Zhangcha duck

Zhangcha duck is a quintessential dish of Szechuan cuisine. It is prepared by hot smoking a marinated duck over tea leaves and twigs of the plant. Due to its complicated preparation, zhangcha duck is eaten more often in banquets or festive events than as a daily household item.

Preparation

The duck is first marinated for hours with a containing a typical combination of Sichuan pepper, Chinese wine, ginger, garlic, and salt, with much of it rubbed inside the cavity of the duck. For intensity of taste, sometimes the marinade rub is augmented with amazake, black pepper, tea leaves, and camphor leaves. Following the marination, the duck is quickly blanched in hot water to tighten the skin, and then towel and air dried. This step ensures that the skin of the duck has a crisp snap upon completion. A wok is then prepared for smoking the duck with black tea leaves and camphor twigs and leaves. Following a smoke treatment of approximately 10-15 minutes, the duck is then steamed for another 10 minutes before being fried until its skin is crisp.

The duck is consumed wrapped in clam-shaped buns called .

Twice Cooked Pork

Twice Cooked Pork , along with , and Kung Pao chicken , is probably the best-known Chinese dish.
The process of cooking Twice Cooked Pork involves boiling steak chunks in hot water with slices of ginger and salt first, then after being cut into thin slices, the pork is returned to a wok and shallow fried in hot oil. The most common vegetables to accompany the pork in Twice-Cooked Pork are cabbage and peppers.

History

The dish is said to have originated from the Qing Dynasty, while the Qianlong Emperor toured Sichuan. Qianlong demanded a feast in every stop that he made, and, when he approached one particular village, the villagers fretted. The crops had not been harvesting well that year and there may not have been enough to host the emperor. Fearing prosecution, the villagers hastily dumped their leftovers into the pot, cooked them again and served the resulting dish to the emperor. To their surprise, the emperor enjoyed it, and so the "Twice Cooked Pork" became a famous Sichuan cuisine.

Suanla chaoshou

Suanla chaoshou is a dish of Szechuan cuisine that consists of a spicy sauce over steamed, meat-filled dumplings. ''Suanla'' means "sour spicy," and ''chaoshou'' is what these particular large wontons are called in the Chinese province of Sichuan.

''Chao shou'' translates literally as "folded hands"; in Sichuan dialect this refers to a style of dumpling whose square wrapper is folded into two points, one crossed over the other. According to Peter Hessler , "In most parts of Sichuan, you can walk into a restaurant and order ''chaoshou'' without making a sound. Cross your arms and they will understand exactly what you want." One native speaker claims the Sichuan-only name for these dumplings may have originated at one time by a dialectic transposition, i.e. "chao shou" was originally "shou chao", meaning "hand-folded".

A restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts named Mary Chung's serves a dish called ''Suan La Chow Show'', which are dumplings in a spicy soy ginger sauce on top of a bed of raw mung bean sprouts. This popular dish is slightly different from the authentic Suanla Chaoshou, which has a hot garlicky peanut sauce on top of dumplings. A local restaurant reviewer noted the first version of the dish was introduced to Cambridge as Shanghai street food, by a nearby restaurant, Colleen's Chinese Cuisine,
where Mary Chung worked in the 1970's.

Steamboat (food)

Steamboats refer to a variety of dishes eaten throughout East Asia, where ingredients are cooked in a simmering pot of broth at the table, usually communally, similar to a fondue.

Typical steamboat ingredients include thinly sliced meat, leafy vegetables, mushrooms, tofu, noodles or seafood. The cooked food is either eaten with a dipping sauce, or sometimes as a soup.

In many areas, steamboats are often eaten in the winter.

Varieties

Japan

Japan has a wide range of steamboat dishes, collectively known as nabemono. They can be divided into styles where the ingredients are simmered in a light flavoured and then dipped in a sauce before eating , and where ingredients are stewed in a soy sauce based or a miso-based broth. There are many varieties; below are some of the more popular ones.
* Yosenabe: is one of the most popular nabemono in Japan. Yose means putting together and ideally similar to German ''Eintopf'', thus implies that all things are ed together in a pot. ''Yosenabe'' is typically based on a broth made with miso or soy sauce flavourings.

* Chankonabe : was originally served only to Sumo wrestlers. ''Chankonabe'' is served with more ingredients than other nabemono, as it was developed to help sumo wrestlers gain weight. Many recipes exist but usually contain meatballs, , vegetables such as Chinese cabbage and udon

* Yudofu: a very simple dish of tofu simmered in a kombu stock and served with ponzu and various condiments.

* Sukiyaki: thinly sliced beef, negi, tofu, ito konnyaku , shungiku, various types of mushrooms and other ingredients, simmered in a shallow cast-iron pot in soy sauce, sugar and mirin and dipped into a small bowl of beaten raw by the diner before eating.

