My not-so-little brother picked up these Pine Street Market hot dogs from the Peachtree Rd Farmer’s Market a couple of weeks ago for an impromptu football and beer afternoon hangout. These five natural casing dogs ($11) may not look like much in the photo above, but KABLAMMO! now, look at them below after a few minutes on the grill. Hot damn, they were good. The natural casing gives the dogs that crunch that is part of the appeal of the wildly delicious and elusive hot dog at Holeman & Finch.

The Pine St. dogs have flavor of mustard, paprika, and just a touch of pepper. OK, I just pulled that from their website and didn’t really notice all that, but they were really good, I promise.

They were served with some homemade chow chow, mustard, and buttered/toasted Publix (underrated bakery?) rolls.

My contribution was hot wings with blue cheese macaroni. Regular Frank’s cayenne/butter (50/50), as well as a Rowdy inspired cumin/cayenne/Sichuan pepper paste version.

This meal was followed by a stellar three hour food coma.

I made my first visit to Tasty China since it’s been confirmed that Peter Chang is back in the kitchen. Various people on 285 Foodies have been discussing their meals over the last ten days, with very positive reports.

I started with the wontons in hot oil “soup”. I use the word soup lightly because you are not supposed to drink much of the broth. It’s horrible for you and is solely meant to provide flavor to the wontons, though this hot oil mix was lighter (making use of more stock, less oil) than in prior visits. Fuchsia Dunlop did a great blog post on the topic of Chinese food being categorized as greasy.

Of course we had the fried eggplant. Fluffy and lighter than ever, they were wonderful. Not overly ma la (hot and numbing).

One of the Peter Zhang’s blackboard specials was hot and numbing tofu skins. This cold dish was simply Sichuan peppercorns, cilantro, and these amazingly awesome thin and chewy ribbons of tofu covered in an red oil dressing. It’s like they stacked many layers of really tough tofu exterior on top of each other then cut these layers into strips which stayed together, for the most part. Very noodle like. The best part was that the tofu had obviously been prepared in a manner such that they took on a good deal of star anise and cinnamon flavor. I’m not sure if they simply soaked them or steamed them or what.

My favorite dish of the night was the fragrant duck special. Fragrant things (xiang liao) generally refers to cassia bark (similar to cinnamon), star anise, Sichuan pepper, cloves, and maybe cao guo (a dried fruit with a cardamom like flavor).

The duck itself is prepared by marinading a whole duck in these spices with some Shaoxing rice wine. The duck is steamed, cooled, then deep fried. This particular preparation was likely cut into serving pieces, then “fragrant fried” (tossed in a wok with oil to activate the spices), with a boat load of red chiles and Sichuan pepper, finally tossed with a lot of cilantro, mostly stems.

The large portion of whole duck was amazing, particulary the breast pieces – super crispy skin with a thick layer of duck fat that melted into the layer of tender duck beneath it with every bite. It wasn’t greasy, the ma la was in full effect, lots of heat from the chiles, but my mouth wasn’t on fire, partly thanks to the cooling effect from the cilantro.

It’s the best dish I’ve had at Tasty China.

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!!

I made another attempt at duplicating RowdyFood’s Sichuan spiced fried chicken, which is incredible. I enjoy making fried chicken; it’s fun to vary the steps along the way and see how the changes affect the results. I feel the same way about pizza. Of course, it’s delicious to eat as well.

I bought a whole springer mountain chicken at Kroger (4lbs, $7), cut it up (good practice), and brined it overnight. I used a cooked brine with sliced lemon and fresh cilantro and parsley. The brine only boils for a minute, then is cooled before adding the chicken to it.

The next day I buttermilk soaked it for 4-5 hours. Not sure if it really adds anything, but I was going out of town and needed to use it up.

The coating was flour, ground Sichuan peppercorn (pictured above), crazy hot cayenne, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, and salt. The measurements were eyeballed, but probably somewhere along the lines of 2 cups, 2Tbsp, 1Tbsp, 1tsp, 1Tbsp, 1Tbsp, 1Tbsp (in order as listed above).

I left the herbs from the brine in the buttermilk soak.

The buttermilk drips off completely. The chicken was brought to room temperature before cooking.

Single flour dip, then I let the chicken sit for 30-45 minutes. Some people claim that this resting period will result in a better fried exterior.

I fried in (probably too much) peanut oil. Dark meat first – 320F for 11-12 minutes (per Ad Hoc cookbook). White meat at 340 for 9-10 minutes.

These things are handy.

