My Chinese friend Wen does not consider himself a foodie.
But his tales of growing up in Xian during the Cultural Revolution often fill me with deep culinary longing.
There’s the story about his typical birthday treat, which he describes with unsarcastic relish as: “A hard-boiled egg. When most of your food is corn bread and sweet potatoes, you feel very lucky to have that one delicious egg.”
Then there’s the one about sneaking off campus with hungry pals for bowls of mutton and dumpling soup, only to get stuck on top of the iron gate coming back. After being rescued by the guards, Wen had to pen a long self-criticism on the mutton soup affair.
My favorite, though, popped out one night while we were eating at Uptown’s Sun Wah Bar-B-Q and the chili paste triggered yet another Dickensian (Wen prefers Orwellian) boyhood tale.
The year was 1975. Wen was 12 years old and a student at a highly selective Communist boarding school “that would train the successors to the Revolution,” he explains. “Each Sunday night the teachers searched bags to make sure no one had smuggled in fruit, cookies, cakes or other bourgeois luxuries from home.”
Occasionally, however, Wen’s mom would visit midweek and slip him “a little jar of her homemade chili paste.” On those weeks, he and his friends indulged in a subversive treat after their usual dinner of thin soup and one manto-a steamed bun that was the staple of northern China.
“If we had extra money we could buy more manto coupons at the canteen,” he says. “While they were still hot, we’d split them open and spread my mom’s chili paste for a delicious sandwich. To have that spicy flavor and the oil oozing out of the bread, it was just so appetizing. It was a salt-plus-spicy-plus-oil sandwich. So good.”
That night, with a little tub of the paste and a package of frozen manto, I steamed a batch and re-created the sandwich at home. The sweet, soft, crunchy, salty, oily and spicy sandwich tasted just as fabulous as I’d imagined-even without subversive seasoning.
No wonder the hardship foods of the Cultural Revolution have recently come back into fashion-along with rousing Maoist anthems-in hip mainland restaurants. Nostalgia blended with equal parts salt, sugar, fat, carbs and chilies will almost always taste sweet.
SUN WAH’S CHILI PASTE
Makes 6 cups*
8 ounces dried, small red chili peppers, stemmed
3/4 ounce dried Thai chilies, stemmed
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons Chinese prickly ash (a peppercorn)
1 ounce ground red pepper
3 1/2 cups peanut oil
6 cloves finely chopped garlic
3 tablespoons finely chopped ginger
1/4 cup ground bean sauce
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
6 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons salt
3 tablespoons MSG
Prepare in a well-ventilated room and wear gloves for handling chilies. Do not take deep inhalations of the chilies throughout the process.
1. Dry roast both types of peppers in a wok over medium-high heat, until they release a faint aroma, continually stirring for about 30-40 seconds.
2. Soak the dry roasted peppers in hot tap water, weight down to fully submerge and cover for an hour until they are soft. Drain well. Working in several batches, transfer peppers to a food processor and shred into small pieces. Occasionally pulse motor off and on, processing for 1-2 minutes. Transfer to a bowl.
3. Grind the black peppercorns and Chinese prickly ash in a coffee grinder or mortar and pestle. Add to the bowl with the shredded chilies, along with the ground red pepper. Mix and set aside.
4. Heat oil in a wok over medium heat, to about 180-190 degrees. Add garlic and ginger, cooking until lightly golden, about 30 seconds.
5. Turn the flame to low. Add bean sauce, hoisin and ground pepper mixture. Frequently stir the mixture in the oil for 30 minutes.
6. With the heat off, stir in sugar, salt and MSG until sugar dissolves, about 30 seconds.
7. Cool, ladle into jars and cover. Chili paste can be kept up to a year in the refrigerator. Bring to room temperature prior to using.
*Test kitchen note: The recipe can be easily reduced by half.
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meng@tribune.com
