Gong Bao Chicken

This version of Gong Bao Chicken is not typical to the version you find in most Chinese takeaways. This Sichuan dish is usually bastardised to buggery, presenting itself in a sweet, gloopy, greasy mess. Fuschia Dunlop's version in 'Sichuan Cookery', however, is top notch.

Chicken isn't my favourite of all the meats, but it is perfect for this dish. Traditionally, chicken breast is used but I prefer the darker thigh meat. Though it needs a touch more cooking, the marinating technique ensures it is still tender and juicy while giving more flavour than breast.


Another deviation was that I used cashews instead of the more traditional peanuts. It's bloody difficult to find roasted, unsalted peanuts in the supermarket. Rows upon rows of dry roasted, honey roasted, jumbo salted, salted, even lemon and coriander-spiced peanuts, but plain roasted were not to be found and I couldn't be bothered to roast my own, so I settled for a posher nut.

The result is glossy, sweet and spicy velvet-textured meat, with the occasional crunch and richness of the cashew. Eaten with rice, this went down a storm with the family.

Gong Bao Chicken (adapted from 'Sichuan Cookery')

Serves 4 with 2 other dishes, or 2 with rice

325gr chicken thighs, deskinned and boned
4 cloves of garlic chopped & the equivalent of minced ginger
3 stalks of spring onion, sliced diagonally
A handful of whole dried chillis
1 tsp whole Sichuan peppercorns
75gr roasted unsalted cashews or peanuts

Marinade:
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp light soy
1 tsp Shaoxing rice wine
1 1/2 tsp cornflour
1 tbsp water

Sauce:
3 tsp sugar
1 tsp cornflour
1 tsp dark soy
1 tsp light soy
3 tsp Chinese black vinegar
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp water

Snip the chillis in half, discarding the seeds, and soak in boiling water to soften.

Firstly, chop the chicken into chunks around the size of the cashews, maybe a little larger, and put in with all the marinade ingredients and mix well. Next, slice the spring onion so that it's around the same size as the cashews; you want everything roughly the same size.

Mix all your sauce ingredients together in a bowl. Toast the Sichuan peppercorns and then grind into a fine powder.

Heat 2 tbsp oil in a wok till almost smoking, and add the chillis, stir-frying for a few seconds, before adding the ground Sichuan pepper in. Add the ginger, garlic and half the spring onion and stir-fry until fragrant. Turn the heat up and add the chicken, cooking for 5 or so minutes, stirring all the time so it doesn't stick or burn. Turn the heat down to medium and add the sauce ingredients and the cashews, simmering for a few minutes until thick and glossy. Toss through the rest of the spring onion and serve.

Ba Shan, Revisited

If there was a testament to visiting somewhere more than once, Ba Shan would be it. After my original visit in April 2009, I was less than impressed, both by the service and the quality of food on offer. Fast forward almost two years, and I found myself visiting again for a Chinese new year dinner with family and friends. This was mainly due to recommendations after having visited the Hunanese Golden Day, where food was good but service patchy. While the menu used to be Northern Chinese street food, a recent overhaul with their resident consultant (and rather a hero of mine), Fuschia Dunlop, made the basis more strongly focused on Hunanese specialities.

We kicked off with three starters. The Hunanese pickles were crunchy, sour batons of cucumber and daikon. They had the curious quality to be both cold yet fiery from the heat. Spare ribs were fine; tender meat, but not hugely interesting when compared to the pickles and the slivered chicken salad (below). The shredded chicken was combined with chilli oil and julienned crunchy vegetables. While on the salty side, it was addictively spicy.

For our mains, we spotted another table with an enormous plate and after enquiring as to what it was, the steamed catfish with salted chillis were duly ordered (opening photo). Two fillets were cooked to tenderness, topped with the chopped salted inferno of chillis. They cut like butter, and came with a portion of noodles to dump in the deeply savoury, almost dashi-like sauce. It was my favourite dish of the night.

A typically home-style Hunanese dish is Peng's beancurd. The beancurd is fried on the outside, soft within and is cooked with fermented black beans, chilli bean paste and pork. Liberally sprinkled with thick rings of chopped fresh chillis, the green were bearable while the red were so spicy they could have been incandescent.

