In the Hands of an Elusive Sichuan Master

There's no doubt that my search for the infamous Sichuan chef Peter Chang, who recently turned up in Atlanta, Georgia, was far less thrilling (and obsessive) than Todd Kliman's fascinating article in the Oxford American from last year. You should probably read his article before continuing with my post. Done? Ok, good. Maybe Calvin Trillin had a similarly dramatic adventure, but I wouldn't know, since his New Yorker piece is behind a pay wall. Anyway, Peter Chang's fabulous new namesake restaurant is set in what looks to be a country club dining room circa 1975. Hey it's Chinese food, I kid, but don't much care about the decor.

Somehow not only did I convince (connive?) four of my friends into joining me at Peter Chang's (none of them had tried Sichuan before), but they also trusted me enough to order the whole meal (after the round of wonton and hot and sour soups). Do you know how hard that is to pull off? I nearly abused that trust, but managed to order a solid introductory survey of Sichuan food (and asked for everything ma la and authentically prepared). How well that survey highlighted Chang's strengths, I'm really not sure. Regardless, we had an excellent and intriguing meal, making it all the more unfortunate that I'll probably never go back.

Goin' Down to Old Old Sichuan

Didn't we all used to agree that Midtown and Flushing had the best Sichuan food in the city? These generalizations are no longer true and I'm forced to qualify every pronouncement I make about Sichuan cuisine with a "yeah, but...". Yet this works to everyone's benefit, since excellent Sichuan food is popping up from the Upper East Side (Wa Jeal and Szechuan Chalet) to even Bensonhurst (Bamboo Pavilion). So why can't a new Sichuan restaurant open up in Chinatown, where Cantonese and Fujian dominate? This would seem fairly obvious to most people, so I won't get into it. Anyway, on to the food...

Two Sichuan Trips: From Flushing to Chengdu

We've never really set out with a single goal for Law & Food. Instead, we've played it by ear while indulging our desire to write about cooking and restaurants in New York City. Yet, as the blog has gained popularity, the constant need for content has sharpened my interests, particularly around Sichuan cuisine, which I have always loved, but only started delving into beyond a surface level in the past year. Lately, as those of you who follow Law & Food know, I've been cooking from, and posting about, Fuschia Dunlop's "Land of Plenty."

Well it seems that my love of Sichuan cuisine has earned me a few new friends, who I met for dinner last week. Mel and I first connected over our mutual appreciation of Fuschia Dunlop's travelogue and cookbooks. While searching her blog for the proper brand of chile bean paste, I stumbled on Mel's comments, which proved extremely helpful. Soon, Mel, who is also a lawyer, started reading and commented on my Sichuan posts. Since we clearly shared interests in Law and Food (perfectly natural), I ended up contacting him. Turns out, Mel and his partner Diane had just returned from Chengdu, where they had spent two weeks taking classes at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine.

From Mel and Diane's Trip to a Chengdu Market

Mel is a retired chemistry professor who switched careers, ending up as a patent attorney. Diane has a great story too-- she ran her family's bottled water business before "retiring" in 2008. Now she advises small business owners while indulging her passion for travel. It was clear that a Sichuan meal was necessary, so after work last week, I met Mel and Diane in Midtown for the drive out to Flushing.

We exchanged out life stories while weaving through the dense Midtown rush-hour traffic, making it across the 59th Street bridge and into Queens, stopping at Carmel, a Middle Eastern specialty store in Forest Hills. As Mel and Diane filled up a basket of nuts, dried fruits, olives and coffee, I leered at plates of golden bureks. I ultimately ended up buying a cheese burek and a spinach and cheese burek (the spinach proved to be the winner for lunch the next day). I also filled up a container of olives and pickles that would have cost twice as much in Manhattan at half the quality. We packed up the car before moving on to our next stop.

Sichuan Homebrew

I've got a nice little buzz going as I write this post (and others) because tonight my Saturday project came to fruition.

Ever since I first saw the recipe for fermented glutinous rice wine in Fuschia Dunlop's Land of Plenty, I knew I wanted to make it. The ingredients were a deceptively simple duo: 1 1/4 cup of long-grain glutinous rice and a wine yeast ball. Cook the rice, sprinkle on the ground-up yeast ball and store in an earthenware jar for three days.

"That's it? Of course I can make that!" I said to myself when I first opened Land of Plenty. It was easier said then done, because beyond the earthenware jar I picked up for 10 dollars, the other two ingredients proved difficult to locate.

Returning to the Land of Plenty

All last week, my focus was on Law rather than Food. So it was really nice to finally get back in the kitchen to cook and relax a little bit this past weekend.

On Saturday I made a trip to Chinatown, where I picked up a whole chicken, some chicken bones and a bunch of mustard greens. For a quick lunch, I grabbed a half roast duck and roast pork from Hop Won on Mott and a couple of baked pork buns from Me Lei Wah on Bayard (and made duck fried rice for lunch today too).

I hadn't made a single chicken dish out of Fuschia Dunlop's Land of Plenty yet, so for my next dish I made one of my favorites: Chicken with Chiles (or Chongqing Chicken). Though it's covered in chiles, it has a pleasant, but not overwhelming spiciness with a low and slow burn.

Today, I spent the day catching up on work while slowly assembling the dish. I also wanted chicken stock, so I roasted the bones in the oven for 30 minutes, then threw everything in a pot around noon. After 6 hours of simmering, my stock looked and smelled delicious. Once I cleared the stockpot and remains out of the way, I broke down the chicken and prepared my mise like so:

The chicken is marinated simply with some light and dark soy sauce, Shaoxing wine and salt (Dunlop recommends at least 30 minutes in the marinade, I left it in for about 2 1/2 hours). The rest of the ingredients were simple: a pile of seeded chiles, green onions, Sichuan pepper, ginger, garlic and sesame oil. My only audible was adding roasted sesame seeds and using 1 teaspoon of sesame oil instead of two (sesame oil is cloying when you use too much, and I like sesame seeds better anyway).

The Flushing Conundrum

With some free time on Friday, Steve and I decided to make a Flushing excursion. I also had the ulterior motive of wanting to check out some of the grocery stores in the area for more Sichuan ingredients.

As usual, we were met with what should be dubbed "The Flushing Conundrum." Essentially, it's the never ending struggle between the desire to try one of the thousands of different restaurants in the neighborhood, against the urge to eat at an old favorite. We decided to split the difference.

Our first stop was (old favorite) Chengdu Heaven, in the basement of the Golden Shopping Mall. I want to eat the whole menu here. We ordered some new dishes, but as I do every time, I got the house salad.

Running the Sichuan Marathon

I've eaten a lot of Sichuan food in the past week. By Saturday I had started to feel Sichuan overload, my mouth constantly buzzing, and my lips cracked and raw. Yet I bravely pressed on and cooked a full dinner from Land of Plenty that night. It was not the most daring of meals, but it was definitely one of the most satisfying.

Fish fragrant eggplant, one of my go-to orders at Sichuan restaurants, was simple and delicious (p. 285). You can see the classic extra slick of oil on the dish, which added even more richness. I didn't want to fry the eggplant, so I cut them up and threw them in a 375 degree oven with some oil and salt for 20 minutes. They had lost their deep purple color in the oven, so I may just fry them straight next time. In any event, I ended up browning them in oil anyway.

That one piece up front looks disgusting right? I probably should have made it look better for the camera, but I'm usually too eager to eat by the time I start taking pictures. Next time I'll be sure to make the eggplant look more palatable.

Conquering Dan Dan Noodles

Wait... did I just make the best dan dan noodles I've ever eaten? I wasn't sure, so I took a second bite, feeling the numbing sensation envelop my lips. A third bite confirmed that these noodles were killer. Yet, I still couldn't quite believe that I had just made what was long my favorite Sichuan dish. It took minimal effort, in my own kitchen, far from the streets of Chengdu where this recipe originated.

Fuschia Dunlop's Land of Plenty contains two dan dan noodle recipes (pp. 88-89). One is oily and uses black vinegar, while the other, "Xie Laoban's," is thickened and made "saucy" by the addition of sesame paste (I used tahini, which Dunlop says is an acceptable substitute). The latter is by far my preferred version.

The prep is amazingly simple. For the sauce, all I needed was fresh-roasted, ground Sichuan pepper, light and dark soy sauce, tahini and a bunch of chili oil (I found a flavorful version from Sichuan Province). The meat topping called for ground beef, preserved vegetables and dried chiles. I didn't have ground beef, but there was a piece of pork shoulder sitting in my freezer that I defrosted then ground up in the Cuisinart. Before I ground the pork, I took some fat off the shoulder and rendered it for the mushrooms (see below). I also need to make another trip to Chinatown to find the proper "heaven facing" chiles. I just substituted some generic dried red chiles.

The preserved vegetables I had bought earlier that day had a strong salty kick, so I rinsed them off (as recommended) before adding them to the pork sauteing in my skillet. Due to the saltiness of the ingredients, this dish needed very little added seasoning, and I only sprinkled a little salt over the pork (no other salt was added and the dish turned out perfectly salty).

Ghetto mise.

With the prep completed, all that was left was to cook the noodles and assemble the ingredients. I used "Twin Marquis" brand fresh flat wheat noodles, which sounds like a type of Detroit-made car, but these noodles are actually common in Chinese markets. They only took three minutes to cook, and once they were finished I combined them with the sauce and meat mixtures.

In The Land of Plenty, The Man Who Wings it is King

Per my usual method of jumping into something headfirst with great enthusiasm, but without fully having an idea of what I'm doing (cooking only, never legal), I found myself wandering through Chinatown markets on a sunny Monday afternoon in search of common Sichuanese pantry ingredients. While browsing shelf upon shelf of indecipherable bottle, I decided on a whim I wanted to make Mother Chen's pockmarked bean curd, more famously known as mapo tofu. I had just started reading Land of Plenty, the Sichuanese cookbook by Fuschia Dunlop, and I was eager to cook some of my favorite dishes at home.

I spent what seemed like 20 minutes comparing the merits of various types of chile-bean paste while the counterwoman eyed me nervously. I eventually settled on a jar entitled “Pockmarked Grandma's  Bean Curd Seasoning.” Turns out I chose fairly well, as broad beans (aka fava beans) were the first ingredient, rather than soybeans (which Dunlop recommends to avoid). It was also made in Sichuan Province. I’m not completely sure, but I think it's just chile-bean paste with ginger and garlic added. I couldn't find fermented black beans (didn’t look hard enough), but I also picked up some Shaoxing wine, green onions and a package of firm tofu I found in the refrigerator section. Typically (and consistent with my lack of planning), I immediately passed a long line of people waiting to buy fresh tofu from a vendor. Next time dumbass.

I feel the need to digress before continuing. I dig this book, and plan on cooking a lot of the recipes inside. Plus, I have a food blog, so it seems only natural that I would document the process. BUT, I know what you are thinking, and I will be the first (and most vocal) person saying that I am NOT Julia & Julia, NOT French Laundry at Home, and NOT Momofuku for 2. Whatever the merits of these cookbook-dedicated-blogs (clogs? blookbooks? coo-de-blogs?), I have absolutely zero intention of turning into the "Land of Plenty at Home" Guy. This blog is called Law & Food, and I swear I will start writing lengthy legal posts about the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act before I do that (this scenario assumes that enough people would be interested in me as the Land of Plenty Guy in the first place, which I sincerely doubt).

Sorry I needed to get that rant out of the way before I could proceed.

Once I got home, I prepared my mise en place for my first official dish from Land of Plenty.

Not bad right? Not great either.

A little improvisation was required. I added bok choy to give make it heartier (and I didn’t want to make rice). The recipe also called for ground beef, but I’d overloaded on it during the weekend. I subbed in some leftover mushrooms to approximate the umami taste. I also only had birds-eye chilis, which Dunlop says are too spicy, so I only used a small amount. What I ended up missing most were the fermented black beans, which are what usually elevates mapo tofu for me (I also like it with a sprinkling of peanuts for some crunch).

MA LA MOTHERF*#KA!

I live for the sweating, euphoric feeling I get when throwing something spicy down my throat. This is especially true with the unique heat from the combination of Sichuan peppercorn and chiles known as "ma la" or spicy and tingly. Since I have recently taken some heat for my fiery views (yeah I'll stoop to wordplay), I would like to set the record straight.


Dumplings in chili oil, ordered "ma la."