From the Home of Chili Crisp
Greetings, Friends of The Mala Market,
I read recently that bistros are all the rage in China's large cities right now and that a majority of these bistros serve "Yun Gui Chuan" food along with the wine. That's right: Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan cuisines! The spicy, sour, bold cuisines of China's Southwest are also (predominantly) what we serve up at The Mala Market, and this month we bring you the next product in our own Yun Gui Chuan lineup: Guizhou Chili Crisp straight out of Guiyang! Last summer, FC and I and her boyfriend, Hao, who lives in Chongqing, spent a few days in Guizhou eating every chili sauce in site. This is a more daunting task than it sounds, as Guizhou is the home of chili crisp and there are infinite variations on it there. Click here or on the photo at top to see a 1-minute video I made of a shop in an "ancient town" near Guiyang that sells literally dozens of chili oils, fermented sauces and pickled vegetables—in other words, a glimpse of heaven! We left Guizhou with two clear faves: the sauce we're calling Mala Market Guizhou Chili Crisp and a second equally delicious but different sauce that will launch later in the year. And speaking of new sauces, how are you liking our new Sichuan Mala Sauce for Stir-Fry and Dry Pot? Some of you are raving and even "have literal tears in your eyes" as the flavor takes you back to China, but we'd sure like to hear from more of you with a review at the bottom of the product page. Are you getting creative with it like these folks?
Enjoy!
🌶 Taylor & Fongchong 🌶
P.S. You didn't think I'd get through a whole newsletter without mentioning tariffs, did you? The rates on the 50+ food products we import now range from 153% to 188%. We're hoping against hope that the parties come to the table by the time our next container arrives in late May—or drastic measures will be necessary to pay our exorbitant unexpected tax bill on products that could never be made in the U.S. In the meantime, we truly appreciate all of you who have sent words of encouragement and support—or shopped with us in solidarity. We will not raise prices significantly until we have to. Read more on this below....
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Guizhou Chili Crisp (Specialty of Guiyang)
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$14.00
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All together now: "You can never have too many chili oils and crisps!"
While Sichuan is renowned for its chili oil, Guizhou Province is the home of the type of chili oil that's chock-full of crispy bits and nuts and is referred to as chili crisp or chili crunch in English.
We can thank Lao Gan Ma for taking this style of chili sauce from Guizhou to the far corners of the world, but "The Godmother" is not the only maker of Guizhou-style chili crisp. The Mala Market's Guizhou Chili Crisp is also made in the province, in the same style as LGM but with quite a different taste, with high-quality ingredients and without the preservatives or gluten.
Made to order for us in small batches, it uses all-premium ingredients, starting with a blend of Guizhou's famous chilies. (Guizhou is well-known to have the best chilies in China, and all of The Mala Market's dried chili stock are grown there.)
Like our Chengdu Crispy Chili Oil, it also starts with a base of cold-pressed roasted rapeseed oil, which gives chili oil throughout Southwest China its inimitable taste. It also has bits of crispy garlic and ginger and whole roasted peanuts, which are a delight in a smashed cucumber salad or other cold dish. Otherwise, you know what to do with it: Put it on everything!
We taste-tested our way through Guizhou, and this was the best, moderately hot chili crisp we found. Thanks to the locals' unmatched know-how with chilies, its relatively few ingredients deliver a powerfully tasty punch.
Note its generous size of 8 ounces in a world of 5-6 ounce chili crisps.
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Fujian Stir-Fried Rice Noodles
(We're not saying you should put our Guizhou chili crisp on these Fujian stir-fried rice noodles—they have more than enough flavor on their own—but some of us rarely meet a noodle or rice dish that isn't a magnet for chili oil...)
I was surprised to learn, as you may be, that stir-fried rice vermicelli noodles such as these originated in the coastal province of Fujian. Clarissa Wei brings us this recipe:
"Once upon a summer in college," Clarissa writes, "I spent a dreamy couple of months at a friend's family home in Xiamen, Fujian, where I fell in love with one of the dishes they cooked and ate almost every day: stir-fried rice vermicelli (chǎo mǐfěn, 炒米粉).
"Made with delicate strands of sun-dried rice noodles, the dish arrived at the table laden with slivers of pork, earthy mushrooms and crisp seasonal vegetables. It was almost always the main carb of the evening, a hearty base for a convivial, family-style spread of dishes like steamed shrimp, stir-fried cabbage, tea eggs and oyster omelettes. Unlike the drier, more restrained versions I grew up with in Taiwan, this Xiamen rendition was bolder—glossy with two different types of soy sauce and heady with aromatics.
"I'm not the only one to have fallen for this dish. It is so popular that it has spread outside of mainland China, particularly through the Hokkien diaspora, and is now often found in places like Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia. A staple that originated right where I first had it, in the eastern Chinese province of Fujian, this rice noodle is thought to date back to the 4th and 5th centuries, when northern Han Chinese migrants brought their noodle-making traditions down south and adapted them to the region’s abundant harvest of rice. Today, it is common all throughout the Chinese-speaking world, though specific regional differences are hard to pinpoint since most modifications are based on personal preferences."
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Xinjiang Lamb Pilaf
Another super interesting recipe and history of a dish comes to us from Sean St John:
"It’s a bit controversial to say this in China, but I’ve never been a fan of rice. Luckily, I live in Beijing, so rice is easy to avoid; most restaurants in the capital serve flatbreads, steamed buns or dumplings. However, on a visit to Urumqi a few years ago, a friend of mine insisted we try Xinjiang lamb pilaf (yángròu zhūafàn, 羊肉抓饭) from the Uyghur quarter. We found a local restaurant and sat upstairs so I could peer into the kitchen. I watched the cooks serving up the rice from a huge iron pot known as a qazan, an ancient vessel from Central Asia that is similar to a wok but with taller sides....
