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Recipes with pixian chilli bean paste

3 recipes that use pixian chilli bean paste, with photos, step-by-step instructions and cook times. The quickest, Mapo tofu with mushrooms, takes 25 minutes. It is most often cooked with garlic, ginger and sichuan peppercorns.

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Mapo tofu with mushrooms

Mapo tofu was first served at a small eatery in north Chengdu in the late 1800s, and it is still on the table at almost every Sichuan family dinner: wobbly cubes of tofu in a glossy red sauce that is hot from chilli bean paste and tingling from Sichuan pepper. Restaurants make it with minced beef or pork; here finely chopped shiitake and chestnut mushrooms are fried until crisp-edged and dark, so they give the same savoury bite. Spoon it over plenty of steamed rice, which soaks up the oil. Chef's tip: grind the Sichuan pepper fresh and scatter it on at the very end; ground ahead of time it loses its buzz.

25 minVegetarianSpicy
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Sichuan vegetable hot pot

Across Chengdu and Chongqing, friends spend whole evenings round a bubbling pot of red broth, dipping in mushrooms, tofu and greens a few at a time and fishing them out with chopsticks. The best-known bases are cooked in beef tallow; the clear-oil style (qīngyóu huǒguō) uses rapeseed oil instead, which keeps it vegetarian without losing the heat and tingle. You need a portable burner or electric hot pot on the table. Chef's tip: give each person a bowl of sesame oil with crushed garlic for dipping; it cools each mouthful just enough to keep going.

70 minSoupsVeganSpicy
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Big plate chicken

Born in roadside restaurants along the highways of northern Xinjiang in the 1980s, when truck drivers wanted something big enough to share, this dish arrives on a platter the size of a steering wheel. Chunks of bone-in chicken and potato braise in a spicy, star anise-scented sauce with green peppers, and the leftover gravy is spooned over wide, chewy belt noodles at the end. It is warming, a little numbing and very generous. Serve it for a crowd on a cold evening, with a bowl of sliced cucumber and garlic to cool things down. Chef's tip: cook the noodles first in the same pot and toss them in a little oil; they wait happily while the stew cooks and you only have one pot to wash.

60 minChickenSpicy
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Goes well with pixian chilli bean paste