Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Television

- I recently came back from a trip to London, where I spent some time in East London with Fuchsia Dunlop, who wrote the classic book, The Food of Sichuan.

She spent years and years in Sichuan.

Obviously had to learn the language and how to cook, and it completely changed how she thought about cooking.

So we're going to bring back two recipes that will change the way you think about cooking.

One is a cold poached chicken with a double sesame sauce.

This is a classic Sichuan dish because it has hot chili oil, and toasted sesame oil, and that roasted tahini, lots of other ingredients, all of which make an amazing dish you could do on a Tuesday night.

And then red-braised beef, which is, you know, a beef stew with carrots but with a chili bean paste called toban-djan, which really transformed that dish.

We're also going to talk about cooking with tofu.

So please stay tuned as we try to change the way you cook through the cooking of Sichuan.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - MOWI Salmon comes ready to cook, ready to grill, ready to season, or pre-seasoned and ready to eat.

In an assortment of flavors for an assortment of people.

MOWI Salmon.

- We pass down traditions here.

We create and connect.

We enjoy special moments-- some simple, some grand.

The heart of your home is the kitchen.

The heart of your kitchen is The Galley.

- The first impression I had of Sichuanese food when I went to live there, so first in 1994, was really about eating it rather than cooking it.

(laughs) And the thing that was so striking for someone who'd grown up on sort of Chinese restaurants in the West, was how fresh and healthy everything was.

There were so many gorgeous seasonal vegetables.

So, it was just this fresh, healthy, completely delicious cuisine.

(indistinct chatter) - In terms of Sichuanese cooking, the heart and soul of the regional style lies in the sort of artful layering of flavors.

They say in Sichuan (speaking Mandarin) Which means each dish has its own style and a hundred dishes have a hundred different flavors.

And that's sort of key to the sort of, um... to understanding the spirit of Sichuanese cooking.

Mm.

You know, people often think about Chinese food in the context of stir-fries, but they also have a lot of delicious stews and the Sichuanese... red braising, when you use chili bean paste to cook stews of various sorts.

So I'm going to make one slow-cooked beef stew with carrot.

A beautifully warming, delicious dish that you can have either Chinese style with rice, or you could serve it, as I often do, with mashed potatoes, (chuckles) European style.

So the first stage of many typical Sichuan dishes like mapo tofu, twice-cooked pork and this beef stew, is sizzling this chili bean paste in oil.

It's called chaoxiang, stir-frying, fragrant.

And you sizzle it until the oil goes this beautiful red color and you get all the aromas.

The savoriness of the beans and, um, the spiciness of the chili is going to fill your kitchen.

(chuckles) And when you sizzle this, you don't want the oil to be too hot because you're just trying to... gently coax out the color and the flavor.

And that's looking really nice.

So that's going to be the base for the beef stew.

In Sichuan, as in all Chinese cooking, food is cut up into small pieces to be eaten with chopsticks, or it has to be tender enough to pull apart with chopsticks.

So let me try...

So the beef has just been cooked, either for two or three hours on a slow flame, or you can do it in a pressure cooker in about half an hour.

And then, the carrots were added later and cooked until they're tender.

Mm, and it smells wonderful.

Mm.

So the beef... is just meltingly tender and has absorbed all the flavors of the chili bean paste.

And the carrot should be wonderful too.

One of the really wonderful things about Sichuanese cooking, in my opinion, is the cold dishes, and in particular, um, the cold chicken dishes.

It's a sort of idea in Sichuanese cuisine where you poach a chicken, um, so you keep the flesh really juicy, and succulent and silky.

So it's not like a roast bird when bits of, you know, the breast can be a bit dry.

The way Cantonese chefs do it is that they plunge a whole chicken into a pot full-- a measured amount of boiling water, and they let the chicken cook in the hot water until it's just cooked to the bones.

And so you have this lovely cold chicken meat and then you mix up a dressing, much as you would mix up a vinaigrette, except the elements are different and there are so many different variations.

And once you've sort of, got a hang of the basics, you can mix it up differently every time, just as you might a salad dressing.

I'll make a couple of them.

One of them is a classic sort of red oil sauce, which is basically soy sauce, a bit of sugar, a bit of chili oil, a hint of vinegar.

Look at that.

In my experience, everyone loves this.

And the important thing to say again is that it's not that hot.

You know, you've got this gorgeous red chili oil, but because it's made with quite mild chilies, it's not overpowering.

