Around the World in 26 Meals: No. 15 - China (Hunan)
Intro
It’s been a little time since my last proper post here, all my cooking was done in late December but no posts since August. Honestly I’m a little worried I’ll forget my assessment of what I made and ate! Fortunately I’m moving directly from one post on China to another so I can skip most of the introduction.
Today’s style of Chinese cuisine is Hunanese - a style known for being particularly hot. As can be seen Hunan is another inland province and it was incorporated into China at a fairly similar time to Sichuan (a few decades apart, in what we would call classical times).
It’s also the home province of a certain 20th century dictator whose reputation is somehow still good in China. Despite, you know, all the famine and death heaped on the Chinese people. Nice to start one of these off on a cheerful note.
The book
Hunan is covered, once again, by Fuschia Dunlop. As discussed in the previous post despite her very obviously not being Chinese she most definitely knows her stuff. This time I’m looking at the Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook (2007).
As the name, styling and review on the front cover may show there is a light Chairman Mao influence on how this is presented (though the American release tones this down a lot). Despite that this is just an aesthetic choice, it does seem odd to me how it’s socially acceptable to use Maoist and Soviet imagery given the (correct) taboo of doing the same with fascist imagery but here we are.
Many of the recipes begin with personal anecdotes, tying into Dunlop’s time or Mao’s history, and her view on Mao himself is clearly not exactly positive despite the book’s theming. Unfortunately I couldn’t find my favourite ancedote from the book (about a man intentionally antagonising his colleagues by delaying meals with repeated long-winded patriotic spiels). Instead I’ll quote this rather on the nose abridged statement on differing attitudes on Mao, from the recipe for steamed smoked fish with black beans and chillies/zheng la yu (I suspect it was there purely to put it somewhere):
“The official Chinese Communist Party verdict on Mao Zedong is, bizarrely, that he was seventy percent right and thirty percent wrong. In Hunan, as one of my close friends explained to me, it’s more like ninety percent right and ten percent wrong. Despite the appalling suffering that his policies and political movements inflicted on the Hunanese, most people still revere him as a great local and national hero. Rural houses tend to have a picture of Mao hung up in pride of place in the main living room, where pictures of ancestors would have been hung in the past ... One family I stayed with had an enormous, twice life-size bronze bust of the Chairman beside their television ... When I visited another friend on the May Day bank holiday, the top of his TV was decorated with a statue of Mao, a statue of Father Christmas and a vase of fake flowers. Even after all this time, I can’t pretend to understand.”
If you want a book on Hunanese food without the Mao theming there are few alternatives. I would presume Hunan: A Lifetime of Secrets from Mr Peng’s Kitchen is centred on Hunanese food (though Peng himself is Taiwanese and owns a London restaurant). There’s also Henry Chung’s Hunan Style Chinese Cookbook but as the Google blurb contains two terrifying details - “Originally published: 1978” and “adapted for use in the American kitchen” - I’d tread with caution. Books from that far back can be good but the 1970s has a bad reputation for food that seems earned and as for the American kitchen… cups. Need I say more?
However I don’t own either of those so can’t really attest to their quality either way.
What I cooked (and adjustments)
The first dish, intended to be a starter (though it didn’t end up that way) was lotus root “sandwich” fritters (jaio zha ou jia). Essentially a deep-fried battered sandwich of sliced lotus root, filled with pork mince and spiced with sichuan pepper. For reasons that will become clear later I had to improvise with this and ended up with a fairly inauthentic product!
For a main dish I cooked red-braised bream (hong shao bian yu) - I expect this recipe was written with freshwater bream in mind but the instructions do also state that this cooking method can be applied to many other fish. I cooked this a long time ago now and forgot to note down what fish I used but, judging by what would be available and the shape of the fish’s head in the photographs I took I think it’s sea bream.
