I’ve been enamored of developing simpler stir fry recipes that are based upon the principles of Cantonese cuisine: ingredients combined to create a flavor/color/texture contrast with minimal use of condiments so as to allow the natural flavors of the food to shine through. I never really loved Cantonese cuisine when I was younger, probably because I had only eaten wretchedly greasy, relatively flavorless, gloppy versions of it at bad restaurants. And let me tell you, the versions of Cantonese food I ate as a young adult are a far cry from being accurate representations of the cuisine!

But as I have aged, I have found myself drawn to the aesthetics of the Cantonese ways with food. I think it is because I grew up eating very simple food. My grandmothers prepared vegetables, in particular, simply–with only a bit of butter, (or, bacon grease!) salt and pepper and sometimes an onion or some vinegar. Now, granted, to my taste now, they overcooked their vegetables woefully, but they still tasted good–and like themselves, though admittedly, like overcooked versions of themselves. But still delicious.

Meat was prepared in much the same way–maybe some onions, a bay leaf, salt and pepper, sometimes garlic–and that was generally it. And particularly when it was the grass-fed beef my mother’s parents raised–the meat tasted like the very essence of itself.

And that is the challenge of cooking simple food. You must let the natural flavors shine through without making the food taste bland and lacking in depth. Part of the trick of this is to start out with the best ingredients you can get your hands on, and then don’t overcook or undercook them, and for goodness sake, be judicious in the use of your aromatics, spices and condiments.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to these days, when I haven’t been busily sewing Generic Winter Holiday presents. (That’s why no recent posts–been stitching, by hand and machine–oh, and moving a friend from a nightmare house into a nice house. That took a day…) I’ve been coming up with new and simpler ways to stir-fry fairly ordinary seasonal ingredients and transform them into the very essence of themselves.

And this recipe, like the Baby Gai Lan with Chicken and Chilies, is a good example of this process at work.

Oh, one more thing before we go on to the recipe, let’s talk about how to cut baby bok choy in half without having them fall sadly apart. See how pretty they look in the photo above? Well, they aren’t only pretty–they cook faster and more evenly in a wok if you cut them longitudinally. But, as I said, you have to cut them the correct way, or they just might fall apart on you and they also won’t be as lovely looking as my examples.

Okay, take a look at the bok choy in this photograph. I call the side that is up the “back” of the vegetable. And it is through the back that you want to cut the bok choy. If you turn the vegetable a quarter turn to the right or left–it doesn’t matter which–you will see that instead of a solid broad stem and leaf, that you are looking into the layers of the bok choy. I call that the front, and that is where you do NOT want to cut.

So, just cut through the “back” of the bok choy where you see a single broad stem and leaf, instead of through the “front” which shows the layers of the leaves. You get a prettier result that is less likely to fall apart on you.

How does this taste? Well, Kat loved it, as did Zak. I cooked it again tonight for Kat, Zak, Morganna and Brittney and the two line cooks loved it too. It is sweet, but not cloyingly so–just sweet enough to enhance the natural sweetness of the pork. The bok choy tastes green and fresh without being bitter and the mushrooms are like velvet–they all but melt in your mouth.

Honey-Ginger Pork and Baby Bok Choy
Ingredients:

3/4 pound boneless pork loin, fat trimmed and cut into slices 1/4″ thick, 1/4″ wide and 1 1/2″ long
1 teaspoon honey
1 1/2 teaspoons light soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon Mirin, sake or Shao Hsing wine. (would you believe I didn’t have Shao Hsing in the pantry and had to make this with Mirin? How very odd for me, but it ended up tasting divine…)
1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
2-3 tablespoons canola oil
4 scallions, white and light green parts, trimmed then cut thinly on the bias
5 or 6 fresh shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and cut in half
1 garlic clove minced
2 1/2″ cube fresh ginger–as young as you can get it–minced
1 1/2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
2 tablespoons Mirin or other alcohol as noted above
12 baby bok choy, washed, dried and cut longitudinally, as noted above
1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

Method:

Toss pork with the first measures of soy sauce, mirin and honey, as well as the cornstarch. Allow to marinated for twenty minutes–which is about the amount of time it will take you to prepare the other ingredients.

Heat your wok over high heat until a thin thread of smoke spirals up from the surface. Add the canola oil and heat it until it shimmers–which should take about another thirty seconds or so.

