March 2025 Part 2: Beijing Cabbage Salad and Sichuan Chicken Salad With Sauces From Your Pantry

March 24, 2025

March 2025 Part 2: Beijing Cabbage Salad and Sichuan Chicken Salad With Sauces From Your Pantry

All About That (Pantry) Sauce

Greetings, Friends of The Mala Market!

Tariff chaos has begun for us, but the good news is that after some turmoil at the port our most recent container slipped in without the new 20% tariff on China, or even the new 10% tariff, being assessed only the 15% to 25% original Trump tariffs. 

We won't be so lucky on the next one, but for now, we don't have to agonize over whether and how much to raise prices on our red-oil doubanjiang, small-mill sesame oil, Guangdong chow fun noodles, aged mandarin peel, cassia bark, smoked black cardamom or Chinese spice collection

Our apologies that not everything is back in stock. We source a few products including the yacai and zhacai pickles from a larger NY importer, and their containers have been held by Customs for many weeks.

So hold tight! The supply chain from China is bound to get longer and bumpier, but we'll do our best to keep ours intact.  

On a happier note, though most of our heritage products are all-natural, we have always had a few that have preservatives. But you may have noticed that we are continually working to upgrade products to versions with "clean" labels when we can. Already this year we have launched an extra-pure Fujian oyster sauce, a 3-year fermented soybean ("black bean"), and now a red-oil Pixian doubanjiang (the younger version of chili bean paste) that now have no additives and no preservatives
 
Onward and upward,
🌶 Taylor & Fongchong 🌶
 
P.S. This week's new recipes are both all about that sauce! And both sauces are made entirely from premium pantry ingredients you can always have on hand.
 
Qianlong cabbage

Cabbage Salad Fit for an Emperor

Have you ever seen a more gorgeous plate of cabbage? Its crisp Napa leaves are bathed in a luxurious sauce of stone-ground sesame paste, dark soy sauce, black vinegar, sugar and honey. Nothing less would be expected in a dish called Qianlong cabbage (Qiánlóng báicài, 乾隆白菜). Emperor Qianlong’s favorite cabbage salad—or so goes the lore in Beijing—this dish is on practically every menu in the capital, according to our contributor Zoe Yang. 

"When I set out to research this recipe," writes Zoe, "I thought it represented a straightforward case of Chinese culinary marketing spin: The Qianlong Emperor (1711–1799) supposedly came across a humble cabbage dish served by an overlooked but secretly talented (and thus deserving) individual....

"The crux of the story is the same in all of these tellings. The emperor is eating raw cabbage, and the emperor does not usually eat raw cabbage—he eats 300-course feasts of bear paw and monkey brains—so there has to be some storytelling hook to bring the cabbage to the emperor: He is out late so the kitchens have closed and there is nothing else to serve; he is somewhere rural and poor and cold so there is nothing but cabbage. You get the point. Also, he is in disguise, so whoever is serving him cabbage can be forgiven for the offense....

"But here’s the interesting thing about this origin story: There is no evidence that Qianlong cabbage existed at all before the 2000s...."


Click through to see what Zoe found about its true origins—and, of course, to make this easy stunner! 

Kou Shui Ji

Mouthwatering Sichuan Chicken Salad

Another sauce made entirely from pantry ingredients gives this Sichuan cold chicken dish its name: kou shui ji, 口水鸡, or saliva chicken, which we'll translate as drool-worthy or mouthwatering chicken.

The Sichuan canon has multiple variations on cold chicken in red-hot oil, where chicken in various forms is dressed in high-quality chili oil along with varying proportions of soy sauce, black vinegar, sesame oil, sugar, Sichuan pepper, Sichuan pepper oil and, often, Chinese sesame paste.

Truth be told, you could put this sauce on anything and it would be mouthwatering, but when you put it on perfectly poached/steamed/rotisseried chicken, it's a combo that deserves its constant presence and myriad variations on Sichuan menus.