As we’re in the right area of the world for it I’d also wanted to attempt some recipes with tofu/bean curd, an ingredient I haven’t much love (or hatred) for but one which I’d heard has hidden depths. The most interesting looking recipe is the sensitively named pock-marked woman’s bean curd (ma po dou fu), reportedly originally Sichuanese and named after a woman with smallpox-scared who made the dish famous. Naturally, as this is from a Hunanese book this is a Hunanese variation of the dish, the recipe spread out from Sichuan and was adapted in other areas.
I would also note that this recipe is not vegetarian, it does contain meat as well. In the West we tend to view tofu as an alternative to meat, given that more bean curd/tofu recipes in this book contain meat than don’t I think it’s safe to say this is not the view in China!
Alongside the meals I made some rice - specifically pot-sticker rice (guo ba fan), a method of boiling that should produce a golden crust of bottom rice. It also optionally can involve a starchy vegetable cooked with the rice such as potato, sweet potato or taro. All of these were available but I opted to use potato, as an easy and versatile option.
I also cooked some pre-made noodles, with a topping of fresh prawns and greens (xia ren cai xin mian) to go with them.
This was already quite a lot so some cooking ended up happening the day after - notably my spicy steamed pork buns (duo jiao xiao bao). Bao has taken off in the last few years as a fast food option so I also feel the need to clarify that these buns are more like a char siu bun you’d get in a Chinese restaurant than what you’d get going out for bao in the UK specifically.
Cooking
As these posts are now published a very long time after the actual cooking I’ll drop the artifice of pretending these were at all recent. This was all cooked in early July 2021 and by the time I wrote post 14 I was already done with all the cooking for Asia! This is my way of saying that, even with the pictures and recipes to jog my memory, I may have forgotten some details. So apologies for that.
The first step in my cooking was preparatory - many of these recipes need stock. Obviously I had cubes but those wouldn’t be a good substitute for a decent home-made stock for this kind of food.
So I prepped some spring onion, ginger and a chicken carcass (also wings, never been a fan so a stock seems a good use for them!).
And in the carcass goes!
Is there anything more aesthetically pleasing than stock being prepared? I’d say, in the whole wild world, only almost everything else.
While the stock was starting to get going it was time to attend to the rice. Potatoes peeled, rice weighed.
The rice was ready for an initial parboiling and the stock grew only more “beautiful” as it simmered. Evidently this shot was taken before I skimmed off any scum - charming.
The Chinese recipe book then told me to do what a million internet "experts” said people should never do with rice. I complied and drained the rice.
At this point the rice was set aside for a final stage of cooking later and the vegetables were added to the stock. There are no more photos of this stock but after a few hours it would’ve been ready to use!
For whatever reason I decided to move onto the noodle topper next (the noodles themselves were just shop bought). Pictured below are eggs, salt, asfoetida (to substitute for garlic), chilli, potato flour, spring onion, prawns and pak choy - this was supposed to be baby pak choy, so I had far too much of this. Not pictured are the stock, sesame oil and vegetable oil for cooking. Also not pictured are ingredients used for serving up at the end - Chinkiang vinegar and Tantan Xiang brand salted chillies/duo jaio (which are more more moreish than they sound).
The prawns were shelled and de-veined, then mixed with the potato flour, egg white and salt to make a basic batter. This gave them a light coating, not heavy like you’d expect from a batter but also a bit difficult to keep on the prawns! These are shown after pan-frying below.
The pak choy was left whole but with crosses cut in to ease later cooking and the spring onion was cut into chunks. And, though not visible in this next photo, the ginger and chilli was also chopped and combined with asfoetida for later use.
At this point I started prep work on the remaining dishes. First the tofu. Below we have tofu, minced pork, dried Chinese mushrooms (it should have been shitake but I couldn’t find those dried), sichuan pepper, dark soy sauce, sesame oil, asfoetida again, chilli, spring onion, my homemade chilli oil and some chilli bean paste. As a note my chilli oil was a last minute substitution for salted chillies - I had found these and used them at the table but as commercial preparations contained garlic and I hadn’t time to make my own salted chillies some degree of improvisation was necessary. It proved to be a nice, if imprecise, substitution. Not pictured are stock, crushed chilli flakes, salted chillis and cooking oil.
