A taste of the simple life - savory peanuts and gluten

I fell in love with this dish the first year I lived in Taiwan. I’d find it on the dinner table of the Chinese family I boarded with as an easy appetizer or as the perfect side for congee. But even way back then, people did not whip this up at home, as it was so much easier to simply buy it at just about every corner store.

And that’s the way I enjoyed it for years. But then I decided to try making it myself, and I have to tell you, the difference is night and day. Instead of the heavy sweetness and general softness of the canned version, this homemade recipe has a lovely spectrum of flavors and textures that hit all my buttons just right.

I’ve tossed in black mushrooms for a terrific xianwei undercurrent, some fresh ginger to back up the flavors with a touch of heat, and then lots of warm spices to amplify the comforting nuttiness. The result really is delicious.

Simmer the nuts and shrooms

This dish might have originally hailed from Shanghai or Zhejiang due to the fried gluten balls, soy sauce, and rock sugar. It seems that this was then turned into a classic side dish by Taiwan’s military families, who have given the island a wonderful range of homey dishes called juancuncai 眷村菜 (literally "military dependents' village foods"). 

Back in the day (we are talking about the early 1950's here), these villages were rather impoverished, as even the officers lived in very simple barracks that looked like old motels. A hallway ran down the center of the place where my husband's family lived, and each household had front doors that opened up on this. The balcony in the back was covered with corrugated steel and used as a makeshift kitchen. No running water back then, so my husband and his father had to haul water up the stairs in buckets that would be poured into the family cistern.

Small grocery stores run by retired soldiers would sell supplies like fresh produce, as well as steamed breads (mantou) and the deli dishes known in Shanghai as péntóucài 盆頭菜 ("basin foods"). Prepared by either the soldiers' wives or local aunties, these savory preparations literally were sold in aluminum basins and covered with window screen mesh. Then, someone had the bright idea of making this simple concoction even easier by canning it, and most folks never turned back.

Rock sugar always makes things better

I recommend, though, that you do. Consider this yet another one of those template recipes, a guideline that you start out with and then hone to fit your own taste buds. The peanuts and fried gluten are the perfect backdrops for experimentation. Do try this traditional take first, though, as it’s a classic.

Peanuts and fried gluten

Huāshēng miànjīn 花生麵筋

Taiwan Military Families and the lower Yangtze River area

Serves 8 as an appetizer or side dish

1 cup (6 ounces/170g) raw shelled peanuts

1 big handful of dried black mushroom stems (see Tips), or 3 dried black mushrooms

Water, as needed

3 slices fresh ginger

2 whole star anise (see Tips)

½ stick cinnamon

1 teaspoon whole Sichuan peppercorns

2 tablespoons/30ml peanut or vegetable oil

1 tablespoon (or so) rock sugar

3 tablespoon/45ml oyster sauce (or oyster-flavored sauce for a meatless version)

1 tablespoon/15ml dark soy sauce

¼ cup/60ml mild rice wine (Taiwan Mijiu)

1 big bag (7 ounce/200g) of small fried gluten balls (see Tips)

1. This will be ready in two days from beginning to end (most of that spent just waiting around, truth be told). Start this recipe by rinsing the peanuts and mushrooms, placing them in separate bowls, and covering them by at least an inch with cool water. Let them soak overnight.

The collapsing gluten balls

2. Before you begin cooking, first rinse off the peanuts in a colander and place them in a 2 quart/2 liter pan. Reserve the mushroom soaking liquid and either rinse the mushroom stems or, if you are using the whole mushrooms, rinse them off before slicing them into thin pieces. Add the mushrooms and strain the soaking liquid into the pan, and add enough water to cover the peanuts and mushrooms by an inch.

3. Add the ginger, star anise, and cinnamon to the pan. Place the peppercorns in a mesh ball or teabag and add them to the pan, too. Bring the pan to a boil over high heat and then lower the heat to maintain a gentle simmer.

4. After about 15 minutes, add the oil, sugar, oyster sauce, soy sauce, rice wine, and gluten balls – you probably will have to add the gluten balls in increments, as they start out huge, but then collapse as they soften, so add enough to fill the pan, cover, simmer for a few minutes, and then add some more until you’ve added the whole bag.

5. Bring the pan to a boil again over high heat, and then reduce it to a slow simmer. Cook until the peanuts are soft but not mushy and the gluten is silky. Allow everything to come to room temperature before chilling it overnight, as this will give the nuts time to absorb all of the flavors. Serve this dish as either a bar snack or as a side with bland but delicious things like steamed rice or congee.

Tips

I’m a serious collector of mushroom stems. Fresh or dried, whenever I use Chinese black mushrooms (which are very similar to Japanese shiitake), I remove the tough stems and dry them out in a strawberry box set out on the counter for this very purpose. When the stems are completely dry and are as hard as wood, they get tossed into a jar and stored in the pantry. This is an amazing resource for deep sauces like the one we have here, for stocks, and for whenever you want to add a serious flavor boost to your soups. For more refined dishes, strain out the stems before you use the stock; otherwise, as with here, keep the stems in if you have a good set of teeth, as they can be a bit chewy, but I think divinely so.

Fried gluten balls

If you are in a hurry, or just don’t have all these spices, toss in five-spice powder to taste. Start with a teaspoon and work up until the flavors hit your sweet spot.