Dried yard beans with Chinese bacon was a serious saltfest. The chewy texture of the dried beans and the slivers of bacon were great, but you really needed to eat this with a lot of rice.

Another typical dish of the region was the least spice-laden. Chairman Mao's red braised pork was a dish of tender, glossy cubes of pork belly, coated in a soy anise sauce. It put the fires out.

My suggestion of hand torn cabbage was veto'd, apparently too boring and instead dry fried green beans, staple of all Sichuan restaurants was ordered and were a fine example. Making up the vegetable contingent, bitter melon with black beans also came with pork. Not everyone's cup of tea due to it's bitterness, we loved it. Again, pork intestines were so intensely porky that it could have put you off, but not us.

With two bottles of wine, tea, 3 starters, 7 mains, rice and service, the bill came to around £36 a head; more expensive than Golden Day opposite, but a much more pleasurable experience. Service was sweet; a mistaken dish of pickled green beans and minced pork was delivered to us and upon the mistake being pointed out, was gifted to us anyway. Leftovers were boxed up happily. I'll be back.

Ba Shan

24 Romilly Street,

London, W1D 5AH

Tel: 020 7287 3266

Fish Fragrant Pork Slivers

It's been a long time since I cooked any Sichuanese food, so when the mood took me I turned to my trusty oil-splattered bible, 'Sichuan Cookery' by Fuschia Dunlop. If you haven't got this book already, you're a fool and you should rectify it immediately.

I've cooked 'fish fragrant' dishes before; though not made with any fish ingredients, this phrase refers to the spicy, sour, sweet and savoury elements of the dish based on tradition seafood cookery, with the redness from chilli bean paste and aromatics from garlic and ginger. Dunlop specifies using pickled chilli bean paste; I couldn't find any, so just used the regular stuff and upped the black vinegar. Served with plain steamed rice, it had addictive qualities. Slivering all the ingredients meant that each mouthful was crunchy from the bamboo shoots, earthy from the mushrooms and meaty from the pork in equal measure.

Fish Fragrant Pork Slivers (yu xiang rou si)

Serves 3

150gr pork (I used a pork loin chop)
75gr tinned bamboo shoots
1 handful of wood ear mushrooms - you can buy these dried and already slivered in Chinese supermarkets

Marinade:

1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp light soy sauce
1 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine
1 tbsp cornflour
1 tbsp cold water

Sauce:

1.5 tsp sugar
1.5 tbsp Chinkiang black vinegar
1 tsp light soy sauce
1 tsp cornflour
3 tbsp water

2 tbsp chilli bean paste
5 cloves of garlic
2" ginger
1 spring onion
50ml groundnut or vegetable oil
0.5 tsp sesame oil
A small handful of coriander, chopped roughly (optional)

Best thing to do is get all your ingredients laid out in various bowls. Start with the pork - cut it into matchsticks and place in a bowl with all the marinade ingredients, leaving for half an hour. Soak the mushrooms in boiling water.

Cut the bamboo shoots into similar shape and size as the pork. Mince the garlic and ginger finely, and slice the spring onion on the diagonal. Set to one side.

In a bowl, mix together all the sauce ingredients.

Once you have everything all ready, heat the oil in a wok until shimmering and about to smoke. Chuck the pork in and stir-fry till just turned white, then move the pork to the side and pool the oil in the wok in the middle. Add the chilli bean paste and fry until fragrant, then add the minced garlic and ginger. Stir fry for a few minutes, then add the pork back in with the bamboo shoots and mushrooms. Add the sauce ingredients, toss to coat and once thickened take it off the heat, add the spring onions and the coriander if you're using it. Drizzle the sesame on top and serve with plain rice and some steamed veg.

Chilli Cool

Chilli Cool has been on my restaurant 'Want-To-Go' list for ages. I first heard about it from Niamh, who said that she had such a good meal here. I love Sichuanese food, ever since I got Fuschia Dunlop's Sichuan Cookery book. I can't say I remember eating all that much Sichuanese food in Hong Kong, but I didn't quite have the tolerance for chillis as I do now.