My chicken sits on a rack with space underneath it, but they still seem to steam a little bit on the bottom side. I rotate the chicken pieces every minute or so two-three times to avoid this.

Meanwhile, I have a metal bowl with freshly ground cumin, more cayenne, more ground Sichuan peppercorn, and whole chiles. I take 1-2T of hot oil from the fryer and splash it in the bowl and stir vigorously to activate the spices and create a paste. The paste is then brushed on both sides of the resting chicken.

The combination of the intense cumin, heat from the cayenne, and ma la from the Sichuan peppercorn is intoxicating. A riesling on the sweeter side is recommended to put out the mouth fire.

I like this single dip coating – it’s crunchy and just thick enough without overpowering the chicken. The Ad Hoc method (flour dip, buttermilk dip, flour dip) creates a more substantial but bready crust. That crust is really it’s own entity, separate from the chicken. It’s delicious though, no denying that. This single dip is more of a union with the chicken. It adheres much better. Less greasy too.

This chicken was the smallest I could find at Kroger, but I really recommend trying to use a 4.5lb chicken or smaller.

Many thanks to Rowdy for constantly sharing his methods, answering my questions, and providing me with so many great ideas.

First dish – homemade burgers

I do own a meat grinder, but it’s vintage and the blades aren’t sharp, so I opted to try a food processor method I read about on Serious Eats’ A Hamburger Today website. I cut short rib, sirloin tips, and chuck into 1-2” cubes and put them in the freezer for 20 minutes. This gets the fat cold and firm so the blade can deal with it.

Then I pulsed the meat a few times.

I formed a fairly loose burger and seasoned with salt and pepper. I seared it in a smoking hot cast iron skillet, then turned down the heat and continued to cook for a few minutes, adding cheese on top along the way.

The resulting medium-rare burger was fantastic. The griddled exterior was crispy and flavorful, and the burger was fatty, tender, and deliciously greasy. I’m fairly sure I won’t be buying ground beef for burgers anymore. The cost was roughly the same, the flavor was unquestionably better, I can control the fat content, and as I’m comfortable eating even Publix beef medium rare, there’s no reason I shouldn’t be comfortable eating a freshly ground burger that way.

Next meal up – panini. I started by making a coleslaw, with some homemade chile oil as the base. I’ve had this batch a few months, and just a spoonful can be added to any number of dishes for improved heat and color.

The sauce was: 2 Tbsp of chile oil, 1T soy sauce, 1 tsp sesame oil, 1t fish sauce, 1t Shaoxing rice wine.

For the panini filler – meats from Patak. Boston butt, salamis, and ham.

Stacked on ciabatta. Ciabatta is perfect for a panini.

See?

Next meal – 20 minute mac

Start by boiling your noodles per instructions. Meanwhile shred some cheese. Sauté chopped onions, garlic, and one small can of green chiles in a small amount of olive oil. Add 1-2T of flour, whisk rapidly. Slow pour in 1 cup milk, a bit at a time, whisking to create the roux. Add 1 cup cream after the milk, again, slow. Once all the liquid is incorporated, add the cheese. If it’s too runny, add more cheese. Too thick, add more cream.

Stir in noodles, place in oven safe serving dish, top with more cheese, broil.

Next dish – Ad Hoc Roasted Chicken

Let the chicken air dry in the refrigerator for up to 1 day, then rest on the counter for 1-2 hours before cooking. Truss. Set chicken on top of diced root vegetables. Rub butter or oil all over the skin. Season with salt and pepper.

Cook per recipe (linked it above)

Yum. Skin was the crispiest I’ve ever made. Slightly over cooked, but still acceptable.

Save the chicken fat/juices in the skillet with the leftover veggies. For a snack, reduce that liquid to create a pan gravy and pour over the vegetables.

Next – Muss and Turner’s small plates.

Squid, in a green olive based “salsa”. Sauce was rocking. Portion was huge.

Szechuan beef. Small portion, high quality, tender beef. Very nice.

Now I’m hungry.

I am definitely guilty of taking on more projects than I actually have the time to complete. You may have noticed I am constantly coming up with new ideas for a food series, which is my way of holding myself accountable when I want to learn something new. Hence, the Atlanta Pizza Days, the Bon Appétit series, and the Land of Plenty series.

