Early summer's first gift: garlic stems

Wandering through my local Korean grocery store the other day, I came across one of my favorite vegetables, albeit one that has just a short few weeks of glory. 

The long, thin, emerald flower stems that emerge from garlic bulbs at the first sign of warm weather are called "scapes," and they embody all the warm flavors you'd expect from garlic, but with a subtler, more vegetal vibe.

The Chinese simply call them "garlic stems" (suantai) and love them dearly. We have a doctor friend from Nanjing who lives nearby, and at least half of his backyard is dedicated to rows of garlic bulbs carefully planted in the cold days of autumn just so that he can have as many of these garlic stems as he desires. Which must be a lot, because his little field keeps encroaching on the rest of his yard with each passing year...

Inside a flower head

You can grow them yourself, too, which is a really good idea if you like these little wonders. Set aside a plot in the fall before the frost and plant yourself a couple of rows of garlic cloves as directed here; you'll also have a wonderful harvest of home-grown garlic in late summer!


Do note that the flower is not eaten here, just the tender stem. If you've ever looked at an onion or allium blossom, you'll know why: it's a spiky little ball, all long pins with the flowers at the very end. And then, these nascent needles are wrapped up in what pretty much amounts to a paper cone, so there is not much there to enjoy, which means in the end that what you will be enjoying here is actually the tender, luscious stem.

Select garlic stems that are green all over; even the blossom sheaths should be green rather than yellow. If they are anything other than green, that means the short season has passed and the stems will be tough. When you want to make sure, use the time-honored fingernail test: if your nail goes easily into the bottom half of the stems, they are still tender enough to eat.

Stems cut into short lengths

Once you get them home, wrap them in plastic and refrigerate immediately to stop any more of the blossoming action. Then, within a very few short days, simply rinse the stems and trim off the flower heads about half an inch down, where the stems start to turn dark green; discard the heads. 


Use a paring knife to cut each stem, one at a time. If you want to cut them into inch-long pieces, as here, start at the top and cut off the lengths one at a time. As soon as you start to encounter resistance, that means the skin of the stem is becoming tough and you should discard it. 

If, on the other hand, you have uniformly slightly tough scapes, you should think about dicing them finely. When you do this, only dice a few a time so that you don't really go cutting into deadwood, as dicing can only do so much. No matter what, if you are at all concerned about the tenderness of your stems, cut them shorter so that they will become more tender.

Cooking these delectable garlic stems is a joy because they come already seasoned and only require a bit of heat. I have suggested a Hunan style stir-fry here, with some smoky cured pork and a handful of chopped fermented black beans to provide some savory balance to the sweetness of the green garlic stems; they also are beautiful together: rosy pink, deep black, and jade green.

Hunan smoked cured pork

The one thing you don't want to do is to overpower the garlic stems with lots of chilies or heavy sauces. Let them be the star of the show. In the recipe below, for example, the meat is only a quarter of the the dish, with the rest being the beautiful scapes, and this ends up being a really nice way to focus the attention where it should be.

Meatless diners can use pressed bean curd here instead of meat, and it is terrific; or, just go without any protein at all -- I've done that many times with great delight. If you would like other things besides cured meats, fresh pork is delicious, as is chicken here. The only think you need to do is to cut the meat up into pieces that are about as long as the pieces of garlic stem so that they're easy to eat together. 

I have put a little bit of leeway into the seasoning because everything depends upon the saltiness of the meat and beans, as well as your own palate. So, start with the smaller amount of soy sauce and dribble in more as needed.

Head out to your local Asian market right now while these lovely vegetables are still in town. As Robert Browning would have written had he known about them, "Gather ye garlic scapes while ye may."

Just the right balance

Garlic stems with cured meat Hunan style
Suantai chao Hunan larou 蒜薹炒湖南臘肉 
Hunan
Serves 4 to 6 as part of a multicourse meal

1½ pounds (or so) fresh garlic stems
1 cup (or so) Hunan style cured meat
2 tablespoons fermented black beans
3 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil
2 tablespoons Shaoxing rice wine
2 to 4 teaspoons good soy sauce

1. Rinse the garlic stems and trim off the flower heads. Cut them into 1-inch or so lengths as directed above, using a paring knife rather than a cleaver. Cut the cured meat into slivers that approximate the size of the cut garlic stems. Lightly chop (but do not rinse) the fermented black beans.

