Cooking a foreign cuisine can be daunting. It is like learning another language. Not only are the ingredients (words) different, but the grammar of the dishes is foreign, too – the classic flavours of sweet, savoury (or umami), fatty, bitterness, salty and sour are combined in different ways.
As with language, the further a cuisine’s roots differ from what you are used to, the harder it is to get your head around it. So, Spanish cooking may be relatively simple for a cook brought up in the British and French tradition to get their head around. But Chinese food can seem impenetrable.
This was certainly the case for me, until I was lucky enough to move in round the corner from the celebrated cookery writer Fuchsia Dunlop. Fuchsia is the only western woman ever to have trained at the Chinese State cookery school. She speaks fluent Mandarin as well as fluent food. And I have tricked her into becoming my personal tutor.
This is how it works. I invite Fuchsia over for dinner, then I choose a selection of recipes from her books and start cooking them just before she rings on the doorbell. She comes into the kitchen, finds me doing something cack-handed with an aubergine, and glides to the rescue.
We then spend a happy (for me at least) hour at the stove together, as she talks me through the crucial differences in rice wines, or how to achieve the perfect glaze on a soft curl of pork fat.
Alas, not everyone can be Fuchsia’s neighbour. But with one of her books to hand, and the right ingredients, anyone can start to untangle the mystery of Chinese food. So here, for my fellow beginners, are a couple of recipes simplified to suit even the most tongue-tied foreigner.
The Chinese larder
There are only a handful of ingredients you will need to add to your larder to attempt these dishes. Shaoxing wine and Chinkiang vinegar both have foreign, mysterious flavours. They are irreplaceable, but I only use them in Chinese cooking. The Sichuanese chilli bean paste has a deeply savoury and mildly spicy flavour and I have come to use it in all sorts of other dishes – replacing Worcestershire for example, or miso. Potato flour gives a glossy thickness to sauces and I often use it in place of cornflour. It is worth buying a little Sichuan pepper, which is optional here, as its tingly pepperiness has a unique flavour, and an almost narcotic effect. If nothing else, chewing one will give you a little thrill.
Red-braised pork
Serve this feast with plain unsalted rice.
Serves 6
500g boneless pork belly with skin (or shoulder), cut into 2-3cm chunks
2 tbsp cooking oil
4 slices ginger, unpeeled
1 spring onion, white part only, crushed slightly
2 tbsp shaoxing wine
500ml stock or water, plus more if needed
1 star anise
A small piece of cassia bark or a cinnamon stick
A dash of soy sauce
2 tbsp caster sugar
Salt, to taste
A few lengths of spring onion greens to garnish
1 Pour the oil into a seasoned wok (or deepish frying pan) over a high flame, followed by the ginger and spring onion. Stir-fry until you can smell their aromas. Add the pork and stir-fry for a couple of minutes more.
2 Splash in the shaoxing wine. Add the stock, spices, soy sauce, sugar and 1 tsp salt. Mix well, then transfer to a clay pot or a saucepan with a lid.
3 Bring to a boil, cover and simmer over a very low flame for at least 1½ hours; preferably 2 or 3. Make sure it does not boil dry; add a little more stock or hot water, if necessary. Adjust the seasoning. Add the spring onion greens just before serving.
Fish-fragrant aubergines
You can shallow-fry the aubergines if you prefer, but they won’t absorb as much flavour. If you do, you should pour the sauce on top to stop them breaking up during cooking.
600g aubergines
Salt
Cooking oil, for deep frying (400ml will do if you use a round-bottomed wok)
1½ tbsp Sichuan chilli bean paste, or Sichuan pickled chilli paste, or a mixture of both
1 tbsp ginger, finely chopped
1 tbsp garlic, finely chopped
2 tsp caster sugar
¾ tsp potato flour mixed with 1 tbsp cold water (you could use cornflour, but it won’t be as glossy)
2 tsp Chinkiang vinegar
4 tbsp spring onion greens, finely sliced
1 Cut the aubergines lengthways into three thick slices, then cut these into evenly sized batons. Sprinkle with salt, mix well and leave in a colander for at least 30 minutes to drain.
2 In a wok (or saucepan), heat the oil for deep-frying to 180C/350F. Add the aubergines in batches. Deep-fry for 3-4 minutes until slightly golden on the outside and soft and buttery within. Remove and drain on kitchen paper.
3 Drain the deep-frying oil, rinse the wok (or saucepan), if necessary, then return it to a medium flame. When it is hot again, add 3 tbsp oil. Add the chilli bean paste and stir-fry until the oil is red and fragrant. Add the ginger and garlic. Stir-fry until you can smell their aromas. Take care not to burn these seasonings; remove the wok (or saucepan) from the heat for a few seconds if necessary to control the temperature (you want a gentle, coaxing sizzle, not a scorching heat).
4 Add the stock and sugar and mix well. Season with salt to taste, if necessary. Add the fried aubergines to the sauce and let them simmer gently for 1 minute or so, to absorb some of the flavours. Stir in the potato flour mixture – pour it over the aubergines and stir in gently to thicken the sauce. Add the vinegar and spring onions and stir a few times, then serve.
Smacked cucumber
1 cucumber (about 300g)
½ tsp salt
1 tbsp garlic, finely chopped
½ tsp caster sugar
2 tsp soy sauce
½ tsp Chinkiang vinegar
2 tbsp chilli oil
A pinch or two of ground, roasted Sichuan pepper (optional)
1 Lay the cucumber on a chopping board and smack it hard a few times with the flat blade of a Chinese cleaver or a rolling pin. Cut it, lengthways, into four pieces. Hold your knife at an angle to the chopping board and cut the cucumber on the diagonal into ½-1 cm slices. Put the slices in a bowl with the salt, mix well and set aside for around 10 minutes.
2 Combine the remaining ingredients in a small bowl. Drain the cucumber, pour over the sauce, stir well and serve immediately.
These recipes are adapted from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Every Grain of Rice.
