Chinese food – Shananigans Blog

Three Cup Chicken – San Bei Ji

It’s been almost two years since I’ve written a blog post. Where did that time go? I have my excuses. With Shane and Shan relocating from China to Ireland, weekends have been dominated by spending time with Dermot, now aged 4, and his little brother Conan just 9 months old. It’s hard to find time to blog when two little ones are careering around the house, even if Dermot is a willing sous chef and loves to help his Nai Nai cook. Yes, beyond my wildest imaginings, Dermot loves to hop up on a step beside me or his Mum and have jobs to do. It’s not just Chinese food he loves, it’s the magic of making pasta from scratch, the fun of identifying different herbs and spices, the pleasure of seasoning a dish from a height and maybe, sometimes, there might even be dessert…
Meanwhile in Australia Caitlyn is 22 months old and her baby brother is due to arrive around her second birthday. To her I’m “Granny” at the end of a FaceTime connection or for short joyous visits here in Dublin or in Sydney. Being a long distant grandparent never gets easy but it has it’s wonderful moments.
And then there was the “grand projet” – after over 30 years of trying to cook in a cramped kitchen space we finally bit the bullet last June and extended the back of the house to create the kitchen of my dreams. So after 5 months of living in “a squash and a squeeze” while the building works were underway, I now have my island, a gas wok burner, a walk in pantry and a lovely light airy space in which to rediscover my cooking mojo. It’s also a wonderful communal space where several of us can prep and cook food side by side or where Shane and Shan and other family members can gather on stools to chat over a glass or two while I cook. Sometimes I just hand over the cooking to them and wait happily for it to be served.

I had almost given up on writing but for the occasional nudge on line or in person from those friends who still dip into this blog from time to time and enjoy the recipes. You know who you are. Thank you for your patience. And then over the Chinese New Year I attended a masterclass in Chinese cooking by Kwanghi Chan and Mei Chin of slaintchi.com in Cooks Academy and I was bitten by the bug once again.
So below is a recipe for Three Cup Chicken that I served as part of Dermot’s 4th birthday meal earlier this month. I first tasted a variation of this dish in a wonderful Chinese restaurant in Sydney and since then I’ve been trying to track down an authentic recipe.
I asked my daughter-in-law Shan to trace the origins of the dish. The oldest and slightly gruesome version of the story links the recipe to Ningdu in Jiangxi Province and relates to a Chinese national hero, Wen Tianxiang, a general in the late Song Dynasty (960AD – 1279AD). According to the story, General Wen was captured and imprisoned due to his efforts in fighting against the Mongolian invasion. An old lady came to visit General Wen when she learnt he was about to be executed, and she only brought a clay pot, a chicken and a jar of rice wine with her. One of the prison guards was impressed by her compassion and let her visit the General. In prison, she set up a small fire and cooked the chicken with the 3 cups of rice wine in the clay pot with low heat for two hours. Later General Wen was beheaded.
When the prison guard retired and returned to his hometown Ningdu, he cooked the chicken dish on each anniversary of General Wen’s passing, however he changed the recipe from 3 cups of rice wine to 1 cup of wine, 1 cup of lard and 1 cup of soy sauce. The dish became famous over they years and was nominated as one of the main dishes during the 2008 Beijing Olympic banquet.
Nowadays there are many variations of the recipe and the most modern include some or all of the following ingredients – rice wine, soy sauce, sesame oil (instead of lard), sugar, ginger, garlic, spring onions, dried chilli and thai sweet basil. Over the years the Taiwanese seem to have made the recipe their own and I suspect it was they who introduced basil into the recipe.
I found a few recipes on line and adapted them to produce a Shananigan’s version for Dermot’s birthday dinner. It may not be authentic but it follows the wonderful Chinese tradition of adapting recipes to the ingredients at hand. One of the great joys of this recipe is that it can be cooked a little more slowly than stir-fry dishes and let simmer gently while you get on with preparing the rest of the meal. It’s not a particularly spicy dish so it suits young palates and the dried chilli can be reduced or eliminated to taste. It’s a very easy supper dish that’s packed with flavour despite its few ingredients.
I used boned out chicken thigh and leg as I prefer the flavour, moisture and tenderness of the leg meat but you could use breast meat (which I find can be dry). As I couldn’t get hold of thai basil that weekend, I used ordinary basil. The whole garlic cloves add a delicious sweetness to the dish. I don’t normally cook with sesame oil – I just use it for seasoning as it has a low burn point – but if you don’t let the heat get too high it gives a subtle nutty flavour to this dish which I loved.
Three Cup Chicken – San Bei Ji

Serves two as a main course or four as part of a multi-course meal
Ingredients

450g boned out chicken thighs, skinned and chopped into bite size chunks
3 tbs toasted sesame oil
A thumb sized chunk of ginger, peeled and cut into thin slices
12 cloves of garlic, peeled and left whole
4 spring onions, trimmed and cut into 2 cm pieces
3 or 4 dried chilli peppers crumbled
1 tbs sugar
½ cup Shaoxing rice wine
¼ cup light soy sauce
a bunch of Thai sweet basil or fresh basil leaves.

Cooking

Heat a wok over medium/ high heat and add the sesame oil. Allow it to reach the point where it shimmers but doesn’t smoke.
Add the ginger, garlic, spring onions and chilli pepper and stir-fry for about 2 minutes until the aromas are released.
Push these ingredients to the side of the wok and add the chicken pieces, allowing them to sit and sear on one side for a minute before stir frying for 5 or 6 minutes until the chicken pieces are browned and just beginning to crisp on the edge.
Add the sugar, rice wine and soy sauce, stir to combine and bring to simmering point where the sauce is just beginning to bubble.
Lower the heat and simmer gently for about 15 minutes until the sauce has reduced and thickened.
Turn off the heat. Tear in the basil and stir it into the dish. Serve with rice.