These obviously take a lot of time, and the projects loom over me, and I end up with long delays between posts. With the arrival of some new cookbooks last week, I think it’s time to put a couple of these to bed. I will continue to eat pizza, and post my findings, but it’s not going to be a series where you can expect a certain frequency of posts. The Land of Plenty series will also be discontinued. This cookbook has taught me more than any other. I’ve learned so much about Sichuan cooking concepts, methods, and ingredients…they have been added to my cooking repertoire on almost a daily basis. I won’t claim I’m an expert, and I am far from putting this cookbook away to collect cobwebs, but I have a large laundry list of cuisines and dishes that I want to tackle. If you do want to keep up with Sichuan cooking in the future, I’ll be posting them as Land of Plenty tagged photos on my Flickr page.

Here’s a summary of the individual Land of Plenty posts:

• Land of Plenty – Announcement post
• Sichuan 101 & Ingredients
• Xie Laoban’s Dan Dan Noodles
• Zhong Crescent Dumplings
• Fried Peanuts, Cucumber Salad, Bean Curd Noodles
• Boiled Beef & Cookbook Challenge Announcement
• Dry Fried Greenbeans
• Gong Bao (Kung Pao) Chicken
• Spicy Cold Noodles with Chicken Slivers
• Dry Fried Chicken
• Red Cooked Pork (Hongshao Rou)
• Challenger #1 – Spicy Cold Noodles/Dry Fried Greenbeans
• Challenger #2 – Dry Fried Chicken/Stir Fried Vegetables w Lotus Root
• Red Braised Beef
• Cold Sichuan Chicken, Hot and Numbing Beef, Fried Lotus Root with Tomato Sauce
• Steamed Pork Buns (today)

With that, here is my last entry in the Land of Plenty series.

I started by stir-frying pork and bean sprouts in spicy fermented Sichuan bean paste, with a splash of soy sauce, and rice wine at the finish.

The dough for the dumplings was similar to many pizza dough recipes. I waited for it to rise for an hour or two.

Then punched it down and waited another 1/2 hour for it to rise again.

I prepared my steaming basket with a layer of cabbage so the dumplings wouldn’t stick to the wood while cooking.

I cut the dough into thirds and floured heavily; the dough was quite sticky.

This was the first attempt, which was a small dumpling. I ended up making them a bit larger than this – maybe a 2” portion of each dough log per dumpling.

Poor form on the first few…

Aaron made a lot of the dumplings, and I think he got very good at it. All the pretty looking dumplings below were his creations.

Three to five dumplings per layer. The hole is purposely left in the top to let the steam escape.

Here’s what they look like 10 minutes later.

Close-up of a nice one.

And the guts…

For a first attempt, this worked out well. Aaron and I probably each ate 10 of them, with each batch getting better than the last. While not nearly as well-formed as any steamed bun I’ve had at a restaurant, the texture and flavor was on point. I liked the larger dumplings as they had more filling to bread. I served these with a dipping sauce comprised of aromatic soy sauce (made with ginger, Sichuan peppercorn, cinnamon stick, and star anise) and red pepper oil.

Hopefully this post will hold you over for a few days; I’ve been catching flack for not posting frequently enough.

The three new recipes I cooked for this meal are officially titled Chicken Slices in Sichuan Pepper and Sesame Oil Sauce, Hot-and-Numbing Dried Beef, and Lotus Root in Sweet-and-Sour Sauce.

I started with the chicken dish as that’s a cold appetizer that can easily be prepared ahead of time. To create the sauce, you start by violently chopping scallions, salt, and Sichuan peppercorn with a cleaver until it goes from this…

…to this. You can puree it in a blender/food processor, but the cleaver is the traditional method and it’s quite effective.

Then I grilled some chicken, which I purchased as already-thin filets. It’s a time saver, and we’re going to grill and shred it, so I don’t think there’s much flavor lost compared to using full breasts of chicken. You may recall a quick tip from the Spicy Cold Noodles with Chicken Slivers post – if you’re going to shred the chicken, firmly smack the chicken with the flat side of your cleaver (or a mallet), and the chicken fibers will loosen up and it becomes easier to shred with a fork.

I assembled the rest of the sauce for the chicken, which consists of 3T of chicken stock, 2T of soy sauce, and 1.5T of sesame oil, and set it aside. Then I scrubbed and sliced my lotus root and placed the slices in water.

While the lotus was soaking, I blanched the moderately thin slices of ribeye. I’ve mentioned this before, but blanching meats is very common in Sichuan cooking. It is the attempt to remove the yi wei, or “peculiar smells” of the meat.

I cut the beef with the grain into strips, then across the grain into bite size pieces, which then went into a marinade of ginger, scallions, and Shaoxing rice wine.

