66. Chinese Dry cooked green beans with dried shrimps

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Chinese dried green beans

Before I drew the curtain this evening, saw that almost round, but bright, yellow moon hanging in the dark sky -- mid autumn day is coming. (It is a festival in China on 15th Aug of the Chinese calendar). We always say this is the time of the year that we are all supposed to be with our families and loved ones, and for those, who are far away from home, they are having the worst homesick time.

It seems that I have forgotten so many recipes over these years, I even forgot many of ‘used to be’ my favorite dishes, like this one. :) The other day, I was flipping my long deserted northeast Chinese recipe book, suddenly saw this recipe -- a dish I used to cook all the time, the food I used to like eat almost everyday.

Memory is a funny thing, an ordinary smell, a common taste can all trigger flood of memory. But when things happened in the past, probably we never paid attention, never thought one day it could be in the corner of the memory somewhere. Like now, we experiencing everyday life, it will become memories for us to recall in the future.

Long beans

Green beans in China

The original version of the this dish is not really made with green beans or dwarf beans, but rather with what we call  long beans or Jiangdouin Chinese.

These beans are normally around 40cm long, and slim, their skin is slightly thicker than normal green beans, and the actual beans are much smaller. Since I could not find these ‘long beans’ here, I improvised the original dish with normal green beans.



(image source:http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/長豇豆)

Dry cooking

The method of cooking is called ‘dry cooking’, well, I translated from its original ‘gan shao dou jia’. ‘Gan Shao’ is another way of stir frying Chinese food. Saying ‘stir frying’ is probably not exact, because this is different to the normal concept of ‘quick stir fry’, it is to stir fry with some sauce, and the food is done precisely when the sauce completely dries up.


So, it is not really a stir-fry, no? Well, usually in the West many different Chinese cooking methods are classified as stir-frying, but in Chinese they certainly aren't. I am thinking of talking about each of them, but I could really get lost in translation. :)

‘Gan shao’ (dry cook) is different from my previous stir fry spicy green beans. This one is the typical ‘two steps’ cooking - frying, and cooking with seasonings. ‘Shao’ dishes normally require using some kind of stock, which can be made from vegetables, for example, but water can be used to instead of the stock.

The recipe: dry cooked green beans with schrimps

Ok, here's the recipe

Ingredients:

Green beans, dried shrimps,
Cooking wine, salt, oil, vegetable stock (optional, I just used water)

Cooking:

1) If you are using long beans, cut it into around 3-4cm long, or just normal green beans as a whole. In a wok, pour in enough oil for frying green beans. Until the surface of the green beans get a bit bubbles, remove them to a plate.

2) Keep a little bit oil in the wok, pour the rest out, then add a handful dried shrimps in the wok, quickly stir.

3) Put fried green beans back to the wok, add in 1 tablespoon of cooking wine, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, around one cup of stock or water.

4) Until the sauce in the wok is completely dried up, remove it to the plate.

Cooked green beans

--- Done! It is a medium quick fix. :) 

I like to have it with boiled rice. Oh, it is also a good company with beer. :) 

38 Chinese stir fried potato, green beans and carrots

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If the previous tofu salad (liang cai) dish was a ‘super’ quick fix, this one can only be ‘medium’ quick fix. :)) Say around 15 minutes?

Chinese "stews"

The original version -- I mean the very original version,:) is a typical Northeast dish, and the method of making is called ‘Dun’ in Chinese, which is considered as one of the most popular cooking methods in Northern China.

To explain it in a simple way -- the method essentially consists of cooking the food in a soup base. But the soup is not really suitable for drinking like we normally do, it can be mixed into rice which is great, but using spoon to drink it… a bit strange (although sometimes I do it). So, obviously it is different to making soups, probably more like ‘stew’.

The original dish involves ‘potato, green beans, and beef’ (sometimes with carrots as option) together in a deep wok. It is a typical winter dish in Northeast. But the green beans are different to the ones we could get here in England. There are different kinds of green beans in the markets in Northeast China, the ones used for this dish are normally much bigger and longer, the actual beans are fuller, and the skin is slightly thicker and less juicy. Since the normal way of quick stir-frying is not enough to get the beans very well cooked,  we normally cooke them in this kind of ‘stew’ dish.

If you are in China, and can buy this kind of green beans (dou jiao), you do need to clean them well, I mean, because they are big and dry, there are normally some ‘thread’ from the two sides. The best way is to tear off both ends and break it into two or three parts, then you actually get rid of most of the ‘thread’.

It is a very ‘homemade’ dish, you have to go to ‘family run’ small restaurants to order it. The dish itself is difficult to be presented beautifully, but for a home dining table, it cannot be more cosier and ‘homey’.:)

However, it is really not easy to ‘recreate’ the original dish, so I adapted part of the ‘combination’ of the ingredients, (left out the meat), and changed to stir fried, made it into a vegetarian dish for all seasons. It is just good, lighter and fresh, but if you ever come to Northeast, you have to try the real one. :)

The recipe: Chinese stir fried potato, green beans and carrot

Ok, talking about my dish, nothing to boast this time, it is a very common and easy way of stir-frying. Here you go.

