Taiwanese pickles

Some more wonderful news this week: The Los Angeles Times listed All Under Heaven as one of its 27 favorite cookbooks of the fall. I could not be happier... I mean look at the company I'm keeping! Mom would have been so proud. (However, in all honesty, she never knew that the real reason I learned Chinese was so that I could eat the good stuff for the rest of my life.)

I'm also so thrilled that Jenny Hartin of Cookbook Junkies put All Under Heaven on her short list of her top ten (10!) must-have cookbooks for 1000 Cookbooks. If you are a serious lover of food writing, get to know the Cookbook Junkies and the friendly yet knowledgeable people there - the recommendations are fantastic, and it's where I've learned about and fell in love with many books I otherwise would have never noticed. Yup, I too am a certified cookbook junkie.

Finally, don't forget to come out to the Literary Feast hosted by Les Dames d'Escoffier this coming Sunday in San Francisco. It will be amazing, I promise you. Hope you can join us!

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When you visit Taiwan, there are a few places where you absolutely must eat. And I’m not talking about the big food palaces or those swanky little bistros that now line the more fashionable areas of Taipei cheek to jowl. No, you want to wander down the back alleys, out into the little villages, and into the night markets.

China’s great culinary masterpieces are, to be sure, still to be found in its finest restaurants, and I always make it a point to eat to the point of bursting when I go there with old friends, for the foods of Hunan, Jiangsu, Beijing, Sichuan, and Guangdong are rarely better than in my old favorite haunts.

But what I really hunger for are the local treats, the street foods. Deep-fried stinky bean curd, for example, is like a ripe cheese with a crispy crust when done right – and who can argue with crispy cheese? And then the hawker will shove a handful of crunchy pickled cabbage alongside those golden chunks, often bathed in a homemade chile oil. It’s a genius touch: sweet, sour, cool, fresh, and spicy notes bang around in my mouth against the pungent, hot, smooth, and rough character of the bean curd. I always eyeball each pile as I eat, timing things carefully and portioning them just so, and in that way end up with equal portions of the pickles and bean curd by the last mouthful. (That’s dedication, I tell you.)

Salting the cabbage, carrots, & chile

The Taiwanese are no slouches when it comes to the art of creating the perfect pickle out of little more than a handful of ingredients. This is the sort of thing you will find in busy night market stands, at mom n' pop restaurants, and in your friends' homes. There are good reasons for that: this is easy, cheap, delicious, and perfect alongside anything rich or fatty, like pork or a fried chicken leg or a good barbecued Taiwanese sausage. 

If you are hesitant about getting involved in pickling and fermentation, this is an excellent baby step toward mastery, for today's recipe requires that you first just salt the veggies, then toss everything together before letting them sit in a cool place (even a refrigerator will do nicely) until the pickle is as flavorful as you like. The vinegars do the heavy lifting here, so it's not naturally fermented like in this recipe for absolutely stellar Sichuan pickles that are soured with only time and a touch of salt. 

I’ve added some fresh chile pepper to the pickle, but powdered dried chiles work great, as does the addition of absolutely no hot stuff at all. What I really like to do is to drizzle homemade chile oil over a fistful of these chilled pickles, but that is a quick path to addiction that I must by law caution you against.

Be that as it may, something this good should not be reserved for your stinky bean curd celebrations. Consider this a great candidate for sidling up next to sausages of any ilk (shove a handful into a hotdog if you want your eyes to roll back into your head), slipping into sandwiches, or even tossing in a simple stir-fry of meat or chicken or sausage or bean curd – just do it at the last minute so that the crisp, fresh nature of this pickle can be enjoyed to its fullest.

Prep the colorful veggies

Taiwanese pickles

Táishì pàocài  台式泡菜

Taiwan & Southern Fujian

Makes about 8 cups / 2 liters

1 medium round cabbage (about 3 pounds / 1350 g)

1 carrot

1 fresh red chile of any variety, optional

2 tablespoons / 35 g sea salt

2 tablespoons / 30 cc Taiwanese Mijiu (or other mild rice wine)

½ cup / 120 g agave syrup, or some sort of sugar to taste (Turbinado or other raw sugar is nice here)

6 tablespoons / 90 ml white rice vinegar
2 tablespoons / 30 cc apple cider vinegar

Homemade chile oil, optional but insanely good

1. Set a large colander and a large work bowl in the sink. (This will seem like a whole lot of vegetables at first, so have the work bowl there to help manage things. Once the vegetables shrink down, they can all go into the colander.) Rinse the vegetables and pat them dry. Remove any damaged leaves on the cabbage, cut out the core, and tear the cabbage apart into bite-sized pieces (around 1 inch / 2 cm square). Work the leaves apart with your fingers as you do this. Peel the carrot and then cut it into thin julienne. Remove the cap and seeds from the optional chile before shredding it into thin slivers. Toss the cabbage, carrot, chile, and salt together thoroughly in the colander and bowl, and then let them shrink down few hours until they become more manageable. Dump everything into the colander, where they can continue to drain for a couple of hours (or even overnight) while you do something else.