2. Pour the oil into a wok and heat it over high until it starts to smoke. Add the meat and black beans to the wok and quickly sear the meat until it starts to brown. Scoot it to one side of the wok and add all of the garlic stems. Stir-fry the garlic stems until they turn a brilliant jade green, and then toss them with the meat, black beans, rice wine, and soy sauce. Taste and adjust seasoning. Serve hot.

Add scapes to the wok

Tips

No time like the present for searching out these wonderfully juicy stems. Asian markets seem to have the best selection since they have incorporated them into their cuisines; try Korean and Chinese markets first, but also check with your local farmers' markets.

Wrap the stems in plastic and store in the fridge. If they look a bit dry, you can cut off the stems and plunk them into a jar of water first... they are flowers, after all!

Amazing Hakka salt pork, green garlic & leeks

In the last post here, we talked about Chinese charcuterie and, more importantly perhaps, about how to make your very own Hakka-style salt pork.

 Now we're going to look at ways to transform those crusty coils sleeping in your fridge into dishes that are so good they practically defy description. But I'll try...

The only thing you really need to do with this cured pork is rinse it, slice it, and cook it. No seasoning is needed. At. All. 

You will find that these gorgeous porky slices embody just about everything you will ever want in a savory dish: meaty flavor, delectable fat, even-handed seasoning, and an enticing aroma. 

All you need to do is summon up a supporting cast. And since none of these are truly recipes -- more on the order of tossing things together -- I will just provide some general guidelines.

Green garlic

At the top here is a picture of a lovely breakfast or brunch dish that does complete justice to the salt pork: eggs and thinly sliced green garlic, as well as just a bit of oil to hasten the browning process. I added absolutely no other seasonings, and the dish was amazingly balanced.

Green garlic is available now around here for a brief couple of weeks, and I urge you to try this if you haven't already. 

At this stage in its life, garlic looks and acts a whole lot like leeks, which are their city cousins. Green garlic is much more rustic and yet also much more fleeting, as the stalks soon dry and brown as the garlic head matures.

Browned cured pork & leeks

When you buy either green garlic or leeks, look of course at the root end; the leeks especially should have plump white rootlets, while the garlic will withstand a little more manhandling due to its aspirations to grow up into a fat bulb. 

Most importantly, check the center of the leaves: do not buy either kind of allium if there is a flower stalk, which usually looks like a solid green stick. 

What does the flower mean? That the leek/garlic is already woody and tough, the leaves are getting ready to shrivel, and you will end up with very little to work with once you remove the stem.

Cured pork strips

To make this dish for two people, remove and discard the skin from half of a strip of the salt pork, slice the pork thinly against the grain, and then brown it over medium heat along with about 2 tablespoons oil. 

Wash and trim either two stalks of green garlic or one leek, making certain that there is no sand in between the leaves. Slice the green garlic or leeks very thinly on the bias and add to the browned pork. Stir them around over medium head until they wilt, and then add 3 or 4 eggs. Fry the eggs any way you like, and then serve up the dish.

A variation on this dish omits the eggs for a savory appetizer or beer snack or a nice side dish with plain congee: brown the sliced pork as explained above, add thinly sliced green onions or leeks, and then fry them together quickly with just a splash of rice wine to soften the veggies. 

Sliced cured pork

Finally, a very traditional Hakka way of enjoying salt pork is to trim and slice it as noted, and then steam the sliced pork on a plate it until done. 

Drain off the juices (save them for soup or a stir-fry, if you like) and serve the steamed pork with its fat still attached along with thinly sliced leeks or green garlic. 

The perfect dipping sauce for those who really want to scare off vampires is simply chopped garlic in vinegar. Save this dish for good friends you are not hoping to kiss.

Spice-crusted salt pork Hakka style

Charcuterie is considered by most of us in the West as a European concept. When we think of such marvelous inventions as sausages, cured meats, salted pork, and brined bits of pig, we almost instinctively bring up images of foods from France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Germany, as well as Eastern Europe and a couple other places where the art of charcuterie is honored and has been honed to shiny perfection. 

Asia is generally not thought of as a hot spot for preserved meats, but hidden away in China are some of the most mouth-watering preparations you've never seen.

And to those of you who love Chinese cuisine, this should come as no surprise, for her dried and preserved and brined and salted ingredients are what give these incomparable foods their uniquely Chinese flavor. For example, beans are salted and cured to make everything from fermented black beans (douchi) to yellow bean sauce (doujiang) to crispy bean sauce (dousu) to even soy sauce. 

