To point, I had no idea rice noodle dumplings called Chang Fen even existed. But they, dear sir, are the proverbial jam. Jimmy jam, even. Take a look-see below. There are various fillings offered at EERecipe Rice Crepes House, an assortment of sausage, vegetables, and other forms of pork, served with pungent and salty shrimp paste, of which you will want a small dab with each bite. An order is less than $4.

Also pictured is a porridge, pretty much congee, which is fine, though bland to my tastes, especially when compared to the delightfully light dumpling flavor bombs.

But the chicken soup, oh, the chicken soup! Chloe was almost woeful in her admittance, “This might be better than my mom’s”. Deeply aromatic and enticing from the fried garlic, the broth is rich with fat in a way that us Westerners tend to avoid (scoop that layer off your stock, no sir!). Buried in the broth are even more rice “crepes” for your slurping pleasure, and some processed fish balls, which I don’t understand, though I’m told it’s a texture thing. (Many Asian cultures appreciate chewy and slippery texture as much as flavor, exhibit A, chicken feet at dim sum).

Prefer crispy over steamed? Here’s another form of dumpling, pleasantly perfumed pork with Chinese five spice, wrapped in tofu skin and fried. Dang.

Because we’re gluttonous gorging gourmands (god, I’m killing the alliteration today!), we also tried the super crunchy fried chicken with amazing coconut incensed rice, the latter being almost dessert like to me.

And because we apparently needed some calories in the form of carbs and sugar, Chloe brought Katie some Dutch Monkey doughnuts. And bagels for me! Thanks Chloe!

But yeah, EeRecipe is highly recommend. Really good, and really well priced. It may not show in that picture, but the chicken soup is huge, easily enough to be a whole meal for one, and costs less than $6. On a day which I was not feeling 100%, it was just what I needed.

Above is some of the damage from The Legend’s birthday dinner at Tasty China. Many of the wines were above my pay grade, but damn they were good.

Tasty China continues to do their thing. They’re always very accommodating to our wine guzzling needs. The lazy susan greatly assists in sharing. The food has been spot on the last few times I’ve been too. Very consistent. The bang for the buck can’t be beat either – we were there for more than three hours and we spent about $30 per person.

Peter Chang was there. He and the owner (whose name I don’t know) came over to say hello to our table. We were told Chang’s new restaurant is going to be at 6450 Powers Ferry Road. I tried to Google that and it’s an office park, so who knows. When asked what the name would be, the owner laughed, and replied, “I don’t know, maybe Peter Chang’s Palace”.

Anyone who remembers the last Chang fiasco knows to take this info lightly. But a boy can dream a fiery Sichuan dream.

Below are some food and wine photos. I wish I had more right now.

Shan city chicken. Hot!

Shrimp

Beef

Hot and numbing “three-way”.

Legend’s (and mine) birth year wine!

Haut-Brion Blanc!!

But exploring an unfamiliar locale has its benefits and I was thinking about how I decide where I’m going to eat. I hit up the popular spots that are recommended to me, but in general, I’m way more adventurous than I was a year ago. Searching for the perfect hole in the wall has become sport, where each first step into a dingy, run-down chopped pork BBQ shack in a bad neighborhood becomes an exciting moment that has the potential to be my most satisfying and crave-worthy meal of the week. No PR firm. No marketing gimmicks. No buzz. No pretense.

The best BBQ sandwich you’ve ever had in your life is in the middle of nowhere in South Georgia, but maybe you’ll never know.

Seek these places out. Have some fun with it. See a crumbling building off a country road that says “Fried Chicken”? Hit the brakes.

Currently my favorite practice is to boot up my iPhone, find my location in Google Maps, then search for generic terms like “food”, “chicken”, or “BBQ”. The number of results is often surprising. Below are a few photos of my recent findings.

Menu at a country food shack in Hardeeville, SC (20 miles from Savannah)

Collards, fried chicken, potatoes/gravy, and the sweetest corn bread I’ve ever had

Jomax BBQ, who wouldn’t trust someone with such a credible looking photo?