As a quick correction to my last post Chinese soya bean paste is not universally called pixian, but rather doubanjiang. Pixian is a well-regarded variety of doubanjiang and is what I used in these posts but nevertheless I did make a mistake - my calling all Chinese chilli soya paste pixian is similar to calling all brandies “cognac”.
The pork was combined with the soy sauce and the wine, the tofu and vegetables were chopped (the whiter parts of the spring onion were not used here) and a mix made of salted chillies, rehydrated chopped mushroom, chilli bean paste, asfoetida and chilli oil. In the background a glass with a small amount of potato flour and water mixed together can also be seen, and sichuan pepper was also roasted for later use in this (and other) recipes.
Onto the fish. Here we have our sea bream (probably), ginger, spring onion, pepper, dark and light soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, more asfoetida and more pixian. Once again stock is used but not shown.
I slashed the fish and shallow fried it, head and tail still on, in vegetable oil on a high heat to make it golden - as can be seen I had trouble cooking it without tearing skin. I’m unsure how I could have avoided this but the negative effects were mostly aesthetic. This was set aside.
Also in the background you can see my rice being finished up - the rice is put on top of a layer of oil and very slowly cooked over an hour or so to both finish the cooking process and create a crust.
I also prepped the veg and other ingredients for the fish. As you can see “counter” (actually chest freezer surface) space was becoming an issue!
By this point I’d relegated the buns to being a tomorrow problem so the final prep work was for the lotus sandwich fritters (which, in the end, I would also finish up the next day!).
Eggs, flour and potato flour were needed for the batter - minced pork, Shaoxing wine, ginger, egg and spring onion were needed for the filling with lotus root and roasted sichuan comprising the rest of the ingredients.
There was just one problem. Having spent all day wandering around trying to find lotus root I found it in one shop and one shop only, the same one where I finally found pixian.
The problem was that the lotus root was rotten. Literally. The shopkeeper had noted me being concerned about the darker patches on the vegetable so I got it heavily reduced, so I wasn’t badly out of pocket. But it took me an extremely long amount of time to find lotus root in the first place and I knew most other Chinese supermarkets didn’t stock it, so getting more wasn’t an option. Therefore I needed to improvise.
Potatoes.
At this point the sandwich fritters were put metaphorically on ice. Literally they were put in the fridge.
The remainder of day one’s work was literally finishing everything off:
Firstly the bream - I added the chilli/asfoetida/ginger mix from my bowl into a hot frying pan until fragrant and then added my stock and soy sauce. Then I added my fish and brought the mix to the boil.
The vinegar went in and the fish was simmered for five minutes, with the mix spooned over it repeatedly. I removed the fish and briefly cooked the remaining veg in the sauce.
Recombination, sprinkling with the sichuan pepper and voila.
A more specialised serving dish, better decanting of the items and a better job keeping the skin on the fish and this might become aesthetically pleasing. As things actually are, not so much.
Fortunately it tasted delicious, a lovely hot and complex mix of flavours. Granted, it was rather a pain to eat but that’s pretty much standard for pan-fried fish.
Next up, the tofu. The pork was fried until brown, the mushroom/chilli mix added and fried until fragrant and the remaining chilli flakes/fresh chilli added at the end.
At this stage the tofu was added along with the stock and allowed to simmer. Finally the potato flour mixture and greens were added to thicken up the mix, with sichuan pepper topping it at the end of cooking.
I think this is really visually interesting and has a very distinctive taste (in a positive way). Unfortunately I’m not mad on the texture of the tofu so I can’t call it a triumph despite its positives. I ate this, I enjoyed this, but it outstayed its welcome on successive days - largely because of the texture.
Nevertheless there’s something special about this recipe. Maybe there’s a better tofu out there than what is (easily) accessible here, maybe there’s a way to make it more interesting or maybe there’s a good substitute. I don’t know.
