Adventures with Kake

Today's dim sum item is a little more substantial than the ones I've posted about previously: 糯米雞 (nuò mǐ jī). This literally means "chicken with glutinous rice" — 糯米 is glutinous rice, and 雞 is chicken. Usually left implicit in the name is the fact that this chicken/rice mixture is wrapped up in a lotus leaf before being steamed, though you may sometimes see the lotus leaf explicitly mentioned, as 荷葉糯米雞 (hé yè nuò mǐ jī). 荷 means "lotus", and 葉 means "leaf" [see footnote].

The most common Cantonese transliteration I've seen for this is "lo mai gai", while English translations include "steamed mini glutinous rice wrapped in lotus leaf", "glutinous rice with meat in lotus leaves", "mini glutinous rice in lotus leaves", and other variations on the same theme. As well as the chicken and rice, the ingredients include Chinese sausage (臘腸/là cháng) and Chinese mushrooms; these savoury items are seasoned with soy sauce, ginger, etc, and then buried in the centre of the rice parcel, to be revealed when you open it up and dig in (illustrated below).

The glutinous rice used in this dish is not the same as the rice used to make, for example, fried rice or plain steamed/boiled rice. It's also known as "sticky rice", and is a different variety from jasmine and other long-grained rices. As well as its culinary uses, it's also been used historically to make masonry mortar for walls and buildings.

As mentioned above, 糯米雞 can be quite filling, so you may not want to eat an entire parcel on your own, at least if you want to try lots of the other dim sum dishes! Though this does depend on the size of the parcel — some places just give you one big one, others give you two or even three smaller ones.

If you'd like to try making this at home, check out Sunflower's 糯米雞 recipe. I like it with the chicken on the bone, but you can always use boneless chicken if you find the bones too fiddly.

Footnote: [0] Regular readers may recognise 荷/hé/lotus from my post on 豆/dòu/bean, since it appears in one of the names for mangetout — 荷蘭豆 (Hélán dòu, literally "Dutch bean", as 荷蘭 is a phonetic representation of "Holland"). Similarly, 葉/yè/leaf has also appeared here before, as 牛柏葉 (niú bǎi yè), or leaf tripe.

I've mentioned cheung fun (腸粉/cháng fěn) before, in my post on 粉/fěn. These white, floppy, slippery noodles are considered to resemble intestines, particularly when rolled up to serve, and hence are literally named "intestine (腸) noodles (粉)".

Cheung fun are generally served in portions of three, rolled around fillings such as char siu pork (叉燒腸粉/chā shāo cháng fěn), beef (牛肉腸粉/niú ròu cháng fěn), fresh prawns (鮮蝦腸粉/xiān xiā cháng fěn — pictured above), or scallops (帶子腸粉/dài zi cháng fěn). Many places will also offer "three treasures" cheung fun (三寶腸粉/sān bǎo cháng fěn), which includes three of the above fillings, one in each roll. You don't get to choose the fillings here, and the menu doesn't usually specify which ones you'll get, but beef+pork+prawns is not an uncommon combination.

Vegetarian cheung fun options are actually surprisingly common, given how tricky it can sometimes be to find vegetarian dim sum — the noodles themselves are vegetarian by default, which helps. The most ubiquitous vegetarian 腸粉 filling is probably fried doughsticks (油條/yóu tiáo, literally "oil sticks"). On most if not all of the dim sum menus I've seen in London, fried dough cheung fun are listed as something along the lines of 炸兩腸粉 (zhà liǎng cháng fěn). I'm not entirely sure how to translate this — 炸 is deep-fried, and 兩 means something like "pair" or "couple", so perhaps it's a reference to the carb-in-carb nature of the dish, or maybe to the fact that you usually get two 油條 per roll?

Sometimes 腸粉 will arrive already cut into pieces (photo), while other times they arrive whole (as shown above) and you have to cut them up yourself. The doughstick-stuffed variant usually comes pre-cut, since it's not too easy to cut through the doughstick filling.

Cheung fun are usually served with a slightly sweetened soy sauce. Often they arrive with the sauce already underneath, as pictured above, but sometimes they'll come with the sauce on the side (photo). Sauce on the side is considered preferable by some people, since it stops the cheung fun skins from absorbing too much of it while they sit.

