Beef with orange peel

Beef with orange peel by kattebelletje.

Well, it has been a while, hasn't it? I must say, after starting the site tokowijzer I really didn't see the hype coming! The new site was very well received; we got a lot of good reviews and more visitors that kattebelletje ever had. I have spent many hours updating the site and making pictures. And I have been lurking in Chinese supermarkets for even longer times than before. I have tried many ingredients I wouldn't have bought otherwise - and I have tried out more frozen dumplings than I have in the last 5 years!

This is one of the dishes I made with the ingredient orange peel, chenpi niurou. It is one of my favorite Szechuan beef dishes : it has a dark flavor, mildly spiced by the red dried peppers and with a very fragant flavor of the orange peel. The beef is chewy and has a sweet tinge. I used to use fresh tangerine peels, but stocking up on these dried orange peels is very easy, so all you need is a chunk of beef to get you going.

For this recipe you will need:

500 grams of braising beef (klapstuk, sukadelap)
6 to 7 slices of fresh ginger
4 dried chili peppers (the long pointy ones)
6 pieces of dried orange peel (Chinese shop)
Shaoxing rice wine
soy sauce (light and dark), sugar, rock sugar, salt

Cut the beef in bite size pieces. Slice the ginger. Snap the orange peel into smaller chunks. Fry the ginger and dried pepper in a couple of tablespoons of oil until fragrant (careful, don't burn!), then add the beef and brown on all sides. Splash with almost a cup of Shaoxing rice wine and add 1 tablespoon of light soy sauce and 2 tablespoons of dark soy sauce (or a little more). Add 1 tablespoon of sugar and a walnut-size chunk of rock sugar and stir. Bring to a boil, take off the scum of the surface of the liquid, then put a lid on and leave on a slow simmer.

The beef has to simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours; check regularly to stir and to check if there is still enough liquid. Add a little water if needed. At the end of the cooking process taste the sauce and add more salt or soy if needed. For extra flavour you could add some orange juice, too. The beef has to be dark and the sauce has to cling around the meat - the rock sugar makes the sauce have a beautiful shine.

Take the beef off the heat, sprinkle on some sesame oil, and put on a plate. This dish can be eaten hot or cold: a perfect starter or a perfect dish for a Chinese meal - at least it is not a last-minute stir-fry to worry about. You can eat the pieces of orange peel if you like, they will taste of pepper and soy and beef. Lovely.

shark's fin and sichuan pepper

garlicky pork slices by kattebelletje.

As soon as I found out Fuchsia Dunlop had written a new book with her memoirs on eating in China, I ordered it rightaway. I read it cover to cover in one day. Fuchsia Dunlop's story is very interesting: she did all the things one would have liked to do in China.

For starters, she lived in Chengdu, heart of Sichuan, were the spiciest food of China comes from. Fuchsia Dunlop had ample opportunity, Chinese liuxuesheng [foreign-student] fashion, to hang out in all those eating places instead of staying in her dormitory to study - but then, studying Chinese on the street is studying too, doesn't it? Then Dunlop managed to attend a three month Chinese cooking course in the Sichuan culinary institute, together with a German friend. After the summer, she was asked again to enroll in the real chef training of the same institute. How awesome, to be trained as a Chinese chef for a full year!

This book tells this, and more. How to acquire a Chinese taste takes a very long time; truly enjoying special Chinese textures, like sea cucumber or tripe and that sort of thing. But she is not snobby about this, it just happens as you keep on eating. Dunlop describes how living in China changes you to become two selves, one Chinese, and one English one. But there is a downside too, she was fed up for a while with China and the Chinese, always lusting for food.

Although Dunlop craves Chinese food more than anything, all the Chinese food scares did have her think about being a vegetarian. The growth of the Chinese economy and the opening up to the world might change things in the West as well: what happens when the hungry Chinese turn to the Western cheeses, wines and fish (think of the Japanese tuna scarcity since the Chinese start to eat sashimi?)

