Beautiful & aromatic: fresh chili sauce from Zhejiang

Chili peppers are not usually associated with the cuisines along the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, but now and then you will find spicy delights that increase in heat the further upriver you go. Anhui and Jiangxi, for example, have some pretty fiery dishes and more than their share of diehard chiliheads, and of course by the time you get the headwaters of the Yangtze, you are in pepper central: Sichuan.

However, out in the east in the delta area there is not much to be had in the way of chili peppers. The desire in such places as Jiangsu and Zhejiang tends more towards the subtle and the gentle. Dishes are generally seasoned with considerable restraint so that the natural flavors of the ingredients have the chance to shine.

Even so, chilies are welcome here as long as they are tamed. Usually showing up in condiments such as this sauce made from fresh peppers, the heat is turned down to an understated vibration, with fermented black beans, garlic, and green onions rounding out the flavors against a light oil base that restrains their raw natures even further. A short cooking both ensures that the sauce can be stored for weeks without molding and melds the various aromas together into a truly refined sauce.

 

Toss the chilies into the garlic & oil

I like to keep a small jar of this on the kitchen table to spark up simple dinners or breakfasts, and if I’m in a hurry or just don’t know what to eat, this beautiful red and black sauce comes to the rescue by turning even the blandest meal into a delight: smother hot eggs or rice or cooked cauliflower or bean curd or noodles with it, and then settle in for a very pleasing time.

But this is more than just a condiment, for it is a great way to pull together a fast dinner. Quickly stir-fry something like chopped chicken or sliced fish or shredded pork, and then toss in this sauce at the last minute. It couldn't be simpler.

Next week's post will show you some easy ways to prep your fresh chilies and garlic, so stay tuned!

Fresh chili sauce

Xīnxiān làjiāojiàng 新鮮辣椒醬

Zhejiang, Jiangsu

Makes 1½ cups

6 large red jalapeno peppers (6 to 7 ounces)

1 teaspoon sea salt

4 to 6 cloves garlic

And then add the black beans

¾ cup fermented black beans

¾ cup fresh peanut or vegetable oil

3 green onions, trimmed

1 teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon sea salt, or to taste

1. Wash the peppers and pat them dry. Stem and seed them (see Tips), and then cut them into small (less than ¼-inch) dice. Place the peppers in a small colander, toss them with the 1 teaspoon salt, and let the extra liquid in the peppers leach out over the next hour or two; discard the liquid.

2. Peel and chop the garlic into pieces about the same size as the diced peppers. Rinse the beans in a colander, shake dry, and then coarsely chop them, into something along the same size as the garlic and peppers.

3. Pour the oil into a cool wok and add the garlic. Slowly fry the garlic in the oil over medium heat until it sizzles and smells wonderful, but has not yet browned. Add the chilies and stir these together, and then add the beans. Slowly fry these together for around 15 minutes, adjusting the heat as necessary to maintain little more than a gentle bubble in the oil.

The fast track to Nirvana

4. While the sauce is simmering away, cut each green onion lengthwise in half and then crosswise into pieces that are about the same size as the chilies. Add the green onions to the sauce after the 15 minutes are up, as well as the sugar. Stir and cook the sauce until the onions have wilted. Taste and adjust the seasoning with the salt, using more or less as needed. Refrigerate it in a glass jar.

Tips

Use other, fierier peppers here if you like this sauce hotter.                                                                                                         

You can leave the seeds in the peppers if you like them that way, but I prefer the smoothness of a seedless sauce, as well as the lack of bitterness that the seeds often provide.

Jiangxi's stir-fried bamboo shoots and cured pork

As I was perusing a Jiangxi cookbook, I came across a recipe that struck me for many reasons. 

First, it really shows how much Hunan cuisine has helped shape the cooking of Jiangxi. Second, it has fresh bamboo in it, and I will pretty much try anything if it has fresh bamboo shoots. 

And third, it calls for cured pork, and since I had a hunk of it whiling away in the fridge, this looked like the perfect recipe for dinner.

It's also a good recipe to show that -- as with Sichuan and Hunan cuisines -- the foods of Jiangxi are not always spicy. Rather, this one reveals the same gentle side that Hunan shows to people who grow to love her, one that soothes rather than startles. As with some of Hunan's great dishes, this one from Jiangxi features fermented black beans, or douchi.