Fresh pork belly

Vegetables are given a similar treatment to turn them into umami-rich condiments like "plum vegetable" (meicai) and Tianjin's garlicky "winter vegetable" (dongcai), their flavors now nowhere anything like that of fresh leafy veggies, but more like pickles adept at the art of subtlety and subterfuge.

Like so many of these vegetal creations, meats -- including just about everything that swims, crawls, or flies -- can count on some the folks in some corner of China eyeing it for possible preservation. Although these techniques were initially designed to carry people through the coldest months of winter, nowadays when refrigeration and freezers make this little more than a past concern, cured things serve more than ever as easy and delicious ways to add depth of flavor to just about any dish.

When I lived in Taipei, one of my favorite haunts for hunting down these ingredients was South Gate Market. It had everything: fresh fish and meats, counters full of vegetables and fruit, stalls filled with women busy making local foods, bins piled with candy and dried ingredients, and a special section that arrayed dried and cured animal parts. 

There really is no other way to describe it. These were animal parts in all their wondrous incarnations: split whole fish, strings of sausages, and smoky pork legs all held from the ceiling on long poles, especially in the weeks leading up to the Chinese New Year. Flattened dried octopus and squid were hung up in fantastical dioramas. Splayed chickens, ducks, geese, and even squab and quail hovered over the merchants like aromatic angels.

An array of seasonings for the meat

And the best part was that the making of these delicious ingredients called on traditions from all over China. Yes, Nanjing is known for its great salted ducks and Guangdong for its sweet pink sausages and Hunan for its smoky pork, but people from other areas arranged their families' specialties too around the edges of the market in anticipation of the steady stream of customers that packed the aisles.

Not everyone bought their charcuterie, though. Some, like my late father-in-law, who was Hakka Chinese, enjoyed making their own, which is perfectly reasonable since these meats are often quite easy to make, as with today's recipe.

Without a doubt the master of the family kitchen, Dad was a great cook and loved the things that reminded him of his ancestral home in rural Guangdong. He used to make cured meats and sausages when the family still lived in Taiwan, and this is very similar to one of his recipes. 

The meat has no saltpeter or curing salt in it, so it of course turns brown as it cures. The peppery crust, though, completely seasons the meat and seems to permeate every cell. This recipe will provide you with extra Ground Roasted Salt and Pepper, which you will soon find many uses for, as it is one of those seasoned salts that seem to complement just about every type of protein, including bean curd and eggs.

In the next post we will turn these beautiful cured pork strips into some divinely simple family dishes. Just like Dad's.

Seasoned salt rub 

Spice-crusted salt pork Hakka style  
Kejia xian zhurou 客家鹹豬肉  
Hakka

Makes about 1 pound, plus an extra ¾ cup or so of the Ground Roasted Salt and Pepper mix

1 pound natural pork belly

3 tablespoons white liquor (gaoliang; see Tips)

4 tablespoons whole Sichuan peppercorns

2 tablespoons whole white peppercorns

2 tablespoons whole black peppercorns

½ teaspoon five spice powder

1 teaspoon fennel seeds

5 tablespoons sea salt

½ teaspoon sugar

1.  Rinse the meat and pat it dry. Cut it lengthwise into 3 or 4 long strips. (You can keep any skin on, if you want, as it will be removed before you cook the salt pork.) Rub every inch of the meat with the white liquor and let it marinate while you prepare step 2.

2. Dry fry all of the peppercorns, five spice powder, fennel, and salt (but not the sugar) over low heat until the peppercorns start to pop and the salt turns a darker color. Cool the seasoned salt and then grind finely. Mix about 3 tablespoons of the seasoned salt with the sugar, and then rub this mixture all over the pork strips so that every single area is thoroughly coated. (The rest of the seasoned salt should be sifted and all of the larger grains tossed out; store the fine salt in a covered jar, where it will stay fresh for weeks.)

3. Place the coated pork strips in a plastic container or resealable plastic bag along with any of the white liquor and seasonings that are still hanging around. Cover the container or close up the bag and refrigerate for at least 4 days. Shake the pork around twice a day so that each area of the meat gets evenly cured.

Roasted spices & salt

4. Try a piece to see if it is done to your liking by cutting off an inch and rinsing it thoroughly. Slice it thinly and fry without extra oil; it should have a wonderful aroma of spices and liquor, and you will not need to add any additional seasonings. If you want to let it get more infused with the flavors, leave it in the cure for another day or two. When it's just as you like it, pour off all of the juices and liquor, but don't rinse off the pork. Just remove the amount of pork that you want to cook and keep the rest refrigerated. It will stay perfect for at least a week.

