Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking (27 page)

11 oz (300g) Chinese leaf cabbage

2 tbsp cooking oil

¼ tsp sugar

Salt

2 tsp Chinkiang vinegar

1 tsp potato flour mixed with 1 tbsp water (optional)

Cut the cabbage into ⅜–¾ in (1–2cm) slices. Bring a panful of water to a boil and blanch the cabbage for a minute or two to soften the thicker parts of the leaves. Remove to a colander and shake dry.

Add the oil to a seasoned wok over a high flame, swirl it around, then add the cabbage and stir-fry for a couple of minutes. Add the sugar, and salt to taste. Pour in the vinegar and stir swiftly in. If you are using the flour mixture, add it now and stir quickly to allow it to thicken the juices. Serve.

STIR-FRIED ROMAINE LETTUCE
QING CHAO SHENG CAI
清炒生菜

Since the lettuce entered China from west Asia, probably around 2,000 years ago, the Chinese have grown it more for its stems than its leaves. The most common variety (
qing sun
or
wo sun
) has thick, truncheon-like stems and pointed leaves. Peeled, the stems are crisp and juicy, a pale jade green in color and utterly delicious; the leafy tips, which share the subtle flavor of the stems, are usually stir-fried with a little salt. Stem lettuce can occasionally be found in Western Chinatowns but in my experience, sadly, it’s a rarity. The leaves of romaine lettuce, however, stir-fried with a little salt, have a flavor reminiscent of stem lettuce tips and they make a wonderful and easy vegetable dish. If you are not used to eating cooked lettuce, you’ll find this dish intriguing, because the heat brings out such a different aspect to its flavor.

1 heart of romaine lettuce (about 9 oz/250g)

3 tbsp cooking oil

Salt

Cut the lettuce heart across its width at 1 in (2½cm) intervals. Wash the cut leaves, then shake dry or (even better) spin in a salad spinner.

Pour the oil into a hot, seasoned wok over a high flame and swirl it around. Add the lettuce and stir-fry until hot and fragrant, but still very crisp, seasoning with salt to taste towards the end. Serve.

TWICE-COOKED SWISS CHARD
HUI GUO NIU PI CAI
回鍋牛皮菜

Chard, known in Chinese as “ox leather greens” or “thick-skinned greens” because of its leathery appearance, is a humble peasant vegetable, so humble in fact that it is traditionally referred to as “pig fodder.” In the not-so-distant past, only the desperate would eat it; in Sichuan, at times when meat was hard to come by, it was used as a substitute for pork in that much-loved traditional dish,
Twice-cooked Pork
. Nowadays, with the vogue for rustic food, erstwhile poverty dishes like this have reappeared on restaurant menus, to the bemusement of real peasants.

The following recipe is based on one taught to me by the Chengdu chef Yu Bo, who serves it in an exquisite porcelain dish at his miraculous banquets (the only change I’ve made is to substitute spring onions for the green garlic leaves, which are hard to find in the West). It’s extraordinarily delicious and a marvellous accompaniment to plain steamed rice.

14 oz (400g) thick-stemmed Swiss chard

3 tbsp cooking oil, or 1½ tbsp lard and 1½ tbsp cooking oil

1½ tbsp Sichuanese chilli bean paste

2 tsp finely chopped garlic

2 tsp finely chopped ginger

1½ tbsp fermented black beans, rinsed and drained

½ cup (100ml) chicken stock or water

3 tbsp finely chopped celery (Chinese celery if possible)

2 tbsp finely chopped cilantro

2 tbsp finely sliced spring onion greens

Cut the dark green chard leaves from the stems. Snap each stem into a few pieces, which will allow you to peel away and discard the stringy bits, as you would with celery.

Bring a potful of water to a boil, add the stems and boil for about three minutes, until tender. Add the dark green leaves and boil for another minute or so until they are also cooked. Drain and refresh under cold running water. Squeeze the chard dry, then cut into bite-sized lengths.

Pour the oil into a seasoned wok over a medium flame, swirl it around, then add the chilli bean paste and stir-fry until it smells delicious and the oil is richly red. Add the garlic, ginger and black beans and stir-fry for a few moments more until you can smell their fragrances. Then add the stock, bring to a boil, add the chard and stir until it is piping hot once more.

Finally, stir in the celery, cilantro and spring onion, stir a few times, then serve.