Chinese Chips – French (Bean) Fries with a Chinese Twist

The last time I visited China Sichuan Restaurant in Sandyford, Dublin the owner Kevin Hui gave me a book. Now it takes a special kind of restaurateur to know his clients so well that he can surprise them with something they will treasure. For this is no ordinary cookbook. It’s “Hunan – a lifetime of secrets from Mr Peng’s Kitchen”.
Mr Peng is the owner of a restaurant called Hunan in London that opened in 1982. Many regard it as the best Chinese restaurant in London or maybe even in the world. Little is known about Mr Peng who keeps the story of his own provenance close to his heart. He has his own unique take on Chinese food with influences of Taiwan, Hunan, Cantonese, Sichuan and Guangdong cuisine all coming through in his dishes.
At a time when most London Chinese restaurants were Cantonese, Mr Peng set out to show that there was more to Chinese food. He plied his customers with dishes they hadn’t ordered, taking a “leave it to us” approach to a whole new level, until eventually he abandoned a menu altogether. Now each guest is served a selection of small dishes, as many as 15 at a sitting, and encouraged to try out different tastes on every visit.
This is precisely the way I approach a visit to China Sichuan in Dublin. I never look at the menu any more. I just find Kevin, ask him plaintively to “feed me” and allow him and his chefs to do the rest, knowing each dish will be a feast for the eyes and the palate. Perhaps that’s why he knew I would enjoy the Hunan cookbook so much.
Mr Peng is nearly 70 now, his own life story remains untold. But food and travel journalist Qin Xie, who writes her own blog In Pursuit of Food, has captured his recipes and his kitchen wisdom in this lovely book. In it his son Michael Peng who works with him in the restaurant speaks lovingly of a man whose story is that of a stereotypical Chinese immigrant who has never lost the values of his homeland, who remains an enigma and a force of nature to be reckoned with, bolshy, maybe even arrogant and an extraordinarily hard worker and who doesn’t change his approach with the passing of the years.
I have already cooked many recipes from the book and but one in particular caught my eye. As a result of my last blog post on Sichuan Chilli Squid with Black Beans, I’ve struck up an email correspondence with Chinese American food writer Grace Young. Her books Stir-frying to the Sky’s Edge and The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen are also among my favourites with her tales of her own family and the Chinese diaspora interspersed with wonderful recipes. Grace was enquiring if it is true that the Irish have french fries with their Chinese meals and I explained the post-pub Chinese takeaway of “Chicken curry, half rice, half chips”. So when I came upon the Hunan recipe for “”French Chips”, I had to give it a try.
The recipe was an immediate hit in our house – a bit naughty and not as low in fat as my usual Chinese vegetable dishes but a great treat as a side dish or part of a multi-course meal. I am going to try a similar approach with cauliflower florets, courgettes, carrots and leeks.
As I grow more confident in my own Chinese cooking under the watchful eye of my friend and Chinese teacher Wei Wei, I’m getting more intuitive with the use of ingredients, learning the feel for texture and flavour. I’m going to start encouraging my faithful readers to do the same. So here goes with Mr. Peng’s Chinese Chips.
Meanwhile, the next time I get to London, I know where I will be heading for dinner.
Chinese Chips made with Green Beans

Serves 3 – 4 as part of a multi-course meal
The secret is in Mr Peng’s batter which uses self-raising flour and vinegar to give a stiff dough and a tempura like texture.
Ingredients
You will need:

300 to 400 green beans – about 100g per person
cooking oil for deep-frying (sunflower or groundnut oil)

For the batter

self-raising flour
water
Chinese white rice vinegar or white wine vinegar
salt

For the seasoning

red chilli
garlic
spring onion
crushed Sichuan peppercorns
salt

Preparation

First make your batter. For every 100g self-raising flour add about 200 ml water and 4 tsp vinegar (I used rice wine vinegar) and a good pinch of salt. Beat it well with an electric mixture and leave to stand for about 20 minutes until the bubbles rise to the surface. Chef Peng and Qin Xie say you need a batter that’s quite thick and gloopy. With those proportions I found my batter was a little runny but I liked the tempura like texture with the batter lightly clinging to the beans rather than giving them a heavy coat. You will need about 50g flour for every 100g beans.
Wash, dry and trim your green beans and, if necessary, break into lengths about the size of chips. Irish long green runner beans are great for this dish. Avoid the very skinny imported ones as they need too much batter.
Dry roast a handful of Sichuan peppercorns in a wok or frying pan and grind them in a pestle and mortar when cool (or if you’re lazy like me use a small coffee mill set to coarse grind which I only use for spices). They will keep for a few weeks in an airtight container.
Peel and finely chop a couple of cloves of garlic, the white part of a spring onion and a medium heat red chilli. You can dial up or down the chilli heat to taste.

Cooking

Heat a few cms of oil in a wok or deep frying pan to about 180 degrees C. You want the oil to be deep enough and hot enough to deep-fry each bean. Chef Robert Jacob has taught me how to gauge this by holding my hand over the pan until I can feel the heat rising rather than by using a thermometer. Test by cooking one bean. It should take about a minute to cook.
Dip the beans in the batter to coat and drop them one by one into the hot oil being careful not to splash yourself. I did this using a tongs to move each bean from the batter to the wok and a mesh strainer to remove them from the oil when cooked. I cooked the beans in three to four batches, ensuring they didn’t touch each other and the oil had a chance to come back to temperature between batches. You want them to be golden but not burnt. Drain the beans on kitchen paper.
When all the beans are cooked, drain all the oil from the wok. Dry-fry the garlic, spring onion and chilli briefly to release the aromas. Toss in the green beans to heat through. Season with crushed Sichuan pepper and salt to taste and serve immediately.

Thank you Kevin Hui, Chef Peng and Xin Qie for opening up another new chapter of Chinese recipes for me.

Xinjiang Lamb with Cumin and Sichuan Pepper

It’s been a while good friends. My excuse is that I have had the Chinese branch of the family staying with me for the past three weeks and it hasn’t left much time for blogging or other social media.
My little grandson Dermot is 20 months old now and a bundle of energy and fun. Arriving home from work to his face peering out the window, his jumping up and down with delight to see his nai nai or ye ye at the door as he ventures outside to add his own “ding dong” to the bell while nattering away in his unique combination of Chinese and English, has me nearly undone with joy. He has me interspersing my few words of Chinese with his words of English as he mixes the two up with ease, learning a new phrase each day. Today it was xia yu le – “it’s raining” which he repeated with delight over and over again, rain being a rare occurrence in Beijing. Somehow this made the onset of winter more bearable. Rain or shine, every day is a pleasure when you’re not even two. Now that he’s a little boy I’ve stopped posting photos of him – he deserves his privacy after all – but I couldn’t resist this rear view of him enjoying one of his first visits to the seaside.