You can, I am informed, make cheung fun at home. I've never done this, but if you're interested in trying it, it's worth looking at the eGullet thread on the subject, as well as these recipes by Lily Ng, by Alison Foo, and by Feast To The World; and here's a video (which is in Cantonese, with English captions for the important bits). Note however that both recipes and video include extra flavourings (spring onions and dried prawns) in the batter — if you're making filled cheung fun like you get in restaurants, you'll want to leave these out and make plain noodles. The spring-onion-dried-prawn variant is usually served unfilled.

A final note for Londoners: Lo's Noodle Factory and See Woo in Chinatown both sell fresh cheung fun to take away and reheat at home, but they only stock the spring-onion-dried-prawn version as a rule. Lo's will do the plain ones if you order in advance, but you'll need to buy at least five or six packets, which is rather too much for a single household — they don't keep well. The best way I've found to reheat purchased cheung fun at home is in the microwave (steaming works too, but is slower and no better than microwaving).

Next up in my August dim sum series is 燒賣, a type of open-topped dumpling. 燒賣 has various transliterations, some of which are listed on its Wikipedia page. In Mandarin it's shāo mài, though as I've mentioned before, dim sum menus generally use Cantonese transliterations — the ones I see most often are "siu mai" and "shu mai".

Slightly confusingly, siu mai often appear on menus as something along the lines of 蟹皇蒸燒賣 (xiè huáng zhēng shāo mài) or 蟹黃蒸燒賣 (xiè huáng zhēng shāo mài). The 蒸 (zhēng) in the middle simply refers to the fact that the siu mai are cooked by steaming, but the 蟹皇/蟹黃 part is a little more obscure — though for those who want the literal translations, 蟹 (xiè) is "crab", 皇 (huáng) is "imperial" or "emperor", and 黃 (also huáng) is "yellow".

However, the most common siu mai filling is pork-and-prawns, and often these very dishes are translated as either "pork and prawn dumplings" or just "pork dumplings". According to a thread on the CantoDict forums, the mention of crab simply refers to the fact that these dumplings are often topped with a dab of orange crab fat, while according to a comment from the ever-informative Mr Noodles, xiè huáng means crab roe, which is another common topping. I've also seen them topped with tiny cubes of carrot, as in the photo above, but this is pretty clearly just an attempt to save money while retaining something of the aesthetics.

燒賣 are easy enough to make at home; unlike many other dim sum items, the shaping is really very simple, due to the open-top shape. There's actually a specific kind of dough used to make the wrappers, but pre-made wonton wrappers work fine. Again in comments, Mr Noodles points out that wonton wrappers are used for Cantonese siu mai (pre-made ones are fine), while Shanghainese siu mai use a different, special kind of dough. The type you'll see in dim sum restaurants, at least in the UK, is the Cantonese style.

I have two recipes for pork-and-prawn siu mai: one from Sunflower (of Sunflower Food Galore) and one from Appetite For China. Note that Sunflower recommends a vigorous beating of the filling, to make it firmer, while Appetite For China skips this step. I'd additionally point out that I don't think using lean pork mince in this dish is the best idea — use the fattier stuff from the Chinese butcher, rather than the normal supermarket stuff, since it gives a better texture.

Finally, I recently found an interesting variation while browsing around on Flickr — vegan siu mai based on minced carrots. I haven't tried making these, nor have I ever seen anything similar in a restaurant, and mention them merely as an aside.

What better dish than tripe to start off my month of dim sum? Tripe may have a reputation for being smelly and rubbery, but when properly prepared it is neither of these things. The tripe pictured above (from Gerrard's Corner in London Chinatown) was perfectly textured, with a bit of a bite to it yet yielding easily to chewing, and with no hint of any unpleasant smell or taste.

The generic name for tripe is 肚 (dǔ) [see footnote]. However, the type of tripe used in this dish also has a couple of more poetic names, as mentioned in my post on 白/bái — 牛柏葉 and 牛百葉. Both of these are pronounced in Mandarin as niú bǎi yè; the first literally translates as "cow's cypress leaves" and the second as "cow's hundred leaves". Like the English names "leaf tripe", "book tripe", and "bible tripe", they refer to the appearance of the tripe slices, each with a long, firm "spine" from which softer, thinner "leaves" spread out. This kind of tripe comes from the omasum, the third chamber of the cow's stomach.