Mm.

(chuckles) But also the sauce for bang bang chicken, which is what they call a "strange flavor" sauce, guiwei.

And that's because it has many different elements, but they're all supposed to sort of be brought together in a sort of surprising harmony.

And it, it just smells so heavenly with that sort of roasty chili scent.

Yum, yum, yum.

So you've got savory soy sauce, you've got nutty sesame paste and sesame oil.

You've got a bit of sweetness from sugar, a bit of sourness from vinegar, the spice and heat of chili oil and a bit of tingly Sichuan pepper.

And they all come together to make this gorgeous, kind of-- almost creamy dressing for the chicken.

There we are.

Mm, so... how's my bang bang chicken today?

Mm.

It's such a great dish.

(giggles) - About a year ago, I was in London and I stopped by Fuchsia Dunlop's apartment.

She just moved in East London.

She made a few dishes for me.

This is a cold poached chicken with a double sesame sauce.

A classic Sichuan dish.

And it really epitomizes or sums up almost everything you need to know about Sichuan cooking.

So we're going to poach a chicken.

Now, before we do that, we're just going to add a couple other ingredients to flavor the water.

One is ginger.

And if you want to bruise ginger, that is, you're not going to actually eat the ginger.

You're just going to flavor the water with it or whatever you're cooking.

Do that.

And then, you smash down on it.

Put that in the pot.

Scallions... the green parts we can reserve, and we'll just smash these as well.

Put those in.

And now, we're ready for the chicken.

Now, you want to have the chicken to be fully submerged, of course.

A tablespoon of Kosher salt.

So a low simmer is about 185 degrees.

You want that really gentle cooking.

Otherwise the chicken can get a little bit tough.

Put the top on, and in 15 minutes, we're going to come and flip the bird breast side down.

Cook another 15 minutes, and we'll move on.

Chicken is cooked for half an hour.

It's rested in the hot water another half hour.

And be careful when you pull this out, (laughs) because if you pull it out like this, you're going to get hot water all over your hand.

So, I want to drain it.

And we're going to reserve a little bit of this water, because we're going to use this when we actually put everything together.

So, this is double sesame.

We're going to use a sesame paste, a little bit like tahini in a minute.

These are just a few seeds, and we're just going to toast those.

It's good when they start to toast to take it off the heat.

You're not going to overdo it.

Okay, so those are nicely toasted.

Uh, Sichuan peppercorns again, this, this is not heat.

This has that mouthfeel.

And this... we're not looking for browning, because you couldn't tell.

You're looking for that aroma to really come up, which will just take probably a minute or so.

And finally, we're going to take a quarter cup of just neutral oil... heat that up.

So we're going to fry peanuts in this oil for just three or four minutes to get, obviously, more flavor.

But also, you know, the peanuts are to go on at the end to provide texture.

So, we have the peanuts.

We'll let those drain a little bit.

We have the toasted sesame seeds, and we also have the Sichuan peppercorns, which we've toasted.

I like to use the mortar and pestle.

Some people like to use those little electric coffee grinders.

I don't think they do a really good job.

I vastly prefer to do this.

And they're very easy to use.

So that only took about ten seconds.

Okay, onto the sauce.

So we're going to start with what is essentially a tahini, but it's a roasted sesame paste, which is a little different than a typical Middle Eastern tahini because it's roasted.

Soy sauce.

Some Chinese black vinegar.

Uh, some toasted sesame oil, which has its own flavor.

Some chili oil.

Now, it's kind of interesting that in Sichuan, which is known for hot, right-- for chilies?

In fact, their chili oil is relatively mild.

So when you buy it, you really want a chili oil that's not overpowering, And sugar.

So we have the Sichuan peppercorns, which have been toasted, and a couple tablespoons of poaching liquid go in.

Okay.

So, are you ready to watch me pull apart this chicken with my bare hands?

It's a little easier to do this, by the way, when the chicken is still warm, I find.

So, you might want to do that.

And then you can chill it, because she wants the temperature, she wants it cold, as in the name of the recipe.

There's also this little piece of meat on either side of the backbone.

It's called the oyster.

You want to definitely get that.

I actually would make a soup out of this because there's going to be a lot of small pieces of chicken meat left... by the time I'm finished.

I would say we got most of it.

So we reserve this as poaching liquid.

