Sichuan · Salad
Chuan Bei Liang Fen
- Intermediate
- 25 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with acid holding everything up to the light, toasted, nutty warmth throughout, on a slow, honest burn.
Ingredients
- 150 g wandou dianfen (pea starch)
- 900 ml cold water
- 3 g salt
- 80 ml hongyou, with its sediment
- 30 ml light soy sauce
- 30 g garlic, crushed to a paste with 30 ml cold water
- 3 g ground roasted huajiao
- 10 g sugar
- 15 ml Baoning vinegar
- 20 g spring onion greens, sliced fine
- 10 g toasted sesame seeds
Equipment
Sheet pan
The skills inside
Chilling to firm: the fridge as binder
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · soy · sesame
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Whisk the starch and salt into 300 ml of the cold water until no lump survives and the slurry pours like single cream; a lump here becomes a hard nugget in the finished block.
- Bring the remaining 600 ml to a boil, then pour the slurry in a thin stream, stirring hard and always in one direction. It thickens almost at once.
- Drop to the lowest heat and keep stirring 6 to 8 minutes, until the paste turns from milky to glassy and pulls away from the pan in a single sheet. Stop before that and the centre stays chalky and tastes of raw starch. 8 min
- Scrape into an oiled tray, level the top, cool uncovered to room temperature and then chill about 2 hours, until it cuts without sagging. 120 min
- Cut into thick ribbons and dress at the table with garlic water, soy, vinegar, sugar, ground huajiao and a generous flood of hongyou.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Chilling to firm: the fridge as binder 48 recipes
- It went cold before it was handled any further, and it went in spread flat and covered rather than as a warm mass that insulates its own centre.
- It is cold through rather than cold at the edge: tested at the middle it is as firm as it is at the rim.
- It holds its shape unsupported; it can be cut, portioned, rolled or lifted without slumping, tearing, or sticking to the hands.
- The fat in it has gone solid: it feels firm and waxy to the fingers rather than greasy and yielding.
- It survives the step it was chilled for, going into heat or a coating or a mould still holding its form rather than collapsing the moment it is touched.
Where it goes wrong It was given twenty minutes instead of the hours it needed, so it is firm at the rim and soft at the core: it slumps out of shape as it is portioned, and everything made from it spreads or breaks apart in the pan.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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