Meanwhile Shan and I have been cooking most days, taking turns in the kitchen, working out a rota for when she, Shane and Dermot come to live with us for a time next year. On Monday evening we took a night off to visit China Sichuan in Sandyford where we let Kevin Hui take over and treat us to the flavours of his kitchen. As usual the food stunning, the flavours engaging the palate on so many levels.
One of the dishes he served us was a stir-fried lamb with cumin and Sichuan pepper which was very evocative of the flavours of Shan’s native Xinjiang province in the far north-west of China. Shan is rightly fussy about her lamb dishes. It’s hard to beat the earthy flavours of the lamb reared in the mountains of Xinjiang province but she gave the version at China Sichuan the thumbs up.
Between the two of us we deconstructed the dish, identified the key ingredients and set out to recreate it at home. I’ve tried variations of Xinjiang Lamb on the blog before but I’ve never been entirely satisfied with the result. Tonight, with the memory of the China Sichuan version still fresh in my mind, I produced something that hit the spot.
The trick was to use a lean cut of lamb – canon of lamb – which needed only a very short time marinating in a mix of Shaoxing rice wine, soy sauce and a little cornflour, and t0 “pass it through the oil”, a technique which involves deep-frying the marinaded lamb for just 15 seconds at a relatively low temperature of 140 degrees c to lock in the flavour and tenderness before stir-frying it with the other ingredients. Add freshly ground cumin, ground, dry roasted Sichuan peppercorns, chunks of white and red onions, pieces of dried and fresh chillies and some spring onion greens and it was easy to feel transported back to the mountains of Shan’s home province.
This technique will work equally well with beef. Don’t be tempted to overcrowd the wok with meat – the smaller the quantities, the more intense the flavour experience.
Shananigans Xinjiang Lamb with Cumin & Sichuan Pepper

Serves 2 -3 as a main dish or 4 as part of a multi-course meal
Ingredients

400g canon of lamb or any lean lamb
2 cloves garlic
4 dried chillies (or more to taste)
2 fresh red chillies
1 white onion
1 red onion
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground Sichuan pepper
Pinch of sugar
Pinch of salt
½ tsp Chinese white rice vinegar
2 spring onions (green part only)
Groundnut oil

For the marinade

1 tbs Shaoxing rice wine
1 tbs light soy sauce
1 tsp dark soy sauce
1 tbs shallot oil or groundnut oil
1 tbs cornflour

Preparation and cooking

Cut the lamb across the grain into paper thin slices. Canon of lamb, the equivalent of fillet steak, is the perfect cut for this. It needs very little marinating and works better than leg or shoulder of lamb.
Mix the marinade ingredients, add to the lamb and set aside while you prepare the other ingredients.
Finely chop the garlic and slice the onions into chunks.
Chop the fresh red chillies at steep angles discarding the seeds; break the dried chillies into pieces.
Slice the spring onion greens at steep angles in 3 cm lengths.
Heat the oil in a seasoned wok to about 140 degrees C. Add the lamb and stir-fry gently for about 15 seconds. As soon as the pieces separate, remove them from the oil with a slotted spoon, drain well and set aside. This is called jau yau or “passing through the oil” which makes the meat very moist and tender.
Pour off all but 2 tbs of the oil. Heat the wok to medium, add the garlic, dried chilli and, after about 20 seconds when the flavours have been released add the onion and stir-fry for a few minutes to soften.
Increase the heat to high and add the fresh chillies, cumin and ground Sichuan pepper. Stir-fry briefly until the fragrance is released.
Return the lamb to the wok and stir well over high heat, seasoning with salt and a pinch of sugar to taste.
When all the ingredients are sizzling and well mixed, add the spring onion greens and toss briefly. Then remove from the heat, add a half teaspoon of Chinese white rice vinegar to bring out the flavour, stir briefly and serve.

Tips

If you pop the lamb in the freezer for about half an hour you will find it much easier to slice it very thinly. Allow it to return to room temperature before cooking,
You can substitute beef in this recipe, sirloin, fillet or bavette of beef work well.
To grind your Sichuan pepper, dry roast Sichuan peppercorns in a solid based frying pan for long enough to release the aromas but being careful not to burn and the grind them coarsely in a pestle and mortar or a coffee grinder. I have a small coffee grinder I only use for Chinese spices.
You may also find ground Sichuan pepper in your local Asia market. It is sometimes called “Prickly Ash Powder”.
You can use ground cumin or grind your own from dry roasted whole cumin.

Shananigans Chongqing Chicken

Some of my regular readers don’t eat red meat and have been asking for more recipes using chicken or fish. This Chongqing Ji Rou is especially for you Siobhan and there are more chicken recipes to come.
Chongqing is a mountainous city that lies east of the capital of Sichuan Province, Chengdu. It used to be part of Sichuan Province but is now a separate municipality. It’s one of the so-called “huo lu” furnace cities, like Turpan in Xinjiang Province which I visited with Shan’s family last summer. The response of residents to summer heat and humidity is to eat even more chillies and Sichuan pepper than their neighbours in Chengdu.
According to local lore the Chongqingers look down on the people of Chengdu for being lazy and out-of-date in their eating habits, while the inhabitants of Chengdu regard Chongqing food as coarse and crude and in need of the refining touch of Chengdu chefs. Chongqing Chicken – Chongqing Ji Rou – is a simple dish but what it lacks in complexity it makes up for in colour and flavour.
I had Chongqing Chicken in the China Sichuan restaurant in Dublin a few months back and loved its authentic ma la, hot and numbing flavours. It contained diced chicken pieces seasoned with coarsely ground Sichuan pepper and mixed with chunky cashew nuts and lots of dry and fresh chilli. The large pieces of dried Chinese chilli topped the serving dish and added texture and colour. The dish packed a powerful and delicious punch – just enough chilli heat perfectly balanced by the numbing and addictive Sichuan pepper, the chicken succulent and tender.