Next up, frying the lotus root. I didn’t cut them into uniform slices, so some cooked better than others. In general, I should have fried them longer.

The beef gets dry fried in the wok for 4-5 minutes, until each piece gets a crispy exterior. I then removed the beef from the wok, added some oil, ginger, scallions, sugar, salt, soy sauce, and my reserved stock and brought it all to a boil. Then the beef is added back to the liquid and I simmered for about 30 minutes until the liquid had totally reduced and I was ready to serve.

While the beef sauce reduced I prepared the rest of the dishes. The chicken and sauce was assembled.

Then I prepared the sweet and sour sauce for the lotus. I stir fried some ginger and ginger, then added a combination of chicken stock, salt, sugar, rice vinegar, and corn starch, and brought it to a boil. Then I added the tomatoes, cooked for just a minute or so, added the scallions, and plated the dish.

And finally I plated the beef with some sesame seeds and cilantro.

I highly recommend the cold chicken dish. It had such a clean, simple chicken flavor, with the light scallion element, and a generous kick of Sichuan pepper that made it quite distinct. The lotus was good, not great. If I had fried it better that would have helped, but the sweet and sour tomato sauce wasn’t really doing it for me. But it’s a very unique dish and worth a try if you want to cook with lotus. There haven’t been many dishes so far in this cookbook that involve tomatoes either.

Everyone was giving the chicken high accolades until the beef dish came along. The hot and numbing beef was fantastic – it had the great fried dry fried beef exterior, but with loads of additional flavor and textural complexity from the reduced sauce. Just typing this sentence is difficult, because now I can’t stop thinking about how I wish I had some right now.

Is there anyone out there who isn’t convinced yet that you need to take up cooking Sichuan at home? What are you waiting for?

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.

Congratulations to Ted and Sarah – they both did a great job. Their meals looked very tasty, and their pictures and write-ups were detailed and thoughtfully done. I hope others will follow their lead. Go trek around some of the best parts of Atlanta, get yourself in the kitchen, and fire up something new!

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Being a Chinese food cooking novice, I was really excited to have the opportunity to participate in the Land of Plenty Challenge. Given that my heat tolerance is a lot higher than Alison’s (my wife), I elected to go with dishes that were described as on the milder side. For dinner tonight, we had the Dry-Fried Chicken (gan bian ji) accompanied by Stir-Fried Mixed Vegetables (si zhong shu cai). Like the first participant, I did all my prep work in advance so as to be able to cook more quickly.

First up, I cut the veggies for the stir fry. Here are all of the ingredients: snow peas, lotus root, cucumber, tomato, and julienned ginger.

After getting these in order, I put together the components for the chicken dish. This next shot shows all of the ingredients lined up, which include: cubed chicken, sliced celery and scallions, dark soy sauce, chili bean paste, Shaoxing rice wine, sesame oil, dried chiles, and whole Sichuan peppercorns.

Here is a close up of the peppers, as well as the liquid ingredients:

Time to cook. The chicken takes longer, so I started with it. First, ¼ cup of peanut oil into the wok and stir-fry until the chicken was brown and most of the liquid had cooked off.

Next step was to add the chiles and peppercorns, stir-fry until fragrant, and then add the paste. The paste imparted a great red orange color to the chicken, which deepened considerably as it cooked.

Next, I added the wine and dark soy, and cooked over medium heat until the sauce thickened and nearly cooked off (about 10 minutes) at which point the celery and scallions went in for a couple of minutes, until crisp-tender.

Towards the last few minutes of cooking the chicken, I made the vegetable stir-fry in a separate pan. First, I heated the peanut oil until smoking, then quick-fried the snow peas. I then pulled these out of the pan, added the ginger until fragrant, and then the lotus root. Next came the cucumber, and then the tomatoes with the snow peas added back to warm through. Very simply seasoned, the dish called only for some salt in addition to the ginger.

Finally, it was time for plating, and, of course, eating! I served the chicken over some steamed basmati rice, and the vegetables on a separate plate.

Of the two, we definitely preferred the chicken. It was very flavorful. The sauce was complex, with a nice numbing feeling from the peppercorns, and a slow, mild heat. Actually, I thought the heat was a bit too tame, and I would add more chiles next time. The textures were similarly complex, with the celery added a nice crunch to off-set the soft chicken. Of note, the recipe suggested adding salt to taste, but I found that the combination of the soy and chili paste provided ample saltiness. The vegetables were a bit disappointing. I found the lotus to be starchy and a bit bland, perhaps because I couldn’t find fresh and had to settle for pre-sliced and refrigerated. I think jicama would actually work better in this dish, imparting a bit more sweetness. While the dish was designed to be simple and refreshing, I thought it was a bit too tame in the flavor department.

