Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking (25 page)

SPINACH WITH CHILLI AND FERMENTED TOFU
JIAO SI FU RU CHAO BO CAI
椒絲腐乳炒菠菜

Fermented tofu may be an unfamiliar ingredient, but don’t be deterred: almost everyone adores this dish. The tofu, strong, salty and cheesy on its own, melts away into the spinach juices, giving the leaves an irresistible savory gleam and a slightly silken texture. In the Cantonese south of China, this dish is usually made with water spinach, which has crisp juicy stems and long green leaves, but it also works well with regular spinach. Most Cantonese chefs in the West know how to make it, but for some unknown reason they don’t tend to put it on English-language menus. I’ve suggested using the kind of bunched spinach sold in farmers’ markets and Chinese or Middle Eastern shops, but you can use the same method to cook baby spinach leaves. (Though I much prefer bunched spinach as it has more body and doesn’t shrink quite so much.)

Blanching the leaves before you stir-fry quickly reduces them to a manageable bulk, which makes stir-frying swifter and more even; it’s the method I use increasingly at home.

11½ oz (325g) bunched spinach

½ fresh chilli (to taste)

2 cubes of white fermented tofu

¼ tsp sugar

3 tbsp cooking oil

2 tsp finely chopped garlic

Salt (optional)

Wash and trim the spinach and cut the long, leafy stems into thirds. Finely slice the chilli. Mash the tofu with the sugar and some of the juices from the jar to give a liquid the consistency of heavy cream.

Bring a panful of water to a boil and dunk the spinach in it to wilt the leaves. Drain and shake dry.

Pour the oil into a hot, seasoned wok over a high flame and immediately add the garlic and chilli. Stir a couple of times until you can just smell their fragrance, then add the fermented tofu mixture. As soon as the liquid has boiled, add the blanched spinach and stir-fry briskly. When the sauce is incorporated and everything is hot and fragrant, tip the spinach on to a plate and serve. You can add a little salt, but you probably won’t need it because of the tofu.

VARIATIONS

Water spinach with fermented tofu

The classic Cantonese version of this dish is made with water spinach rather than regular spinach. Just cut the washed water spinach into chopstickable lengths and follow the recipe above. The taste and texture of this variation are really wonderful.

Spinach with red fermented tofu and ginger

Chefs in eastern China prefer red fermented tofu and ginger to the white fermented tofu, chilli and garlic of the Cantonese version. The method is the same, but the dish has a very different flavor and the juices are prettily pink.

Simple stir-fried spinach

The simplest Chinese stir-fry is a
qing chao
, which literally means an unmixed or “clear” stir-fry and usually involves stir-frying a single ingredient with only salt as a seasoning. A
qing chao
spinach may be an understated kind of dish, but it’s a delightful counterpart to rich or spicy foods. Simply blanch the same amount of spinach as in the main recipe, then stir-fry in 3 tbsp oil in a hot wok, adding salt towards the end. This method can be used for beansprouts, pea shoots, snow peas, choy sum, bok choy and Chinese water spinach, or more unusual varieties such as purslane, radish tops and shepherd’s purse.

STIR-FRIED GREENS WITH DRIED SHRIMP
BAO XIN CAI CHAO XIA PI
包心菜炒蝦皮

In this dish—which I learned in the kitchen of the Starfish Harbor Restaurant in the eastern city of Ningbo, thanks to the kindness of chef-patron Cui Guangming—crisp-fried dried shrimp lend their marvellous umami taste to the greens and transform them into something extraordinary. It’s one of the reasons why I always keep a bag of dried shrimp in the fridge. I’ve come across variations on the same theme in Beijing and other places.

In Ningbo, the dish was made with
bao xin cai
, a round white cabbage, but I’ve used the same method in England with Savoy cabbage, choy sum, bok choy, sliced Brussels sprouts and Chinese cabbage, to delicious effect: just make sure you slice them very thinly. I first cooked this particular version in London as part of a nearly vegetarian lunch for a friend. Apart from the greens, we had
Pock-marked Old Woman’s Tofu
,
Fava Beans with Preserved Mustard Greens
, brown rice and, as a soup, the rice’s cooking water (
mi tang
), followed by fruit and Longjing tea.

You can use the larger dried shrimp if you like, but soak them in hot water for about 30 minutes before cooking.

