Asian, Chinese Recipes
41 recipes found
Sichuan Celery and Tofu Salad
This otherwise simple salad, adapted from a dish at Szechuan Gourmet in Manhattan, may require a trip to a Chinese market for Szechuan peppercorns and pressed tofu. And you’ll need to make your own chili oil! But here’s the thing. The effort, which really isn’t much more than difficult shopping, produces an elegant dish that is worth whatever shoe leather or mileage you’ll expend getting the ingredients together. It is astonishingly good. And we’ll even allow one substitution. You can use regular celery instead of the Chinese version!
Lemon Chicken
Five-Spice Chicken Livers
Stir-Fried Shrimp With Snow Peas and Ginger
In 2005, Julia Moskin wrote an excellent article about woks, the best sort for American kitchens (a 14-inch heavy-gauge carbon-steel wok with a flat bottom) and how to season it. This recipe, adapted from Grace Young's book, "The Breath of a Wok," ran alongside it. It is simple, fresh and fast. It cooks in under 5 minutes, so start your pot of rice as you clean the shrimp and chop the ginger, garlic and scallions.
Zucchini Pancakes With Peanuts
Street-Market Noodles
Sichuan Chicken Salad
Dumplings With Chile Crisp
Great dumplings are as much about texture as taste, and these double the welcome contrast of tenderness and crunch. Simultaneously fried and steamed in a covered skillet, the wrappers develop crackling brown bases, while the tops become delicately chewy. Inside, the crunch of spicy chile crisp punctuates soft tofu and greens. Wringing water out of both fillings first allows them to soak in the soy sauce and chile crisp and ensures the filling doesn’t end up watery or bland. Another benefit to this vegan filling is the ability to taste it raw and adjust the seasonings before wrapping.
Café China’s Dan Dan Noodles
Also known as dan dan mian, these noodles have regional variations — you’re likely to find a peanut-laden, vegetarian version in Taiwan — but this recipe comes from Café China, a beloved Sichuan restaurant in New York City. Popularized in Chengdu, this dish takes its name from the Mandarin verb “dan,” which refers to how vendors once carried the ingredients, hanging from bamboo poles balanced on their shoulders. The dish builds on a complex chile sauce that is more rich and robust than fiery. Though the ingredient list is lengthy, the process is clear-cut: Get the water boiling for your noodles while you prepare the sauce. Sauté the pork, seasoned with suimiyacai (preserved mustard greens), boil your noodles, and dinner is served.
Spicy Stir-Fried Cabbage
This is a vegetarian version of a classic Chinese stir-fry. The authentic versions I’ve encountered include some pork or bacon, but the chilies, ginger, garlic, star anise and the cabbage are flavorful enough without meat. I’ve added carrots for color.
XO Sauce
In Hong Kong in the 1980s, when expensive Cognac was all the rage, legend has it that some smart cook at the Spring Moon restaurant in the Peninsula Hotel on Kowloon got it into his head to name the funky new condiment he’d come up with after the status mark on the bottle of Remy Martin at the bar: “XO,” extra old, rare, very expensive. The stuff was a hit: dried scallops and dried shrimp, a ton of chiles, a faint pork-smokiness and a whisper of allium, expensive to make and worth it for the flavor-enhancing pop. By the end of the decade, XO sauce was on menus all over Hong Kong and eventually the world. Recipes for XO vary wildly, save for those scallops and shrimp. Mine derives from the teachings of Diana Kuan, who included a formidable XO in her 2019 cookbook, “Red Hot Kitchen.”
General Tso’s Chicken
General Tso’s chicken is named for Tso Tsung-t’ang, a 19th-century general who is said to have enjoyed eating it. The Hunanese have a strong military tradition, and Tso is one of their best-known historical figures. But although many Chinese dishes are named after famous personages, there is no record of any dish named after Tso. The real roots of the recipe lie in the aftermath of the Chinese civil war, when the leadership of the defeated Nationalist Party fled to the island of Taiwan. They took with them many talented people, including a number of notable chefs, and foremost among them was Peng Chang-kuei. He created this dish in 1950s Taiwan, and brought it with him when he moved to the states in 1973, making it sweeter for American palates. This version is adapted from the original, hot and sour and lacking the sweetness of its Americanized counterpart.
Five Spice
At once musky and sweet, with a pronounced kick, five spice is traditionally made from equal parts cinnamon, cloves, fennel seeds, star anise and peppercorns (usually Sichuan or white). This one, adapted from Kian Lam Kho, the author of “Phoenix Claws and Jade Trees: Essential Techniques of Authentic Chinese Cooking” (Clarkson Potter, 2015), includes Sichuan peppercorns to give the mix a characteristically numbing, tingly sensation on the tongue known as mala. Once the spices are toasted and mixed, the blend can be used both whole (simmered into stews, braises and soups) and ground (added to sauces, roasted meats and vegetables). Or, stir some salt into the ground blend and use it as a piquant table condiment: It’s wonderful sprinkled on everything from barbecued meats to scrambled eggs.
Tiger Vegetable Salad
A bright toss of cilantro leaves and scallions, this dish, called lao hu cai, is somewhere between a salad and a garnish, adding coolness, salt and juice to the mix.
Eddie’s Remarkable Ribs
Cinnamon Curry Rice
Sizzled Five-Spice Shrimp With Red Pepper
This flavorful wok-fried shrimp dish makes an easy but very impressive dinner. Bright and spicy, it calls for strips of ripe red Fresno chiles, which are not very hot and available in the produce section of most supermarkets. Use red bell peppers instead if you want to tame the heat. Look for fresh or frozen wild shrimp when possible, from the Eastern Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico or Alaska. Make sure to buy farmed shrimp from a certified sustainable source; imported farmed shrimp are not always reliable or of good quality.
Scallion Oil
Crispy Lamb With Cumin, Scallions and Red Chiles
Dongbei cai is the food of Northeast China. Weiliang Chen, the chef at Northeast Taste Chinese Food, the biggest of the Dongbei restaurants in Queens, makes an elegant, tender version of a popular Dongbei stir-fry of lamb with dried chilies, made fragrant and crunchy with cumin seeds — a legacy of the nomadic Mongols who long ruled Central Asia, carrying spices on horseback along with their arrows. Lamb is considered a Northern taste and excessively “strong” by many Chinese cooks; it is always cooked with powerful aromatics, like chili peppers and garlic, to subdue it.
Sauteed Pork With Chinese Egg Noodles
Shun Lee's Lobster Cantonese
Here is an adaptation of the lobster Cantonese served at the eminent Shun Lee West restaurant in New York, which Alex Witchel captured for us in 2009. “Nostalgia deluxe,” she called the dish, totally accurately. It seems complicated to prepare. It is not. Set up all your ingredients beforehand, and the process moves quickly and is not at all difficult.
Chinese-Style Fish Fillets
Romaine Lettuce With Black Beans