When served as dim sum, 牛柏葉 is generally flavoured with ginger and spring onions, often with a few sliced red chillies thrown in too. You might see this listed on the menu as 姜蔥牛柏葉 (jiāng cōng niú bǎi yè) or as 蔥椒牛柏葉 (cōng jiāo niú bǎi yè) — 姜 is ginger, 蔥 is spring onions, and 椒 is peppers/chillies. Some menus use the alternate character for ginger, 薑 (also pronounced jiāng). Other preparations include tripe in black bean sauce (豉汁牛柏葉/chǐ zhī niú bǎi yè) and plain poached tripe (白灼牛柏葉/bái zhuó niú bái yè).

To make this at home, make sure you get the right kind of tripe. As mentioned above, you want beef tripe (not pig tripe), and you want the third-chamber tripe, not the honeycomb stuff. I found it frozen at See Woo in Chinatown, amusingly labelled in English as "beef manifold".

When served in restaurants, the dish is usually cooked in advance, reheated by steaming, and presented as pictured above in a small dish nestled inside a steamer basket. The initial cooking takes rather longer than the reheating. Some tripe is pre-cooked, but if yours isn't, you may need to boil it for a couple of hours in order to get it soft enough.

English-language recipes for this dish seem to be few and far between. Foodblogger Nooschi has a recipe which involves stirfrying as a final step. (The FoodiePrints blog has an amusing pictorial of making Nooschi's recipe, first the wrong way, and then the right way.) Nooschi also suggests doing the initial boiling in chicken stock if you want a little more flavour, a suggestion seconded by the Gourmet magazine version (though Gourmet use the wrong tripe, and their suggestions of using low-sodium chicken broth and sherry look to me like house style sub-editing decisions rather than decisions made for the sake of flavour).

As an aside, you may also see stewed tripe on the menu (often as stewed tripe with daikon). I think this is usually honeycomb tripe, which comes from the reticulum (second chamber of the stomach).

Footnote: [0] I read on the ChinesePod forums (in a post that appears to have since been deleted) that 肚 is pronounced with a different tone depending on whether it's stomach-the-organ (dù) or tripe-the-edible-thing (dǔ), but I don't know how general a practice that is.

上湯豆苗 (shàng tāng dòu miáo) is a basically very simple dish of mangetout leaves moistened with a rich stock, though it can be jazzed up with garnishes such as century egg or peeled prawns (as in the version pictured above, which I ate at Red & Hot in London). English translations I've seen include "pea shoots in rich broth" or simply "pea shoots in soup" [see footnote].

Wikipedia tells me that 上湯 is a "dark tan broth made from Jinhua ham and chicken", while the Red Cook blog states that it's made by adding more fresh meat to an already-made clear stock, and simmering further. The eGullet forums have a nice discussion of Chinese stocks, including a recipe for 上湯. As that recipe points out, it's worth blanching the meat before you begin (I've discussed this before — see the comments too).

The eGullet recipe also mentions that you should choose an old chicken rather than a young one, for better flavour, and simmer the stock for 6-8 hours. I can thoroughly endorse this suggestion. I bought a "fresh Scottish hen" from the Chinese butcher (he described it as 老雞/lǎo jī/"old chicken") and let the stock simmer at a very low temperature for 8 hours, and it was the chickeniest chicken stock I've ever made. The fact that the neck and feet were also included probably didn't hurt either. The meat itself won't really be worth eating after such a long time — you can eat it if you like (I nibbled a few bits), but the flavour will mostly be gone.

Note that the low temperature is important — if you let the stock boil while you're making it, it will be a creamy/cloudy colour rather than nice and clear. This isn't something specific to Chinese cuisine; in the River Cottage Meat Book, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall insists that a stock should never go above "a very gentle simmer, whereby a few bubbles just tremble the surface every few seconds or so".