14 oz (400g) spring greens, or cabbage of your choice

4 spring onions, green parts only

4 tbsp cooking oil or lard

6 tbsp thin dried shrimp (
xia pi
)

2 tbsp light soy sauce

Salt

Discard any fibrous outer leaves and cut out and discard the thick stem of the greens. Shred the leaves. Cut the spring onion greens into thin slices.

Add 3 tbsp of the oil or lard to a seasoned wok over a high flame and swirl it around. Add the shrimp and stir-fry until crisp and fragrant. Remove the shrimp from the wok and set aside.

Return the wok to the stove with the remainder of the oil or lard, add the greens and stir-fry over a high flame until hot, barely cooked and still a little crisp. Return the shrimp, adding the soy sauce and salt to taste (you may not need any salt because of the saltiness of the shrimp and soy). Finally add the spring onions, stir a couple of times, then turn on to a dish and serve.

STIR-FRIED BROCCOLI WITH CHILLI AND SICHUAN PEPPER
QIANG XI NAN HUA CAI
熗西南花菜

The familiar Italian broccoli or calabrese (known in China as
xi nan hua cai
, “flower vegetable from the south west”) is a relatively recent import to China, but the Chinese have taken to it with gusto. It is often used as a bright garnish for banquet dishes, and for appetizers or vegetable side dishes. In this Sichuanese recipe, scorched chillies and Sichuan pepper give an everyday vegetable an exciting zing, and the green florets look lovely, too, with their scattering of deep red chilli and pepper. For more formal occasions only the florets are used, but the flesh inside the thick stalks has a wonderful flavor, so for home cooking I recommend peeling them, slicing the jade-like flesh and adding it to the stir-fry. The same dish can also be served cold, as an appetizer, in which case it is usually offered in a much smaller portion.

The same method of stir-frying with chilli and Sichuan pepper, which is known in Sichuan as
qiang
, can be used for many different vegetables, including beansprouts, water spinach, Chinese cabbage, slivered potatoes, and even Brussels sprouts (less fleshy vegetables, or those that are finely cut, do not have to be blanched).

Take care not to blanch the broccoli for too long, or the florets will disintegrate when you stir-fry them.

11 oz (300g) broccoli

5–6 dried chillies, to taste

Salt

4 tbsp cooking oil

½ tsp whole Sichuan pepper

1 tsp sesame oil

Cut the broccoli into florets, and cut larger florets lengthways into smaller pieces. Peel the stalk and slice thickly. Snip the chillies into halves or sections and discard the seeds as far as possible.

Bring a generous 2½ quarts (2½ liters) of water to a boil, add 1 tsp salt and 1 tbsp oil. Add the broccoli and blanch for two to three minutes; it should remain bright and crisp. Drain in a colander.

Add the remaining oil with the chillies and Sichuan pepper to a seasoned wok over a high flame, and stir-fry briefly until the chillies are just beginning to brown (take care not to burn them). Add the broccoli and stir-fry for 30 seconds or so until the florets are coated in the fragrant oil, seasoning with salt to taste. Turn off the heat, stir in the sesame oil, and serve.

VARIATION

Stir-fried broccoli with garlic

Simply substitute two or three garlic cloves, peeled and sliced or finely chopped, for the chillies and pepper, and omit the sesame oil. Fry the garlic very briefly before adding the broccoli: you just want to smell its fragrance, not to brown it.

BABY BOK CHOY IN SUPERIOR STOCK
SHANG TANG BAI CAI MIAO
上湯白菜苗

In recent years I’ve become completely addicted to this Cantonese way of serving fresh green vegetables. The greens are first blanched, then served in a rich stock, conventionally a
shang tang
or “superior stock” made with chicken, pork bones and ham. In restaurants, the basic dish is often embellished with a scattering of other ingredients, such as chopped salted and preserved duck eggs, mushrooms and chopped shrimp (see variation, right), but at home I like to serve the simpler version, which is a wonderful complement to dryer or more boldly seasoned dishes. You can use this method to cook all kinds of vegetables, including green bok choy, pea shoots, asparagus, Chinese cabbage and fresh mustard greens. I’ve also used it for spring greens and purple-sprouting broccoli. (If you are using bulkier vegetables, cut them into bite-sized pieces before you begin: bok choy can be quartered lengthways.) This recipe is a great way of using up leftover stock, especially when you don’t have enough to make a soup.

Serve the greens in a bowl or a deep serving dish. Encourage your guests to eat the vegetables with their chopsticks, then spoon any leftover stock into their bowls as a soup.