Haddock, Sichuan Style

When I spoke to Ann early yesterday morning, she wanted something for dinner last night but just couldn't put her finger on it. So she went back to this blog and looked at what we were doing at this time last year. When she came across the Sichuan-style catfish from February of last year, she knew what she was in the mood for.

At the market, I couldn't find a catfish, but I did find some reasonable looking haddock filets. Haddock is mild and white and pretty forgettable: it would be a fine foil for the super tasty Sichuan sauce I was about to put on it. I wouldn't dare put this complex and spicy sauce on a really good piece of fish.

Mise en Place

Each time I make this dish, I do it differently, based on how I am feeling and what I have available. Isn't that how most people cook? Once you learn the theme of a recipe, each time you make a dish after that it is all about subtle variation. Where I would typically use dried black and tree-ear mushrooms, this time I had fresh shiitake on hand. And I happened to want five spice-flavored and pressed tofu instead of plain tofu. The recipe theme is the same, but the slight variations make the particular instance of the dish.

The ingredients clockwise from the little red bowl of ground Sichuan peppercorns: five spice-flavored pressed tofu, bamboo shoots in chile oil, dobanjang (more about which in a minute), garlic, cilantro, green onions, shiitake, zha cai mustard stems, doenjang bean paste, and ginger.

The market I shop at is run by Koreans and so their selection of Korean foods is really good; their Chinese less so. But fortunately, there are a lot of ingredients in common. Take the dobanjang for example, the bright red fermented fava bean and chile paste in the small jar to the extreme left of the photo. It is also known in China as doubanjiang and is the heart and soul of Sichuan sauces. The same sauce made with soybeans instead of favas is known as gochujang and it is very different to tell the two apart. I mention this because the tiny jar of dobanjang you see above cost an exhorbitant $8. You can make your own gochujang facsimile by mixing chile paste with doenjang, the bean paste that you see on the right of the photo, for next to nothing. Although the flavor isn't quite the same, with all the chile spice going on, it is very difficult to tell them apart in a finished dish.


Haddock, Sichuan Style

To pull this dish off, I first rubbed one side of the fish in a touch of sesame oil and then sprinkled the filets with finely minced garlic, finely minced cilantro stems, freshly ground Sichuan peppercorns, and a little corn starch. After they were browned on the corn starch side, I flipped them and removed them to the casserole dish. Then I built the sauce by cooking the mushrooms, tofu, ginger, garlic, bamboo shoots, and mustard stems over high heat. To this I added a bit of dobanjang and a lot of doenjang bean paste along with enough water to just make a sauce. After this cooked for a minute, I poured it over the fish and put the whole thing in the oven for about 4 minutes, until the fish just cooked through. Just before serving it got a topping of green onions and cilantro leaves.

Just delicious served with plain rice!

Zha Jiang Mian with Steamed Yu Choy

The latest in our Wednesday night dinners continues the recent Sichuan trend; actually, the mapo dofu that I made Monday reminded me that I love zha jiang mian and haven't had it since I left Fairfax County in 2002, when I used to eat it weekly. Ann's never had it and I knew she would love it. What could be nearer and dearer to our salsa bolognese-loving hearts than Chinese noodles with pork sauce? If I had to wager, I would say that the Chinese zha jiang mian was the prototype for pappardelle bolognese, centuries ago.

This northern Chinese dish of noodles topped with ground or minced pork cooked with bean paste is so popular in the Asian world that both the Japanese and the Koreans have appropriated it for themselves. The Koreans call it jajangmyeon and serve it over the same large wheat noodles you see here. The Japanese serve jajamen over udon; their bean paste is miso. By whatever name, it's a great dish and is served in its most elemental form (such as you see here) to highly garnished elaborate preparations. For me, it's about the noodles bathing in a rich porky bean paste goodness; you can keep the fancy garnishes.

Here you see my mise for this dinner, save a tiny bit of chile paste. From the bean paste in the center working clockwise, you see firm tofu, yu choy, preserved vegetable, wheat noodles, green onions, garlic, and ground pork. My favorite restaurant always put finely diced tofu in their noodles; I like it and do the same. The sauce is trivial to make: brown the pork with the garlic, add the bean paste and some water, stir well and add the remaining ingredients except for the green onions which are garnish. Simmer and reduce while you steam the yu choy and boil the noodles. Dress the yu choy with a little sesame oil and serve.

I Love Sichuan Food

A few days back, Ann emailed me a photo of a Chinese fish dish along with a recipe and said she wanted me to make it. Just quickly glancing at it, it was obviously just the classic mapo dofu over fish instead of rice. Easy enough and a dish I haven't cooked in more than 20 years when I was teaching myself Chinese fundamentals.

Here you see my mise en place. Ann accuses me of doing this just for photographic reasons, but after years of seeing me operate in the restaurant kitchen, she ought to know better. I always have and I always will get all my ingredients together ready to cook before lighting any flame (and you should too!) From the top left dish: Shaoxing wine, light soy sauce, fermented black beans and broad bean paste, black mushrooms, cornstarch slurry, and tree ear mushrooms. On the righthand plate: tofu (I prefer mine firm; eat what you like) and green onions. And clockwise from the red chile paste on the other plate: preserved vegetable, ginger, garlic, and bamboo shoots in chile oil. You don't see the ground pork or the catfish, which are still in the fridge at this point.

A word about ingredients. Sichuan cooking is famous for use of preserved ingredients that are often spicy. You will almost always find dried, pickled, or salted ingredients in Sichuan food, and these are huge flavors that appeal to my palate. I am in love with the inelegantly named preserved vegetable, a salted mustard green, more about which on the restaurant blog. This was Ann's first encounter with this spicy, salty bit of goodness, which now comes conveniently packaged in single serving foil packets, and she loves it as well.

So, here's an awful photo of a scrumptious dish. I started by dredging the catfish lightly in cornstarch and then searing it on both sides. This gives the fish a nice crust and then it helps thicken the sauce when the fish goes back in. After removing the fish, I built the sauce by cooking the ground pork with garlic and ginger over very high flame, then added the other flavorings except the tofu and green onions. A couple of ladles of chicken stock went in next and then the fish. Once the fish had cooked through, off to a warm plate it went while I added the tofu and half the green onions, then thickened the sauce with a little cornstarch slurry. The sauce went over the fish and the rest of the green onions on top. Yum!

A typical Sichuan sauce would most likely also contain Sichuan peppercorns, but I couldn't find mine. Bummer. I like their little electric numbing touch that the Chinese call la.