To make the roasted chile oil, just toast a handful of whole Chinese chiles (or if you want, red pepper flakes) in a dry skillet until fragrant and ever-so-slightly smoking (about 30 seconds). Transfer them to a food processor with a cup of neutral oil, like canola, and whiz the whole thing up. Let it sit in a sealed container in the fridge for a week or so, and you're good to go. You can even top up the jar with more oil and toasted chiles every time you seem to be running low. Make some, have it on hand at all times, and it will revolutionize your mapo tofu, ramen, dumplings, stir-fries, and countless other dishes.
While the most traditional versions don't include a sesame product, I've recently taken to adding a touch of tahini to my sauce, after having tasted it in Chichi's vermicelli with chili oil recipe. Not enough to bring a distinct sesame flavor to the dish, but just enough to lightly bind the sauce and add a touch of creaminess to help it cling to the noodles a little bit better.
A wok is designed to allow you to flip and toss whatever you're cooking with ease, but fish isn't as sturdy as chicken or beef. The water-velveted cod in this recipe needs to be treated more gently—turn each piece carefully so it doesn't fall apart. For your restraint, you'll be rewarded with a light, elegant dinner of bright, colorful vegetables and tender chunks of fish.
"German Riesling is the ultimate answer to this question. Find a lighter bodied riesling like a kabinett for the ma po tofu. A richer spatlese or auslese style for the duck to hang out with the fat. Pairing with Asian food is complex because there are so many flavor components. Spicy, sweet, fatty, tangy...Riesling easily handles all of those flavors. Don’t be afraid of wines with a little sweetness to them! They can really be excellent for pairing."— Adam Chumas, Tom Douglas Restaurants, Seattle
There are all kinds of variations on the dish that you'll find in Chinese restaurants in the U.S. Some go the ultra-authentic, hardcore traditional route, while others remove some or even all of the heat from the dish, instead replacing it with a creamy sesame (or even peanut butter!) based sauce. To me, picking one version of dan dan noodles as the best is kinda like choosing my favorite Beatles album: It's a constantly shifting debate, even with myself. Best plan is to just pick a path and run with it. This time I'm going for the more traditional approach. Obviously, modifying it for my vegan needs is going to alter that approach in practice (though not in spirit).
The history of Singapore noodles is unclear—they probably aren't actually Singaporean—but we are confident about how to make the tastiest version. Most of the seasoning comes from curry powder, which we add to the noodles and vegetables separately so that everything turns out perfectly spiced.
Lentil soup is one bowl of brown sludge that I can really get behind. It hits that sweet spot of being not so unappetizing that you wouldn't even try it, but being just unappetizing enough that the mental shock of how good it tastes compared to how it looks is enough to send an endorphin jolt running through your system.
This is the spicy slaw everyone at the picnic or cookout will love. Cabbage, red onion, cilantro, Thai bird chiles, lime juice, and salt combine for a side dish with a kick for grilled meats, fish, or vegetables.
This recipe is a true hybrid. It starts with a traditional French mirepoix base of onions, carrots, and celery cooked down in extra virgin olive oil, but then gets a bare hint of flavors with a curry bent—ginger, garlic, hot chili, a touch of coriander and cumin and a jar of coconut milk. An unconventional gremolata topping turns a run-of-the-mill wacky lentil soup into something downright fancy tasting.
One of the problems with ordering dan dan noodles at a Chinese restaurant is that you never know exactly what you'll get. Are they gonna deliver the hardcore Sichuan version swimming in red-hot chile oil and laced with pickled zha cai (mustard root) and mouth-numbing Sichuan peppercorns? Or can you expect the equally delicious but totally different Chinese-American version with more pork, a vinegary soy-based sauce, perhaps some greens, and a sprinkling of peanuts?
They don't always get as much attention as the noodles , stews , or barbecue , but stir-fries are a major part of Korean cuisine. If you need an introduction to Korean stir-fries, try this spicy-sweet dish made with pork shoulder marinated in gochujang (Korean chile paste) and gochugaru (Korean dried-chile powder).
The pork is the odd man out in the traditional recipe. Fortunately, much like with the beef in Sichuan mapo tofu, the pork is not the star player of the dish. Its role is mainly textural, Noodleinsight site adding a bit of meaty, bouncy chew that clings to the slippery noodles as you slurp them up. Having already addressed an identical issue when finding a suitable replacement for ground beef in my vegan mapo tofu recipe, I knew what I had to do here: I chopped up a bunch of mushrooms in a food processor, then employed the Chinese technique of dry-frying—cooking them slowly in oil—until they were mostly dehydrated, lightly shriveled, and deeply browned. The resulting little nuggets have great texture and a flavor that is not really pork-like, but savory and rich in its own unique way.