This is one of my earliest recipes on the blog, which I've updated and revised slightly for its 10th birthday. It makes the abundance of sauce you need to float the chicken in the dressing, but you can use any leftover to sauce dumplings or noodles. (Fongchong said it made a terrific lunch last week on our knife-cut noodles after she finished off the chicken.) 

Two tips:

  • This is the place to use your premium sauces. Because they won't be subjected to heat, the full flavors will shine through. 
  • There's no shame in applying the kou shui treatment to a Costco (or any other store-bought) rotisserie chicken. After all, it's all about that sauce! 
Cuizi Small-Mill Roasted Sesame Oil (Cold-Pressed)
Cuizi Small-Mill Roasted Sesame Oil (Cold-Pressed)
$14.00
Back in stock!: The sesame oil from Cuizi, the brand that created the artisan production of sesame oil in Shandong, the home of China's best sesame products. Cuizi has inherited a 600-year history of producing sesame oil in a very specific, labor-intensive way for superior color, fragrance and taste.  
 
View
Aged Mandarin Peel (Sun-Dried Tangerine Peel, Xinhui Chenpi)
Aged Mandarin Peel (Sun-Dried Tangerine Peel, Xinhui Chenpi)
$13.00
Back in stock! Xinhui chenpi, or dried mandarin peel from Xinhui, has national geographical indication, officially honoring the district of Jiangmen city in Guangdong province as the maker of the most prized chenpi in China. 

Often translated as tangerine peel, chenpi is actually the peel of the mandarin, a small, slightly flat citrus native to China. The loose skin of the mandarin is the most valuable part of the fruit. It contains 24 kinds of volatile oil components and a high number of flavonoids (according to Baidu Wiki), making it desirable for both culinary and medicinal purposes.


View
Chinese Spice Collection (Star Anise, Cassia Bark, Sand Ginger, Smoked Cao Guo)
Chinese Spice Collection (Star Anise, Cassia Bark, Sand Ginger, Smoked Cao Guo)
$36.00
The return of cassia bark and smoked black cardamom means that our Chinese Spice Collection is also back in stock! 

If you're in braising mode this spring or making chili oil—perhaps for the mouthwatering chicken above—then having the full set comes in handy. Plus, the set sells at a 10% discount off the individual prices. 
 
View
Pixian Red-Oil Doubanjiang  (Juan Cheng Chili Bean Paste With Oil)
Pixian Red-Oil Doubanjiang (Juan Cheng Chili Bean Paste With Oil)
$14.00
Not only is our red-oil Pixian doubanjiang back in stock, but it's new and improved! The company has removed the preservatives from this young version of douban, leaving it pure and all-natural like its older, 3-year version has always been. Use this version of douban with added oil when you want a lighter, fresher chili taste and redder color. Refrigerate once opened. 
 
View
Guangdong Wide Rice Noodles (Ho Fun, He Fen for Chow Fun)
Guangdong Wide Rice Noodles (Ho Fun, He Fen for Chow Fun)
$18.00
Our popular noodles for chow fun are back! 

These semi-wide, flat noodles, called ho fun (or he fen in Mandarin), are made in Shaoguan, a city in northern Guangdong, bordering Hunan. Shiny and semi-transparent, they are made only of rice flour and water according to local traditions and methods then formed by hand into 16 bundles. 

This is a large bag of noodles (almost 2.5 pounds), and it will make at least five plates of beef chow fun or other stir-fried noodles or many bowls of soup noodles (another good use!). 

Note that the instructions in English on the bag are to soak the noodles in warm water before stir-frying to rehydrate and partially soften them. I never found that sufficient to soften them and sometimes gave them a quick blanche in boiling water as well. But some of you mentioned that this made them too soft for stir-frying. The company's new packaging notes in Chinese that an alternate method to the longer soak in warm water is to simply soak the noodles in boiling water from a kettle for 3 to 5 minutes. I now find this to be the perfect method for prepping them for a stir-fry, producing the best textural starting point. 

I have updated my beef chow fun recipe to reflect this method as well as other hacks I've worked out for using the dried ho fun to get as close as possible to fresh noodles.