6 other friends and I decided it was high time we visited. Places like this require more than solo dining or with just one other, as there were so many dishes you'll want to try and being such big portions, it's a shame to let it go to waste. Incidentally, my mum e-mailed my just after I booked it to let me know about some great Dan Dan Noodles she'd had from "some place on Leigh Street". It was meant to be.

Luckily, we're all pretty adventurous eaters, because there was a lot of offal on the menu. I'd had 'Beef Slices & Ox Tripe in Chilli Oil' (left) before at Leong's Legends, and really enjoyed it so I wanted to order it again. The dish was delicately spicy. The tripe contrasted well in texture with the beef, with the smattering of sesame seeds providing a hint of flavour. The spicy oil the slices were in had pieces of lightly cooked celery which made it all the more delicious. When the rice arrived we spooned the spicy oil from this into our rice bowls, it was so good.


We also ordered 'Hot & Crispy Pigs Intestines', pictured above. Initially when I made this choice the waitress looked doubtful and told us we wouldn't like it. I'm glad we persevered though, because this was one of the highlights of the evening. The intestines had varying contrasts - some were very very crispy, some only a bit, some fatty and squidgy. What was constant was that each bite of the intestine was intensely porky and rich. The dried chillis you can see aren't as spicy as you'd imagine. Whilst they're not edible as they are quite tough, they made the dish look very pretty.

Of course, none of us could resist ordering pork belly. This 'Sliced Pork Belly in Mashed Garlic Sauce' was a lot less pungent than I imagined. I have a recipe for this in Dunlop's book and I have been a touch too scared to make it for fear of the backlash. This was not so. The pork belly is sliced very thinly so that it's almost transparent and so there's no danger of being chewy or coming upon thick strips of fat. Instead, this melted in the mouth.

What I didn't get to try at Ba Shan, I certainly did here. These 'Shredded Potato Slivers with Dry Chilli' really delivered a massive hit of Sichuan peppercorn. The mouth suddenly starts to salivate more, the tingle spreads, and a slight metallic taste lingers. It sounds unpleasant but I assure you it's not - it's extremely addictive. I kept on munching. The potato slivers were very uniform; not at all starchy and they didn't stick together at all. I can guarantee you if I attempted this at home, it would be an unmitigated disaster.

Another highlight was the brasied tofu with minced meat (top, main picture). The tofu slices were fried on the outside and soft on the inside, soaking up all the thick gravy. 'Stir-Fried then Stewed Jack Beans' were much better than the name suggests, although veggies should note this also came with minced pork. Not the most veggie-friendly restaurant at all, actually.

Here, we have the 'Fish & Chilli Hot Pot (large)'. The pot was huge. Brought to the table steaming, we were given a slotted spoon to fish out the pieces of grouper, ginger, tofu, Sichuan peppers, and of course; the abundance of chillis. By this point my mouth was tingling like no one's business and it was making me feel a little giddy. The fish was perfectly cooked, which confused me somewhatthat it hadn't carried on cooking more - one finger dipped in the soup by accident and it was HOT. We even, at the end of the meal, had a competition to see who could hold their fingers on the side of the pot longest (it was a very highbrow meal) and it burned.

The fish was fresh and wasn't overtly fishy. Despite appearances, the hot pot was actually very light - the broth was flavoursome and nothing sat heavily on the stomach. It was a perfect end to the meal.

All in all, I loved Chilli Cool and I can't wait to go back. It certainly didn't hold back on the spicing like Ba Shan did and for that, I salute them. The service was a little hard to get the attention of, and one might take umbrage to the waitress being doubtful of our intestine dish choice, but rather than being disparaging I think she was really just concerned for whether we'd enjoy it. Looking around, we were the only (aside from 1 couple) table of English(ish) people. Unfortunately the '4 rounds of vegetables' that was supposed to appear with our hot pot was forgotten, both by the kitchen and ourselves. Oh well, we'll just have to go back...

Dinner came to £20 each with service, the feast we had and 2 beers. A bargain, I'd say.

Chilli Cool

15 Leigh Street

London WC1H 9EW

Tel: 020 7383 3135

Pock-Marked Mother Chen's Beancurd

Snazzy name, no?

Legend has it that this dish, Ma Po Tofu, is named after the wife of a Qing Dynasty restauranteur that was scarred with smallpox. Apparently she prepared this dish for hungry people returning home and as it's so delicious, it thus became popular.

