S | THEORY

When my friend Adlyn, owner of Hias Gourmet, the culinary tour company that I've talked so much about, asked me to join her on a foodie test tour through Chengdu, I jumped for joy. And got stuck. (R Peters shout out!) We were in a cab one night returning from a night market tour, when we began sharing early experiences with Chinese food. Mine was obviously of the red, hot and ma la type that is only found in my home province of Sichuan, evoking memories of strolls to the 'fly' restaurants ("cangying" aka. hole in the wall) down the street from my grandparents' house in Guanghan and ordering bowls of noodles sold by weight and smothered in sweet, spicy chilli sauce. These are some of the typical Sichuan xiaochi (snacks) that my childhood dreams were made of.  As I told Adlyn about them, a certain kind of crazy glazed over our eyes, and like true addicts with excessive tendencies, we decided to indulge in a weekend of culinary hedonism in my favorite Chinese city.

The weekend started on Thursday night with an elaborate dinner at Baguobuyi, a Chengdu institution where we visited the back kitchen and watched the preparation of traditional Sichuan specialties like Huiguorou (thinly sliced fatty pork cooked in chili sauce) and Mapodoufu (spicy tongue-numbing tofu) in their industrial kitchens resplendent in steel and iron woks. The size and utility of the stations astounded me. There was no excess equipment, one wok and a large soup ladle did all of the work, only a combination of six spices were ever used, and each cooking station came complete with its own tap and sink. After a delicious meal, we wached a traditional face-changing show, which works exactly how it sounds; traditionally-clad dancers wore elaborate face masks that changed colours and pattersn in rapid-fire sequence at the nod of a head. Really, really neat.

Notice the silver tins of seasoning on the side. There are only 6 or so because that's all there is to Sichuan cooking. Salt, Sugar, MSG, cumin, chili powder, pepercorns. This is incredible considering how many varieties of flavours can be achieved just with different combinations of those! A delicious dish called Huiguorou. Twice cooked pork that is thinly sliced fatty meat cooked in chilli paste and sometimes eaten in between guokui, small baked buns.
Dry-cooked string beans. Deliciously fiery beans fried without any water to preserve flavour
A traditional Sichuan face-changing show after dinner. They just nod their head and the mask changes in a flash to new colours!
Our table getting some face-changing love.

The next day we went to the foremost culinary institute in China to learn a few dishes from one of the most sought after chefs in the country. No big deal. The chef showed us four core Sichuan dishes; Mapodoufu, Yuxiangqiezi ("fish fragranced" egg plant), Shuizhuyu (hot pot fish), and the famous Dandanmian (noodles in minced pork sauce). Afterwards we each got our own wok station and tried our hand at the dishes! We all apparently needed a few extra lessons because our tofu lacked colour and eggplant lacked flavour. And there you have the pillars of Sichuan cooking. It is all about the vibrancy of colours and the complexity of flavours. You cannot have a dish without a lustrous coating of red oil on top and you cannot be satisfied until your taste buds are aburst with flavour and tongue tingling from the spices. Most times these qualities are achieved at the expense of nutritional value, but 30 million people must be doing something right, and the taste just can't be beat.

Here the students are hard at work rolling dough for dumpling wrappers.

The ingredients set up for our master class.
Teacher cooking a batch of ground pork as a condiment for our Dandan noodle dish later.
Deep frying a batch of eggplant coated in cornstarch to make it soft on the inside.
The final product. This is called fish-fragrant eggplant. There's no fish in it, but the sauce used is a little sweet and sour from a combination of sugar, vinegar, chilli paste and garlic. I suppose a lot of sweet and sour fish dishes have a similar flavour, hence the name.
One of the most famous products of Sichuan, the green peppercorn. It is more sharp and pungent than the red version, but has less lingering flavour. The two are used in combination sometime to add a more multi-dimensional ma (numb) to the la (spicy).
No dish is complete without a dash of ground peppercorn powder.
Preparing for our Hot Pot Fish dish.
Instructing us not to try this at home.
Admirable knife skills! Clearly I'm still transfixed!
And still...
Fish is thrown in to simmer in a pot full of chili oil, water, dried chili peppers, and peppercorns
The finished product!
Our dandan noodles!
In each bowl, we place some preserved mustard greens called "yacai", some of the fat from the fried pork earlier, a bit of the minced meat itself, and adjust to taste.
Cooking the noodles is an art.
Said "yacai". This brand called "Yibing" is the most famous so watch out for it at the grocery store! It makes a great condiment to any stirfry; with mushrooms, greens, and meat.
Topping up our noodles.
The finished product. How cute in their little bowls!!!
Trying our own hand at the four dishes. Check out how pro I look. Teehee
My precise knifework that unpeeled an entire eggplant. Naw, that was the instructor. Look at those veins popping!
Slicing to make a decorative flower!
Glorious tofu.
Cooking Mapo Tofu. Anyone who knows an inkling about me knows this is my ride-or-die dish. In my memory, my mother made the best version. But I think this weekend may have topped hers! oops.
Final product. With a dash of peppercorn powder.

On the last day, we drove out to the county of Pixian to visit the famous Pixiandouban (chilli bean condiment) factory, where factory operations consisted of a few hundred large clay pots filled with the black bean and chilli pepper concoction, fermenting happily in the sun. A sun-baked farmer walks through the rows of pots every hour or so with a large wooden stick, stirring the beans to make sure each batch receives equal exposure to the fiery heat.

Oh, process #2 is an old man who walks around mashing the concoction up every hour or so. Some high technology here.
 


We all bought our obligatory vats of fresh chilli paste and got on our way to the next stop, the Sichuan Culinary Museum. This was a beautiful building that housed some ancient cooking equipment, illustrations and stories of traditional cooking from the time of the earliest inhabitants of the province, and culminating with lunch in a beautifully appointed dining room with a view into the kitchen where an army white hats prepared our lunch.

A lunch-time visit to the Sichuan Food Museum. Beautiful presentation but slightly lacking in flavour.

We topped off the weekend with a traditional tea ceremony. This is the tea master who led the ceremony at the LVMH event that I hosted last weekend in Chengdu. She's a tiny lady who packs a feisty punch, cute and definitely knows how to pour an Oolong tea.
A delicious meal in a "fly" (hole in the wall) restaurant. So much baijiu. So much plum wine. So much delicious.
One of the most memorable trips. Hope you enjoyed the visual feast!