Tips

As always, use the best natural pork available. The pork can come with skin or without, as it doesn't matter here.

Try to get pork that is half fat and half meat. In Chinese, pork belly is known as wuhuarou, or "five flower meat." What this means is that you should ideally have a nice layer of fat under the skin, then a layer of pink meat, then a layer of fat, then a layer of meat followed by a layer of fat. There might even be six layers if you are lucky, although four layers is fine, too. 

This layering in pork belly is what makes the cut so luscious when cooked right. As with Dongpo Pork, the fat acts as a buttery interlude between the thin layers of muscle, rendering them tender and juicy. 

The best white liquor for this and other cured meat recipes is, in my opinion, Taiwan's gaoliang liquor. The island of Kinmen (aka Jinmen) off the coast of Fujian is renowned for its gaoliang, and while it costs close to $30 for a bottle, it lasts a long time and possesses a wonderful fragrance.

Be sure and sift the leftover seasoned salt before you use it. Sichuan peppercorns, in particular, can be really annoying if left in largish pieces, as they become rock hard and end up feeling like sand between the teeth.

Cured meat and "hundred layer" bean curd soup

As the chilly days of spring give way to warmer weather, I am tempted to fit in as many winter dishes here as possible. One of my favorites is a dish I translate as "Shanghai casserole," but which is called yanduxian in Chinese. Many versions exist -- some with things like fresh clams thrown in -- but I've always had a soft spot for the basic one with Chinese ham, the pressed bean curd known as "hundred layers" (baiye), and a rich pork broth humming with more than enough Shaoxing rice wine.

Recently, though, I came across a much simpler version that uses cured meat, baiye, and little more than a rich stock and some rice wine to produce a truly fine soup, almost a Cliff Notes edition of the more labor intensive casserole.

To this I added a generous helping of fresh ginger and green onions to offset the pork, made up a broth out of the bones and scraps from a roasted chicken, threw in a couple of fresh Chinese black mushrooms because I never can have enough of them, and topped it off with a fistful of lively green bok choy to make this a beautiful balanced meal.

Baiye or 百葉

This is super easy to put together, although you have to start at least 2 hours before you serve it to both make the stock and prepare the baiye. Few non-Chinese know about this form of doufu, which consists of thin layers of bean curd pressed together with what looks likes an impressive amount of force. And if the fact that it's called "hundred layers" is not enough to impress you, its other name is qianzhang, or "thousand sheets." (The English names on the packaging will vary wildly, so look for the two characters under the picture on the right.)

You will often find baiye either as a hard block or as prepared, ready-made knots (baiye jie), and it will always comes vacuum packed in plastic bags in the refrigerated section. When you take it out of the package, it will be rather leathery in texture and not very appealing. But it wakes up like a sleeping princess if the right keys are used: boiling water and baking soda.

Even then, you might end up with a bowl of mushy, squashed bean curd if you don't take care. So, to get back to that fairy tale, this too requires adherence to some magic steps that must be followed to the letter.

Plumped up baiye

First, the leaves of the baiye are separated, although if you buy them already soaked and in knots, you can just dump them into the soup later on with little ceremony. Use care when you peel the leaves apart, as they will often stick; a thin-bladed knife can be called upon to urge them apart if necessary. However, if there is some tearing, don't give it much thought, as this won't be noticed once the soup is cooked. 

The baking soda is dissolved in boiling hot water; this is very important. Do not use merely hot water, since the soda will bubble and fizz in boiling water and so dissolve thoroughly. The sheets of baiye are then submerged in the still boiling hot water, where they will stay only until the bean curd turns from tan to white and plumps up a bit. At this point the baiye must be drained and rinsed with cool tap water to stop the chemical reactions from continuing in that bowl. If it is left in the alkaline water, the baiye will just give up and dissolve into gross pillows.

Bubbling baking soda

And that really is it. With the baiye correctly woken up, it just requires a slow simmer in broth to continue its journey toward the table. One really nice thing about cooking baiye in a stock is that it will turn the soup a milky color and make it seem very rich. I like to underscore that with plenty of ginger, green onion, and my beloved Shaoxing rice wine, all of which complement the baiye perfectly. 

The soup should also include a nice bit of oil to add the necessary mouth feel, and my favorite candidates for this are both chicken fat and pork fat. You can, of course, make this pretty close to fat free, but it is so much better with that buttery edge.