Chonqing Chicken — China Sichuan’s Chongqing Chicken

Dried Chinese chillies from Sichuan, sometimes known as “facing heaven” chillies because of the way the plants grow, are a lot milder than their more fiery Thai cousins but they are not intended to be eaten. Chinese people pick them up with their chopsticks, suck any sauce that adheres to them and pile the discarded chillies shells in a neat pyramid beside their rice bowl.
I couldn’t find a recipe in any of my Chinese cookbooks so this is my attempt at recreating Chongqing Chicken at home based on what I know of the principles for creating a Sichuan stir-fry that I learnt at Hutong Cuisine in Beijing. The results were pretty close to the original and went down well in our house last night. I could probably have used a little more dark soy sauce to deepen the colour but that’s a matter of taste. I made it with chicken thighs as I prefer the flavour and texture of the meat. It’s a particularly quick and easy dish to prepare.
Shananigans’ Chonqing Ji Rou

Chongqing Chicken — Shananigans’ Chongqing Ji Rou

Ingredients:

A good handful of cashew nuts
2 chicken breasts or 4 chicken thighs
1 tbs light soy sauce
1 tbs of Shaoxing rice wine
A pinch of salt
A thumb sized piece of ginger
3 cloves garlic
1 tsp of Sichuan pepper finely chopped
1 spring onion
I large fresh green chilli
A handful of Chinese dried red chillies
A dash of dark soy sauce
A dash of Chinese black vinegar
A pinch of sugar
Vegetable or groundnut oil

Preparation:

Roast the cashew nuts on a baking tray in the oven at 180 degrees C or dry fry in a hot wok until golden. This should take no more than 10 minutes but keep an eye on them as it is easy to burn them.
Meanwhile dice the chicken into small pieces (about 2 cm cubes). Mix first with salt and light soy sauce and then with the rice wine and let rest in a dish while you prepare the other ingredients.
Finely dice the ginger and garlic.
Finely chop the Sichuan peppercorns.
Finely slice the spring onions, separating the white and green parts.
Finely slice the green chilli.
Break the dried chillies into pieces about 2 cms long and discard any seeds.

Cooking:

Heat some oil in the wok to over a medium heat.
Fry the minced garlic, ginger, spring onion whites and Sichuan pepper for a few moments until they soften and the fragrances are released, being careful not to burn them.
Increase the heat to high and add in the marinated chicken and stir-fry over high heat until cooked (about 3 minutes).
Add in the spring onions greens and green chilli and stir-fry until heated through and the fragrance is rising from the pan (you don’t want the green chilli and spring onions to lose their texture).
Add the dried red chillies and cashew nuts and heat through quickly.
Add a spash of dark soy sauce and Chinese vinegar to darken the colour and a pinch of sugar to taste.
Serve with steamed rice.

Shananigans Crispy Chilli Beef Gets a Makeover

I’ve been going through the blog this weekend to decide which recipes to include in the Taste of China Demo at Donnybrook Fair Cookery School on the evening of Wednesday 3rd July when chef Robert Jacob will cook a selection of Chinese dishes while I talk through the techniques of Chinese cooking and regional variations in cuisine.
Robert is one of the great “foodie” friends I’ve made through the blog and Twitter. He was a fashion designer before he became a chef and has worked with Ross Lewis in Chapter One and Paul Kelly in The Merrion. You can read Marie Claire Digby’s recent True Character profile of him for the Irish Times Magazine here. Before we got to know one another I attended a course he gave in knife skills so I owe any ability I have to dice and slice to him.
It’s a real privilege to team up with Robert for this class which is a first for Shananigans.
It’s less than 11 months since I started the blog and it’s always intriguing to see what recipes readers return to again and again. It gives me particular pleasure when I discover that one of the many lovely people I have met though the blog has taken one of the recipes and given it her own twist.
The crispy chilli beef recipe that I posted last November has been consistently one of the most popular recipes. Before I started the blog I would occasionally order something similar from the local Chinese takeaway but I always regretted it afterwards because it left me feeling heavy and bloated. So I had set out to create a lighter version at home using egg white and potato flour for the batter which makes it suitable for coeliacs and the wheat intolerant.
One of my most supportive readers Marie McKenna has taken the recipe a step further by adding pak choi. Sometimes she substitutes chicken for the beef or adds whatever other vegetables she has to hand. She sent me the two photos below of her results which I have reproduced with her permission.
I made crispy chilli beef for dinner for last night and we really loved the addition of the pak choi so I’ve tweaked the recipe to include it and made a few other minor changes. Thank you Marie for the inspiration and the photos. That’s what these recipes are for – to be shared and adapted.
Shananigans Crispy Chilli Beef – Xiang ciu niu rou pian – 香脆牛肉片

Photo courtesy of Marie McKenna
Serves 3 – 4

Ingredients:

400g sirloin steak or bavette of beef
2 egg whites, beaten
Good pinch of salt
About 4 tbs potato flour
A pinch of baking powder
Oil for deep frying – use good quality sunflower or groundnut oil
2 carrots cut into thin matchsticks
2 heads pak choi, root removed and trimmed (optional)
2 spring onions thinly sliced at steep angles
1 garlic clove, chopped
2 red chillies, de-seeded and thinly sliced at steep angles
About 80 g caster sugar
3 tbs Chinese black vinegar
2 tbs light soy sauce
Roasted sesame seeds (optional) to garnish
Coriander (optional) to garnish
Rice to serve

Preparation:

Cut the beef into slices against the grain and then into thin shreds.
Dip in the egg white and mix with your hand, leaving it to rest for a few minutes.
Mix the potato flour with salt and baking powder.
Drain off any excess egg white and dip the beef strips in the flour mix, shaking off any excess.