Jomax’s chopped BBQ was damn good though. Some of the best I’ve had in a while.

Falafel from the Pita House in Greenville, SC. This place is fairly well known in Greenville. It’s one of the few places in town to serve this style of food, and I think the meats are weak, but the falafel, hummus, and tahini salad are outstanding.

Another time I was driving back to GA from Greenville, I searched for some options in Duluth. When I searched for “BBQ”, Ming’s came up. The duck was solid, and a good value.

The shrimp and red pork chow fun was my favorite though. Love the noodles in their chow fun.

If you’ve never had the yellow sauce of Carolina BBQ, it’s worth a go. This time I am embarrassed to say it’s from Maurice’s. I say that because I did a post on them a year ago and said I wouldn’t go back, but it was convenient one day. Their hush puppies are the best part.

Poppa’s Finest was another iPhone find. It was literally a trailer on the side of the road.

The potato salad was good, but the meat was suspect. As in, there were unidentifiable parts in the meat. I’m pretty sure I ate some plastic, or a really strange cut of meat. Eater beware.

Saigon Fast Food in Greenville is my latest favorite find. A small mom and pop Vietnamese place on East Pleasantburg Dr, the large menu is full of the usual suspects, including many types of banh mi. The first time I got the roasted red pork, but the bread was a little hard.

Next time I went for the shredded pork, and the bread was much better. It was heavy on the fish sauce, but I didn’t mind.

Tanner’s Big Orange is a Greenville fixture, and I couldn’t resist the urge for a chili dog. But the onions rings were fantastic – large, not too greasy, and they stayed very crisp. Worth the visit.

This recipe is simple, braising short ribs couldn’t be easier.

First we blanche the short ribs. You may recall this step is consistent with the Szechuan cultural dislike of blood and juices in meat.

The resulting grey beef isn’t appealing to me, but the short ribs are close to getting a two hour bath that will impart flavor.

The base of the braise is some oil and Sichuan red bean paste. This will add a bit of heat and I love the deep red color.

In goes some stock, scallions, star anise, Sichuan pepper corns, and a few large chunks of ginger.

Near the end of cooking I added some carrots and red radish. Daikon radish is called for but I didn’t have that in stock. The red radish worked just fine, it wasn’t too harsh.

I was in a rush so my plating is poor here, but I just served the beef over rice, garnished with cilantro.

Pretty much a Sichuan beef stew, this dish was tasty, but the flavors weren’t as intense as I would have liked, and there was very little heat. But with the level of ease and the convenience that comes with braising, this isn’t a bad option for a lazy afternoon of cooking.

Today’s post, Red-Cooked Pork, is from a different Fuchsia Dunlop cookbook (Revolutionary Chinese), but there is a red pork belly recipe in the Land of Plenty cookbook that looks to be the same thing. I found this recipe on the Appetite for China website, which has fantastic Chinese recipes and amazing photos.

I had a nice slab of bacon that was given to me (shout out to Liz!) which you are instructed to boil for a few minutes to partially cook the pork – the photo below is post plunge.

While that was boiling I got the spices together – star anise, sliced ginger, cassia bark (cinnamon bark), and red chiles.

Slice up the bacon – the recipe calls for cubes but I went with more of a rectangle shape.

First you heat sugar and oil over low heat to let the sugar melt, then add the pork and the Shaoxing rice wine.

Then add enough water to cover all the pork and add all your spices, bring to a boil, then simmer.

Below is after ~ 30 minutes.

This is after almost an hour. Turn up the heat and the sauce will start to quickly thicken. As soon as it’s very thick, splash in your soy sauce, stir, and you are ready to plate.

My plating/photos doesn’t even compare to the Appetite for China photos, but the taste was surely as good, because this tasted incredible. The salty/savory/sweet/heat combo was in full effect. It wasn’t overly spicy, but the star anise and chiles did add enough to counteract the rest of the flavors. There is of course large amounts of fat, but I couldn’t resist eating it all, sometimes savoring the fat for a few moments on my tongue before chewing.