After writing her first book (Sichuan cookery / Land of Plenty) Fuchsia Dunlop got a job at the BBC writing about Chinese food, and was voted as culinary journalist of the year 2006. She wrote a second cookbook (about Hunan cuisine), which I own as well now. I like her recipes, they are well written and she sure knows what she is talking about. On the picture here one of the things from Sichuan Cookery / Land of Plenty: garlicky pork slices.

These garlicky pork slices are not made by me, but by Flickr friend FotoosVanRobin, who I met IRL last Wednesday. That was fun! We went to the shops to get all kinds of ingredients and then cooked together. I made some baozi in her wonderfully large steamer, and she had prepared two mouthwatering dishes from Fuchsia Dunlop's books (see photo). Recipe of this pork dish can be found here.

Fuchsia Dunlop. Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China. W. W. Norton, 2008.

twice cooked pork (huiguo rou)

This classic Chinese dish, lovely pork slices in a spicy, garlicky sauce, never fails to please. It is called twice-cooked (actually it is called 'back to the pan-meat') because it is first cooked, then stir-fried with seasonings. I found a video which shows you exactly how to make this. First the ingredients.

For this recipe you will need: 400 grams of hind shoulder of pork (with fat layer) - I don't know if there is a western equivalent cut for this... - Dutch people: use speklap); two or three white leeks (sometimes white cabbage is used); some Shaoxing rice wine (left) -10 grams, 50 grams of vegetable oil (about one cup), 4 grams of salt; 5 grams of sugar, 4 grams of MSG; 10 grams of ginger, 10 grams of spring onion; 75 grams of Pixian chili bean sauce from (the most famous chili bean paste from Sichuan), 30 grams of sweet bean paste (the kind you have with Peking duck).

Now watch the video, the cooking starts at 1:25: Put the whole piece of meat in a pan of boiling water, cover with a lid and boil for about 10 to 15 minutes (until "70% tender", you go figure it out...). Take the pork out, cool slightly, and cut into very thin square slices (you can prepare this beforehand). As you can see, each slice is part lean meat, part fat. Heat oil in a wok and stir-fry the slices in hot oil until slightly browned. Add ginger and spring onion and keep stirring. When it starts to smell delicious, add rice wine and sweet bean paste. Put in chili bean paste, salt, MSG, soy sauce, leeks.

After just a short mixing of ingredients, put on a plate and serve. The plate looks a bit on the small side, but as you can see, the sauce is very delicious and coveres most of the plate. Enjoy!

dandan mian (Sichuan noodles)

This three minute YouTube video (ripped from a Chinese cooking dvd), which I stumbled upon, tells you how to prepare dandan mian, the famous Sichuan spicy noodles which I make very often at home - and which my friends and family keep begging me to make for them when they come to dinner. (The other often-begged-for dish, by the way, is jiaozi. Noodles are easier.)

Although my version is slightly different, this recipe looks absolutely delicious and very easy to do. Here is how : (don't forget watch the action on the video now!) On a moderate fire, heat a chunk of lard until 60% hot (you can substitue this for oil), add 200 grams of minced (pork) meat, a slug of rice wine, 15 grams of sweet bean paste (tianmianjiang, a dark thick paste), a pinch of salt, and some soy sauce. Fry until the water has evaporated - and as soon as the oil comes floating on top of the meat and it starts smelling delicious, take it out of the pan [1:07]. Take two bowls and put in each one: two or three spoonfuls of soy sauce, 3 grams of MSG, 2 grams of chicken stock powder, 15 grams of shredded xuecai (preserved vegetable, you buy this in tins in the Chinese supermarket), 1 clove of pressed garlic, 3 or 4 spoons of sesame paste, and now watch the cook ladling this huge amount of chili oil in each bowl [1:54] - if you weren't hungry by now, you will be!

Add 25 grams of finely chopped spring onions and stir everything together with a ladle of chicken stock. Take 500 grams of noodles and boil until done (the fresher the noodles, the nicer the end result will be). Drain and lower slowly in the spicy sauce. Add a blanched vegetable leaf, then add a large scoop of meat sauce, and EAT!