* Oden

* Shabu-shabu: similar to Chinese hot pot. Thinly sliced beef simmered in a potful of stock along with tofu, mushrooms and various vegetables, and served with a variety of dipping sauces such as ponzu. Ingredients such as pork, chicken or seafood are occasionally used instead of beef. Chinese hot pot was introduced to the Japanese during their , and upon their return to Japan following the end of the , they recreated the dish replacing with beef with which the Japanese were more familiar.

* Motsunabe : made with beef or pork offal, originally a local cuisine of but popularised nationwide in the 1990s because of its taste and reasonable price. The ingredients of motsunabe vary from restaurant to restaurant, but typical is to boil the fresh cow offal with cabbage and garlic chives. After having offal and vegetables, the rest of soup is used to cook champon noodles. The soup base are mainly soy sauce or miso.

* Mizutaki: chicken pieces simmered with other ingredients in stock and served with a dipping sauce such as ponzu. A traditional specialty of , but eaten throughout Japan for hundreds of years.

China

The word "Steamboat" that is commonly used these days in many countries is in fact a mis-spelt, spread by migrant Chinese, who have problem saying properly the word, "Steambowl". It is so wide-spread nowadays that it is appearing everywhere, anywhere in Chinese restaurants and on food packagings.

steamboats are known as hot pot, or sometimes Chinese Fondue. ''Huo Guo'' is the Chinese name for hot pot, where ''huǒ'' means "fire", while ''guō'' refers to "pot".

It originated in and spread to the south during the Tang Dynasty . Over time it was enhanced with different kinds of meat, and in the south with seafood. By the Qing Dynasty, the hot pot became popular throughout most of China.

The cooking pot is often sunken into the table and fueled by propane, or alternatively is above the table and fueled by hot coals. The ingredients are loaded individually into the hot cooking broth by chopsticks, and cooking time is brief. The food is then dipped in a sauce before eating.

* Beijing: Different kinds of hot pot can be found in Beijing—typically, more modern eateries offer the sectioned bowl with differently flavored broths in each section. More traditional or older establishments serve a fragrant, but mild, broth in the firepot, which is a large brass vessel, which is heated by burning coals in a central chimney. Broth is boiled in a deep, bowl surrounding the chimney. Mutton hot pot is one notable variation, as mutton is widely consumed in .

* The Manchurian hot pot uses plenty of to make the pot's stew sour.

* .

* In style hot pot, a raw egg is sometimes mixed into the condiments to help bind the condiments to the food. Because newly cooked food are hot, this hot food touching the condiments mixed with raw egg will cook the egg and bind the condiment to the food.

* In Xishuangbanna, near Myanmar, the broth is often divided into a yin and yang shape—a bubbling, fiery red broth on one side, and a cooler white chicken broth on the other.

* In Taiwanese style hot pot, people eat the food with a dipping sauce consisting of sacha sauce and raw egg yolk.

Korea

* Jjigae: Korean steamboats are hot and spicy, perfect for warmth in harsh Korean winters. The ingredients are stewed in a spicy soup flavoured with chili bean paste or salted shrimp paste. Below are some of the most popular varieties.
** Sundubu jjigae: with soft tofu.
** Kimchi jjigae: with kimchi.
** Doenjang jjigae: with doenjang, a fermented soybean paste.
** Budae jjigae : invented back in the earlier years by poor people, who collected leftover food from U.S. military bases such as instant ramen and , and stewed it with kimchi and other ingredients.
* Jeongol
**Gobchang jeongol
**Sinseollo

Thailand

* Thai sukiyaki: Steamboats in Thailand were Chinese-style hot pots at first, catering mainly to Thailand's sizable ethnic Chinese community. However in the 1960s a restaurant chain called Coca Steamboat opened its first branch in Siam Square, Bangkok, offering a modified version of the Chinese hot pot under the Japanese name of ''Sukiyaki''. In this modified Thai version, diners had more options of ingredients to choose from, each portion being considerably smaller in order to enable diners to order many more varieties. The spicy dipping sauce was catered for Thai tastes too, with a lot of , chilli, and coriander leaves added. This proved to be a massive hit, and it was not long before other chains started opening "suki" restaurants across Bangkok and other cities, each with its own special dipping sauce as the selling point. Today the MK chain is the most popular in Thailand with 122 restaurants across the country and eight in Japan. Coca is making a rapid spread abroad too, already serving Thai suki in 24 outlets across Asia and Australia and further outlets planned in the US and Europe.