A word on the dried scallops — these are a very expensive ingredient, and not all that easy to get hold of in the UK. I'm not entirely sure what the situation is regarding these — they're certainly not illegal to sell, since I found them at See Woo in London's Chinatown (at £40 for a 200g gift package of around 25 scallops, and no, that isn't a typo) — but as Helen Yuet Ling Pang points out, they're not often available in the shops. One suggestion given in the eGullet thread linked above is to try substituting them with a bit of dried squid — or you could just leave them out.

Jinhua ham is also not very easy to find — I asked in three Chinatown supermarkets, and none of them had any. Serrano ham or some other dried non-smoked ham might work as a substitute.

Anyway, my stock turned out well, but I shot myself in the foot when it came to making the dish. I couldn't find any pea shoots, so I thought I'd try spinach instead, but accidentally picked up a bag of something that turned out to be labelled "kai choi" — mustard greens (芥菜/jiè cài). Their flavour totally overwhelmed the flavour of the stock, which was a bit disappointing given how long it had taken to make! I'd say this dish is definitely best made with milder-flavoured greens.

The method I used was fairly simple (cribbed from a blend of two recipes, one from Noob Cook and the other from Portion Perfect) — heat oil in a wok over medium heat, add some chopped garlic and stir it around briefly, add the washed leaves and continue to stirfry until they've wilted, pour in some 上湯, season with a drizzle of Shaoxing wine and a small pinch of salt, let it get hot, and serve.

Footnote: [0] I don't actually know why 豆苗 is usually translated as "pea shoots", since to my mind pea shoots look more like this.

Photo © Ewan-M, used under cc-by-sa.

As with the 水煮 (shuǐ zhǔ) style of cooking, the literal English translation of 火鍋 (huǒ guō) can be somewhat misleading to those unfamiliar with Chinese cuisine. Like 水煮牛肉 (shuǐ zhǔ niú ròu), which is completely different from English boiled beef, 火鍋 bears very little resemblance to Lancashire hotpot.

火鍋 is a sociable, communal-style meal, served as a simmering pot of stock in the middle of the table with raw ingredients (sliced meat and fish, prawns, vegetables, tofu, noodles, etc) supplied on the side. You choose your own ingredients and cook them to your preferred doneness by letting them simmer in the pot before fishing them out with chopsticks or a strainer. Various dipping sauces are also offered.

There are a number of different styles of stock. Helen Yuet Ling Pang describes the Cantonese style, which is a fairly plain one flavoured with carrot, daikon, spring onion, and ginger — you could use pork or chicken stock as a base for this, but since Helen lives with a vegetarian she uses water, and it works out fine. The version pictured at the top of this post is a "split" version known as 鴛鴦 (yuān yāng) [see footnote 0], which has a spicy Sichuan-style stock in one side and a milder, "medicinal" stock in the other — quite handy if the various members of your party have differing chilli tolerances!

I'm having a little trouble finding recipes for the Sichuan-style stock — as far as I can see, a lot of people who make this hotpot style at home simply buy a pre-mixed seasoning packet and use that. I did find a recipe on the BBC website, and an accompanying video [see footnote 1]. (Update, April 2012: I found one on the Yi Reservation blog, though it doesn't give quantities.) I've had no luck at all finding a recipe for the "medicinal" stock, but it usually seems to include things like dried mushrooms and goji berries (wolfberries). (Update, February 2013: Yi Reservation has now posted a recipe for medicinal hotpot stock.)

To serve 火鍋 at home, you'll want some kind of tabletop cooker, a pot to go on it, some small single-serving hotpot strainers, and of course chopsticks. You may want to supply separate sets of chopsticks for eating and for transferring raw ingredients to the pot with, to avoid cross-contamination. Hotpot strainers (photo) should be available in most Chinese supermarkets that have kitchenware sections (regular readers will, I suspect, not be surprised to learn that I got mine from Loon Fung in Silvertown). The cooking can be done in a rice cooker, if you happen to have one of the old types with a completely removable lid, or in a specialist 火鍋 vessel (look for these in any Chinese cash-and-carry/large supermarket). I recently managed to achieve a two-person hotpot in a fondue set, but it was a slow process even on the highest heat setting.

