February 2024: Huajiao Harvest + New Hotpot Recipes

February 07, 2024

Qingxi Tribute Pepper

Dragon Spice

Greetings, Friends of The Mala Market!

Just in time to breathe a little fire into the Year of the Dragon, the huajiao harvest is in the house! If you ordered Sichuan pepper in the past couple weeks you've been getting the freshest of the fresh. (But don't worry if you ordered before that; the previous harvest still has a long and potent shelf life.)

We've also got two new recipes this week for hotpot. Tis the season for festive, communal hotpot gatherings of all kinds, especially during the next two weeks of Lunar New Year celebrations. Keep scrolling for palate- and mind-expanding flavors!

 

Xin nian kuai le! 

🌶 Taylor & Fongchong 🌶

P.S. While this week's recipes are all about the spice, find a mild but luxurious complement to them in our Hotpot Deep Dive: including Coconut Chicken Hotpot from Hainan Island.
 
Guizhou Suantang Hotpot

Guizhou's Sour Soup Hotpot


Though rarely encountered in the U.S., Guizhou’s Hot and Sour Tomato Hotpot (酸汤火锅, suāntāng huǒguō) is a wonderful broth variation to add to your repertoire. Made from fermented tomatoes and fermented chilies, it is a punchy, piquant broth that kisses any ingredient you put into it with the perfect balance of savory, spicy and sour.

Guizhou Province, cradled between Sichuan, Hunan, Guangxi and Yunnan, is not only the chili pepper capital of China (and where all our dried chilies are grown), it is also a hotbed of fermentation. This dish is part of the Miao culinary tradition, an ethnic group that uses a dazzling array of ferments in their cooking, according to Zoe Yang, an experienced maker of all kinds of unique ferments who we asked to tackle this recipe for us.

In the end, she found it to be much easier than you would think. Though you have to wait 2-3 weeks for your soup base to lacto-ferment, after that it's a breeze. And once you've mastered the fermentation step, you might even want to make a giant batch in a Chinese pickling jar

As Zoe says, "You can use this broth for tomato hotpot, but you can also use it to poach whole fish or slices of fish to make Sour Soup Fish, fatty beef slices to make Guizhou-style Sour Soup Beef, or simply as a noodle soup broth. Unlike mala broth, it’s gentle enough to be sipped or spooned over rice."

And as if you need another endorsement of this mind-blowing flavor, our friends at Chinese Cooking Demystified, frequent visitors to Guizhou, had these instructions for a noodle soup: "...Suantang—probably both mine and Steph’s all-time favorite dish. The base is a mix of fermented tomatoes and chilis—the short story of the dish is to fry up aromatics with a bit of lard, add in the base, add in pork stock, and boil some rice noodles inside."

I love how Zoe served her suantang hotpot with skewers (chuan chuan style), but of course you can do it the easy way.

Keep reading to the end of this newsletter for two videos that will further whet your appetite for suantang in its many forms. 

New Harvest Huajiao


This is our buyer Suki checking out the gongjiao, or Tribute pepper, near the end of the Sichuan pepper growing season. Every year, she and Charlotte make the trip out to Qingxi village in Hanyuan County—home of China's most famed Sichuan pepper—to see how the year's crop is progressing and lay claim to our lot of this extremely limited-supply huajiao. 

As always, all of our Sichuan pepper is hand-picked by the farmer, which itself is a marvel—look at the ferocity of those thorns! (I once met an elder farmer there who still harvested without gloves.) It is then machine-sorted once and hand-sorted twice to ensure there are no twigs or seeds in the resulting, pristine product. 

If you're a longtime fan of Sichuan pepper, don't forget to mix it up. All the varieties have different flavors:
If you're new to Sichuan pepper, check out our thorough guide to cooking with and storing the numbing spice. It also includes dozens of huajiao-forward recipes. 
 