One out of one terra cotta soldiers agree.

But one benefit that I had not planned on is that I’ve met a handful of bonafide foodies who have been kind of enough to guide me in my on-going food adventure, particularly in the area of Korean and Chinese cuisine.

Shamefully, my previous residence was right by Buford Highway (slightly ITP), yet I rarely took a chance and tried anything new; Penang and Little Szechuan was pretty much it. I’m doing my best to make up for it, any chance I get. So when Chloe agreed to take me along to Wan Lai, which she and Bliss have both written up recently, I was pumped.

We met up for lunch, which had drawn a large crowd – always a good sign. I would have been lost trying to order from their large menu, but Chloe quickly suggested a few items, “Jimmy – congee or three dumpling soup?” Before I could answer, she answers herself, “Let’s get both!”. (please watch that video, it’s awesome!)

Chloe placed our order, after which the waiter counted out all seven dishes, then looked at us with a quizzical and sarcastic look. Move it along. We’re hungry.

With my recent Sichuan experimentation, I was interested to see how Cantonese differed. While writing this post, I did some research, and discovered that many of the dishes/ingredients we ate at Wan Lai are Cantonese mainstays – congee, century eggs, and beef chow fun are all staples. Similar to Sichuan, stir-frying, braising, and steaming are the primary cooking methods, but Cantonese sauces are often much lighter and less intense and full of heat as Sichuan. The most often used spice is Chinese 5 spice, which can actually vary and have more than 5 spices, though anise, fennel, and cinnamon are almost always going to be included.

So there’s a small bit of knowledge. But how did it taste? Well, it was one of the best all around Chinese meals I’ve had. I love the heat and boldness of Sichuan, but Wan Lai is rocking. You need to get out there and try it. Order a ton like we did, and you’ll be left with enough leftovers for 3-4 meals. Lucky for me, Chloe doesn’t like leftovers.

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Dish #1: Century egg congee. The eggs looked like mushrooms to me at first, but read the century egg link and you’ll understand. Much like porridge, this wasn’t bad, but can be very plain tasting if you don’t get a big bite of pork and egg. Worth a try if you haven’t had it.

Dish #2: Three dumpling soup. This was ridiculously good. Chinese cabbage (appeared much like broccoli rabe to me), amazing broth, and firm, crunchy (from the shrimp) dumplings. I had to pace myself at this point.

Dish #3: Beef Chow Fun. I loved the beef and the delicious noodles in this dish. The beef was soft, succulent, and texturally awesome. The flavor of the whole dish was overpowered by bean sprouts to me, but this is definitely something to try.

Dish #4: Fried Rice. Eh, it was fried rice, not bad, but too filling for me to waste valuable stomach space on, except for the wonderful pork mixed in with the rice.

Dish #5: Ong choy water spinach. Tubular and leafy greens, sautéed with garlic in a light sauce. I loved this, please try it. 

Dish #6: Pork belly and taro casserole. This was one of the casseroles that takes 20 minutes or so for them to prepare, but I didn’t even notice the wait with all the other food on our table. The sauce was rich, very sweet, obvious 5 spice flavor, and there was tons of pork belly and taro. I thought taro is a root vegetable, but you actually eat the “corm”, which is like a root, but it’s actually an underground stem.

Dish #7: Garlic fried chicken – Ridonkulous. Perfectly crispy and covered with garlic, you are going to want to savor the skin on this bird.