Toss in the scallions and cook, stirring constantly, for one minute. Add the mushrooms and stir fry until the scallions take on a golden color.

Scrape the pork into the wok and arrange it into as close as a single layer as you can manage. Sprinkle with the garlic, ginger and the second measure of honey, then allow the pork to cook, undisturbed in the bottom of the wok, until it browns on that side. Then, start stir-frying again, and when it is nearly all white and brown and most of the pink is gone, deglaze the wok with the second measures of soy sauce and mirin. Add the bok choy immediately, and cook, stirring until it browns a bit and wilts slightly, and the pork is done, and a small amount of very thick brown sauce lightly glazes the ingredients.

Remove the wok from the heat and drizzle in the sesame oil and stir to combine it well. Serve with steamed rice–it is enough to feed two adults and one toddler. You can double this recipe, but if you do, either cook it in two batches, or cook the meat first, remove it from the wok and then cook the bok choy and bring everything together at the end with the second measures of mirin and soy sauce.

They say all babies are cute.

And it’s mostly true.

But some babies aren’t just cute; they’re tasty.

Baby greens, for example, are tasty.

Baby gai lan goes beyond tasty into a realm I like to call, “Well, why haven’t I been eating this my entire life?”

That’s baby gai lan. It’s tiny–the stalks are, at their largest, as thick as my pinkie finger and abut as long as my middle finger at their longest. Most are smaller than that, though. And being tiny, its just darned cute.

And sweet–all babies are sweet, too, don’tcha know? Well, baby gai lan is really sweet–it has none of the bitterness that its adult brethren can be plagued with. It’s leaves are just as velvety when they are cooked as big gai lan, but the stalks are crisper, or rather, crisp in a different way. They crunch in a more iceberg lettucy-kind of way, instead of a more cabbagey kind of way like big gai lan.

So, I found some of this wonderful winter green at one of the Asian markets in Columbus, and even though I had already chosen Mamma gai lan to come home with me, I tossed the baby in the basket as well, because I’d never had it and I just had to know.

And now I know. And I’m letting you know, so we all will know, that if you see it in the market–buy it, run right home and cook it up and eat it. You’ll love it–that is–if you love greens.

I decided to make a very simple Cantonese-style stir fry out of the little gai lan–I wanted to showcase its flavor and texture without a lot of other stuff to get in the way. I added chicken for protein and textural contrast and fresh Thai chilies for color (I love the way scarlet pops when tossed in among forest and emerald greens) and a sparkle of heat.

For aromatics, I used a small red onion, two cloves of garlic, minced and a 1
1/2 inch cube of fresh ginger, peeled and minced.

And for condiments, a thin, light soy sauce, a bit of sugar, a tiny amount of Shao Hsing wine and some sesame oil. I used no broth to make a sauce–I wanted this to be a nearly dry dish, with what sauce there was clinging to the ingredients, making their own fresh flavors the star of the show.

It turned out to be superb–sometimes the old saying that, “less is more” really is true. And the Cantonese principles of cookery which is to enhance natural flavors without masking them is so often right. Sometimes food really does taste better the less you do to it.

One thing you will notice is that I add small amounts of soy sauce at three different points in the recipe and do the same with the wine twice. The reason for this is that I wanted each component of the dish to be seasoned carefully. So, the chicken marinates in the soy sauce and wine, then when it is cooking with the aromatics and chilies, soy sauce and wine are added again to marry the flavors of the aromatics with the chicken. The third and final addition of soy sauce comes when the gai lan goes into the wok, adding a bit of salt and umami goodness to the sweet greens.

Baby Gai Lan with Chicken and Chilies
Ingredients:

1/2-3/4 pound boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into thin 1″ long slices
1 teaspoon thin or light soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon raw sugar
1/2 tablespoon Shao Hsing wine
1 scant tablespoon cornstarch
2-3 tablespoons peanut or canola oil
1 small red onion, peeled and thinly sliced
3-5 fresh red Thai chilies, stemmed and cut in half lengthways, seeds scraped out
2 large garlic cloves, peeled and finely minced
1 1/2 inch cube fresh ginger, peeled and finely minced
1 1/2 teaspoons raw sugar
1 tablespoon light or thin soy sauce
1 tablespoon Shao Hsing wine
1/2 pound baby gai lan, well washed and dried
1-2 teaspoons light or thin soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

Method:

Toss the chicken with the first measures of soy sauce, wine, sugar and cornstarch. Allow to marinate for about twenty minutes, while you prep the vegetables.