Enjoy this now while the cold weather lasts!

Cook the baiye until tender

Cured meat and "hundred layer" bean curd soup
Xianrou baiye tang 鹹肉百葉湯
Shanghai
Serves 4 to 6 as part of a multicourse meal, or 2 to 3 as a main dish

4 sheets (1.5 ounces) baiye, or 8 ounces prepared pressed bean curd knots (baiye jie)
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 cups boiling filtered water
3 ounces (or so) Hunan style cured meat (see Tips)
4 cups good chicken stock, preferably unsalted
2 large fresh Chinese black mushrooms5 slices fresh ginger
2 green onions, trimmed and tied in knots
¼ cup Shaoxing rice wine
Sea salt to taste
6 green bok choy


1. Carefully separate the baiye into sheets (or measure out the bean curd knots and skip the rest of this step). Put the baking soda in a medium heatproof work bowl and pour the boiling water over it. Stir to dissolve the baking soda, and then immediately add the baiye. Soak the baiye in the hot water, turning it over gently so that each piece is submerged. After about 10 minutes, as the water starts to cool, the baiye should look white instead of tan and should appear plumper. Rinse the baiye in a colander under running cool tap water. Place the baiye back in the bowl and cover with cool tap water. Let it soak for about 30 minutes to an hour. Drain.

Cured meat, ginger, and onions

2. Rinse the cured meat and pat it dry. Trim off the skin and any large pieces of fat from the cured meat; add them to the stock, if you like, and bring it to a boil so that the extra flavor works its way into the stock. Slice the meat against the grain into thin pieces. Remove and discard the mushroom stems and slice the caps into thin pieces.

3. Remove the skin and pork fat from the stock, and then add the cured meat, mushrooms, ginger, green onions, and rice wine. Bring the stock to a boil over high heat, and then add the drained baiye or bean curd knots. Bring the pot to a boil again and then lower the heat to a gentle simmer. Cook the soup for around 30 minutes until the stock turns milky and the baiye are soft and tender; don't overcook the soup, as the meat will become tasteless and the baiye too mushy. Taste and adjust the seasoning with the salt. 

4. Remove and discard the ginger and green onions. Bring the pot to a boil again and add the bok choy; cook them for around 5 minutes, or until barely tender. Serve the soup very hot.

Tips

Hunan larou

The cured meat will most likely be labeled larou, rather than xianrou, but this is more a matter of local nomenclature than anything worth specially seeking out. Larou literally means meats made during the last lunar month (i.e., the depths of winter), while xianrou means "salted meat," so they pretty much amount to the same thing.  Some of these cured meats are smoked, and that is fine, but I prefer unsmoked meat for this dish, as the smoke can sometimes be a bit overpowering.

Select cured meats that are one solid piece, if at all possible, rather than bits and pieces. You should be able to look inside the plastic bag and see what is in there. The best pieces will be from the ham (or thigh) with a single good layer of fat and skin. If it is a jumble of smaller pieces, these are the leftovers and end pieces, and so might be tough from tendons and connective tissue.

As always, try to find cured meats that were made in the U.S., rather than in China. A good second choice is a Taiwan product, but some reputable American producers seem to be taking over the larou market, at least in California. 

The smoked charcuterie of Hunan with leeks

Chinese charcuterie generally gets short shrift in the West because it still is pretty much unknown. But if food lovers could taste what it is that Hunan, Guangdong, and many other provinces have to offer in the way of cured meats and sausages, all of this could change in an instant.

Take for example Hunan's smoked cured pork, called Hunan larou in Chinese. It is a perennial favorite even in places like Taiwan, where there isn't an enormous contingent from that region, a testament to the intense flavor and juicy texture this variety of gammon supplies.

Like most Chinese charcuterie, Hunan-style cured pork is marinated and then air-dried for a few sunny winter days. But there the similarity ends. While most other cured meats are simply dried, Hunan's specialty is smoked over a cool fire, permeating the flesh with a sweet, heavenly flavor. Also unlike other varieties, this is a fairly moist cured meat that is taken from the picnic cut (upper front leg), salted and marinated with the skin on, and given a bit of curing salt to keep the lovely pink hue of the meat. 

The skin is often rather soft on a good piece of Hunan larou, so you can keep it on if you wish. Just be aware that the skin will pop a lot when exposed to high heat, as with stir-frying, so use a spatter guard. If you do remove it, keep it in a bag in the freezer with any other ham-like scraps and bones for tasty additions to winter soups, as it adds a gentle smokiness and depth to the broth.