Here are some of my favourite hotpot ingredients (see also my earlier post full of balls):

Finally, here are some hotpot menus from London restaurants:

• Chilli Cool, Bloomsbury (photo with transcription, bilingual)
• Red & Hot, Euston (blurry photo with partial transcription, bilingual, but the English and Chinese versions don't correspond exactly)
• Royal Palace, Surrey Quays (text, translation by me)

Footnote: [0] 鴛 (yuān) and 鴦 (yāng) are the characters for the male and female Mandarin duck, and are often used together to denote a pairing of some kind — CantoDict has a few examples (scroll down).

Footnote: [1] I'm not sure whether or how much the BBC recipe is "dumbed down", given that the chef (Ching-He Huang) is using Lee Kum Kee chilli bean paste — with the brand name blanked out on the jar, since this is the BBC, but the jar is pretty distinctive. See Fuchsia Dunlop on this subject, and also note this forum thread disparaging Lee Kum Kee's pre-prepared Sichuan hotpot base.

As I mentioned on Wednesday, one cooking method that appears frequently on Chinese menus is 水煮 (shuǐ zhǔ), or "water-cooked". It would be a mistake to translate this simply as "boiled", however. The "water" is actually a flavourful, fiery stock enhanced with chilli bean paste (豆瓣醬/dòu bàn jiàng), and the spice level is increased further just before serving with a generous sprinkling of sauteed dried chillies and Sichuan pepper (花椒/huā jiāo).

The main ingredient of the dish might be beef (牛肉/niú ròu), rabbit (兔/tù), sliced pork (肉片/ròu piàn), tripe (肚/dǔ), or fish (魚/yú). Because it will be cooked only very briefly (a minute or so), the flesh is sliced thinly, against the grain where applicable. This, along with the choice of simmering rather than stirfrying, helps it stay nice and tender.

Appetite For China has a version of Fuchsia Dunlop's recipe for 水煮牛肉 which I tried out earlier this week. The recipe says to use flank steak. Because I learned to cook roughly a decade before I started eating meat, and hence still have some catching up to do in terms of expertise, I consulted my butcher — he told me that while he didn't have that cut on hand, rump would do nicely, so I bought a pound of that. It worked fine.

Where the recipe says to cut the celery into 2-inch lengths, I think it meant julienne, so that's what I did. It didn't say whether to crush the Sichuan pepper or not — I didn't, and I think I would have liked it a lot better if I had. The numbing flavour only really came out when I was lucky enough to crunch on a peppercorn, and I would have preferred it to be spread more throughout the dish. Also, I was concerned about too much saltiness, which I've found in the past can be a hazard of using chilli bean paste, so I skipped some of the salt in the recipe — I shouldn't have.

As shown in the photo at the top of this post, 水煮牛肉 is basically served as slices of beef swimming in copious amounts of oily, chilli-laded stock. You're not meant to drink all the stock, just lift the beef out and eat that. The recipe linked above uses 3 cups (700ml) of chicken stock for the liquid. I'm not entirely convinced that this much stock is absolutely necessary, and it feels a bit wasteful given that most of the liquid isn't eaten. Bob also mentioned that the flavours seemed to be a bit diluted, and the dish was less oily than when we've had it in restaurants. I may try using a little less stock next time.

Photo © Ewan-M, used under cc-by-sa.

Today's dish is one of the ones I mentioned in Monday's post on dishes with flowery/poetic names — 螞蟻上樹 (mǎ yǐ shàng shù), which translates literally as "ants climbing a tree". I've seen it actually listed under this name in English translations on menus, though more often they go for the less-exciting option of "minced pork with vermicelli" or something along those lines. The vermicelli represents the tree, and the specks of minced pork are the ants.

螞蟻 (mǎ yǐ) means "ant", and I think I can feel fairly confident in stating that 螞蟻上樹 is the only context in which you're likely to see it used on a menu.

上 (shàng) is the "climbing" part; it has a number of related meanings such as "above", "superior", "previous", and "summit". Aside from its use in 螞蟻上樹, I've mostly seen it as 上湯 (shàng tāng), literally "superior soup", which is often translated as "consomme" or "rich broth" and is used in dishes such as 上湯豆苗 (shàng tāng dòu miáo). As mentioned in my post on 豆/dòu, 豆苗 are pea shoots/mangetout leaves, so 上湯豆苗 is essentially mangetout leaves moistened with a tasty stock/broth (photo).