Heat your wok on high heat until a thin swirl of smoke rises from the hot metal. Add the peanut or canola oil, and heat for another 30-45 seconds, or until the oil shimmers and ripples slightly from the heat.

Toss in the onion slices, and stir fry vigorously until they soften and begin to take on a golden tone. Add in the chilies and continue cooking, stirring constantly, until the onions are truly golden and the chilies have wrinkled a bit and darkened from the heat.

Add the chicken in one layer to the bottom of the wok–spread it so as much of it is in contact with the hot metal as possible. Sprinkle garlic, ginger and the second measure of sugar over the top of the chicken pieces and leave the meat undisturbed on the bottom of the wok until you smell it browning. Then, start stir frying, keeping the contents of the wok in constant motion.

Add the second measure of soy sauce and wine, and keep stir frying until most of the pink has gone from the chicken and has been replaced with golden brown and white. Add in the gai lan (make sure it is really dry, please) and finally add the third measure of soy sauce. Cook, stirring, until the leaves wilt nicely and the green color of both the leaves and stalks darken slightly.

Remove from heat and stir in the sesame oil.

Serve immediately with steamed rice. I prefer jasmine.

This recipe will feed two or three people, depending on their appetite.

Nothing will cure the wintertime blues for me better than greens.

Don’t get me wrong, I love me some greens all through the year, but in the deep, dark, cold months of winter, greens help pull me through the sunless days and long, shivery nights. (No, I don’t live in Alaska, but I do live in Ohio, and in the winter here, the sun is but a rumor, and we Ohioans exist in a grey twilight world of cold and shadow. It gets depressing after a while–particularly in February.)

And while I adore a fine mess of Southern style long-cooked collards and kale, I can’t help but also truly appreciate a plate full of Chinese-style stir-fried greens, with or without meat, tofu or any other vegetables. They are just so good–brilliantly colored, tender-crisp to the teeth and meltingly velvety on the tongue. A big bowl of steamed rice with greens can banish just about any kind of bad mood winter can throw at me, and make me smile. In fact, since my depression tends to be much worse in the dark months of the year, greens are like medicine to me, and I treat them as such. I make sure to eat greens at least twice a week in the winter, usually more like three or four times.

And they do help. The taste makes me smile, the color makes me think of spring which makes me smile again and the vitamins and minerals help bolster my immune system against all the viruses that are endemic to the season.

Tonight, I did something I had not done before, and now I am wondering exactly why that is. (Kind of like I have no idea why I never cooked chicken with bacon and bok choy together before.)

I combined two Chinese greens in one dish, and discovered something: if one green is good, then two are better.

I had about a half pound of baby gai lan left from Sunday dinner, and I had a bundle of three small Shanghai bok choy.

Baby gai lan is a delicacy among a lot of Chinese folks–there in the photograph above you can see what it looks like–it is essentially what it says it is–gai lan that has not matured yet. Interestingly, this fall, when my gai lan came in on my deck garden, this is how I harvested it, because I wasn’t patient enough to let it get big. And when I did it I felt kind of guilty for not waiting, but it tasted so good-sweet, and crisp, with only a tinge of the native bitterness to the leaves. And it was pretty too–the stalks had little flushes of violet along their creamy jade sides, and the leaves were a brilliant emerald color.

Then I saw it at the Columbus Asian Market (CAM to city residents) and was informed as I picked it up, by the Chinese Grandma next to me that it was a delicacy, and it was her favorite way to eat the vegetable. Of course, I had to get it.

And I didn’t use all of it for Sunday dinner, since I got about a pound and a half, so there was some in the crisper drawer, looking lonely next to those Shanghai bok choy bundles, so I decided tonight that they needed to become friends.

I decided to cook them with chicken because Kat loves chicken and is in a growth spurt, but one day, I really want to do this with spiced dry tofu or black mushrooms. I think that both variations would be fantastic.

I decided to make the seasonings pretty simple: an onion, some garlic and lots of ginger, with light soy sauce, sugar, a bit of Shao Hsing wine, a dab of chile garlic paste, a teaspoon of vinegar and some chicken broth and sesame oil to finish it.

When I went to the pantry, I had a choice of red or yellow onions, and for a change, I picked up a red one. I wanted to see how much of the pretty violet color would be left after stir-frying, hopeful that at least some of it would remain, because I love to combine greens and purples, whether it is on a plate or in a quilt.

