Free Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking by Fuchsia Dunlop Page A

oil and paste. The paste, richer and darker than Middle Eastern tahini, with a wonderful roasty aroma, is an essential ingredient in many appetizers and noodle dishes. It may be offered as a dip for batons of fresh cucumber, or mixed into a sauce for various vegetables, including the juicy spinach in this recipe.
    The Sichuanese like to use the same sauce to dress you mai cai , a kind of crisp lettuce with no head and long, spear-like leaves. Trimmed and cut lengthways into quarters, it resembles the tails of the mythical phoenix, which is why this dish is known as “phoenix tail lettuce” in sesame sauce. (This particular variety of lettuce can be hard to find outside China, but the sauce is also lovely poured over a couple of hearts of romaine or little butter lettuces: this dish appears in the background to the photograph of Twice-cooked Pork .)
11 oz (300g) fresh bunched spinach
1 tbsp cooking oil, plus more if needed
    For the sauce
1 tsp sesame seeds
4 tbsp oil-topped sesame paste
1 tsp sesame oil
2–3 pinches of sugar
Salt
    Bring some water to a boil in a large saucepan (4–6 cups/1–1½ liters will do).
    Wash and trim the spinach. When the water has boiled, add the 1 tbsp cooking oil, then the spinach and blanch briefly to wilt the leaves. Drain the spinach, refresh in cold water, then shake dry in a colander. Gently squeeze it to remove as much water as possible, then cut into chopstickable sections.
    Toast the sesame seeds gently in a dry frying pan until they are starting to turn golden, then tip into a dish and set aside to cool.
    Blend the sesame paste and sesame oil in a bowl, adding some oil from the top of the sesame paste jar if necessary to achieve a thick pouring consistency, like heavy cream. If there isn’t enough oil in the jar, use cooking oil instead. Add the sugar and salt to taste.
    Arrange the spinach neatly on a plate. Pour the sauce over it, sprinkle with the sesame seeds and serve.
    VARIATION
    Sour-and-hot spinach
    Prepare the spinach as in the recipe above, but dress it with a sauce made from the following seasonings: 2 tsp Chinkiang vinegar, 2 pinches of sugar, salt to taste and 1½ tbsp chilli oil. The same sauce is also good with purslane, similarly blanched.

RADISHES IN CHILLI OIL SAUCE
QIANG LUO BO 熗蘿蔔
    This is a beautiful and stunningly simple dish to rouse the appetite at the start of a meal. Small red radishes are not a traditional Chinese vegetable, but a recent import. This recipe is based on one from a book of simple recipes for home cooking, Ji ben jia chang cai ( shu cai pian ), or Basic Domestic Dishes .
2 bunches of small red radishes
¾ tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
2 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tbsp chilli oil with its sediment
½ tsp sesame oil
    Trim the radishes. Smack them lightly with the side of a cleaver or a rolling pin; the idea is to crack them open, not smash them to bits.
    Add the salt and mix well. Set aside for 30 minutes.
    Combine the sugar and soy sauce in a small bowl. Add the chilli and sesame oils.
    When you are ready to eat, drain the radishes—which will have released a fair amount of water—and shake them dry. Pour the prepared sauce over them, mix well and serve.

DELECTABLE LOTUS ROOT SALAD
MEI WEI OU PIAN 美味藕片
    The so-called “root” of the lotus is actually the underwater stem of the waterlily. Other parts of the plant can also be eaten: the seeds, a traditional symbol of fertility, are made into soups and sweetmeats; the thin flower stems are delicious stir-fried; the broad lily leaves are used to wrap meat or poultry for an aromatic steaming, or a mud-baked “beggar’s chicken”; I’ve even tasted the delicate white waterlilies themselves, in a lyrical soup of assorted water plants. The root, cut into slices, has an ethereal quality, with its crisp, crystalline flesh and snowflake pattern of holes, which this colorful salad shows off beautifully.
1 tbsp dried shrimp (optional)
A couple of small crinkly pieces of dried wood ear mushroom
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