樹 means "tree" or "plant". It's not a particularly common character on menus, but it does appear in the form of 茶樹菇 (chá shù gū), or tea tree mushrooms (also known as willow mushrooms or Agrocybe aegerita). (If anyone knows where to buy these in London, dried or fresh, I would be very interested. Update, July 2010: Found the dried version on the first floor of New Loon Moon in Chinatown. Still looking for fresh ones — they may be seasonal.)

螞蟻上樹 is a Sichuan dish, and unsurprisingly it's intensely-flavoured and quite spicy. It's made with 粉絲 (fěn sī), which are normally translated as "bean thread noodles", "glass noodles", or the rather non-specific "vermicelli". 粉絲 are thin, resilient noodles made from mung bean flour. They come dried (I've never seen them on sale fresh) in packages of various sizes — this is important to note, since unlike rice or wheat noodles they're very hard to cut or break in their dried form, so it's worth looking out for them packaged in sizes that you're likely to want to use. I often use them for a single serving in a quick salad or whatever, so I find the multipacks of individual 50g packages are very useful. Lóngkǒu (龍口) brand is a good one, if you can find it. (Londoners: Loon Fung in Silvertown has 龍口粉絲 in various package sizes.)

Sunflower Food Galore, a blog I've mentioned before, has a recipe for 螞蟻上樹 which I've made a few times. It includes celery, which I haven't seen in other recipes; the Angie's Recipes version omits the celery and marinates the pork mince before cooking it. Neither of these recipes includes Sichuan pepper (花椒), but the version pictured above, which I ate at Chilli Cool in Bloomsbury, definitely had a flavour of 花椒, so I'm not sure if it should traditionally be included or not. The dish is tasty either way.

Update, October 2010: Although I was previously of the opinion that this dish isn't worth it without the meat, I recently tried making it with very finely-chopped courgette (zucchini) instead of the pork mince, cooking the courgette just enough to soften it slightly but not go mushy. It worked pretty well, so I'm now happy to make this even when I don't have pork mince on hand.

Recipes linked in this post:

• Sunflower Food Galore: Ants climbing the tree
• Angie's Recipes: Ants climbing a tree / 蚂蚁上树

Literally translated, 擔擔麵 means "peddler's noodles". As I noted on Wednesday, 麵 (miàn) on a menu pretty much always refers to wheat noodles. 擔 (dàn) is a less-common character in the context of the Chinese menu. The only other dish I'm aware of that includes 擔 in its name is 擔仔麵 (dàn zǎi miàn), or danzi/tan tsai noodles, a Taiwanese noodles-in-soup dish that also translates as "peddler's noodles". Wikipedia seems to think 擔擔麵 and 擔仔麵 are the same thing, but this doesn't sound right to me, and other sources also indicate otherwise.

Like mapo tofu, which I posted about a couple of weeks ago, dàn dàn miàn originates from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. In my experience, though, 擔擔麵 is much less likely than 麻婆豆腐 to turn up in a dumbed-down version on Anglo-Chinese menus, perhaps because the Westernised Chinese canon already has its exemplar noodle dish in the form of chow mein.

Of the Chinese dishes I've covered so far, 擔擔麵 is perhaps the one with the greatest variation in styles. Some versions are fairly dry, others almost soupy. Some are served hot, others cold. Some recipes insist that a peanut sauce is mandatory, while others prefer a sesame-based sauce, and others still omit both peanuts and sesame. Some include Sichuan preserved vegetable (芽菜/yá cài[see footnote] or 榨菜/zhà cài), while others use chopped cucumber.

Most reputable sources, however, agree that the key to good dàn dàn miàn is the aromatic spiciness imparted by Sichuan peppercorns (花椒/huā jiāo) and carried by the oily dressing. The quality of the noodles is another important factor. At Sichuan Restaurant in West London, the noodles used in 擔擔麵 are fresh, hand-pulled noodles (拉麵/lā miàn). It's not necessary to go quite this far — just choose a type and brand of noodles that you know you like. Not too thick, not too thin, made from wheat rather than rice. Dried or fresh will do.