It turned out that a reasonable amount of color was left, so I got my wish of having a supper that had colors of a beautiful plum-violet and varying shades of brilliant green with pale pinkish-white and brown chicken. It looked really, really, pretty.

But looks aren’t everything–how did it taste?

I thought it was perfect. The stems of the baby gai lan were crisp, and the leaves were velvety, while the bok choy stems were juicy and crunchy in a totally different way, with leaves that were soft and yielding to the teeth. The bok choy was sweet the way it always is, but the gai lan was sweeter, with just a little bit of the bitter edge that makes it interesting. And the chicken and slices of red onion just tied everything together nicely.

I will definitely be making this one again–though I might have to try slipping in a third green like Napa cabbage or Chinese mustard, just to see what happens.

Chicken with Baby Gai Lan and Bok Choy
Ingredients:

1 whole boneless skinless chicken breast, thinly sliced into pieces 1″X1/2″X1/4″
1 tablespoon raw or brown sugar
1 tablespoon Shao Hsing wine or dry sherry
1 teaspoon light soy sauce
1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
3 tablespoons canola or peanut oil
1 red onion, peeled and sliced thinly
1 2″ cube ginger, peeled and minced
5 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1/2 teaspoon chili garlic paste
1/2 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons light soy sauce
1/2 pound baby gai lan, bottoms trimmed and stalks separated, washed and dried
3 medium Shanghai bok choy, bottom trimmed, washed and dried and cut into 1″ pieces
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

Method:

In a bowl, toss together the chicken with the first measure of sugar, the wine, the first measure of soy sauce and the cornstarch and allow to sit for at least twenty minutes.

Heat a wok over high heat until a thin ribbon of smoke spirals up from the bottom. Pour in oil, swirl to coat the bottom and allow to heat for about thirty seconds. Add the onion and cook, stirring, for two minutes or so, until the onion is soft and is starting to brown and turn golden on the edges.

Add the chicken and its marinade and push into a single layer on the bottom of the wok. Sprinkle the ginger and garlic over the chicken and put the chili garlic paste in the middle on top of the chicken. Sprinkle with the second measure of sugar.

Allow to sit, undisturbed on the bottom of the wok for about a minute or so, until the chicken begins to brown. Then, start stirring, and cook, stirring, until most of the pink is gone from the meat and it is mostly white with some brown bits.

Add the soy sauce and baby gai lan, and cook, stirring, until the gai lan’s color brightens and the leaves begin to wilt. add the bok choy and the broth and keep cooking and stirring until the leaves of the bok choy wilts slightly. Remove from heat, drizzle in the sesame oil, stir and toss to mix it in thoroughly and transfer to a heated platter and serve immediately with steamed rice.

This dish is a Barbara original, although it was inspired by the simple, clean flavors prevalent in the Cantonese cuisine of southern China. It was born of the fact that I had fresh, local bacon, Shanghai bok choy and chicken breasts in my refrigerator that needed to be used. And, I thought to myself, “I wonder how they would taste together?”

There is precedent for the use of bacon in stir-fried Chinese dishes–and of course, we Appalachians have been using smoked pork products to flavor greens ever since there were hillbillies, pigs and greens here in the mountains.

So this recipe is a natural result of an Appalachian-born chef’s interest and education in Chinese cookery.

What is odd is that I had never thought of doing this before.

I have to stress here that it is best to use really fresh, high quality ingredients for this dish, because there is a minimum of condiments and flavorings, so there is nothing to cover old, bitter greens, flavorless chicken or overly salty bacon. Tje three aromatics are simply minced fresh garlic, ginger and very thinly sliced scallions, while the condiments are good quality light soy sauce, raw sugar, a tiny bit of rice vinegar, sesame oil and Shao hsing wine or sherry. The only other ingredients are canola or peanut oil, chicken broth or stock, and cornstarch for thickening.

One thing you will note, is that the order of stir-frying in this recipe is different than most of my stir-fried recipes; the aromatics are added -after- the chicken, which is cooked -after- the bacon.

The reason for this is two-fold. One, it is necessary to cook the bacon before cooking anything else, because it takes longer to cook than any of the other ingredients, and two, if you cook the bacon first and remove it from the wok and set it aside until later, the meat will render its fat into the cooking oil, and will then add all of its flavor to the dish. If you were to try and add the aromatic ingredients before the bacon, they would burn long before the bacon and then the chicken were finished cooking, and no one would like dinner. It would just be a waste of good ingredients, and really, who wants to waste garlic and bacon? In fact, such profligate waste of good ingredients is a crime in certain jurisdictions.

