Jiangnan · Side
You Men Chun Sun
- Easy
- 25 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, toasted, nutty warmth throughout, with a bitter-edged char at the rim.
Ingredients
- 600 g spring bamboo shoots, still in the sheath
- 60 ml neutral oil
- 25 g rock sugar
- 30 ml light soy sauce
- 10 ml dark soy sauce
- 15 ml Shaoxing wine
- 100 ml water
- 5 ml sesame oil
The skills inside
BraisingSautéing & the shallow frySalted water & the float testBlanching & shocking
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · soy · sesame · alcohol
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
- Strip the sheaths back to the pale core, cut away the woody base and roll cut into wedges, so every piece carries a slanted face for the glaze to catch on.
- Blanch 3 minutes in hard boiling water and drain them well. 3 min
- Fry in the oil over a high flame for 5 minutes without crowding the pan, until the cut faces are blistered and gold at the edges. 5 min
- Add the wine, both soys, the rock sugar and the water and braise uncovered for 12 minutes, tossing, until the liquid is a dark syrup hanging off the wedges and the pan hisses more than it bubbles. 12 min
- Off the heat, sesame oil, and leave it until warm rather than hot: the glaze tightens as it cools.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Braising 39 recipes
- The pieces went into the liquid already deep brown on their faces, and the pot floor gave up its fond to that liquid rather than keeping it.
- The liquid comes partway up the pieces and stays there for the whole cook (not submerged, not run dry), and it never boils: the surface trembles and no more.
- It went long enough for the collagen to convert: a fork twists in it with almost no resistance, and the piece still lifts out whole rather than falling into shreds.
- The liquid has become a sauce: it has body, it coats the back of a spoon, and it tastes concentrated rather than thin and washed out.
- The meat is moist and seasoned through to its centre, not dry fibres sitting inside a good sauce.
Where it goes wrong The oven or the burner ran too hot and the liquid boiled, so the fibres tightened and squeezed their moisture out: it shreds dry into a thin greasy liquid, and more time makes it worse rather than better.
Blanching & shocking 76 recipes
- A large volume at a hard rolling boil, and enough of it that adding the food barely interrupts it; a pot that goes quiet has started stewing rather than blanching.
- Timed rather than watched, and short. This is an interruption in the cooking of something, not the cooking of it.
- The ice bath was made and standing beside the pot BEFORE anything went into the water, not started once the timer went off.
- It went straight into the ice water, fully submerged, and stayed until cold at the centre: a piece still warm inside is still cooking, and the arrest has not happened yet.
- Drained and dried afterwards rather than left sitting in water, so it does not carry that water into whatever it meets next.
Where it goes wrong The ice bath was not ready, so the food sat draining in a colander while its own residual heat carried on cooking it. By the time it cooled it was a stage past where it was pulled, and exact arrest is the entire reason for blanching rather than simply boiling.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.