Kung Pao is great because it has significant heat, a touch of sweetness, stark flavor/texture contrast from the roasted peanuts, and an altogether pleasing aesthetic. But I’ve never made it at home, and I’ve never seen it on an “authentic” Sichuan menu. I’ve pretty much been relegated to ordering the fast-food Chinese delivery version. I was interested to see how this compared – the ingredients appeared to be the same as the mass-produced version, though this dish of course utilizes the Sichuan peppercorn, and the preparation method could result in something very different than the dish to which I’m accustomed. Let’s find out.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about cooking Sichuan, and cooking with a wok in general, is that you need to get your shit mise en place put together before you start cooking. I threw about 1/2 cup of raw peanuts (from Super H Mart in Duluth) in the oven at 350 and amassed all my other ingredients: soy sauces, vinegar, rice wine, sesame oil, potato starch, dried chiles, Sichuan pepper, ginger, garlic, the bottom part of the scallions, and some butterflied chicken breast from the Buford Highway Farmer’s Market. BHFM had a great price on this chicken, and the butterflied version is perfect because your Sichuan recipes are always going to have you cutting thin, small strips of meat. This saves you some time, money, and I don’t see any degradation in quality over a full breast.

I roasted the peanuts for 15 minutes, and they came out a little overcooked. I don’t mind them this way, but I should have taken them out after 10 minutes, or perhaps only cooked them at 300 instead of 350 degrees.

Aaron (my roommate/saucier for those that don’t know me personally) was kind enough to create the marinade for the chicken, as well as the sauce, while I prepared the vegetables and the chicken. I could improve at cutting more uniform slices of chicken so that everything cooks evenly.

I started by cooking the Sichuan pepper and the cut chiles in peanut oil over a high flame. They will cook/burn quickly, so I recommend having your wok very hot and only cooking them for 10-15 seconds before you add the chicken. Be sure to stir rapidly throughout this process.

After the chicken cooked for 30 seconds or so, I added the garlic/ginger/scallions and let that cook until the chicken was almost cooked through, again, stirring very rapidly over as high of heat as possible.

Above – now I’m ready to add the sauce.

The sauce has now been added, and I let it cook for about 20-30 seconds so that it would thicken up. The potato starch is what is causing it to thicken into a great sauce. At this point, I removed the wok from the heat, stirred in the peanuts, and plated.

Here it is plated, ready to be devoured. I thought it was very good, and I think Aaron agreed, but be forewarned that this meal brought some serious heat. I love spicy food, but this was getting close to the “hiccup threshold”.

The potato starch marinade on the chicken resulted in a fantastic texture, and the chicken was still tender and moist, I thought it was cooked very well. The sauce was a little different than what I’m used to in a Kung Pao, having a slightly thicker texture, and a bit sweeter than I’m accustomed. The ginger was a nice touch, though sometimes it can overpower a bite if you get a large slice. The addition of the Sichuan pepper is amazing – the smoky/wood flavor and aromatics that it adds is incomparable. I enjoyed this version much more than any other I’ve had at a restaurant. That could be the home-cooking talking though. :-)

If you like Kung Pao, I definitely recommend trying Fuchsia’s recipe.

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We’re all familiar with deep frying, where you totally submerge food in hot oil, but dry frying is more similar to stir frying. When dry frying, the food is continually stirred in the wok with a small amount of oil until it appears almost dried out. More details on dry frying are available here (and of course in Fuchsia’s cookbook).

Getting started – I’ve got some green beans from Ranch 99, some ground beef (the recipe calls for pork, but no big deal), some Tianjin preserved vegetables, soy sauce, Shaoxing rice wine, sesame oil, peanut oil (for frying), salt, and crushed & toasted Sichuan pepper.

Rinse, trim, and pat dry. Why dry them? Because we’re about to fry the hell out of them and the oil will splatter you otherwise.

Extreme close-up of the Tianjin preserved vegetable. It’s quite pungent. I’ve seen some people say that you should rinse it due to how salty it is, but I am starting to think it’s good just the way it is. Just keep this salt content in mind when it comes time to season your dish with salt. You may not need to add much salt, if any.

First we dry fry the beans over medium-high heat. I cooked mine for about 7 minutes, stirring constantly, waiting for them to get slightly browned and shriveled.

You can see the texture we’re going for, especially on a few of them. I probably took mine off a bit too early; they could have used another minute or two I think. When you’re satisfied, remove them from the heat.