Fried gluten balls come in two sizes: big and small. The big ones are used in such Shanghainese dishes as this. Try to get the small ones for this recipe, though. They will usually be found in Chinese grocery stores that cater to Taiwanese and newer Chinese immigrants. The gluten balls are called miànjīnqíu 麵筋球 and should be around 1 inch/2cm in diameter. 

This bag of gluten balls will be alarmingly large, but don’t worry, as the puffs will collapse into small wisps in the sauce. Check the expiration date on the bag – old frying oil always tastes like old frying oil no matter how hard you try to fix it – and store them in the refrigerator.

Pickled long beans with ground pork

One sub-cuisine in China almost never, ever gets mentioned. This is a type of cooking that is a solid part of Taiwan’s food culture, and it is so homey and delicious that there really is no good reason for it to stay in the shadows. What I am talking about is the cooking of military communities, the comfort food that people in the armed forces would come home to back in the fifties through the eighties.

Called juancun cai 眷村菜, this is often translated as the food of “military dependents,” but putting it like that makes it seem like the soldiers and sailors don’t cook it or eat it themselves, so let me suggest "military communities" instead.

So what is juancun cai? This is rustic cooking from all over China that was brought to the island of Taiwan in 1949 when Chiang Kai-shek retreated there for all time. He brought many armed personnel with him, and most did their best to evacuate their families, as well. As they settled down in the simple housing close to the military bases, people from Sichuan, Shandong, Jiangsu, Guangdong, and elsewhere started sharing recipes and cooking up a storm.

Homemade pickled beans

These folks generally did not have a whole lot of money to spend on food, so the dishes they created were inclined to use lots of vegetables rather than meat, and what meats there are tend to be cheaper cuts or ground pork. A lot was always made out of a little. Food was preserved with pickling and drying, and these added extra layers of savoriness to the final dish. (The noodle dishes of the juancun were also incredibly delicious, cheap, and well made.)

My husband grew up on one such base in southern Taiwan very near the seashore, and he counts those as some of his happiest days. The one thing that seems to summon the best memories are the flavors that remind him of that little house in Pingdong, the smells that wafted down the narrow alleyways, the tastes that he came to equate with home.

This dish uses longbeans pickled the traditional way, which turns them from rather boring and tough string bean wannabes into vegetables with a truly haunting flavor and tender texture. You can, of course, sometimes find them in Chinese grocery stores, but they are never as tasty and crisp as homemade ones.

The cowpeas in the pods

Long beans are a strange looking vegetable. Usually way over a foot long, they have a reptilian feel and appearance. However, they are nothing more sinister than immature cowpea pods, and if you look closely at the little beans inside them, you can see the white baby, which add a light nuttiness.

This dish is sometimes referred to as Sour Bean Pods with Ground Pork (酸豆角炒肉末 Suan doujiao chao roumo). It's a terrific dish to have on hand, as it's something that keeps well and tastes perfect spooned over a bowl of plain noodles, eaten with steamed rice, or used as a side dish for congee. As for its origins, I’ve heard people say it’s from Sichuan, which may be true, but I can’t find it in my encyclopedia of Sichuan foods. So, at least for the time being, I’m going to say it’s from Hunan. But in the end, who cares… it’s just plain tasty.

Homey food

Pickled long beans with ground pork 
Pào jiāngdòu chǎo ròumòu 泡豇豆炒肉末 
Taiwanese military communities, Sichuan

Serves 4 to 6 as a main dish

1 bunch pickled long beans (from the Sichuan traditional pickled vegetables recipe)

3 cloves garlic

3 dried Thai peppers

1 tablespoon finely chopped ginger

¼ cup oil, more or less

8 ounces (or so) ground pork

1 tablespoon plain rice wine (mijiu)

2 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil

½ green onion (white part only), finely sliced on the diagonal

1. Trim off the stem ends of the pickled long beans and rinse the beans thoroughly to remove the extra salt and sour juices. Taste a piece, and if it is too salty or sour for your taste, quickly blanch the beans in boiling water, rinse, and drain. (I usually like them unrinsed, but this is a matter of personal taste and also depends on the quality of the beans.) Chop the beans into ¼-inch lengths.

2. Peel and trim the garlic cloves and then finely chop them. Break open the chili pods and shake out most of the seeds, and then cut them on the diagonal into small pieces. Add the ginger to the garlic and chili peppers.

3. Heat a wok over high until the pan begins to smoke, and then pour in the oil. Toss in the garlic, chilies, and ginger, and quickly stir them over the heat to release their fragrance. Add the ground pork and stir-fry it until the meat is slightly browned. Add the chopped beans to the wok along with the rice wine, sugar, sesame oil, and green onion. Quickly toss these all together over high heat until the beans are barely cooked through. Taste and adjust the seasoning, and then serve while still hot.

Tips

If you need to buy pickled long beans, look for some that were made in the U.S., if at all possible. They often have an expiration date on the plastic shrink-wrap, so try to find the freshest ones you can. Although they are supposed to stay edible for a long time if the package isn’t opened, I suggest that you use them sooner rather than later.

Fresh long beans

Also, see whether there are lots of preservatives and food coloring used in their manufacture, two things which tell you it’s not the best quality.

Any kind of ground meat is fine here – even veggie meat, if you are so inclined – but I prefer both ground pork and ground turkey in this dish. Add a bit more oil if whatever meat you’re using is on the dry side.

Fresh chilies can be used instead of dried here, and they are equally good. But don’t be tempted to add Pickled Red Chilies, as that would be too much salt and sour for your palate to handle.