Finally for day one I finished up the noodles. Spring onion whites, ginger, asfoetida and chilli were fried first.
Then prawns, stock and salt.
And everything green (including the rest of the spring onion, if you look carefully). There is far too much of the pak choy. Potato flour mixed with water was added at the end to thicken the sauce and the noodle topper was seasoned to taste with sesame oil and pepper. After the picture below I combined it together and decanted it onto noodles.
As stated before the recipe also states Chinkiang vinegar and salted chillies as optional seasonings to be added at the table - I’m afraid that I don’t recall whether I actually used them. But it would have been possible - Chinkiang vinegar is something I have in as standard and at that point I had salted chillies in as well. I expect both would have been good complements to the flavour.
Broadly the noodle topper was good, the prawn and the greens gave it a lovely fresh flavour to contrast with the nice but rather stodgy approach of the rest of the food. However, on the negative side the greens were simply too large for the meal, which made it more likely to get a mouthful of flavourful prawn and spice or a mouthful of fresh-tasting vegetables without having both at once. This was my own error, as the recipe did ask for baby vegetables.
I ate them on the dog tray again. The lighting in my living room once again does the food no favours but I think this meal comes off aesthetically a bit better than most living room shots on this blog.
As I haven’t mentioned the rice - it was nice but the crust was fairly minimal, it was just decent rice with potato in at the end of the day.
Day 2. I had sandwich fritter ingredients ready to go, so I assembled the fritters and deep fried them. I think this is the first post in which I used my then-new deep fat fryer and, despite it being a hassle to clean, it’s a fantastic addition to a kitchen. Deep frying isn’t something you need to do every day but, like the steamer, having a dedicated machine for it is a massive upgrade on attempting it with pans when the need arises.
And the fritters look a bit ugly - this is because in my panic I’d prepped the potatoes the day before and, predictably, they turned black. It turns out that this doesn’t represent any spoilage but simply oxidation. I’m a doctor of biochemistry so you’d have hoped I’d have intuited that but, no, I remember being anxious about it on the day and very happy when the fritters turned out fine.
And they did - they’re tasty little morsels with an usually complex flavour (for a snack). I could have done with them being a bit closer to bite-size but that’s not really a problem with the recipe - had my lotus root been okay to use these would have been thinner.
The final recipe was for my pork buns. Flour, water, yeast, sugar (for the yeast), pork mince, salted chillies/chilli oil and sesame oil. The recipe recommends oiling a steamer but I used baking paper instead, something that works a lot better for me.
The ginger wasn’t chopped but rather smashed and covered with water to make an infusion - this (but not the ginger itself) was mixed into the pork, with sesame oil and chillies added later. Oddly this was to be frozen for a short period - the recipe indicates these kind of buns have a history going back at least to the 19th century so how this step was done in the past is a mystery to me.
The other feature of this picture is the start of the process of dough making - combining flour, water, sugar and yeast.
Ten minutes’ kneading (I think my partner did this bit for this particular dough), a rest, a rolling and segmentation of dough followed.
Whether to spare my blushes or out of laziness or stress I don’t know, but I didn’t take any pictures of my assembling the buns.
As is common with most buns (or dumplings, even the recipe flits between both terms) discs of dough were made, filling deposited in the centre and the bun sealed, I won’t relay the exact size as I don’t want to be a substitute for any of these cookbooks but these ones were rather large. Unlike the parcel shapes of the previous post or the half-moon and crescent shapes common in dumplings these are intended to be ball-shaped with a whorl-pattern on the top, a shape achieved by “small pinching movements”. It’s evident Dunlop had some anxieties about how best to convey how to do this and, for something clearly better learned by watching and then doing, I think she did a good job.
Finally the buns are steamed quite extensively. As can be seen from the picture I did not consistently achieve the desired shape (though the bottom-right bun looks good) but as this doesn’t affect taste or texture I’m not hugely concerned looking back on it.
The buns were good. Not as good as the pork and beansprout ones from the previous post but good. And easier to make, despite the more complex shape. These don’t have the depth of flavour of the Sichuan buns, nor the distinctive taste of a momo but they certainly worked well for a high-quality, more everyday pork bun.