One other thing about this recipe–not only does it taste really, really good and is loved by everyone who tastes it (except for vegetarians and Muslims, of course–the chicken and bacon rather put the kibosh on those folks enjoying this dish), it is fast and easy to make. I can start a pot of jasmine rice in my rice cooker and in the forty minutes or so it takes to cook, I can have everything else prepped and ready to stir fry. (Okay, that isn’t really fair of me to say–I can also prep plenty of more complex stir-fried dishes in the same amount of time, because I have been working as a professional chef for the past year, but what I am saying is that -anyone- could prep the ingredients in that time.)

So, without further ado, here is my newest favorite dish, from my kitchen to yours.

Chicken With Bok Choy and Bacon
Ingredients:

1 1/2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into slices 1/8″ thick by 1/4″ by 1″
1 tablespoon premium light soy sauce
1 teaspoon Shao Hsing wine
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons peanut or canola oil
4-6 slices smoked thick bacon, cut crossways into 1/2 slices
1 tablespoon raw sugar
5 cloves garlic, minced finely
1 1/2 inch cube fresh ginger, peeled and minced finely
6 large scallions, white and light green parts only, thinly sliced on the diagonal
1 1/2 tablespoons premium light soy sauce
1 tablespoon Shao Hsing wine
1 teaspoon rice vinegar
1 pound Shanghai or baby bok choy, rinsed, bottom trimmed away and cut into 1″ chunks
3/4 cup chicken stock or broth into which 1 teaspoon of cornstarch has been dissolved
dark green tops of the scallions, cut into thin slices on the diagonal
1 teaspoon sesame oil

Method:

Gently toss chicken breast slices with the first measures of light soy sauce, Shao hsing wine and cornstarch, and allow to marinate at least twenty minutes.

Heat wok on high heat until a thin ribbon of smoke spirals up from the hot metal. Add peanut or canola oil, and let it heat for thirty seconds. Add the bacon, and stir well to separate each piece out from the others.

Cook, stirring, until the bacon has rendered its fat and is done but not crispy. Remove from the wok and set aside.

To the wok add the chicken, spreading it out into a single layer against the bottom of the wok. Sprinkle with the sugar, garlic, ginger and scallion slices. Leave the chicken undisturbed for a minute or so, until the bottom of the chicken begins to brown, then cook, stirring until 2/3 of the chicken is no longer pink, but white and brown. Sprinkle the chicken with the soy sauce, wine and vinegar and stir, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom and sides of the wok. Add the bacon back to the wok.

Add the bok choy and the broth or stock and cook, stirring, and scraping any more browned bits from the bottom of the wok, until the bok choy wilts slightly and a sauce forms.

Sprinkle with the scallion tops, drizzle with sesame oil, and give the whole thing a final stir before scraping it out of the wok into a warmed serving

Serve with steamed rice and really good Chinese tea.

As you can see, this dish has been taste-tested and approved by Kat–one of my toughest critics!

(She liked it so much that she ate seconds of it!)

This year, I planted a whiskey barrel with Thai chilies and basil; eight starts of Thai Dragon chilies, a dozen of Siam Queen basil. These relatively few plants kept us in fresh Thai ingredients for the entire summer and early fall. The rainy early summer resulted in lush growth but the first chilies were fairly mild; however, the drought that fell upon Ohio in the late summer (something like eight weeks without appreciable rain) made for smoking-hot ripe chilies.

The same was true for all of the farmers around here–their first chilies were mild, the ones harvested after the drought, no matter what variety, were at the hotter end of what that variety can be.

It all has to do with water content in the fruits. The less water the plants get, the less water is able to be stored in the tissues of the fruit. The less water in the fruit, the more concentrated the essential oils and flavoring components in the chile, and the better they will be.

By the end of September, there were so many chilies on the plants that they were leaning over, unable to support the weight of the plethora of ripe fruits. Because we are going out of town for ten days, I decided yesterday that I needed to go ahead and pick the ripe chilies and preserve them somehow and leave the green ones on the plants to pick when we came back. Once I got close to the plants, though, I noticed that there were very few green fruits, except on one plant that is still covered with blooms.