Green Sichuan Pepper Fish

Green Sichuan Pepper Fish, Hotpot Style


This dish, 藤椒鱼, called tengjiaoyu in Chinese, is fish filets in a sea of green vegetables, green chilies, green Sichuan pepper and green Sichuan pepper oil. If you’ve met and liked red Sichuan pepper, then you have to meet its green cousin, which is a different species and has an altogether different aroma and flavor. It’s more floral and fresh tasting, more spring and summer, vs. red Sichuan pepper’s earthy and warming, fall and winter taste.

 

Tengjiao, sometimes called vine pepper or rattan pepper in English, actually refers to a slightly different green-colored Sichuan pepper than qinghuajiao and is usually eaten fresh. In Chengdu itself, you’d find a branch—or five—of fresh green tengjiao on top of this dish (and many others). It would be just-picked if it was the summer harvest season. You rarely if ever see fresh tengjiao in the U.S., however, because the only good preservation technique is freezing and, even then, it’s really not the same as fresh tengjiao.

Fortunately for us, the other way that tengjiao can be preserved is in oil. Our Yaomazi tengjiao oil is made from just-picked tengjiao, the essence and numbing potency nicely preserved in the cold-pressed rapeseed oil. So we use both dried green Sichuan pepper and tengjiao oil to top this dish and make it taste of Sichuan.

Some of you may remember that I originally published this recipe in 2017, trying to replicate Chengdu Taste's beloved Boiled Fish in Green Pepper Sauce. But I since realized that I took too many shortcuts with that dish—which, when it comes down to it, is basically shuizhuyu with green chilies and tengjiao oil vs doubanjiang and red huajiao. The recipe now more closely follows the method for making shuizhuyu and is all the better for it. 

Plus, I've added alternative instructions for serving it hotpot style, over a flame (or induction) burner so the stock stays hot over a leisurely dinner spent fishing out the delectable morsels of fish and veg.
Green Sichuan Pepper (Szechuan Peppercorn, Qing Hua Jiao)
Green Sichuan Pepper (Szechuan Peppercorn, Qing Hua Jiao)
$15.00
View
Yaomazi Green Sichuan Pepper Oil (Rattan Pepper Oil, Teng Jiao You)
Yaomazi Green Sichuan Pepper Oil (Rattan Pepper Oil, Teng Jiao You)
$16.00
View
Brass Hotpot
Brass Hotpot
$130.00
View
Gold Stainless Steel Hotpot
Gold Stainless Steel Hotpot
$130.00
View
Blondie in China eating suantangyu

Eating Sour Soup Fish in Guizhou


My current favorite YouTube series is Blondie in China, a weekly show wherein the young Aussie eats her way around China for our vicarious thrills. It makes me miss the country even more, but also gives us abundant tips for our long-awaited next trip (in May!). 

Blondie, aka Amy, recently visited Guiyang, the capital city of Guizhou, and sought out a famous suantang fish restaurant. Here it was served hotpot style, with whole little fish dumped straight into the bubbling pot of fermented sour soup. (I've linked straight to the good part. Note that it's mis-captioned as Sichuan.)

And this video, from the Guizhou Tourism Board, profiles a Miao restaurateur as she makes the famous dish. 

Watch these and then go make Zoe's recipe for it!
 
Soup Base for Mala Hot Pot (Sichuan Hot Pot, Mala Huo Guo, Mala Tang, Chuan Chuan Xiang)
Soup Base for Mala Hot Pot (Sichuan Hot Pot, Mala Huo Guo, Mala Tang, Chuan Chuan Xiang)
$11.00
The store-favorite mala hotpot base is back in stock! 
View
Double Flavor Hot Pot Base: Spicy Mala + Porcini Mushroom
Double Flavor Hot Pot Base: Spicy Mala + Porcini Mushroom
$9.00
You get two for one in this hotpot base—a mala broth and a mushroom broth for your divided, yin-yang hotpot.
View