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Hong you (Sichuan red chilli oil)

In Chengdu kitchens, a jar of hong you sits next to the stove and goes into almost everything cold: wontons in red oil, cucumber salads, cold noodles and the dressing for liang mian. Good chilli oil is a deep ruby colour, fragrant rather than burnt, with a warm, rounded heat and the tingle of Sichuan pepper. It is poured in two stages, hot then warm, so you get both toasted and bright chilli flavours. The mistake most people make is pouring smoking oil onto the flakes, which turns them black and bitter in a second; check the temperature. Chef's tip: mix coarse and fine chilli flakes, the fine for colour and the coarse for crunch and flavour, and let the oil sit overnight before using.

20 min

Chinese Basics

by KrazyBadal 0 views

Five-spice powder

Across China, from Cantonese roast meat shops to Sichuan home kitchens, five-spice is the blend that seasons red-braised dishes, tea eggs, roast duck and spiced tofu. Shop-bought powder loses its scent quickly; grinding your own takes ten minutes and gives a sweet, warm aroma with a gentle tingle from the Sichuan pepper. It is used by the pinch, not the spoonful. The classic mistake is grinding the spices raw or toasting them until they smoke; warm them just until fragrant. Chef's tip: pick the black seeds out of the Sichuan peppercorns before toasting, since they are gritty and bitter, and sieve the ground blend so it is silky fine.

10 min

Chinese Basics

by KrazyBadal 0 views

Salted duck eggs

Gaoyou in Jiangsu is famous for salted duck eggs with oily, deep orange yolks, and at the Dragon Boat Festival they are hung in little woven nets around children's necks before being eaten with congee or rice. At home they are simple: clean duck eggs left in a strong salt brine for about four weeks, then boiled. Cracked eggs are the risk; use only uncracked, very fresh eggs, keep the jar cool and always cook them before eating. The common mistake is too weak a brine, which lets the eggs spoil; it must taste as salty as the sea and then some. Chef's tip: from week three, boil one test egg each week until the yolk is as firm and rich as you like.

25 min

Chinese Basics

by KrazyBadal 0 views

Hong suan tangFermented tomato sour soup base

In the Miao and Dong villages of Qiandongnan, south-east Guizhou, small wild 'hairy' tomatoes and red chillies ripen together in late summer, and every household fills tall jars with them to ferment into hong suan tang, the red sour base of the region's famous sour-soup fish and sour-soup beef hot pots. The fermented paste is bright scarlet, sharply sour, fruity and fiery, with a funk from the ferment that ordinary tomato never has. People say three days without sour and you walk unsteadily, and it goes into soups year round. Outside Guizhou, use cherry tomatoes, which have a similar high acidity. Common mistake: fermenting with too little salt or with wet produce, which goes mushy and off; dry everything first and weigh the salt. Normal signs: bubbles, a sour, wine-like fruity smell and liquid rising. Bad signs: fuzzy coloured mould, pink or black patches, or a rotten smell; discard. It is ready after 2–3 weeks, when it tastes clearly sour and the raw tomato taste has gone. Then keep it in the fridge for 3 months or freeze it. Chef's tip: fry a few spoonfuls in oil with ginger before adding stock; it turns a deeper red and smells richer.

60 min

Chinese Basics

by KrazyBadal 0 views

Pixian doubanjiangFermented broad bean chilli paste

Pixian, now part of greater Chengdu, has made doubanjiang since the 1600s: broad beans are moulded into a koji, chillies are chopped and salted in high summer, and the two are combined in huge open clay vats left in the courtyards to sun by day and breathe by night, stirred every morning for a year or more. The paste darkens from bright red to a glossy red-brown and becomes salty, savoury, deeply fruity and only moderately hot. Fried in oil until the oil turns red, it is the foundation of mapo tofu, twice-cooked pork and boiled fish in chilli oil. This home version takes about three months. Use koji spores for a clean bean ferment, and do not cut the salt: homemade bean pastes are low-acid, and the high salt (about 15%) is what makes them safe. Common mistake: sealing the jar airtight in the warm months; it needs air and daily stirring, so cover it with a cloth or loose lid. Normal: darkening colour, a winey-savoury smell, a little liquid. Discard if fuzzy mould spreads or grows coloured (green, black, pink) patches, or it smells putrid. It is ready when the paste is red-brown and tastes rounded, not raw. Chef's tip: fry it slowly in oil until it smells toasty.

105 min

Chinese Basics

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DouchiFermented black beans

Yangjiang in western Guangdong and Liuyang in Hunan are the two great douchi towns, and both traditionally make their fermented black beans in the dry season, when beans can be moulded indoors and dried in the sun without spoiling. Cooked black soybeans are covered until a yellow-green koji mould grows over them, then washed, salted, packed and fermented for weeks before drying. The result is wrinkled, soft-chewy beans with an intense salty, savoury, almost chocolate-dark flavour. A spoonful steamed with spare ribs or a whole fish, stir-fried with bitter melon or pounded into Hunan's chilli dishes seasons the whole plate. At home, buying koji spores (Aspergillus oryzae) is far more reliable than waiting for wild moulds. Common mistake: letting the beans sit wet or warm in a sealed container during the moulding stage; they must breathe at 28–32 °C. Good koji smells sweet and chestnut-like; discard any batch with black, pink or bright coloured mould, slime or a rotten smell. Keep the salt as given. It is ready when the beans are dark, wrinkled and dry outside but supple within. Store dried douchi in the fridge for 1 year. Chef's tip: rinse and lightly crush the beans before cooking.

180 min

Chinese Basics

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Guihua jiangOsmanthus syrup

When the osmanthus trees around West Lake in Hangzhou and along the Li River in Guilin bloom in late September and October, the whole town smells of apricots, and families shake the tiny gold flowers onto sheets to preserve them. Guihua jiang, sweet osmanthus sauce, is the result: a loose, amber syrup thick with petals that is drizzled over glutinous rice cakes, sweet lotus-root stuffed with sticky rice, tangyuan in fermented-rice soup and plain congee through the Mid-Autumn Festival and all winter. It tastes floral, honeyed and faintly fruity, with a clean sugar sweetness and a soft, slippery petal texture. The flowers are salted briefly first, which takes away their green bitterness and helps them keep their colour. Common mistake: boiling the petals hard in the syrup, which turns them brown and flattens the perfume; add them only once the syrup is ready and let them barely bubble. It is ready when the syrup coats a spoon and the petals are evenly suspended rather than floating. Chef's tip: dried food-grade osmanthus from a Chinese grocer works well out of season; soak it for 10 minutes and use a third of the weight of fresh.

35 min

Chinese Basics

by KrazyBadal 0 views

Dulce de lecheMilk caramel

Dulce de leche is Argentina's national sweet, spread on toast at breakfast, sandwiched in alfajores, rolled into panqueques and spooned onto flan. Argentine families traditionally make it by slowly cooking milk and sugar with a vanilla pod and a pinch of bicarbonate of soda, which helps it turn deep brown, until it becomes a thick, glossy caramel cream. It takes about three hours of gentle cooking and regular stirring. Chef's tip: use a wide, heavy pan and keep the heat low; the wider the surface, the faster the milk reduces, and the less it catches on the bottom.

185 min

Argentinian Basics

by KrazyBadal 0 views