"There are four main ingredients in a Xinjiang lamb pilaf (yángròu zhūafàn, 羊肉抓饭): rice, lamb, raisins and carrots. A low heat transforms these simple elements into something special. The rice plumps up with the broth, the carrots turn buttery, the lamb falls apart, and the raisins pop with sweetness. In the years since that initial introduction to the dish, I have travelled all over Xinjiang, and I’ve found that every Uyghur cook puts their twist on this dish....
"Zhuafan likely originated during the Tang dynasty, and it would have fallen under the general category of dishes known as húbǐng (胡饼), which referred to foreign-influenced foods introduced into China via the Silk Road. (In ancient China “Hu” referred to non-Han ethnic groups, while “bing” referred to all staple foods, such as rice and other grains.)...
"Rice, in fact, would have travelled through the Silk Route in both directions: It came to the area from India, via the Kashmir and Karakoram routes and across the Taklamakan Desert, and it likely also came up from Southern China, traveling through Xinjiang before heading across the border to Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and beyond. Rice ultimately became so popular here that people even experimented with cultivating it, usually planting it close to lakes, where irrigation is easier. As the local Uyghur population of Xinjiang became accustomed to these delicious grains, they created dishes that were distinctly theirs, such as this regional style of pilaf."
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Potsticker Tomato Salad
When The New York Times first published this recipe for potstickers in a tomato-chili-crisp salad awhile back, my initial, purist reaction was, "um, NO." But I eventually gave Hetty Lui McKinnon's recipe a try and found it to be genius! If you're a fan of the individual ingredients, combining them makes a glorious, fresh and spicy light meal out of dumplings. And that's especially true if you're using ripe tomatoes, tasty chili crisp, aged black vinegar and premium soy sauce. We've got you covered on those pantry items! Here is her recipe and here is my slight adaptation:
- Cut about 8 ripe Campari tomatoes into quarters and place in a serving bowl. Add 2 tablespoons Shanxi or Zhenjiang vinegar, 2 tablespoons Zhongba soy sauce and 2 tablespoons Guizhou Chili Crisp (or Chengdu Crispy Chili Oil) and mix well. Let tomatoes sit and marinate
- Make a large pan-full of potstickers, about 18, or a 1-pound bag, as per your usual method or package instructions. (After all these years, our favorite remains Trader Joe's Thai Shrimp Gyoza, believe it or not.)
- Add the hot dumplings to the bowl with the dressed tomatoes and gently toss together. Garnish with 1 more tablespoon chili crisp along with store-bought Viet/Thai caramelized shallots (another genius ingredient) and a fresh herb such as basil or cilantro. We use zisu (shiso) because we grow it and love it.
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Buzzworthy
- Here is the fun article on the Yun Gui Chuan bistros, where they serve "signature dishes like pig’s knuckle in sour soup, fried morel, tea-flavored chicken feet with chili pepper, and chicken stewed with bamboo mushrooms and figs." We'll definitely search out one of these places when we're in Shanghai later this month.
- And speaking of eating in Shanghai, longtime resident/ chef/ journalist/ soup-dumpling-obsessive Chris St. Cavish has just published a guide to his favorite restaurants in Shanghai. It's worth far more than the $5 charged, even if it's just for the read about the Shanghai food scene.
- I spoke to The San Francisco Chronicle for a piece about how the tariffs are affecting that city's Chinese restaurants, including our longtime customer Mister Jiu's. The story's behind a paywall, but here are my favorite quotes from it: ..."Holliday will have to figure out how much to absorb or pass on from a tax bill that will be exponentially higher than she could have planned for. She’s considering for the first time storing new shipments temporarily in bonded customs warehouses to wait out the tariffs. She thinks Mala Market will be able to ride out the uncertainty, 'but it’s going to be extremely challenging,' Holliday said. 'I feel like a lot of businesses aren’t going to survive this because it’s just an outrageous number to deal with.'"
Chef Brandon Jew—who won the 2022 James Beard Award for Best Chef California—points specifically to our Sichuan pepper, aged Pixian douban and 10-year Boaning vinegar: "For Jew," the story continues, "there’s a deeper issue at play: the perceived worth of Chinese food in America. 'Because we were in business the last time Trump was president, what I’m mostly concerned about is the rhetoric of ‘China is bad,’ and what that trickles down to as far as Chinatown and Chinese food,' he said. 'I already feel like a lot of times I’m battling that idea of the worth of Chinese food and its products. When you get these really nice things that I think really make a difference, they’re pricey—and they’re going to be pricier.'"
- I spoke to The Guardian in the same week for a similar story. "For direct importers, like the Mala Market, an online shop, the tariffs on Chinese products threaten its entire business model. Sichuan peppercorns are popular on the site, but it also sells a number of items produced in their original region using traditional methods....'These are products which have been made in that exact area for hundreds if not thousands of years,' said Holliday. 'They have such a history, there’s no way these products can be made anywhere else.'"
- And on a different subject, I spoke to the brilliant Mahira Rivers for the Taste newsletter. She did a deep dive on whether Asian food—in Asia—is getting progressively sweeter, and if so, why. She compares our Fujian oyster sauce, which is 75% oyster and exceptionally savory, with the most popular brands of oyster sauce on the market, which lead with sugar.
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