp beef and vegetable slivers topped off with just the right amount of fiery goodness.

Dry frying is a common cooking method in Sichaun (Szechuan) cuisine. Meat is stir-fried until its excess moisture evaporates and it becomes slightly crisp, then chili bean sauce is added to the oil to coat the meat in rich, spicy redness. The vegetables are then added and stir-fried for a minute or two, and the remaining sauce ingredients are added.

I created two dry-fried dishes from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Sichuan cookbook, Land of Plenty, this one with beef slivers and another with chunks of chicken thigh. As with all stir-fry dishes they’re very easy to assemble, requiring only some extra prep work. These dishes, however, are a little more fun because of the hot red paste added in. It sizzles a bit when it hits the oil, and mixes in to create a wonderful, aromatic little pan sauce. The little bit of soy sauce and salt at the end evens the flavor out, and darkens the color a tad. There’s a nice rhythm involved in making these stir-fries, just be sure you’ve got everything prepped before you start.

First cut the meat into thin slices

Then cut the slices into slivers

Celery, ginger, and scallion whites cut batonnet

Stir-fry the beef until the excess moisture evaporates

Add the chili bean paste and stir-fry to release its potent spiciness

Stir-fry the vegetables for a minute or two

Heat & Knives

The Recipe

Source: Land of Plenty by Fuchsia Dunlop

1 pound lean beef (flank steak is good)
4 celery stalks
salt to taste
a 1 1/2-inch piece of fresh ginger
2 scallions, white parts only
1/3 cup peanut oil
1 tablespoon Shaoxing rice wine or medium-dry sherry
2-3 tablespoons Sichuanese chili bean paste
1 teaspoon light soy sauce
½ teaspoon sesame oil
chili oil to finish (optional)
½ teaspoon ground roasted Sichuan pepper

Cut the beef into thin slices and then against the grain into fine slivers (less than a ¼ inch thick). Discard any fat or gristly bits. Using a knife, scrape off the tough outer strings of the celery stalks, chop them into 3-inch sections, and then cut these lengthwise into thin strips to match the beef. Sprinkle the celery with a little salt to draw out some of the water (about ¼ teaspoon will do). Peel the ginger, slice it, and cut it into fine slivers. Cut the scallion whites into fine slivers to match the ginger.

Season your wok, then add 1/3 cup of fresh peanut oil. Heat over a high flame until smoking, and then add the beef and mix well. The liquid will become cloudy initially as the beef releases its juices. Stir-fry constantly until the liquid has cleared and the beef has lost most of its water content and is beginning to crisp up-this will take about 10 minutes, depending on the beef you use (you will notice that the beef starts sizzling as the water disappears). As the meat dries out, splash the Shaoxing rice wine around the edges of the wok and let it sizzle.

When the oil is clear, turn the heat down to medium, push the beef up to one side of the wok, and tilt the wok so the oil runs into the space you have created. Drop the chili bean paste into the oil and stir-fry for about 30 seconds, until the oil is red and fragrant. Add the ginger and scallions, mix everything together, and continue to stir-fry for another 10 seconds or so until you can smell the ginger. Finally, add the celery, soy sauce, and salt to taste, and continue to stir-fry until the celery is just cooked. Remove the wok from the heat, stir in the sesame oil, and tip onto a serving plate.

Drizzle with a little chili oil, if desired, and sprinkle with a few generous pinches of Sichuan pepper.

This was printed from: Heat & Knives
The site URL: http://www.heatandknives.com
The Title: Sichuan Dry Fried Beef Slivers
The URL: http://www.heatandknives.com/2008/12/sichuan-dry-fried-beef-slivers/

Other Chinese recipes: