I discovered Fuchsia Dunlop through her utterly fascinating memoir, Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper, and was inspired by her to try cooking Chinese food at home. She has published two cookbooks, one on Sichuan cookery and one on Hunan, and both are widely considered to be among the best (if not the best) Chinese cookbooks written in English.
As the bulk of her memoir focuses on her time in Sichuan, that collection of recipes is the one I started with (although my library fortunately has both!).
Her recipe for Gong Bao Chicken (often called Kung Pao here in the states) is listed on her website as well as in her memoir, and is the first Chinese food recipe I attempted to make at home. I took a copy of the recipe to my local Asian market, and after a good 15 minutes in the vinegar and wine aisle, was able to locate most of the tricky ingredients. For example, there are a couple varieties of rice wine. Sweet rice wine, also called mirin, is a staple in Japanese cooking and is quite distinct from dry rice wine, which is what this recipe required. (Incidentally, I have both dry rice wine and mirin in my pantry! Mirin is essential for udon soup and tempura dipping sauces, which I'll write up the next time I make those.) The ingredients list calls for Shaoxing wine, but not being able to decipher all the Chinese characters on items at the Asian market, I found something that said, in English, "dry rice wine" and felt that would work (and it has).
Chinkiang vinegar was easy to locate. Sesame oil I can find at my standard grocery store, and it was simple to pick out light and dark soy. My local grocery doesn't carry dried red chilies, but they were no problem at the Asian market. The trickiest ingredient to find was the Sichuan peppercorns, which are not actually a peppercorn as we understand them but are actually the small dried budding fruit of a particular bush. While this spice was not available at either my local grocery or at the Asian market, I found it at Penzeys, a spice specialty store. (I didn't have the peppercorns the first couple of times I made this dish, and it came out fine, although lacking that distinctive flavor.)
Also - the recipe calls for groundnut oil for the wok. All this means is peanut oil, called "groundnut oil" in the UK, which is where Dunlop is from.
Part of the magic of this dish lies in the combination of garlic, ginger, and scallions. All of those must be fresh. Also - make sure you use roasted peanuts. I accidentally got raw peanuts from the Asian market once - yuck!
I've made this recipe 5 or 6 (or 7?) times now, and have learned a lot about wok cooking during that time. The prevalence of wok cooking in China was driven by the relative shortage of cooking fuel, and you can both cook food very quickly and conserve precious fuel if you cut it into small pieces and then cook it over a very high flame. The shape of the wok, with its sloped sides, contributes to the even distribution of that precious heat. Combined with the fact that chopsticks are used for pretty much everything, most authentic Chinese dishes are in bite-sized pieces when brought to the table. No knives, here!
Additionally, since wok cooking is all about exposing your ingredients to high flame and cooking them very quickly, how you cut your ingredients is essential. The food processor can't be used here, as it is imperative that your ingredients be in cubes or slices (or whatever) as the recipe indicates. The shape of the cut food determines how it reacts to the fast heat in the wok, so this step can't be glossed over. (Dunlop spends a whole chapter in her memoir on the importance of cutting - just the cutting! - in Chinese cuisine.) The enormous upside, besides the rather zen exercise of careful slicing that I must admit I quite enjoy, is that the recipe can be almost entirely prepped in advance, and then everything pulled out of the fridge and thrown into the hot wok right before mealtime.
With this particular recipe, I have tried several things. I made it in one batch, double batches, triple batches, with extra sauce, without the Sichuan peppercorns, and with a reduced number of red chilis.
The sauce of this dish is fantastic, but increasing that part in ratio by even a little bit throws off the delicate balance of flavors, and the end result is way too sweet. I was astonished at how much I liked the sauce when there was just a little of it, but could hardly stand the sweetness when there was more. The Sichuan peppercorns add a distinctive kind of spice that is completely irreplaceable. The red chilis, when used in the amount listed in the ingredients list, bring too much heat for our house to enjoy. I tone down the chilis from 10 to 7 and find that suits our taste buds (although we love spicy food, so it might be worth it to tone down more if you aren't into lots of heat). The primary purpose of both the peppercorns and the chilis is not to be eaten themselves, but to flavor the hot oil which then permeates all of the ingredients. The flavor of both is carried to everything, but you don't actually eat the peppercorns and chilis (unless you want to, of course! Although those chilis - eat at your own risk!).
However, the biggest lesson I learned with this recipe was about the size of cooking portions. The first time I made the dish, Matt and I were struck at how light and fresh the taste was - so far and above take-out Chinese food that it'd be hard to go back. I lost that freshness and lightness on subsequent batches, and only last night figured out why. The first time I tried the recipe, I made a single batch since I was unsure how it would turn out. After the roaring success of that first time, I doubled and tripled the recipe the next few times. However, increasing the amount of food in the wok completely changed how the food reacted to the heat. Some water comes out of the ingredients when you cook them, and when you have a single recipe in the wok, that little bit of liquid evaporates quickly. With two or three times the ingredients in there, the greater amount of liquid doesn't evaporate, and you get almost a boiled effect instead of the hot quick saute you're after. The effect is completely different! Last night I made a double batch of the recipe but cooked one batch at a time in the wok. It was the best version of this dish I've made yet.
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