Overall, the dinner was a success, and I am looking forward to trying more dishes from Land of Plenty. I really enjoy dabbling in new cuisines, especially when the results are as tasty as the chicken dish.

Sourcing

I was able to find the vast majority of the ingredients at the DeKalb Farmer’s Market and at the near-by First Oriental Market on Ponce. The only thing I couldn’t find there was the lotus, which I located at the Buford Highway Farmer’s Market. This was my first trip there since the re-model, and I wish I had had the time to explore it in greater detail. By far the most interesting and varied collection of international foods I have seen in Atlanta. It also has a terrific produce section, including a surprisingly large amount of organics. I will definitely have to pay it another visit soon.

Thanks to Jimmy for putting this contest together, and for helping me expand my culinary horizons!

A guest post where someone cooks something different, using unique ingredients, is very much in the spirit of this site – hopefully it will inspire you to get out there and cook up something you’ve never tried before. Thanks Sarah!

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For my Land of Plenty challenge, I chose to make Spicy Cold Noodles with Chicken Slivers (p. 95) and Dry-Fried Green Beans 2 – Vegetarian Version (p. 290). The first thing I did was get all of the ingredients ready.  From reading Jimmy’s posts, I assumed the actual cooking would go quickly and I would want to be ready. I boiled the chicken breasts and then Ben made them into nice slivers by first mashing the breasts with the meat pounder, then slicing them along the grain.

Here is everything for the noodles ready to go, except the noodles themselves.

I cooked the noodles and, following the recipe, spread them out, sprinkled some peanut oil over them, and tossed to coat.  This prevents them from getting sticky while they cool.

While the noodles and chicken were cooling, we made the sauce by mixing all of the ingredients together.  Said ingredients include tahini, soy sauce, Chinkiang (black Chinese vinegar), sugar, garlic, ground Sichuan pepper, chili oil with chile flakes (ours had peanuts in it too), and sesame oil.  The rest of the noodles dish is simply layering everything.  First, I placed the bean sprouts at the bottom of the bowl (as seen in the first picture), then placed a layer of noodles over those.  Here is everything mid-way through the layering process.

I spooned a generous amount of sauce over the noodles.  Lastly, I placed the chicken and some chopped chives on top.  Here is a close-up of the noodles ready to eat.

For the beans, first I cut the ends off the beans, then I sliced the scallions, ginger, and garlic, and cut the chilies in half.

To cook the beans, I heated the peanut oil in a skillet (a wok would be ideal here) and cooked the beans over medium heat for about eight minutes.

I set the beans aside, wiped out the pan, and heated some fresh oil.  Then I added the scallions, ginger, garlic, chilies, and Sichuan pepper.  I stir-fried those briefly then added the beans back in.  After adding some salt, they were ready.

The finished products were very yummy looking.

There was definitely a lot of heat in both dishes.  Once we got past the heat…or more correctly, before the heat set in, the noodles were quite fantastic.  We both said that we taste the many different flavors in the sauce, and that it was a great combination.  The description in the cookbook calls this dish distinctively Sichuanese, so I was glad that we both enjoyed it so much.  We ate the leftovers for lunch the next day.

For me, the green beans were a small disappointment.  They tasted like exactly the ingredients – the beans, the peppers, the garlic and the ginger.  I wonder if I did not "dry fry" them enough, because they didn’t look wrinkly like in the cookbook.  I did cook them longer than the recipe called for, but perhaps I should have kept going.

Overall I was pleased with the results and we were both satisfied after our delicious dinner.  Just to mimic Jimmy’s great style, I should mention that we paired our meal with Sweetwater 420.  And lastly, here is Holden, the most amenable food critic around…

Sourcing

I found all of the ingredients either at Publix or the Buford Highway Farmer’s Market. This was my first trip the Farmer’s Market and it was a great experience.  While it may appear slightly sketchy, it is very well organized, and most of the Chinese products have translations.  The prices are good, and I loved their enormous tea selection.  I felt that Ben and I had to be the preppiest suburbanites in the store, given that we were dressed for dinner at Watershed afterwards.  On our way home, after eating our gourmet southern meal, I kept talking about how I love that Atlanta represents so many different cultures but still retains the best of the south.