Bean curd with pine flower preserved eggs

As the year winds down and 2016 finally comes to an end, All Under Heaven continues to hang out with some really great books. I still can’t believe that this is happening, but here you go:

Epicurious has my book up there with goddesses like Dorie Greenspan, as well as friends like Jeffrey Yoskowitz. Each and every one of these books is now on my Must Have List. I can think of fewer honors that make me happier than sharing a shelf with these great food writers. Please buy their books!

Check out Munchies - it's always good

Munchies reproduced my Mapo Doufu recipe on its website. If you are wondering what to cook for dinner this week, look no further. I am so proud of this truly authentic and very flavorful rendition of a Chengdu classic.

Public Radio station WBUR just published “7 Recipes from Resident Chef Kathy Gunst’s Favorite Cookbooks of 2016.” It shortlists only four titles, but Chef Gunst goes on to note, “If you, or anyone on your list, love Chinese food, this is your book.... The charming illustrations were drawn by Phillips and even though there’s not a photograph in sight, her writing and very clearly written recipes will make you want to cook your way through China, and this book.”

I ask you, could you find better company to be in?

Eat Your Books is having a cookbook giveaway, and that book is All Under Heaven! This contest ends on January 12, so hurry on over, become a free member of Eat Your Books (it is SO worth it!), and join the fun.

And finally, the wonderful Marc Schermerhorn gives All Under Heaven two thumbs up on his blog, Baketard, where he posts my beloved recipe for Dry-Fried Chicken Wings and talks about cooking from the book with his friends, who gave the book super high points: 

Marc's wings

“Recently I invited a group of friends over to explore the book that in my opinion is THE cookbook of the year, Carolyn Phillips’ comprehensive tome on Chinese cookery, All Under Heaven: Recipes from the 35 Cuisines of China. I have a large cookbook library, and Chinese cookbooks, both from the US and around the world, are the second largest section in my collection -- second only to Italian. None of my books come close to covering the breadth of Chinese cuisine explored in Carolyn’s book. Not even close. This book blew us all away. We made 10-12 dishes together, and Every. Single. Dish. Was amazing. Every one! We always rate dishes between 1-10. Nothing was less than a 9. That never happens.” 

And then he says, "You want this book. Trust me. This is THE book of 2016, IMO." Thank you, Marc, for such a great Festivus present!

*  *  *

Today we have a classic East China appetizer – another incredibly simple yet dazzling combination from the Yangtze River area. 

Back in the early 1980's, the one place my husband and I could always count on to do this dish right was a wonderful mid-priced restaurant in downtown Taipei, Fùxīngyuán 復興園. We became such regular customers there that, as soon as we walked in the door, the cook would prepare this dish just the way I liked it — with an extra egg — and it would be set on our table only sec­onds after we’d been poured hot tea.

Snowflake patterns under the shell

Generally referred to as simply pidan doufu, or bean curd with preserved eggs, this dish relies on the quality of the ingredients, the perfect ratio of bean curd to egg, and the proper execution of the tangy sauce that tops it. The bean curd must be the soft, custardy type, and the preserved eggs should be of the pine flower (songhua) variety, meaning that crystalline patterns have formed under the shells.

Preserved eggs get a bad rap because of their appear­ance and the touristy names associated with them: “thousand-year-old egg” or “century egg” or even “mil­lennium egg.” The fact is, they’re not at all old, and they should be enjoyed while they are relatively fresh because they will dry out if left out for too long. When opened, the whites will have turned a clear, dark amber, and the yolks will be runny and grayish green but taste remarkably buttery.

A long-time favorite

I once was at lunch with a good American Chinese friend in Taipei. She had her young daughter in tow, and of course when the pidan were served, the daughter was horrified at having black eggs plunked in front of her. I grabbed a big wedge, stuck it in my face, and made all sorts of yummy sounds before saying, “Ooooh, Jello eggs...” She bought it, and proceeded to devour what remained on the plate.

And that, my friends, is marketing. Happy holidays!