What is fairly strange with it is that it uses minced beef, something not regularly seen in Chinese cookery. My grandmother made a dish with minced beef, tinned tomatoes and spring onions, a sort of bolognese-style dish but this is the only one I really remember. Don't be put off by the tofu - this is a dish that I've known to convert tofu haters. It combines the great almost crunchy texture of the beef with the silky tofu pieces perfectly and is a spicy, rich and warming dish. Many restaurants use minced pork, and also add things like shiitake mushrooms, but I prefer this version; simple, and with the main components shining through.

The recipe I use is adapted from Fuschia Dunlop's 'Sichuan Cookery'. I love this book and I highly admire Dunlop. No simpering or batting the eyelashes at the camera like Ching He-Huang, but instead she's actually lived in the country and writes about authentic and traditional recipes.

Ma Po Tofu (Pock-Marked Mother Chen's Beancurd)

Serves 2

1 block of tofu (I use Mori-Nu Tetrapak Firm Silken, when I can't get fresh)

4 stalks of spring onion, sliced on the diagonal

180gr minced beef

2 1/2 tbsp chilli bean paste

1 tbsp fermented black beans, or black bean sauce

2 tsp ground chilli (if you really love chilli)

250ml vegetable or chicken stock

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp Chinese black vinegar

2 tsp light soy sauce

2 heaped tsp cornflour mixed with a little cold water

1/2 tsp Sichuan pepper, dry-roasted & ground

3 tbsp groundnut oil. Dunlop uses much more, and this is meant to be an oily dish, but I can't bring myself to do it.

Cut your tofu into cubes and steep in hot water. Heat your wok until smoking, then add the oil. When it's shimmering, add the minced beef and fry the beef on a high heat until it's crispy. Add the chilli bean paste, and fry until fragrant. Add the black beans or black bean sauce and the ground chilli if using.

Next, add the stock with the soy sauce, sugar and vinegar. Carefully drain the tofu, then add the tofu to the wok and simmer for 5 or 10 minutes so that the tofu absorbs the flavour. Add the spring onion, stir ever-so-carefully, and then add the slakened cornflour and cook until thickened. Sprinkle the Sichuan pepper over the dish and serve with steamed rice and steamed greens.

General Tso's Chicken

Deep frying strikes again. I felt quite naughty deep frying chicken with skin on, but this dish was definitely worth it. Josh, a fellow blogger recommended it to me.

Apparently this is often served in American Chinese take-aways and I've certainly never seen it in my travels. It's quite a different dish there, usually very sweet and the chicken is sometimes battered. The origins of this dish and why it's General Tso's, a Qing Dynasty statesman and general, is unknown. This was a Fuschia Dunlop recipe; she's quickly becoming my favourite.

General Tso's Chicken

Serves 2

To marinade the meat:

3 or 4 chicken thighs with the skin on, deboned and chopped into pieces

1 egg yolk

2 tbsp cornflour

2 tsp light soy sauce

1/2 tsp dark soy sauce

Mix this in a bowl and leave to sit whilst you prepare the other ingredients.

For the sauce:

1 tbsp tomato puree

4 tbsp water

1 tbsp rice vinegar

1/2 tsp dark soy sauce

1 1/2 tsp light soy sauce

1/2 tsp cornflour.

The rest:

6 - 10 dried chillis, snipped into 3cm pieces, discarding the seeds

2 tsp finely chopped ginger

2 tsp finely chopped garlic

1 spring onion, sliced for garnish

2 tsp sesame oil

Oil for deep frying

It looks like a long list of ingredients, but you just need to mix the sauce materials up for the last minute cooking.

Deep fry the chicken in 2 batches until the chicken is golden and crispy. Set to one side. Empty out the oil, reserving 2 tbsp. Fry the chillis briefly and then add the ginger and garlic. Fry until it's all fragrant, and then add all the sauce in, and then the chicken. When it is thickened, turn off the heat and serve, with the sesame oil and spring onion to garnish.

This was a great dish - slightly crispy chicken, a glossy coating of slightly sour, spicy and deeply savoury sauce. Recommended.