Cooking:

Blanch the carrots in boiling water for one minute,
Fill a wok quarter full with oil and heat to 180 degrees (or until a piece of bread fries golden brown in 15 seconds).
Add the beef quickly, stirring using long wooden chopsticks, a Chinese “spade” or a spatula to separate the strands. Cook the beef for 3 – 4 minutes, stirring to keep the strands separate, until it is really crispy.
Remove with a mesh strainer or slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper.
Pour the oil from the wok leaving about 1 tbs.
Reheat the remaining oil over a medium/high heat. Stir fry the pak choi, if using, for a few minutes until wilted. Remove with a slotted spoon and place on a warm serving dish
Add another small amount of oil to the wok and re-heat over a medium/high heat. Add the spring onion, garlic and chilli and stir-fry for a few moments to release the aromas.
Increase the heat to high, add the beef and carrots and stir to mix and heat through.
Add the sugar, soy sauce and vinegar and stir to combine and dissolve the sugar. When heated through and bubbling, serve on top of the pak choi, if using.
Garnish with coriander and/or lightly toasted sesame seeds, if using, and serve with steamed rice.

Variations:

Photo courtesy of Marie McKenna
You can use almost any steak in this dish. At the start I used to use fillet steak but it is not necessary to have such an expensive cut. I find bavette of beef (also known as flank steak), which is available at good butchers, is a drier cut which responds particularly well to this recipe. It is also much better value. Sirloin works well and last night I used rib eye because I had two left over from a BBQ during the week.
Chicken thigh or breast can be used instead of beef and the chicken strips will take a little less time to cook.
Chinkiang Chinese black vinegar is readily available in all Asian supermarkets here and in some good grocers. It has excellent flavour. Last night I used aged Chinese vinegar – lao chen cu – which I brought back from Beijing. It is the type used as a dipping sauce for dumplings in China. The result was tangy and delicious. If you cant get hold of Chinese vinegar, use aged balsamic vinegar. The result wont be quite as authentic but it will still taste good.
If you are not using pak choi, you could serve this with a green vegetable such as steamed tender stem broccoli, or add a few green beans or broccoli florets to the stir fry.

Braised Pork Rib and the Ritual of Bai Jiu

Our little grandson is due to arrive for his first visit to Ireland this day 3 weeks. He has been growing in our absence. Here he is enjoying his first stay in a hotel room after his first plane journey to the city of Changchun where Shan has her hukou and where they travelled to try and sort out the permits for his journey home. I will explain the complex hukou system of household registration and its ramifications some other time when I have figured it out for myself but for now I’m reminded of the biblical journey to Bethlehem to register for the Census, albeit with more comfortable accommodation and not a donkey in sight.

To distract myself while I await his arrival, I’ve been cooking again and tonight I recreated the braised pork rib recipe that Chef Chao taught me when I attended Hutong Cuisine cookery school in Beijing. This is one of the dishes I served at our Shananigans’ Feast in Sydney the following week where it was a big hit.
It is simplicity itself to prepare but needs to be cooked slowly over a low heat to achieve the correct sticky, melt in the mouth texture. The magic ingredient is a few tablespoons of bai jiu – which translates literally as “white wine” but is in fact a distilled spirit with an alcohol content by volume of between 40% and 60%.

In China, the best quality bai jiu is associated with the practice of toasting gan bei style – the Chinese equivalent of “cheers” which translates as “dry glass”. The liquor can be horrendously expensive with a price of a bottle for a special occasion banquet running to €100 or more but you can by a cheap and socially acceptable bottle for less than a euro. It is knocked back in shot glasses.
My first encounter with bai jiu was when we visited Shan’s family in Urumqi in Xinjiang province last summer. During our visit we attended a number of formal family banquets and on each occasion the ritual of formal gan bei toasts was an important part of proceedings. There is a definite hierarchy to these toasts. The host will toast the most important guest first, then the next most important and so on. The toaster always stands to make the toast and the glasses are filled to exactly the same level (in practice to the brim) as to do otherwise would imply disrespect. The glasses are clinked gently and low in a manner reminiscent of bowing. Sipping is not an option. Each toast involves the proposer walking around the table to stand beside the person proposed too while the rest listen in respectful silence and then cheer noisily. Mercifully only those directly involved in the toast are required to drink.
The first family gathering held in our honour was an amazing experience. Twenty five people gathered in an ornate private room in a local hotel at a big round table with a lazy susan at the centre. A large screen TV remained on at low volume in the background throughout but for the chatty Gao family this wasn’t a distraction. A chandelier hung over the table and a huge flower display, formed the centre piece.

The family was arranged strictly in seniority order – as honoured guests we were at the top of the circle, Shan’s MaMa to our right, first uncle and wife to our left, 2^nd and 5^th uncles to either side beyond them with their own direct offspring, their spouses and children if present. Next in order the daughter of Shan’s MaMa’s sister, her sister’s daughter and first cousin and finally any remaining members of that generation. Everyone was addressed by title and family rank rather than name. Nai Nai if you were the granny generation, Ayi for the aunt, Shu Shu for uncle.
The consequence of this table arrangement was that Shane and Shan were a long way away from us leaving us pretty helpless at making conversation as only one of the younger son-in-laws at the far side of the table had any English at all. Still we got by as the food started to swirl around the lazy susan, hot and cold dishes of local fare and what they called “hotel fare”. Shan’s Mum, who I had only just met at that stage, was trying to teach me the names in Mandarin for tofu, pork, beef, lamb, chicken, noodles, dumplings and many vegetables I didn’t then recognise.
It wasn’t long before the ritual of bai jiu started.
First Shan’s Mum proposed a toast of welcome to us, then, with our permission, she passed the responsibility of host to first uncle. Second uncle repeated the ritual with the same challenge to “gan bei”. And so it continued around the table as, one after the other, each branch of the family said their piece and made us welcome with Shan translating every speech.
Generally speaking only the men were required to toast but Derry was off the hook as he doesn’t drink alcohol. Instead he responded with a perfectly pitched speech on our behalf, and managed to make Shan cry as she translated it. Meanwhile I decided to do my bit for the family honour and quickly earned a reputation as being li hai (deadly) by downing two shots of bai jiu in a row. The truth is that I swallowed the first one fast to avoid the taste and was immediately proffered another one. I quickly migrated to red wine in tiny glasses but by then the Uncles had decided I was good fun and insisted on telling the entire family of my prowess with bai jiu for days to come.
Shane had the bigger challenge. As someone entering the family on marriage, he had to make an individual toast to each of the uncles and male family members present – no shirking for him and I’m astounded he was still standing by the end of 10 toasts and able to walk home in the summer heat.