Also the dog tray gets a second outing, sans fish but plus fritters and buns.
What I’d do differently
With the noodles my mistakes were obvious - use of full-sized vegetables imbalanced everything. A repeat would need to start with baby vegetables and any variations could follow that.
Similarly the sandwich fritters were nice but there was a big variation from the recipe - namely the very hurried substitution of potato for lotus root. I like it as is, to be fair, but what I liked wasn’t really what I set out to cook!
So far as the tofu goes I think it came out roughly as intended but that perhaps it doesn’t suit bulk cooking. It certainly outstayed its welcome on subsequent meals. As an individual meal though it could be excellent, flavour-wise it already is, but I can’t figure out how to get it to fulfill its potential - is the main protein being tofu the problem? Or is it the variety or preparation of the tofu?
I have little to say on the buns or the fish. In each case they could have been improved with a bit more skill on my part, but any imperfections vs what the food was meant to be are purely matters of execution. As stated previously I prefered the Sichuan buns, which were astounding, but these buns were much easier and are at least in the same ballpark of quality.
My view on the book
Once again this is a book I’m familiar with and already hold in high regard. Technically all but one book used for the rest of Asia is one I already know to some extent so I’m predisposed to like them (why would I cook from something I know I don’t like?) but the extent does vary and Fuschia Dunlop’s books are particularly high in my estimation.
The format of the book is similar to Sichuan Cookery but with a nicer looking but less information dense choice of graphic design, some nice photographs and with introductory content somewhat condensed versus Sichuan Cookery, at 45 pages (plus a glossary at the end) of the 290 page book. As before there are also short interludes between the recipes, adding context.
Unsurprisingly my views on this book are similar to my views on Dunlop’s other book, save that I don’t feel the need to justify the length of the introduction. The information in the non-cookery sections tend to be useful, interesting or both and the addition of illustrations makes the whole package a lot more visually pleasing, though information density is slightly negatively impacted from this.
Said illustrations vary from being useful, as a practical guide to what the end product should look like, to being illustrative of a story being told - for instance there are two recipes for General Tso’s Chicken, a famous dish in the USA (and only the USA), preceded by a few pages on the surprisingly interesting history of a dish I’d had no prior history with. The history is illustrated by pictures of the dish’s namesake, General Tso, and Peng Chang-kuei (the Kuomintang chef who invented the recipe and took it to Taiwan after the Civil War) - meanwhile the Taiwanese version recipe has a close up photo of the finished food and the (ironically more Westernised) version occasionally cooked in Changsha has no illustration. These illustrative pictures perform their function well, though the pictures of the cooking are rather scarce, so cannot be relied on for most recipes.
The actual recipes, save for the introductory blurbs being a bit less focused on the dishes themselves, are very similar in layout and style to those in Dunlop’s earlier book, with the occasional addition of pictures of food. If you are particularly keen on maximising information density the small changes made may be a negative, if you are particularly keen on aesthetics they may be a positive. For most people I’d imagine the differences are only slightly felt.
However, to ruin my love-in on this book slightly Dunlop has made one change that I think is a notable downgrade from her prior work. In Sichuan Cookery the section on ingredients was wonderfully detailed and reasonably comprehensive, with personal recommendations for substitutions and a rigour in covering these topics that I found admirable (with the caveats I mentioned in my lats post). This is much reduced here. Granted the Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook also lacks the (often incorrect) estimates on how difficult specific ingredients would be to source but it seems that in trimming the fat of the introduction they may have started to cut into flesh.
Despite this, overall this cookbook is pretty fantastic. though I personally slightly prefer Sichaun Cookery to this. I’m unsure to what extent that reflects my own priorities in a cookbook and how much reflects my relative preference for (what I’ve cooked from) Hunanese and Sichuanese cuisine. Nevertheless this preference is narrow and I think both are excellent additions for any collection of cookbooks.