Add your meat/rice wine/soy sauce and cook for just a minute, then add the Tianjin. Another minute after that (stirring all the while), add back the green beans, and just give it another minute or so.

Plate, season with Sichuan pepper and salt, and get down on it.

The very first recipe is for Dan Dan Noodles, but I saw Fuschia offered a different version titled Xie Laoban’s Dan Dan Noodles, so I decided to go that route as I’ve had the traditional dan dan noodles before.

First things first, I needed to prep some of the ingredients commonly needed for these recipes. Homemade chili oil is used often in Sichuan cooking so that’s where I started.

I threw some chilies in my food processor and heated up some corn oil with a large piece of ginger in it. I took the oil off the heat and once it had cooled down to the specified temp, it was mixed with the chilies.

Next up, ground peppercorns. I still need to buy a mortar and pestle so I used my coffee grinder. I read that this powder will lose its aroma and flavor after a few days, so no need to grind a ton of this.

Here I have thrown some carrots and ground pork in the wok. Her recipe calls for ground beef here, but the traditional dan dan recipe uses pork and that’s what I had in the refrigerator. The recipe also calls for some ya cai or Tianji preserved vegetables, but that’s the one thing I couldn’t find on the pantry list. I realize carrots aren’t even a close substitute, but I wanted to add a vegetable and they added nice color.

However, a reader has informed me that you can find the preserved vegetables at Ranch 99 on Buford Highway.

Above you can see the close-up of the meat topping. You don’t want to overcook it, but you do want it slightly crispy. It is seasoned while cooking with just a bit of soy sauce and salt and it has a great flavor. One notable comment about cooking with the wok and sauces in this book – the sauces are generally not added until right before you are done cooking the meats and/or vegetables. Maybe just a bit of vinegar, rice wine, or soy sauce, but that’s about it.

Here is the final dish plated. I used some fresh Chinese noodles, topped it with the sauce (which can be viewed in the gallery below) and the meat topping, then garnished with a bit of cilantro and scallions. The scallions are cut in the “horse ear” shape Fushia describes, where you cut the vegetable at a steep angle 1 1/2 inch long.

This dish is served as such, but then should be mixed to incorporate the sauce and the topping into the noodles. The sauce in this version of dan dan was quite different than what I have had in the past. Instead of primarily being made with chili oil, this sauce used sesame paste, which is similar to tahini. The sauce was quite thick, and with the dense fresh noodles, the whole thing was a bit too dense for my tastes. Also, I think less pasta would be better (it calls for 1lb of fresh pasta) as the sauce to pasta ratio was quite low.

This dish did have significant kick, and a lot of flavor, and I actually enjoyed the leftovers more the next day. If you have had the traditional dan dan, this is an easy and different version, so give it a try.

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Continuing with my initial post on Land of Plenty, I started off by reading Fuschia Dunlop’s informative introduction to Sichuan cooking.

The background info on how Fuschia got involved with all of this, the historical development of Sichuan cuisine, traditions, and technique was very interesting. I won’t go into too much detail for the sake of brevity, and also as to not rip off her book too much (I suggest reading it if you are really interested), but there are lots of caveats that are very intriguing.

For example, Fuschia discusses the five fundamental tastes of Chinese food – salty, sweet, sour, hot, and bitter. The Sichuan replace bitter with ma, which is the flavor/sensation gained from the eponymous peppercorn used so frequently in Sichuan food. If you haven’t tried a Sichuan pepper (aka prickly ash), it’s quite interesting. It’s extremely fragrant, slightly hot but not overly so, and it actually makes your mouth tingle and go slightly numb, with the effect intensified if you sip some water afterwards.

She also goes into their slightly systematic, yet inventive approach to cooking in the Sichuan area, which by the way, is an area as large as France. The Sichuan cooking encyclopedia includes 23 flavors, 56 cooking methods, and 33 cutting terms (almost exclusively using a cleaver). Even the meal process is somewhat systematic – salty foods should be eaten before bland dishes, stronger flavors before weak, dry dishes before soup.