SMOTHERED RAINBOW CHARD WITH GARLIC
MEN CAI HONG CAI
燜彩虹菜

For produce that needs deeper cooking than a simple stir-fry will offer, Chinese cooks often begin by stir-frying their aromatics and main ingredient, then adding a little liquid and covering the wok with a lid to allow the food to cook through. This covered cooking method is known in Chinese as
men
, which expresses it perfectly, because the Chinese character
men
consists of the sign for fire next to the sign that means “stuffy,” “stifling” or “tightly covered.” The best English translation I’ve seen of this specializt cooking term is “smothered,” so I use it here.

Smothering is a very good way of cooking tougher greens such as rainbow chard, Swiss chard, kale and cavolo nero: you can moisten them with water for a peasant dish or add a little stock for something richer. It’s also a very good alternative to stir-frying if you want to make the most of Chinese seasonings without the heat and drama of a stir-fry. My friend Seema, for example, uses this method to cook spinach and other greens, stir-frying a little ginger or garlic (or both) in the bottom of a pan, then adding freshly washed leaves, covering the pan and smothering for a few minutes over a medium heat. The water that clings to the leaves (shaken gently after washing, but not spun) is usually enough to smother them: just keep an eye out to make sure they don’t start to catch and brown at the bottom of the pan, adding another tablespoon or so of hot water if necessary. Of course you don’t quite get the smoky fragrance of a stir-fry using this method—and the greens will end up softer and somewhat less vibrant in color—but they will still be aromatic and quite juicily delicious. I’ve never seen rainbow chard in China, although Swiss chard is widely known, so I’ve no idea what it might be called in Chinese. I’ve translated the name of the dish literally, in the Chinese characters above, as “rainbow vegetable.”

½ lb (225g) rainbow chard

2–3 tbsp cooking oil

2–3 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced

Salt

Trim the chard stems and cut both leaves and stems into chopstickable lengths. Wash them well and shake dry in a colander.

Pour the oil into a seasoned wok over a high flame, swirl it around, then add the garlic and sizzle for a few moments until fragrant but still white.

Add the chard and stir-fry for a minute or two until the leaves are wilting, then season with salt to taste, cover with a lid and cook over a medium heat for five to 10 minutes, until even the stems are tender. (Stir them once or twice to make sure they don’t brown and add an extra tablespoonful or so of hot water if necessary to prevent catching.) Serve.

PURPLE AMARANTH WITH RED FERMENTED TOFU
NAN RU XIAN CAI
南乳莧菜

This gorgeous vegetable has deep green, heart-shaped leaves with bright purple hearts and, when it cooks, it colors the juices around it a particularly lovely pink. Its tender stems and young leaves are normally stir-fried, usually with garlic, or simmered in soups. In some parts of China, purple amaranth is traditionally eaten at the Double Fifth or Dragon Boat Festival in the fifth lunar month (the time of this varies, but it is usually in June), perhaps with salted eggs and
zong zi
, glutinous rice cones wrapped in long bamboo leaves. And in the ancient city of Shaoxing, the overgrown stalks of amaranth, which are normally thrown away, are fermented to make an unusual delicacy with a notorious stink and a high, intense flavor that must be tasted to be believed.

For the most common way to cook purple amaranth, with just garlic, see the variation right. The main recipe is a little more unusual, with red fermented tofu giving the vegetable a fragrant, creamy sauce with an almost biscuity flavor. Bunched spinach is a more easily available and delicious alternative to amaranth. Please note that the photograph is of the Purple Amaranth with Garlic variation, as I wanted to show off the vegetable’s naturally pink juices.

9 oz (250g) purple amaranth leaves (discard any thick stalks)

3 tbsp cooking oil

2 tsp finely chopped garlic

1 tbsp red fermented tofu, mashed with 1 tbsp liquid from the jar

½ tsp sugar

Blanch the amaranth leaves in a panful of boiling water with 1 tbsp of the cooking oil. Remove the wilted leaves and shake dry.

Pour the remaining oil into a seasoned wok over a high flame, swirl it around, then add the garlic and stir-fry for just a few seconds, until you can smell its fragrance. Add all the amaranth and stir-fry until hot and fragrant, making sure you toss the garlic into the leaves.

Now push the amaranth to one side of the wok and pour the fermented tofu mixture into the space you have created. Stir to heat it, add the sugar, then mix everything in the wok together. Serve.

VARIATION

Purple amaranth with garlic

Blanch the amaranth leaves as in the main recipe and shake dry. Pour 3 tbsp oil into a seasoned wok over a high flame, swirl it around, then add 1 garlic clove, sliced, and stir-fry for just a few seconds until you can smell its fragrance. Add the amaranth and stir-fry until hot and fragrant, seasoning with salt to taste. The purple leaves stain the cooking juices a lyrical pink color: beautiful.

TENDER BOILED VEGETABLES WITH A SPICY DIP
PA PA CAI