Bean curd with pine flower preserved eggs

Sōnghuā pídàn dòufŭ 松花皮蛋豆腐

Hubei and Jiangxi

Serves 4 to 6

2 or 3 preserved eggs

1 block (14 ounces / 400 g) soft bean curd (see Tips)

2 tablespoons Sichuan pickled tuber

1 green onion, green parts only

2 tablespoons coarsely chopped cilantro

½ teaspoon sea salt

Get a good brand from Taiwan

1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon pale rice vinegar

1 teaspoon black vinegar

¼ cup / 60 ml toasted sesame oil

1. Peel the eggs, rinse them gently to remove any tiny bits of shell, and slice them into thin wedges.

2. Bring a small saucepan half full of water to a boil and slip in the block of soft bean curd; bring the water to a boil again and then discard the water and carefully rinse the hot bean curd under cool tap water. Drain well and place on a cutting board. Cut the bean curd lengthwise in half and then cut it crosswise into thin pieces (⅛ to ¼ inch / 3 to 6 mm wide). Use your knife to gently lift up the fragile slices and fan them out on a rimmed serving plate. Arrange the sliced eggs on top.

Sichuan pickled tuber from my grocer's bin

3. Rinse the pickled tuber and chop it very finely. Thinly slice the onion greens. Scatter the pickled tuber, green onion, and cilantro over the top of the eggs. Boil the salt, sugar, vinegars, and sesame oil in a wok over high heat until they bubble furiously, but not so long that the sugar burns; taste this mix­ture and adjust as necessary, then drizzle it over the greens to wilt them. Serve slightly warm.

Tips

You can use either “soft” or “extra-soft” bean curd here. But keep in mind that although the extra-soft kind will taste very good, it might look messier, as it tends to fall apart easily.

The bean curd is quickly blanched in this recipe to gently firm it up (so that it’s easier to slice) and to remove any scent of the packaging.

My go-to brand

Use care when selecting the eggs and the bean curd. Get soft, organic, non-GMO bean curd (aka, doufu or tofu). The taste is so much better. And the eggs should preferably be from Taiwan, which tends to make good quality preserved eggs with tender whites and creamy centers. Poor quality ones will be rubbery on the outside and hard on the inside. 

Check to see that the packages says that "no lead" was used. Unleaded would - in a perfect world - refer only to gasoline. But unfortunately some unscrupulous manufacturers stoop to horrible practices in making their preserved eggs. Good ones do exist, though. This one in the photo with the yellow packaging has always served me well, and I usually find those "pine flowers" underneath the shell. 

My favorite noodles: dandan mian

This is probably the one thing I could eat every day for a week and still want more: Dandan Noodles. A creamy, crunchy, soft, crisp, nutty, spice-flecked, tart, sweet, and savory sauce coats each strand with luscious flavor. It’s like a whole spectrum of things for the mouth to play with.

My gold standard for this dish was made at a small stand in Qing Guang Market, a warren of tiny dark alleys off of Chongqing North Road in Taipei. I’d get off at the bus stop there as often as I could manage and make a beeline for Caves Bookstore, which had shelves full of pirated English language books. They had classics, modern bestsellers, and shelves full of weird titles that always made me wonder who in their right mind would ever pick them up, much less write them. I still have my first hardback copies of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Claiborne's New York Times cookbook, and The Joy of Cooking more for sentimental reasons than anything else, as I read those so many times in those incarnations that I could never bear giving them up. In spite of that, those reproductions were really bad – just lousy photocopies that turned any illustrations into mud – but it was just about the only way to get anything to read in English at that time, so I was a regular customer.

Homemade chile sauce - always a great idea

One day I had the pleasure of squiring the former director of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art around town as his interpreter, as he was the guest of the National Museum of History where I worked. I told the elegant Mr. Thomas Hoving how much I’d loved his books, particularly King of the Confessors, which had just come out. Bad idea. He asked me where I possibly could have gotten ahold of it in such a short period of time, and I joyfully admitted to having bought an illegal copy. I offered to give it to him as a sort of weird memento of his trip to the pirated book capital of the world, but Mr. Hoving looked determinedly out the window, the air in the cab dropped around 30 degrees, and we spent the rest of the ride in a strained silence. I shelved my idea of asking him for a job at the Met.

Sichuan hot bean sauce

Anyway, back to the noodles. This lady in the market made the best version I’ve ever tasted, and I’ve worked hard over the years to reproduce it. You of course can play with the ratios as much as you like, particularly since things like chile oil and goop, soy sauce, peanut butter, vinegar, and all the other condiments have a wide range of flavors, and also because our mouths are just so different. What this means in the short run is that what makes me thrilled to the core might seem less than perfect to you. And so you should feel free to make this dish your very own.