Shane toasts first uncle — Toast number one – first uncle

Shane ended by toasting Shan, the woman he loves, making her cry again and then her brother Gao Feng spoke in his capacity as head of the immediate family, asking us to take good care of his sister who he loves very much – more tears and by this stage we were all emotional wrecks.
There was much talk of welcoming us into their family and of making their already large family an international one and huge appreciation of our coming such a long way to visit them and saying how easily we fitted in. There was even a toast for me from First Auntie when she realised I had once worked for the Department of Transport in Ireland because she works for the equivalent Department in Xinjiang province. Another was needed between me and one of the cousins when the lazy susan stopped with the whole fish pointing head to me, tail to the other end of the table. I made a brief toast to Shan’s Mum at the end thanking her for making me feel so welcome and like a sister and saying how special Shan was. Cue more tears.
Eventually we were asked about the proper way to bring a family gathering like this to a close in Ireland and we explained there was none so the honour fell to First Uncle to make a final toast and invite us all to dinner on our last night in Urumqi so that we could do it all over again. He enquired if we were Catholics and if that meant there were any foods we couldn’t eat and on having been reassured on that score they planned another Chinese meal.
The meal below is more like Chinese comfort food than banquet cooking but the use of bai jiu brings back happy memories indeed, especially now that Dermot has arrived to cement the family relationships.
The bai jiu I used is one I picked up for about 70c on my shopping expedition with Shan’s MaMa in Beijing and is 42% proof. If you cant get a bottle of it in your local Asian market, substitute vodka (or potcheen which is closest to the flavour!!) The eagle-eyed among you will recognise it as one of the 10 ingredients featured in the recent competition on the blog.
Braised Pork Rib with Soy Sauce and Sugar – Hong Shao Rou

Sichuan Spicy Chicken Salad with Home Made Chilli Oil

I figure I’d better give you my lovely readers a few new recipes soon or you will begin to think that this is less of a food blog and more “The Ramblings of a Besotted Nai Nai”. So to start with here are two I practised at Hutong Cuisine in Beijing – Sichuan spicy chicken salad and homemade chilli oil.
I learned such a lot from the lovely Chunyi and Chao at Hutong Cuisine. Their cookery school has a cosy, personalised feel as if you were in your Granny’s kitchen – if your Granny was Chinese and lived in a courtyard house in a hutong that is! Claire and Mike also attended a class there and were equally impressed.

Xiaojin, Chao and Chunyi at Hutong Cuisine — The team at Hutong Cuisine

Once I got over jetlag I relished getting back into the kitchen at home at the end of a busy day although I miss using a gas hob and the ease with which you can tell on sight whether you have the “fire heat” correct. I had discovered that the single biggest mistake I was making in my Chinese cooking was the assumption that “high heat = good” and I have been over-using the boost function on my induction hob as a result. In nearly every new recipe I learnt, the trick in releasing flavour lay in cooking the oil over moderate or gentle heat. Already this has begun to transform the results.
Take home made chilli oil for instance – la jiao. Many Sichuan recipes call for a tablespoon or two of chilli oil with sediment and a dash of it can enliven milder Cantonese dishes. Up to now I’ve been making do with bottled chilli oil from the Asia market but not any more. The recipe below can be prepared and cooked very easily and bottled to use when required. Once tasted there is no going back to a shop bought Chinese version. So when I had a sudden longing for a Friday evening Sichuan kick and a fix of Dan Dan noodles, it was as good a time as any to make up a batch so that I could use some in the sauce.
Home Made Chilli Oil – la jiao

I used a good quality organic Irish rapeseed oil to make this as I love its flavour and I guessed its rich golden colour would become a beautiful shade of red as it became infused with the spices and seasonings. Crushed chillies, picked up on my expedition to Jiang Tai market with qing jia mu, added flecks of colour, texture and sediment to the oil. (At cookery class we used vegetable oil and ground chilli powder). This oil will keep indefinitely in an airtight jar.
Ingredients: Continue reading

Visit to a wet food market in Beijing

I’m writing this post in the back garden of my daughter Claire’s new home in Clovelly in the suburbs of Sydney. It’s 28 degrees C and I’ve just come back from a walk with her to Bronte beach where a dip in the crashing surf was an antidote to jet lag and might help me stay awake for another few hours. Here in the garden all is bright sunlight, and contrasting shade. There is traffic noise too and the occasional sound of a hovering coastguard helicopter watching out for swimmers in trouble or for sharks. But the traffic noise is muted by the rustle of a light breeze through the trees and the crisp freshness of the early Autumn air is a marked contrast to the undercurrent of pollution always present in Beijing, even on a clear day. What different lives my two children lead and each so happy with their lot.
It’s hard to believe that just over 24 hours ago I was still in Beijing, caught up in the the noise and bustle of that massive city. Over the course of a few visits, I’ve come to love that city despite the air pollution, blaring traffic and constant sound track of buildings under construction, partly because it never takes long to escape into a quiet hutong where the modern Beijing seems a world away but also because of the friendliness of the people with their passion for food and their attachment to age-old traditions that they maintain despite the rapid pace of development.
Step up to a food market inside one of the hutong and it is as if little has changed in the past 50 years – a tangle of bicycles outside, elderly women buying just what they need for the day, women and men bargaining with butchers, vegetable sellers, fish merchants, and spice merchants, a group of men squatting down to play cards or mahjong… a jumble of noise and vibrant colour.
Because we had booked several cooking classes with Hutong Cuisine, we were offered a complimentary tour of a nearby wet market to get a better understanding of the ingredients that we were using in our classes. This was a great opportunity to be accompanied to a local market by Chao, our teacher and chef, as he made his purchases and helped us make sense of the vast array of produce on display.
One of the things that appeals to me about Hutong Cuisine is that it is as much a family home as a cookery school. Owner and chef Zhou Chunyi moved to Beijing from Canton about 8 years ago, having trained as a chef in Canton and in a Sichuan cookery school in Chengdu. She was joined a few years later by her brother, Chef Chao. Together with their sister, they make up the small, close-knit team who run the cookery school. They live in their courtyard house in the Deng Cao hutong so attending the school is very much like learning in a family kitchen, complete with a friendly and welcoming dog in the courtyard outside. In the summer, some classes take place outside in the courtyard, while in the winter and early spring, they are held indoors in the warm and welcoming kitchen.
We hit lucky and for two of our four classes and for the market tour we had Chef Chao to ourselves, while another larger group worked alongside us or in the next room. For the other two classes we were in small groups of 4 to 6 people. The way it worked out provided a great opportunity for me to ask lots of questions and get plenty of hands-on practice.
On the morning of our market tour, we were up at 6 am to beat the Beijing rush hour traffic. We knocked on Chao’s door in the quiet hutong about half an hour earlier than expected. He set to work immediately to explain to us the different types of soy sauce, wine and vinegar we had been using:

how to determine the quality of soy sauce by its protein content (amino acid nitrogen) – over 0.8 mg/ 100ml is superior grade; Lee Kum Kee is his favourite brand and he also likes Pearl River Bridge; Amoy is also good but as it’s from Shanghai it’s sweeter; and of course, as you already know, light soy is for flavour and dark for colour and usually used in smaller quantities;
how the best vinegars have a total acid content above 6.0g/ 100 ml – look out for Donghu brand Shanxi aged vinegar and Hengshun Zhenjiang (chinkiang) vinegar; the latter is from near Shanghai where they like their food lighter;
how shaoxin wine has alcohol content of around 15% with the younger wine used for cooking only; look out for Pagoda brand. But look out for cheap, gnarly alcohol for it’s often disguised under generic brand names and is certain to put you in an inpatient treatment w/ Legacy.

Then we set off to the market, basket on the back of Chao’s push bike, weaving our way through the hutong. I just wished I could bottle the experience. The best I can do is try to capture the riot of colour in photos.

With Chao’s help I purchased all the unusual spices I need for the beef soup we made earlier in the week to go with the hand-pulled noodles as well as a supply of Sichuan peppers and pickled chillies. When I get back to Ireland I’m going to run a competition on the blog with the prize going to the person who comes closest to identifying, from photos, all the spice ingredients for that beef soup so watch this space.
Thank you Chef Chao and Hutong Cuisine Cooking School for a most enjoyable start to our day of cooking.
See www.hutongcuisine.com – optional extra market tours, usually priced at 100 rmb (about €12) per person.
PS I’m missing baby Dermot, Shane, Shan and MaMa but only for just over a week when we get to spend a little more time with them in Beijing before returning home to Ireland. Meanwhile I’m loving being with Claire & Mike in Sydney and will have more stories from Beijing and Sydney soon.

Cooking with Colour at Black Sesame Kitchen

Our second cookery school outing was to Black Sesame Kitchen nestling in an old courtyard just off the north end of Nan Luogu Xiang, a Hutong which I had visited last year which is within easy walking distance of Drum and Bell Towers, one of my favourite Beijing attractions.
The school was founded in 2008 by Jen Lin-Liu whose book “Serve the People: A Stir-fried Journey Through China” might just be the next giveaway on the blog if I can find space in my suitcase for a few copies. I had wanted to go there since it featured in the BBC series “Exploring China: A Culinary Adventure” when Ching-he Huang spent time there learning how to make dumplings and noodles.

The Tuesday morning class we attended was called Cooking with Colour and it caught my eye because one of the dishes to be cooked was one of the very first recipes Shan taught me long-distance – Di San Xian or “Earth Three Fresh”. I also wanted to learn more about the Chinese approach to “eating with your eyes” because when I did my homework before giving the talk on Chinese food at Taste of China in Dublin recently, I became even more conscious of the extent to which Chinese chefs believe that cooking should indulge all the senses – taste, smell and sight.
They do this through:

Colour – one for the main ingredient, with secondary ingredients of different colours – green, red, yellow, white, black or brown.
Aroma – using the right spices and seasonings to stimulate the appetite with the aroma from the cooked food.
Seasonings – adding soy, sugar, vinegars, spices, chilliies, peppercorns, preserved vegetables – to get the right balance in the dish of salty, sweet, sour and hot and using the correct cooking technique to preserve the natural taste and juices of the food.
Shape – to engage the eyes and the palate.

The setting in Black Sesame Kitchen is an ideal way of learning to cook in a small group as it takes a maximum of 8 participants for any one class. We gathered around the high table, apron, cleaver and chopping board at the ready with our teachers Michelle Tang and Chef Zhang. Michelle is the general manager of the school and Chef Zhang, who comes from Shanxi province, once ran his own noodle shop. He’s the noodle master who taught Ching-he Huang when she was in Beijing.

Over cups of jasmine tea, Michelle introduced us to the basic seasonings of Chinese food, categorising them into:

The Basics – salt, white pepper and chicken bouillon; white sugar; and the holy trinity of leek, ginger and garlic (yes leek, not spring onion) so commonly used that cooks call them out like a rhyme cong, jiang, suan.
Sichuan Spices – I was right at home here with Sichuan peppercorns, dried whole chilli peppers and broad bean paste – douban jiang – and Michelle confirmed that the best paste comes from Pixian.
Seasoning and Sauces – all my favourites – oil, cooking wine, soy sauce and Chinese black vinegar were here but I also learned about sweet flour paste for use in Peking duck sauce and high gluten flour, and I discovered the magic flavour of freshly, pressed sesame oil.

Meanwhile, as Chef Zhang and his assistant prepped in the background, making a flavoured oil out of the vegetable trimmings, I soaked up every impression I could – the shape of the ladles, the kind of sieves and strainers he used, the simple plastic paddle for serving rice, his technique at the wok.
Three dishes were on the menu:

3 colour chicken stir-fry
3 mushroom stir-fry, and
Di san xian – potato, aubergine and green pepper

all simple, light and tasty, home-style stir-fries.