Pink flesh with marbled fat

Nowadays there are some good brands -- some of them based in Taiwan or Hong Kong -- that offer meat produced in the U.S. Get those. They are vacuum packed and will keep for quite a while without refrigeration as long as the bag isn't opened. Once you do pierce the plastic, though, seal up the meat in a reclosable bag and store in the refrigerator for up to a week or so, at which point it might begin to suffer in quality.

When you choose a piece of cured Hunan pork, look for a nice, solid piece without a whole lot of scraps tossed in to max out the total weight. It should have a good piece of skin at one end with a layer of fat underneath. Avoid any pieces that look like they were taken from the shoulder, where there are lots of sinews and broken pieces of muscle interspersed with stringy fat. 

Cut off whatever amount you want, wipe it off with a damp paper towel, and then slice it up. If the meat is at all hard, sever off a hunk and then steam it on a plate for about 10 minutes, as this will soften it up considerably.

One of my absolute favorite ways to cook this is in a Hunan specialty called Hunan Cured Meat with Leeks, or suanmiao chao larou. We used to order this often at an old Taipei restaurant that specialized in spicy central Chinese cookery called Tianrentai. Located across from my personal temple of good food, the South Gate Market, it sat on a corner of Roosevelt Road, an artery that ran from the federal buildings all the way down past Taiwan University. Lots of great eating on that street, and more on that some other time.

A good piece of larou

Hunan is located in the central regions of China, just east of Sichuan and nestled next to Jiangxi province. Heaven knows what they did for seasoning before chilies were imported from the New World, but in the past couple of hundred years, those little red firecrackers completely transformed the local cuisine, as well as that of just about every other inland area to Hunan's west and south.

But back to the dish under discussion. Suffice it say that this dish was always ordered by us simply because nobody could do it better. Sweet shards of fresh leek were woven between the cured meat, thin slices of pressed bean curd (doufugan), fresh chilies, and loads of garlic and ginger. The sauce was a delectable balance between pain and pleasure: hot bean sauce (la doubanjiang) and sweet wheat paste (tianmianjiang). If you are a devoted chili head, feel free to amp up the heat with more fresh chilies and another scoop of the hot bean sauce, but try not to completely drown out the smoky flavors.

The pressed bean curd adds a nice counterpoint to all the serious flavors in this dish. Like so many classic Chinese dishes, this is another yin yang component: blandness against punchy flavors, soft texture with chewy, white against deep colors. It's all part of a package that guarantees perfect balance. 

One of my favorite Hunan dishes

Hunan cured meat with leeks
Suanmiao chao larou 蒜苗炒臘肉 
Hunan

Serves 2 as a main dish or 4 as part of a multicourse meal

1 small leek or half a large leek
2 squares pressed bean curd
5 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil
1 cup thinly sliced Hunan-style cured meat
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons thinly sliced ginger
1 red jalapeno, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon spicy bean sauce (la doubanjiang)
1 tablespoon sweet wheat paste (tianmianjiang)
2 tablespoons rice wine
1 tablespoon soy sauce
4 teaspoons sugar
Roasted sesame oil

1. Trim the root end and the dark green leaves off of the leek and discard. Carefully clean the leek, making sure that all of the sand between the leaves has been removed. Cut the leek on the diagonal to make diamond-shaped pieces. Cut each beancurd square in half and then slice each piece horizontally into about 4 thin sheets.

The main ingredients

2. Heat the oil in a wok over high heat. Add the leeks and quickly stir-fry them until the edges just begin to brown. Remove the leeks to a plate or scoot them high up on the side of your wok. Add the sliced meat to the hot oil and quickly stir-fry them until the fat is translucent and the edges have started to brown. Again, remove them to a plate with the leeks or scoot them high up the side of the wok, but leave as much of the fat in the bottom of the wok as possible. Stir-fry the bean curd slices and add them to the leeks and meat once the edges have browned.

3. Toss the garlic, ginger, and jalapeno slices into the wok and quickly stir them around in the remaining puddle of fat to release their fragrance. Push them to the side and spoon both the spicy bean sauce and the sweet wheat paste into the hot fat; cook the sauces quickly to remove the raw taste and then add the wine. Stir it around for a few seconds more, and then return the leeks, meat, and bean curd to the wok. Sprinkle the soy sauce and sugar over everything and toss the ingredients well. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed. Dribble a bit of sesame oil over the dish and serve while very hot.