Comparison to fondue

While not exactly a type of hot pot or "steamboat" fare, the Western dish, fondue, may be compared to the hot pot. Like the hot pot, fondue is also served with a pot and various food that is used to dip in the soup or dipping sauce. The difference namely arise from the utensils that is used , and the type of broth, which may be extended to the use of oil and cheese, while steamboat is restricted to water-based broth.

Shuizhu

Shuizhu is a that recently became popular in China as well as other countries. It is originated in and the name literally means " meat slices". The preparation of this dish usually involves some sort of meat , chili pepper, and a large amount of vegetable oil.

The meat is prepared with water, starch, and a slight amount of salt. Boiled vegetables are placed at the bottom of the serving bowl or dish. The prepared meat is boiled in water for 20-30 seconds, just enough to remove rawness, but short enough so that it is still tender. The meat is drained and put in the serving dish with vegetables. Minced dried , sichuan pepper, minced garlic, and other seasoning are spread over the meat. Vegetable oil is heated in a pan not up to point where the oil smokes. The oil is poured over the prepared meat and vegetable.

This dish maintains tenderness of the meat with boiling instead of stir frying. It offers a good combination of tender meat, freshness of vegetable, hot spicy flavor of chili pepper, and numbing sensation of Sichuan pepper.

Pao cai

Pao cai is a type of , usually pickled cabbage, often found in , and particularly cuisine. It is most common to northern and western China; however, there is also a unique form of ''pao cai'', called ''suan cai'', which is prominent in Northeast China.

Chinese ''pao cai'' closely resembles kimchi , both in content and in preparation, but it tends to be sweet and sour rather than spicy. It is often eaten with congee as a breakfast food.

The flavor and mode of production of ''pao cai'' vary greatly across China.

Mapo doufu

Mapo doufu is a popular from the Sichuan province. It is a combination of tofu and minced meat, usually beef, in a spicy chili- and bean-based sauce, typically a thin, oily, and bright red suspension. Variations using pork or with other ingredients such as , onions, other vegetables, or wood ear fungus are not considered authentic recreations of the Sichuan classic. The name is often thought to mean "Pocked-Face Lady's Tofu," and is said to come from a food vendor by the name of Ma, who made and sold the dish. Another possible explanation stems from an alternate definition of 麻, meaning "numb": the s used in the dish can slightly numb the diner's mouth.

True Mapo doufu is powerfully spicy with both conventional "heat" spiciness and the characteristic "" flavor of Sichuan cuisine. The authentic form of the dish is increasingly easier to find outside China today, but usually in Sichuanese restaurants that do not adapt the dish for non-Sichuanese tastes.

In the west, the dish is often adulterated, with its spiciness severely toned down to widen its appeal. This happens even in Chinese restaurants, commonly those not specialising in Sichuan cuisine. In American Chinese cuisine the dish is often made without meat to appeal to vegetarians, with very little spice, a thick sweet-and-sour sauce, and added vegetables, a stark contrast from the authentic. Vegetarians can often still enjoy the powerful taste of the authentic dish, however, as it can easily be made without meat at all while not toning down the spices; this version is technically referred to as ''Mala doufu'' although this name is not always well-known.

Story of Mapo tofu

Legend of the Pock-Marked Old Lady

Ma stands for "mazi" which means a person disfigured by pockmarks. Po translates as "old woman". Hence, Ma Po is an old woman whose face was pockmarked. Legend says that the pock-marked old woman was a widow who lived in the Chinese city of Chengdu. Due to her condition, her home was placed on the outskirts of the city. By coincidence, it was near a road where traders often passed. Although the rich merchants could afford to stay within the numerous inns of the prosperous city while waiting for their goods to sell, poor farmers would stay in cheaper inns scattered along the sides of roads on the outskirts of the ancient city.

It is said that the first people who tasted the old woman's cooking were a farmer and his son who arrived late to the city during a terrible rainstorm. They were forced to find shelter in the old woman's home having found that all of the inns were full.

Pleased with the company, the old woman prepared them a meal from her paltry larder, including the dish now known as Ma Po Dou fu. The dish was so delicious that soon each time the father and son passed the old woman's home, they would stay for a meal. In this way, the old woman's renown spread as others joined the father and son in visiting and staying at her home. These visitors would often bring the ingredients for her dish so as not to burden her larder.

As time passed, the dish evolved. However, the staple ingredients have always been: an ounce of ground pork or beef, a few ounces of tofu, and an ample amount of ground Sichuan pepper.

Historical Basis

Whether or not the Pock-Marked Old Lady actually existed is open to debate. The story may have been derived from the fact that the same character is used for both "pockmark" and "numb". Aside from similarities in etymology, the story may be purely mythic/anecdotal.

Some cite the simplicity of the dish as supporting evidence for the story.