So here, without more ado, is my personal recipe for what I think are now the best Dandan Noodles in the world:

Dandan noodles

Dàndàn miàn 擔擔麵

Sichuan

Serves 2 to 4 as either a main meal or generous side dish

Meat:

2 tablespoons chile oil plus 1 tablespoon of the goop (if you like it spicy), or else use 2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil

8 ounces ground fatty meat (pork, beef, chicken, or turkey)

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2 tablespoons Sichuan fermented hot bean sauce (la doubanjiang)

¼ cup chopped Sichuan pickles (see Tips)

2 tablespoons mild rice wine (Taiwan Mijiu)

1 tablespoon regular soy sauce

1 teaspoon sugar

Sauce:

2 tablespoons toasted sesame paste

2 tablespoons nut butter (peanut butter, almond butter, etc.)

About 1/2 cup hot water

2 tablespoons black vinegar

The crunchy garnish

1 tablespoon sugar

Noodles:

2 quarts boiling water

1 pound dried noodles of some sort (thick or thin, wheat or rice, white or wholegrain, whatever); I prefer very thin wheat pasta here, like capellini

Garnish:

¼ cup chopped toasted peanuts

2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds

Leaves of 2 green onions, thinly sliced

Blanched greens (like celtuce leaves or spinach), or shredded cucumber

1. This dish can be made ahead of time up through Step 2; refrigerate the meat and sauce if you are not using them right away. Place a wok over medium-high heat, and as soon as it is hot, swirl the oil around inside to coat the iron. Add the goop and ground meat to the oil and break it up with your spatula. As it starts to turn from pink to gray, sprinkle in the garlic and toss these together over the heat until the meat is about half browned. Scoot the meat and garlic up the sides of the wok so that the oil dribbles back down to the bottom before adding the bean sauce to the oil. Stir this around over the heat to cook it through, and then toss in the pickles, rice wine, soy sauce, and sugar. Quickly boil the seasonings down to a thick syrup, toss the meat with it, and then scrape it into a small work bowl.

2. To make the sauce, rinse out the wok and set it over medium heat. Mix the sesame paste and peanut butter in the wok with just enough hot water so that they smooth out and have the texture of sour cream. Add the rest of the sauce ingredients, bring it to a boil, and then toss in the meat mixture. Taste and adjust the seasoning, adding whatever you think it needs, be it more peanut butter, chile oil or goop, vinegar, etc. Remove the wok from the heat.

3. About 10 minutes before serving, bring the pot of water to a full boil and add the dried noodles. Stir the noodles as the water comes back to a boil so that they do not stick together. Simmer the noodles according to package directions, or until done to your liking.

4. Toss the drained noodles (reserve a cup or so of the pasta water) in the wok with the hot sauce. Then, divide the noodles between two large soup bowls and reserve the pasta water. Add about ¼ cup of the boiling pasta water to each bowl (more if you like the noodles soupier), and sprinkle the tops of the bowls with the peanuts, sesame seeds, and green onions. Arrange some blanched greens or the cucumber on the edge of the noodles. Serve and eat immediately, adding more hot pasta water to your noodles if they start to get dry.

Yibin city's famous yacai

Tips

The traditional pickle for this dish is from Sichuan and is known as yácài 芽菜, which is yet another type of pickled mustard leaf. Because beansprouts are sometimes called yacai, most people refer to this pickle as Sìchuān yácài 四川芽菜 (after the province) or 宜賓芽菜 Yíbīn yácài (after the town most connected to this seasoning). Yacai has a nice crunch to it and, to my mouth at least, has a more delicate range of flavors to it that works especially well in dishes like this one. 

If you look at the last photo here, you can see another reason why this pickle is so tasty: it's bathed in a rich soy sauce that gives it all sorts of deep flavors.

A tangle of yacai

The other standby pickle is Sichuan pickled tuber (zhàcài 榨菜), which provides a relatively one-note saltiness. However, the tuber is much more common in markets (find it in sealed plastic bags, in cans, even in open bins at times), and so use what you have here.

My husband loves this topped with a fried egg or two. Just saying.