Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking by Fuchsia Dunlop Read Free Book Online

tap and shake dry. Place in a bowl and add 1½ tbsp clear rice vinegar and salt to taste. Now make the spicy oil: snip eight dried chillies in half and discard their seeds as far as possible. Heat 3 tbsp cooking oil in a wok over a medium flame. Add the chillies and 1 tsp whole Sichuan pepper and sizzle gently until the chillies are darkening but not burned. Add the oil and spices to the potato with 2 tsp sesame oil, mix well, then serve.

SICHUANESE GREEN SOY BEAN SALAD
XIANG YOU QING DOU 香油青豆
    Young soy beans, which can be bought fresh in places where they are cultivated and are otherwise available cooked and frozen, are a strikingly beautiful green and delicately savory in flavor. In the West, they are most often encountered in their pods, with the Japanese name edamame. Although the Chinese eat them this way too (tap here ), they also like to serve the shelled beans as an appetizer, sometimes just with a little red pickled chilli for color, sometimes mixed with preserved mustard greens and other ingredients as in this recipe. Leave out the preserved vegetable if you don’t have it to hand.
Salt
7 oz (200g) fresh or defrosted frozen green soy beans (shelled weight)
2 oz (50g) Sichuan preserved vegetable ( zha cai )
½ oz (25g) carrot
A small piece of red bell pepper or fresh red chilli
1–2 tsp sesame oil
    Bring a panful of water to a boil, add salt, then the soy beans. Return to a boil. If you are using fresh soy beans, cook for about five minutes, until tender, then drain and refresh immediately under the cold tap; if you are using defrosted frozen beans, simply blanch them for a few seconds, drain and refresh.
    Cut the preserved vegetable, carrot and red pepper into small squares of a similar size to the beans. Bring a little water to a boil, then blanch the carrot and pepper, separately, for a minute or two, until tender but still crunchy. Drain and refresh these, too.
    Mix the beans and other vegetables together with salt and sesame oil to taste.

SICHUANESE FAVA BEAN SALAD
LIANG BAN HU DOU 涼拌胡豆
    The Sichuanese name for fava beans is hu dou , or “barbarian” beans, because they are thought to have entered China along the old silk routes from Central Asia. Dried and spiced, the beans are a favored snack all over China; fermented, they are one of the essential ingredients of the fabulous Sichuanese chilli bean paste. They are also eaten fresh, in season.
    One of my favorite uses for the fresh beans is a Sichuanese salad in which they are tossed with slivers of lettuce stem and the leaves and juicy stalks of ze’er gen , a local vegetable with a refreshing, sour fruitiness to its taste that is sometimes called “Chinese watercress” or “fish grass.” Ze’er gen is hard to find outside China, so this recipe offers a version of the dish made with other lettuces and cucumber. The same sauce may be used to dress fava beans alone. If you can find tiny, very young beans, simply blanch them: there is no need to pop them out of their skins.
Salt
7 oz (200g) shelled fava beans
4 oz (100g) cucumber
Generous handful of baby spinach or lettuce of your choice, washed and dried
    For the dressing
2 tsp light soy sauce
½ tsp sugar
¼ tsp Chinkiang vinegar
1–2 tbsp chilli oil with ½ tsp of its sediment
1 garlic clove, crushed (optional)
A few good pinches of ground, roasted Sichuan pepper (optional)
    Bring a panful of water to a boil. Lightly salt, add the beans and boil for about four minutes, until tender. Drain and rinse under the cold tap, then pop the beans out of their skins. Cut the cucumber section in half lengthways, scoop out and discard the pulp, then cut the flesh lengthways into thin slivers.
    Combine the dressing ingredients in a small bowl.
    When you are ready to serve, combine the salad ingredients in a bowl, pour over the dressing and mix well.

SILKEN TOFU WITH SOY SAUCE
XIAO CONG BAN DOU FU 小蔥拌豆腐
    Many years ago I spent a surreal week in the northern city of Lanzhou, hanging