The main seasonings

2. An hour or two before you want to proceed to the next step, simmer the rice wine, sugar, and rice vinegar together in a small (nonreactive) saucepan until it boils. Add the apple cider vinegar, which will provide the necessary sharp edge to this brine. Taste the pickling juice and adjust the seasoning to suit your taste by adding more of any ingredient. Take your time with this, as you are creating the main flavor of the pickle here. Remove the pan from the heat and let the liquid come to room temperature. 

3. Have a large clean jar or two large work bowl ready (again, nonreactive, like glass or steel is good – don’t use things like aluminum, which will have a chemical reaction with the vinegar). The pickles will shrink down over a day or two, so start them out in relatively ample containers so that you can toss them without having them spill out onto your counter. 

Delectable

4. Squeeze handfuls of the vegetables relatively dry, discarding their juices, and transfer them to the jar or bowls. Pour the cooled pickling juice over the vegetables, toss things around a little bit, and then cover the containers and place them in a cool place, like a pantry, basement, or refrigerator. Taste the pickle after around 2 days – whenever it is cured enough for your taste, start eating. (It takes about 3 days for things to hit the sweet spot for me.) The pickle will continue to cure the longer it sits, so try to consume it relatively quickly. Serve chilled in small mounds with the optional chile oil.

The Books Are Here!!! + Zhejiang's Pork in a Crock!

Look at this! #1 New Release on Amazon's Chinese Cooking!!

And it's coming out TOMORROW!!

Please excuse my excitement... this has been a very long time coming. Ten years, to be exact, and I am so thrilled and grateful and downright happy that All Under Heaven is finally seeing the light of day. Thank you all for your incredible support!

The Dim Sum Field Guide is doing very well indeed, too: #1 on Amazon in the General China Travel Guides department! 

Other great news: We are getting great reviews across the board. Georgia Freedman had a generous couple of things to say on the Wall Street Journal about All Under Heaven. Tasting Table featured All Under Heaven in its article, "The Most Exciting New Cookbooks for Fall 2016." Both books are given a very nice mention on Eat Your Books. Virginia Miller @ThePerfectSpot called my twins "the book of the week (or 2)" on Twitter, and the Cookbook Junkies made my head explode with this insanely lovely bunch of words and cookbook giveaway - thank you, Jenny and Marc!

One of my recipes is up on Epicurious. Please, try it and rate it! 

Plus, a very kind reader pointed out that my dim sum illustrations for Lucky Peach were given a great shoutout last year on First We Feast. Nice, and wow! (I need to learn to Google myself...)

And if you're in NYC around the middle of next month, please try to join me at the 92nd St Y for a talk about, well, you know.

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You’ve never had tender until you’ve eaten classically prepared Chinese pork. I’m not talking about stir-fries here, but braises, those rich, decadent, lip-smacking, mind-blowing, insanely addictive dishes that slowly cook for hours until the pork belly or shank or what-have-you finally surrenders into a pillow of delectable textures that sponge up the sauce and make dinner that night a really good reason to celebrate.

Pork in a crock is popular throughout many parts of China. Shandong, Sichuan, Jiangsu, Hunan... it’s hard to find a Han Chinese cuisine that doesn’t fuss in its own way over this dish, adding local flavors to make it their very own. A lot of this has to do with history. Just like Europe, China’s food cultures are a reflection of mass migrations, wars, famines, and upheavals that sent entire villages out in search of better places to live. And, as with all people, they brought their families’ recipes with them, adding this and subtracting that as they cooked with what was there in the new neighborhood.

I witnessed a speeded-up version of this culinary evolution when I lived in Taiwan. The island was home to its own cuisine – basically a template from Quanzhou in southern Fujian tempered with flavors from the local Hakka people, a good dash of Japanese inspirations due to Taiwan’s status as a colony for 50 years, and influences from other ports of call in southern China. But as people from all over the country were busy setting down roots on the island following the fall of the Mainland and the ensuing mass immigration of 1949 to what we used to call Formosa, dishes from just about everywhere took root, too, and became part of Taiwan’s own culinary geography.

For example, Taiwan is renowned for its beef noodle soup, but when I first arrived in the mid-1970’s, few Taiwanese would even consider eating beef, as water buffalo were prized as farmers’ living tractors and were so important to their families that eating them would have been viewed as disgusting, and also incredibly ungrateful. But times have changed, and Taiwan is now a part of the developed world with semiconductor companies eating up the old rice paddies. 

But back to this week’s dish. This is basically red-cooked pork and is most definitely a Zhejiang delight, for you have your bamboo shoots, your ginger, your soy sauce, your generous amount of Shaoxing rice wine, and your touch of rock sugar. In fact, it calls for a whole lot of Shaoxing rice wine and only a smidgen of soy sauce, which means that it’s not terribly salty, but rather rich and decadent. My toes curl in excitement just smelling it cooking away on the counter.

I’ve tossed in a dozen hardboiled eggs, too, which makes my husband ridiculously happy. If you are not an egg fiend, use six or so, or even eliminate them – it doesn’t really matter. But around my house, if I aim to eat one of these eggs, I have to have a whole lot in there to distract him and to outwit his single-minded onslaught on this favorite food.