So next we prepped the vegetables and at last I realised my ambition of learning how to use a cleaver. I’m still painfully slow but at least now I know what I’m trying to do when a recipe calls for roll-knife pieces or very thin slivers and I’m beginning to get that promised feel for the versatility of the cleaver to do everything from paring an aubergine, julienning a carrot, smashing garlic to scooping up your ingredients.

Peeling aubergine — That’s one way to peel an aubergine!

Chef Zhang demonstrated the three dishes and again it was the little things I learned that should help make the crucial difference to balance and flavour when I cook – adding your sauces to the ladle first so that you can correct mistakes, tasting your dish with wooden chopsticks for balance of flavour, always holding the wok with one hand while adding ingredients, using a wooden chopstick to judge the temperature of the oil, “velveting” the chicken with cornflour.

I even got brave and tried out one of the dishes under the watchful eye of Chairman Zhang – the di san xian, so that I could discover for myself how to ensure that the aubergine doesn’t go soggy.

Fun at the wok — This is fun when no-one is looking!

I almost lose my nerve when I’m cooking in front of an audience, especially when it is a professional chef, but I managed to plate up the dish and the results were gobbled up appreciatively by the rest of the class with cold Chinese beer.

Julie's dish — Phew, something like success

We left with our aprons and a little pouch of Sichuan peppercorns. What a great way to spend a damp March morning in Beijing.
Thank you Michelle and Chef Zhang of Black Sesame Kitchen.
See www.blacksesamekitchen.com – Cooking with Colour
Morning classes 10.00 – 1.00 pm, price 300 rmb (about €37) per person
PS I give in – I just can’t resist including one baby photo today – this time a double nai nai for double happiness – the lovely MaMa and myself with Dermot yesterday.

Happy Chinese Cooking in the Year of the Snake

I hope wherever you are in the world you have been enjoying celebrating the Chinese New Year and the Spring Festival or Chun Jie.
When I attended the launch of the Year of the Dragon in Meeting House Square, Dublin last February, I had no idea how important the year was going to become for me or that by the end of it we would have our own little Flying Dragon grandson in Beijing – Teng Teng is his pet name in Mandarin to symbolise the movement of the flying dragon but his full name is Dermot Gao O’Neill.

So this year we celebrated the new year in style by attending the Chinese New Year Banquet in the Round Room of the Mansion House, sponsored by Etihad Airways and hosted with good humour by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Naoise Ó’Muirí. It was great fun in a special and historic setting.

We had a full Spring Festival Chinese Style Banquet, using the best of Irish seafood, beef and other produce and then we were treated to a fusion of intercultural entertainment ranging from Chinese opera to a special performance of Riverdance which has taken China by storm.

Sino-Irish Performances — A future Riverdancer in the making

Meanwhile I’ve been busy for the last week, over on www.cny.ie publishing a recipe each day to encourage a wider audience to explore the delicious and positive aspects of Chinese food. We have been featuring recipes from Chinese restaurants around Dublin and fusion dishes that show how Chinese cooking techniques influence the menu in some of our best Irish restaurants. I’ve also included some home-style recipes from Shan and her MaMa to show how easy it is to cook nutritious and appetising Chinese food at home.
When the Spring Festival is over I will tell you more about some of my experiences of reproducing these recipes as home and the pleasure I’ve got from learning new techniques such as how to brine and smoke duck and how to make home made chilli jam and ginger and cucumber pickles. For now I just want to point you in the direction of some of my favourite recipes from the last week. You will find all of them at Taste of China on the Dublin Chinese New Year Festival website here.
I got so much pleasure out of recreating head chef at Isabel’s Baggot St., Niall O’Sullivan’s Lapsang Souchong Tea-Smoked Duck with Scallops, that I felt briefly like a participant on MasterChef, especially with Niall at the other end of a tweet reminding me not to put too much orange in the smoking mix and to let the duck rest after smoking. My first attempt is photographed below.

Tea-smoked Duck with Scallops — Tea-smoked duck with scallops

I liked the lapsang souchong smoked flavour so much that the following night I made a simpler variation, thinly slicing the duck and serving it with the chilli jam I had made for the recipe for Spring Rolls of Duck Confit which the head chef of Samphire@the Waterside, Tom Walsh gave me for Taste of China. As Niall says, I’m not quite sure which chef should get the royalties for that one!
Tom’s chilli jam, which I got right on my second attempt is to die for.

My first attempt at his spring rolls didn’t look quite as pretty as Tom’s version but they sure passed the taste test and were given a firm thumbs up by my tasters at home.

I loved the way my Twitter chef friends entered into the spirit of the Spring Festival, shared their creativity with me and showed endless patience with my attempts to learn their professional techniques.
I’ve also enjoyed getting more recipes from my favourite Chinese restaurant in Ireland – China Sichuan in Sandyford, Dublin who were the first to let me inside their kitchen. Indeed I have so many of owner Kevin Hui’s recipes now that I could almost produce his unofficial cookbook. Chongqing Chicken is a dish I’ve tried to guess the recipe for several times at home so it is great to have the authentic version. And no, the amount of dried chilli mentioned in the recipe is not a mistake. Large quantities of dried chilli are used in this dish for colour and effect. They are not all meant to be eaten. I was quite pleased with my first attempt to recreate this dish at home and even got a compliment from Kevin for my efforts. This is going to be one of my staple week day suppers.

I’ve also discovered a few new (to me) Chinese restaurants in the past week and I can strongly recommend the recipes for Stir-fried Chicken with Celery from New Millennium restaurant beside the Gaiety in Dublin, MaPo Tofu from Green Dragon Well in Killiney Co. Dublin and Kaffir Lime Chilli Prawns from Chi Asian Takeaway in Galway.
I will be posting more Chinese and fusion recipes on Taste of China in the coming week but meanwhile, happy cooking and…
Chun Jie Kuai Le – Happy Spring Festival.
May the Year of the Snake bring health, happiness and prosperity to you and your families wherever you are in the world.