Traditions are also discussed at length. The hot and spicy reputation of their dishes is believed to have originated from the muggy weather of the Sichuan region, and the Sichuan believe that a spicy meal will expel the dampness from your body and restore vigor. Fuschia discusses the meaning of Xian, which is a word that doesn’t quite translate directly to English, but represents the indefinable, delicious, savory aspect of a meal. MSG is used by chefs to help generate xian in a dish, and Fuschia believes this is a shortcut and she doesn’t use any in her dishes. Another interesting tradition is yi wei, which translates to “peculiar smells”, which has to do with the fact that the Sichuan find the smells and taste of raw meat to be very unappealing. Hence, meat is often blanched, blood is removed, salt, rice, wine, and marinades are used to expel these odors and tastes. This explains why you aren’t going to see medium rare beef in many Sichuan dishes.

Another interesting aspect of Sichuan cuisine is how texture is very important to the Sichuan (and Chinese in general), hence the various cooking and cutting methods, and is also the reason that many cuts of meat are often used that we in the West are unaccustomed to eating. She uses the example of chicken feet, which are eaten for the texture as much as the flavor.

Anyways, this is all interesting to me and is something I can really geek out on. It’s a new approach to cooking for me, and I’m excited take these methods and traditions, put them into action, and add them to my general cooking repertoire.

In addition to all the unique Sichuan technique, there are quite a few ingredients that are not often in the Westerners pantry, and Fuschia provides a suggested shopping list as well as detailed descriptions of these items. Sourcing these ingredients was the next step in this process.

Above is the majority of my shopping bounty. I hit up Super H Mart in Duluth last Saturday with the hopes that I could find everything I needed. I was able to source quite a bit of the shopping list, but I couldn’t find everything. That’s not to say that everything I needed wasn’t there, but I just had a hell of a time navigating the aisles. At one point a nice lady could tell I didn’t know what I was doing and asked if she could help. I said I was looking for Sichuan chili paste, to which she replied “You’re in the Korean section”. Awesome.

That being said, this grocery store rocks. Tons of fun stuff, very good prices, and it’s a nice, clean supermarket.

If you are at the Super H mart, don’t miss out on trying Book Chang Dong Tofu House, which is in the same shopping center. They have amazing tofu soup, decent banchan, and flavorful bbq at a steal of a price.

The rest of my shopping was done at the Dinho Market in China Town on New Peachtree Road. This store is the exact opposite of Super H mart. It’s a small grocer, dimly lit, with dusty shelves, and not a single staff member that I sought out spoke English. If looking for authentic Sichuan ingredients, this is where you can find what ye seek. I even picked up a bunch of bowls, a bamboo steamer, and a cleaver for just a few bucks each.

Let me run through the individual pantry items.

Chinkiang chinese black vinegar and shaoxing rice wine

Bean curd (two kinds, one in chili oil), sesame paste (similar to tahini), red chili bean paste, and sweet bean paste, which they has misspelled to read “chili beam paste”.

Fermented black beans

Brown sugar and red chili powder.

Dried chiles. I believe the chiles on the left are dried thai chilis, which Fuschia says you should only use for garnish as the are way too hot to actually use for cooking.

Star anise – quite fragrant.

It was recommended that I find cassia bark, an inexpensive cousin of cinnamon, but I didn’t see anything labeled as such. This “cinna mon” will have to do.

The famous Sichuan peppercorn.

Daikon radish. Other recommended items there are not photographed: Fresh coriander (aka cilantro), carrots, ginger, garlic, Chinese 5 spice, potato flour/starch, sesame oil, dark and light soy sauce, fresh and dried Chinese noodles (flat and round), and pickled chili paste (chili garlic sauce or sambal oelek will suffice).

Whew. This was quite the weekend of food searching. I hope this search pays off. Stay tuned for recipe #1 – Xie Laoban’s Dan Dan Noodles.

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