So, using scissors, I cut the heads off of all the chile plants, except the one that was still blooming, and brought the bundle of plant tops, all filled with brilliant scarlet fruits, inside.

I spread them out on the dining room table, put on latex gloves and went to work stripping the chilies off of the stalks.

Every now and then, a green fruit would appear, and those I set aside, with their stems intact, to be frozen. The red fruits, however, went together in a bowl, to be turned into my own homemade chile-garlic sauce. The red fruits I very carefully separated from their stems and the little green caps that attach the fruit to the stem–these tough bits of plant matter would not be tasty ground up inside my Chinese-style chile garlic sauce.

I had help in my work from Delia, who decided to gnaw upon a green chile after she picked up one of the plant tops and dashes away with it.

Karma was instant and brutal; the kitten jumped straight up in the air and dashed away.

She didn’t stay away long–while I was still patiently snapping green caps off of the red chilies, she jumped up on the table and watched the proceedings intently, while she batted at the chile leaves idly with her polydactyl paws.

It is imperative to wear gloves even when harvesting chilies–the oils, especially in really hot varieties like these Thai chilies–can be very irritating to skin, and even if it doesn’t bother your hands, if you should rub your eye or nose, you could be in for a world of pain.

(Can you tell I have done that before? It really, really sucks, so now I am quite cautious.)

But, let us talk about how to make Chinese Chile-Garlic Sauce.

This is one of my pantry staples, and last year, I decided to go ahead and make my own. One may ask why, since it is easily obtained in the store, is cheap and tastes pretty darned good. Well, it has to do with the satisfaction of doing something yourself–of growing something from a seedling to a ripe fruit, picking it and turning it into something else. Not only is it satisfying on its own, every time you use the results of your efforts over the next year, that satisfaction from a little bit of self-sufficiency returns to you. Besides–as good as the store bought versions taste–the homemade ones are better.

The version I made last year was fairly tame, but very flavorful, since I made it with red New Mexico chilies, serranos and cayennes. This year’s version was made with my own Thai chilies and two types of cayenne, both bought from the Farmer’s Market. I put together mixed red chilies with fresh garlic, also from the Farmer’s Market, with some salt, some sugar and some locally made apple cider vinegar (rice vinegar is more traditional, but apple cider vinegar is local and works fine, too), and ground it all into a thick paste in the food processor.

While grinding the chilies, it is a good idea to put the vent hood on in your kitchen and open the windows, especially if you are using really hot chilies. Otherwise, you might find it hard to breathe, and if you have asthma, the capsaicin in the air my trigger an attack of wheezing. So, keep your albuterol handy, and keep the ventilation going, even if it is cold outside. Better to put on a jacket and breathe, I say!

After everything is ground together, I add more vinegar–enough to make the sauce somewhat fluid–it thins as it ages–and then I stir it all up well. Once it is stirred, I scrape the resulting sauce into a jar, screw on or lock down the lid and let it sit on my counter for a day in a slightly warm place. After that, I let it finish aging in the refrigerator–it is ready to eat in about a week, but it tastes best after a month. I still have a tiny bit of the gallon I made last fall, and it is divine; this batch will be hotter, but with an amazing garlicky aroma from the hardy German garlic I used this time around.

I use this Chinese chile-garlic sauce in lots of my stir-fries, and Zak loves to put a big spoonful into his ramen. It can be used to spice anything up, but I like it best in my Chinese recipes–it tastes better than any store-bought version I have ever had. The chile fragrance is just amazing, and the garlic is much more pronounced than the commercially made types.

Of course, this is not the only way to preserve the chile harvest. I also made kimchi Hunan salted chilies and frozen chilies. Last year, I also made kimchi-style cucumber pickles, which I just opened two nights ago. WOW, were they amazingly good–they tasted great on bulgogi burgers with lettuce, tomatoes, homemade chile-garlic sauce and ketchup. I also discovered that I really like just snacking on these pickles, when I need a pick-me-up during the day. They sure are an eye-opener.

But this recipe is probably the easiest to manage for a beginning pepper preserver. While the Hunan salted chilies are technically simpler, having only two ingredients, I have heard from folks who have had them go awry. This can happen with lactic acid fermentation, so if you are wary of losing a batch of chilies to the problem of not enough salt and rot, I suggest you try this sauce. The vinegar keeps everything chilled out and fresh.

Chinese Chile-Garlic Sauce
Ingredients:

Mine lasts about a year if properly refrigerated.