Like many Chinese dishes, 擔擔麵 includes a small amount of pork mince for flavour and texture. It's fine to leave this out. If you do include the pork, cook it in a wok over high heat, aiming to get nice crispy bits (but don't burn it). You can drain the cooked pork in a sieve after cooking, if there's too much residual fat for your taste.

On to the recipes... first of all, if you'd like to try making your own Sichuan chilli oil (紅油/hóng yóu/"red oil") to use in the dish, Sunflower's Food Galore has a recipe.

Sunflower also has a recipe for dàn dàn miàn, of the "sesame and peanut" school. Alternatively, take a look at Fuchsia Dunlop's recipe, which uses neither sesame nor peanut. Personally, I like to use a fair bit more Sichuan pepper than specified in either recipe. Even more variations on the theme can be found at this Chowhound thread on dan dan mian. Finally, Appetite For China has an explicitly vegetarian version that uses smoked tofu.

Footnote: [0] You may recall from my post on beans that 芽菜 is also the word for "beansprouts", which can cause some confusion when shopping — see Fuchsia Dunlop's post on the subject for a photo that may help you track down the actual item.

When I was planning this week's posts, I asked doop and bob if mapo tofu was too boring a dish to post about. Apparently it isn't! Tofu-hater bob characterises it as "making tofu actually tasty", which is something of an achievement in his opinion.

The literal translation of 麻婆豆腐 (má pó dòu fu) is "pockmarked old woman's beancurd". Various versions of the story behind the name can be found all over the interweb; here's one. 婆 (pó) is a respectful title for "grandmother" or "old woman", and as mentioned on Wednesday, 豆腐 (dòu fu) is tofu.

麻 (má) is the "pockmarked" part. It has a number of other meanings too, the most relevant to the student of the Chinese menu being "sesame" and "numb" — 麻油 (má yóu) is sesame oil, while 麻辣 (má là) describes the "spicy-numbing" flavour prevalent in Sichuan cuisine. The ma-la flavour is in fact a feature of properly-made mapo tofu, since one essential ingredient of the dish is Sichuan peppercorns (花椒/huā jiāo, literally "flower pepper"), which provide the numbing element.

Although in Western cuisine tofu is mostly seen as a meat substitute, mainly eaten by vegetarians and vegans, in Chinese cuisine it's an ingredient in its own right and is often paired with meat. 麻婆豆腐 is no exception; traditional recipes are flavoured with beef or pork mince.

Finding a good version of mapo tofu in a restaurant can be a little tricky. If you see it on the kind of menu that lists mix-and-match dishes like beef/pork/chicken/duck in black bean sauce/sweet & sour sauce/oyster sauce/with mushrooms/with ginger and spring onion (etc etc), it's likely to be a fairly bland and uninteresting concoction of tofu cubes in a gloopy, salty sauce studded with overcooked peas. If you see it on a Chinese menu as 麻婆豆腐, though, you're probably in luck! The one pictured above is a version I ate at Royal Palace in South-East London, ordered from their Chinese-only menu.

If you've only ever had the Westernised version of this dish, please don't be put off — do give the real thing a go. To make it at home, look for recipes that include plenty of Sichuan pepper, along with fermented black beans, chillies (fresh, dried, powdered, and/or as chilli oil), and the chilli bean paste (豆瓣醬/dòu bàn jiàng) mentioned in last Friday's post on fish-fragrant aubergine.

Non-meat-eaters should note that the beef/pork mince can be left out if you like — it's not the most important ingredient by any means. shiokfood.com suggests replacing the minced meat with minced fried tofu to get the right texture, while Sunflower's Food Galore suggests using chopped shiitake mushrooms and Chinese preserved vegetable instead, to enhance the flavour. (Edit, June 2011: Jing Theory's vegetarian version uses marinaded, deep-fried mushrooms. Edit, Feb 2014: Viet World Kitchen's vegetarian version uses freeze-thawed tofu.)

Some recipes for 麻婆豆腐 use cornstarch or potato starch to thicken the sauce, while others leave it out. It's up to you which you prefer. Fuchsia Dunlop's recipe uses potato starch (and beef mince), while this recipe originating from the Sichuan Culinary Institute at Chengdu leaves out the thickener and uses pork mince.