We'll put a little bit, maybe a tablespoon, a little bit more... on.

And now we're going to plate up a little bit.

She would serve this in a bowl, of course.

Green part of the scallions.

The peanuts... Sesame seeds.

And if you want, a little bit of chili oil.

And now we're going to taste.

Mm.

The sauce is a little spicy, it has lots of different flavors in it.

It's creamy.

The chicken is silky.

The crunch of the peanuts, the fresh scallions on top.

All those flavors in one dish.

As they say in Sichuan-- every dish is totally unique.

And when you serve lots of dishes, each of them is so different.

So if you like a combination of flavors and textures, really exciting food that's not hard to make, this cold poached chicken with a double sesame sauce is really a great introduction.

- One of the most widely used condiments in Chinese cuisine is toban-djan.

It is a fermented bean sauce.

Now, like miso, which is fermented soybean, this is broad bean or fava bean.

So it's fermented fava beans, chilies, sometimes garlic and wheat flour.

Now, toban-djan can be found packaged a couple ways.

We found it in vacuum seal packs and in jars.

And we actually prefer the vacuum seal bags.

And the reason is, it's a little more concentrated and has less oil in it.

This, out of the vacuum seal bags, is very thick and pasty.

The brands you'll find of toban-djan in the jar typically have a little more oil in them.

They're a little wetter.

So when you're in the supermarket and you're looking for toban-djan, if it's a long list of ingredients on the jar-- some of them have quite a few-- you want to stay away from them.

Like any other condiment, you don't need all of that stuff.

You just want the pure flavors of chili and broad beans.

Now, if you are having trouble finding this and you want to try cooking with toban-djan, we've got a great substitute for you.

If you mix red miso and chili garlic sauce, that is a great substitute... for toban-djan.

Because you'll get that fermented, earthy flavor from the miso-- or the soybeans that are fermented in that-- and the chilies in the chili garlic sauce add a little garlic kick.

So now we are ready to put our toban-djan to good use in this delicious recipe, our red-braised beef.

If you're tired of that muddy beef stew or that beef bourguignon, and you want to mix it up a little bit?

Try this recipe.

This is Sichuan red-braised beef that we learned from Fuchsia Dunlop.

Really bold, spicy and delicious.

I'll start by heating up a couple tablespoons of neutral oil here.

We like sunflower here at Milk Street.

And the first thing that goes in here is our chili paste, our toban-djan, and we're going to fry that a little bit.

Now, the way that this braise is made is a little different than you might be used to.

If you're making a beef stew or bourguignon, you start with all the vegetables, you saut them slowly, you build the flavors of the stew.

In this case, we're going for it right at the start.

You put all of the big powered ingredients right in from the start, and use those to flavor the stew all the way through.

So I'll just fry this a little bit.

Much like blooming spices.

Coax a little more flavor out of it by heating it up first.

And then I'm going to add a little bit of fresh ginger.

I have about a three-inch piece of ginger here, cut into three pieces.

I just want to smash it a little bit.

This is a great way to flavor it without having to mince it or go through all the trouble of really prepping it.

We'll get the ginger flavor out of it by smashing it.

and throwing it into the stew.

Now, our spices.

Sichuan cuisine, typically, lots of warm spices.

So I've got star anise, which is really nice, warm, kind of cinnamony anise flavor.

Sichuan peppercorns.

Of course got to have that in a Sichuan dish.

These are the spice that give you that numbing, tingling sensation when you eat Sichuan cuisine.

Now, I'm also going to throw in here some black cardamom.

When you break open these big pods, there are those small little black seeds.

You get ground cardamom.

It's the seeds that are ground up, not the pods.

You'll find white cardamom is just bleached green cardamom pods, but the black cardamom has a different flavor.

It's very menthol, very smoky; they're toasted.

So it's a different flavor than the green.

If you can't find the black cardamom, you can just leave it out here.

The green is a little too sweet.

So into the pot: star anise, Sichuan peppercorn, and the two black cardamom pods.

We're just going to toast that briefly, open up those spices, and then we'll move on with the dish.

I've got Shaoxing wine.

This is a Chinese wine that's made from glutinous sweet rice.

It's got a nice malty flavor.

If you can't find that, you can use sherry.

Scrape up any of the brown bits that are down on the bottom and you can see in here that beautiful rich color already starting to happen.

I have boneless beef chuck roast here, cut into about one and a half-inch sized cubes.