Use the best pork - with skin

One big difference between my recipe and the traditional one is that usually this calls for an actual crock that is sealed with cloth and mud so that not a drop of the juices is given the chance to turn into steam and disappear. I’ve gone a slightly easier route by turning to my trusty crockpot. It doesn’t emit a whole lot of steam, plus the heat is gentle enough to slowly cook the meat without ever burning, making this classic incredibly easy. Be sure and boil down the sauce until it is more concentrated, as this is one of the secrets to getting deeply hued meat, shoots, and eggs. If you’re lazy like me, just keep everything in the crockpot after the first day and plug the crockpot in once a day only until the liquid boils. Do that for two or three days, and the star attractions will turn a lovely mahogany hue through and through.

If you are having friends or even an important guest over for a meal, buy two bottles of good quality Shaoxing rice wine for the pork and a really good bottle for drinking. Dinner and your reputation as a great cook will have practically taken care of themselves.

Pork in a crock

Tánzi ròu 罈子肉

Zhejiang

Serves 4 to 8

Around 2 pounds / 900 g fresh pork belly with the skin on (see Tips)

Boiling water, as needed

1 pound / 450 g fresh or frozen peeled winter bamboo shoots

¼ cup / 1½ ounces / 45 g sliced fresh ginger

6 green onions, trimmed but left whole

2 (600 ml) bottles Shaoxing rice wine (see Tips)

6 to 12 large eggs, hardboiled and peeled

½ cup regular soy sauce

1 piece rock sugar, about the size of an egg

1. Start this at least one day - and preferably three - before serving. Cut the pork into 4 even pieces. Place these in a saucepan and cover with water. Bring the water to a boil and simmer the pork for about 10 minutes to remove the impurities. Then, dump out the water and scum, rinse off and dry the meat, and place it in a 4-quart crockpot.

Simmer away the scum

2. Cut up the bamboo shoots on the angle or with a roll cut into chunks around the size of a large egg. Add these to the crockpot along with the ginger and whole green onions. Bring the rice wine to a boil in a saucepan and then add it to the crockpot; pour in boiling water to cover. Place the lid on the crockpot and bring it to a boil. Cook the pork on high with the lid on for around 5 hours. The pork should at that point be very tender – check this by piercing it with a chopstick, which should glide through the meat as if it were soft butter.

3. At this point add the eggs, soy sauce, and rock sugar to the crockpot, cover again, and bring it to a boil on high before lower the heat and simmering it for another hour or so. Taste the sauce and adjust the seasoning with more soy sauce or sugar as needed. Turn off the crockpot and allow the pork to come to room temperature overnight with the lid on. It can be refrigerated, if you like, for a couple of days, or do as suggested in the headnotes – whatever you do, time is what is needed to give the flavors a good chance to improve.

Yum, yumyumyum

4. About an hour before serving, remove the fat layer on the sauce and use it for something else, like stir-frying vegetables. If you want, each piece of pork can first be sliced into four pieces for easier dining, the eggs halved, and the shoots cleaved in two, as well. (If the dish is cold, heat it slowly in the sauce until everything is warmed up.) Pluck out and discard the green onions, and then plate up the meat, eggs, and bamboo shoots in a wide, shallow bowl. Drizzle the sauce over everything or serve it on the side. If you’d rather, arrange the tidbits on top of rice before ladling the sauce on top. Any way you do this, it will end up amazingly delicious. Be sure and eat the fat and skin sitting on top of and around the meat: it won’t be in the least greasy, but rather will be more like munching on heavenly scented clouds.

Tips

The quality of two ingredients here are absolutely vital to the success of this dish: the pork and the rice wine.

Get your hands on some good pork belly with the skin on at an excellent butcher. What's good pork belly? First, it should be humanely raised and butchered. Nothing smells as bad as supermarket pork that comes from a factory farm. 

The best pork belly (also called a side of pork) is half meat and half fat: lots of thinnish, alternating lines of red and white. You do NOT want lean meat here - it will turn out tough and stringy. And if the meat parts of the pork belly happen to be too thick, they will never become tender. Remove any thick flap of meat that's on the inner surface of the belly and use it for a stir-fry or something, because you can forget about it ever softening up.

The not-so-secret ingredients

If you can't find good pork belly, look for a well-marbled shoulder (also called the pork butt). Since you want it with the skin on, this might require you to call ahead and reserve it. So, nurture a good relationship with your butcher, and soon you'll be able to buy all of those lovely cuts that work well in Chinese cooking: anything with skin, plus trotters, tails, cheeks, kidneys, livers, and so on. 

Good quality Shaoxing rice wine is also necessary here. Don't get the cheap brands, which can be like rotgut. If at all possible, hunt down Taiwan's TTL brand Shaoxing rice wine, which as a good, mushroomy, sherry-like flavor. It makes all the difference in the flavor of the sauce. And be sure to nibble on the sauce if you happen to chill it... it's insanely good that way.

Finally, note that the soy sauce is added toward the end. Salt tends to toughen meat, so try to hold back on adding soy sauce and salt to braises and soups until you get toward the end.