Fermented black beans

If you've never tried fermented black beans before, you're in for a treat. They have a savoriness that is reminiscent of a really good soy sauce, an almost latent smokiness too, but since they're in compact little forms, they sparkle throughout a dish rather than make their presence known absolutely everywhere. 

So, when you take a bite of something that has been judiciously seasoned with douchi, like this one here for example, what happens is that another strong flavor will probably hit your palate first -- in this case the cured pork -- and then you'll most likely start paying attention to the shredded leaks with their herby, oniony flavor, and only when you bite down into a piece of fermented bean will you really notice them. 

They are slightly chopped, of course, so that some of their pungency gets a chance to be acquainted with the other ingredients, but by and large the rest of the flavor will sit there quietly in the rest of the bean and wait for the change to pounce on your taste buds.

Sliced cured pork

The other ingredient here is the cured pork, or larou. The character la refers to the last month of the lunar year, which stretches out over the last weeks of winter, and this is when meats like this would be at their prime in the good old days before refrigeration. 

As in the West, pigs were butchered in autumn when they were at their fattest, and the vast majority of the meat was preserved for use throughout the cold months.

Cured pork -- also known as gammon -- is pretty simple to make, and my late father-in-law was known to take a nice piece of fresh pork with the skin still on it, rub salt and saltpeter and seasonings into it to marinate and cure it, and then let it hang in a cool, dark place for about three days until it had dried out a bit, much like salt-cured ham. At that point it could be smoked or just refrigerated. Sometimes when you slice and fry it, the cured pork will take on a beautiful sheen and look like a beautiful fire opal in your pan!

Rainbow opalescence in frying gammon

Cured pork is popular in many areas of China, and each place has its own special way of doing it. However, unless you eat a lot of larou or just want to try your hand at it, it's easier just to buy a good piece at a Chinese grocery, especially around the Spring Festival (aka Chinese New Year). 

They come in pound or so pieces vacuum packed, and you can keep the unopened package in a cool place. Once opened, keep the meat dry or else it will mold; just cut off what you want and pack the rest in an air-tight bag or container.

Jiangxi style bamboo shoots stir-fried with leeks and cured pork 
Ganshi dongsun chao larou  贛式冬筍炒臘肉  
Jiangxi

Fresh sliced bamboo shoots

Serves 6 to 8 as part of a multicourse meal, or 2 to 3 as a main dish

2 large (winter) fresh bamboo shoots, or 4 frozen ones
1 inch ginger, peeled
8 ounces (or so) cured pork (see note above)
1 large leek
2 tablespoons fermented black beans (douchi, see note above)
6 tablespoons vegetable or peanut oil
6 tablespoons Shaoxing rice wine
1 teaspoon sugar, or more to taste
6 tablespoons stock, or filtered water plus a bit of sea salt
Roasted sesame oil

1. Peel and trim the bamboo shoots. Slice each one in half, and then slice them lengthwise into thin dominoes. Place them in a small saucepan, cover with salted water, simmer for 5 to 10 minutes until tender, and then drain.

2. Slice the ginger into very thin julienne. Rinse the pork and pat it dry; trim off and discard any skin, and then slice it against the grain into thin pieces about the same size as the bamboo. 

Clean the leak with the end attached

3. Cut the leek in half and trim off the dark green leaves as well as most of the roots, but leave on the hard end that holds the leaves together. Silt gets caught inside the leaves, so rinse the split leek carefully under running cool water; shake it dry, trim off the hard end, and then slice the leek into pieces about 2 inches long before cutting each section with the grain into thin julienne. Rinse the fermented black beans in a small strainer, shake dry, and coarsely chop.

4. Heat the oil in the wok over high heat until it starts to smoke. Add the ginger and quickly stir-fry it for a few seconds to release its fragrance before adding the pork. Stir-fry the pork until it begins to brown all over, and then toss in the bamboo shoots. 

5. Cook these together for about a minute, and then toss in the rest of the ingredients. Quickly stir-fry them (you don't want the leeks much more than barely done), taste to adjust the seasonings if needed, and then serve with a little drizzle of roasted sesame oil.