Those go right in.

We don't like to brown meat here at Milk Street very often because it makes a big mess and it's not necessary.

And I'll show you why later.

We'll just stir that meat right in and then five cups of water.

It probably seems a little strange to make a beef stew with water and not wine, or not beef stock, but there's so much flavor in those powerhouse ingredients we added that it's going to make its own broth and be very flavorful.

So then just a couple more layers of flavor here.

Add a little bit of soy sauce; we don't need a lot.

That just adds depth to our braise.

There's a lot of salt in the toban-djan, so we don't need a lot there.

Just a little soy sauce.

And then scallion whites; we have a few scallions.

We chop the whites up, much like you would put white onion in a beef stew.

I'll bring this up to a simmer, pop the lid on, and put it into a 350-degree oven for an hour and a half, covered.

So the red-braised beef has been in the oven for an hour and a half.

I'm going to take off the lid.

Oh, it smells so good; just waft.

I can smell the anise, I can smell the cardamom.

So I'll give this a stir.

We'll put it back in the oven with the lid off.

When this cooks with no lid, the liquid will evaporate somewhat and bits of the meat will poke out of the top and they'll get a nice brown crust on them.

The same reaction, the same flavor we're looking for when we would sear it as you would a beef bourguignon.

No need to do that here.

So back in the oven without the lid for 30 minutes.

So while the beef is in the oven, I want to cut up my carrots.

I'm going to do kind of a fancy restauranty term here and I'm going to roll cut these carrots.

We're going to give these a little bit of star treatment rather than just slicing them into coins.

So to make a roll cut carrot, lay the carrot on the surface, perpendicular.

Take your knife-- and angle it 45 degrees.

Chop off the tip.

Now with your other hand, roll it half a turn.

Keep the knife again-- at 45 degrees.

Cut.

Roll.

Cut.

Roll.

Cut.

So now we have beautifully cut carrots.

Much more interesting than round coins.

And they are going to be a nice counterpoint to that nice big chunk of soft beef.

So now I can see the top of the braise here.

The beef that's been poking out of the liquid for the last half hour, it's got nice brown, caramelized edges.

So our carrots go in, stir the carrots in, pop it back in the oven for 20 minutes, and it'll be ready to eat.

There we go.

So now to finish it up, I want to take the black cardamom out, the star anise, and those big pieces of ginger.

And this is ready to go.

You'll see it's a beautiful, beautiful kind of burnt, reddish orange color from that toban-djan.

Hence the name, red-braised beef.

That's where the term comes from.

Now, to serve this, of course, I'll put a little rice in the bowl, some of those nice, tender carrots.

I don't need a plain old beef stew anymore.

This looks so good.

Some of that broth.

Ah, beautiful.

And then finally, the scallion greens, a little bit of fresh cilantro.

Just tear some leaves right over the top.

And if you like, you want a little more kick, some chili oil.

Mm.

Wow.

The other thing you probably noticed, I never added salt and pepper to this, but there's enough salt in that toban-djan to carry all the way through.

So find yourself a little toban-djan, or make our substitute with the red miso and the chili garlic sauce, and try this dish.

You may never go back to plain old beef stew again.

- All right, so you've poached some chicken, you've braised beef.

And now we want to take a minute to talk about a third protein pillar of the Sichuan cuisine, which is tofu.

I, like Fuchsia, am a huge fan of tofu.

It is low cost, it's high protein, and it lasts forever unopened in your refrigerator.

I want you to think about tofu like you would think about chicken or beef.

There's a lot of different cuts, and you treat them differently in the kitchen.

Let's first look at texture.

I think that's sort of the best way to understand how you want to cook them.

So silken tofu is silken.

You can cut through it with a fork.

It becomes this beautiful cloud-like texture, and as you know from Fuchsia, texture is a huge part of cooking all over the world, especially in China.

The next texture would be medium.

It has a really lovely soft texture.

It's great for colder preparations or something where you're not going to handle it as much because it is still delicate.

Then there's firm tofu, which, as you can see-- there's a huge difference.

This one has much more liquid content.

This one's been pressed.

You can start handling a firm tofu with much less care than with silken or medium.

And then last, the tofu I think most people buy-- but I'm going to change that-- it is extra firm.

It can handle high heat.

It can handle being flipped around in a pan.

It's very versatile.

So why do we like tofu no matter what texture?

It has a really mild, subtle flavor.