Ingredients:

Green beans, potato, carrots
Garlic, oil, ground sichuan peppercorn, five spice powder, salt, light soy sauce, vegetable/mushroom/chicken essence/ MSG (optional)

Preparing

1) Peel and chop potato, carrots into small cubes, and slice around 3-4 gloves of garlic.

2) Get rid of the ends of the green beans, and break it into half if it is too long.

Cooking

1) In a heated wok, pour in around 4 tablespoons of oil, the fire is strong.

2) When the oil is hot enough, add sliced garlic and 1/2 ground sichuan peppercorn.

3) When you can smell the garlic and sichuan peppercorn, put chopped potato in. And stir fry.

4) When the potato gets ‘golden’, add in prepared green beans, then carrots. Stir well.

5) Add in 1/2 teaspoon of five (or thirteen) spice powder, 2/3 teaspoon of salt, 1 tablespoon of light soy sauce. Mixed the seasoning well with the vegetables.

6) Gradually add some water if it is needed, and lower down the fire to medium -- you can cover the lid.
Continue cooking for further 5 minutes probably, until the potato is completely soft, green beans can still be crunchy, which is not bad for chewing :)). Add a little pinch of vegetable/mushroom/chicken essence/ MSG, if you like, otherwise ---

----- Remove it to a plate, and serve!! :)

I like it with rice (boiled white rice, brown rice are both good) or beer. :))

If you are like me, prefer the green beans crunchy with soft potato, it is great, no need to cover the lid. If you like it soft, just keep it in the wok longer and cover the lid, but make sure that it is not burnt. If the wok is covered with the lid, the green bean might lose its ‘fresh’ greenish, but this does not affect the taste. :)

13. Chinese stir fried spicy green beans

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--ganbian doujiao （干煸豆角）

Chinese spicy green beans

Chinese spicy green beans

I almost forgot about this dish until, not long ago, we went to a newly opened Chinese restaurant with friends. The restaurant specialises on Beijing and Sichuan regional food. It turned out to be not bad, not exactly the same, but good enough. The waitress recommended a similar dish to the one I am describing here (the green beans are different), and suddenly I started craving for it. (Actually, I am not quite sure whether this dish is part of the traditional Northeast Chinese cuisine. )

Traditionally, this dish comes with meat mince, and it is cooked in two steps: first deep fry, and then stir-fry. But since the green beans in North China are different from the ones here in UK, I will just stir fry them (here, the green beans are more juicy, the skin is a bit thinner, and easy to cook, where Chinese green beans are more matured, and take a bit longer to cook). However, different seasons produce different green beans; if you are in China, the ones that come in summer are the best for this dish.

I love to have the fresh ones -- the really fresh ones just coming directly from the fields -- all because of my grandpa. When I was very little, my grandparents had just moved from the countryside to the city to live with us. They couldn’t stand wasting the space in our back yard, so they turned it into a vegetable field. They planted different kinds of beans to get harvest at different times of the year. And when it was time to pick them up, my grandpa would take me there, I was holding a bag behind him -- you would see a kind loving old man followed by a little figure --- I was probably 4 or 5 years old.……

Anyway, --- so, it is the reason why I really like the fresh green beans. Here, we normally get green beans in the supermarket; if there are none left, I would get ‘dawft beans’ - I don’t really see the difference when cooking Chinese dishes. How lousy I am with the food, that is the reason I can never say that I am a chef. :)

Because of the nature of the green beans, this dish is really easy to make, but it is a spicy dish -- it is meant to be really spicy. The method of cooking it is called ‘Gan bian’, means dry cooking, so be careful as it might cause smoke, and the spicy smell might go into your nose-- might cause a little discomfort. After cooking, the skin of the green beans is supposed to be dry, but the inside is still juicy. This method is different from the normal Chinese stir-fry: the fire needs to be kept low, and you shouldn't use the kind of strong heat that brings fire out of the wok. :))

Here it goes.

The recipe: Chinese stir fried spicy green beans

Ingredients

Green beans

chilli ( the best one is dried small red chilli, I couldn’t find it in the shops, so I just use crushed chilli), oil, light soy sauce, salt

Preparation

Well, not much, wash the green beans and drain them well.

Washing the green beans

Cooking

1) In a heated wok, pour in around 4 tablespoons of oil.

2) When the oil is heated up, put the chilli (depends on how spicy you can take, I use half teaspoon of crushed chilli)

3) After the chili well influences the oil, (normally you can see that the colour of the chilli changes), put the green beans in, stir well.



4) When the skin of the green beans is softening down, put salt (I use 1/3 of teaspoon) and 1 tablespoon of light soy sauce in, mix well with green beans.

5) Keep the fire low, stir the green beans time to time, you can cover the lid of the wok if you like.

6) It might take a little while, but you can see any liquid in the wok (the juice from the bean and soy sauce) is dried up, and the skin of the green bean almost ‘shrinked’ -- you done!


Easy, no? If you like meat, you can add meat mince before putting the green beens in, beef, pork or chicken mince all do. However, you won't really feel that much like you are eating meat, the flavour of the meat will just give a touch to the dish --- also nice. :))