But that makes it a great vehicle for those high-impact pantry staples we love, which means it's fabulous for that quick Tuesday night dinner.

You grab something from the pantry, you mix it with some tofu you have in the fridge, and dinner's on the table, honestly, in 15 minutes.

We're going to use extra firm in our spicy broccolini dish in just a second.

So often you hear about pressing tofu.

That releases water and sort of dries out the tofu.

That's important when you want to get a sear, which we do.

So we cut it in half lengthwise, and now we're just going to go across and cut it, more or less into squares.

And we want them about half an inch thick.

So we just want to move the tofu over onto some paper towels.

And then we're going to put some weight on top.

And I only do this when I'm searing, because I want to develop browning.

You wouldn't ever press silken tofu.

Fold that up.

If I were using the firm or medium, I'd actually weight it, because there's much more liquid to come out.

But with extra firm, there's not that much.

A lot of the liquid's already been pressed out.

That's why it's extra firm tofu.

So now, our tofu is ready to go, and now we can complete our spicy broccolini and seared tofu dinner.

Okay, so we have the tofu we just prepared.

So you want to take some low sodium soy sauce, about a third of a cup.

So we're also going to add some toasted sesame oil.

And then last, the star of the episode is the toban-djan, which you just saw in the red-braised beef.

So here we're taking that same pantry staple, but using it in a much faster application.

So we're giving you a couple ways to use this if you decide to go out and add it to your pantry.

So a nonstick pan is great with tofu.

It's a very tender protein.

We have this on medium high.

We want to get it so it's nice and shimmery and hot and ready to create a sear.

So into our marinade go our little pressed tofu cubes.

We're going to use this marinade later, so save it.

Don't throw it away when you put the tofu in.

So you can test if your pan is hot enough by taking one of your tofus and putting it in.

You do want to hear a little sizzle.

(tofu sizzling lightly) You'll see as you sear these, really let them sit so that they can develop great browning on the bottom.

I think some people think you really can't develop a good sear on tofu.

You can.

They're going to develop a great crust.

And one of those lessons we've learned is that it's not only having a diversity of flavors, but you want contrasting textures in your food as well.

This smells great.

Let's see if we've got browning on one side.

We do!

Can you see that crust?

It's absolutely beautiful.

That's texture and flavor.

Okay, once they're browned on one side, you want to lift them out and go ahead and put them right on your serving platter.

And they're just going to hang out while we cook our broccolini.

All right.

We want to get a nice char on our broccolini first, so you want to wipe out the extra marinade so that we have a nice clean skillet to start from.

I've got two tablespoons more oil.

And then we have our broccolini, which is slightly more bitter than broccoli.

Although I've made this dish with broccoli, and if that's what you can get, it's fantastic.

(broccolini sizzling) Once your broccolini starts to develop some browning, like we have here, have the lid to your pan ready, and we're going to put in a quarter cup of water and that reserved marinade.

Give it a stir and cover it up.

And reduce the heat a little bit.

And then we're just going to cook this until it's cooked through but still you want it a little crispy on the inside.

That's a nice extra added layer of texture.

The sauce is reduced.

It's coating the broccolini, but there's still a little sauce for this to be a little saucy, which we want for our dinner.

You just pile it on top of the tofu.

This is one of my favorite ways to compose a dish is to have sort of layers.

And then, for garnish, a little nice bright cilantro is a good idea.

And I like either or both sesame seeds and a little chili oil.

I'm going to do both.

This is fantastic.

We've got all the different textures, from that soft inside of the tofu and the crispy outside, the crunchy bitter broccolini, and then a nice kick from the chili oil and the toban djan.

I think this dish will help you give tofu a try.

You can get the recipe for this and all the recipes from this season at MilkStreetTV.com.

- Recipes and episodes from this season of Milk Street are available at MilkStreetTV.com, along with shopping lists, printer-ready recipes, and step-by-step videos.

Access our content anytime to change the way you cook.

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Order your copy of the Milk Street Cookbook for $27, 40% less than the cover price.

Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - MOWI salmon comes ready to cook, ready to grill, ready to season, or pre-seasoned and ready to eat.

In an assortment of flavors for an assortment of people.

MOWI Salmon.

- We pass down traditions here.

We create and connect.

We enjoy special moments-- some simple, some grand.

The heart of your home is the kitchen.

The heart of your kitchen is The Galley.