While I was in France this summer, helping out on the singing course that my mum organises, I was entreated many times to cook a Chinese dish. Though at first I was enthusiastic about this idea, I began to get cold feet when I realized that, being in deepest rural France, I could get very few of the necessary ingredients. I worried that anything I produced would be inauthentic, and thus no good.

After much cajoling, however, I gave in, and decided to cook a cold aubergine dish. This was a dish I’d made many times in China, but it needed some serious adaptation for cooking in France. I did have with me some of the authentic Chinese ingredients, such as ground chilies and fermented black beans, but everything else was just whatever I had to hand.

The result was a somewhat odd, Asian-European fusion dish, which surprisingly, actually ended up being quite good. Given the improvisational nature of its creation, writing a recipe for this dish is, I know, a bit contradictory in spirit. Nonetheless, I thought I’d write it up for those occasions when one wants Asian flavour, but may lack a few of the ingredients.

Sichuan-en-France Cold Aubergine

1 aubergine
Cooking oil
1 tablespoon of any Asian soy sauce (Tamari and Shoyu are both fine)
1 tablespoon cider, wine or fruit vinegar
1 tablespoon chili oil (see below)
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon fermented black beans (dou chi), rinsed and drained
Salt to taste
Fresh mint leaves, roughly chopped

1. First, make the chili oil by heating a jarful of cooking oil in a frying pan or wok, and once smoking hot, adding it to a bowl containing 2-3 tablespoons of ground chilies. Mix well, and allow to cool before using.
2. Chop the aubergine into finger-length chunks, toss in some cooking oil, and then roast in a hot oven until thoroughly cooked.
3. Make the sauce by combining the soy sauce and vinegar with the sugar in a small bowl. Mix well so as to dissolve the sugar in the liquid, and then add the chili oil, fermented black beans and salt.
4. Once the cooked aubergines have cooled to room temperature, place on a serving plate. Drizzle with the sauce, garnish with the mint leaves, and serve.

I couldn’t agree more. The above quotation is from ‘A Room of One’s Own’, Virginia Woolf’s famous treatise on women and fiction, which I’m currently re-reading. I first read this book some four or five years ago while at university, but having not fully given in to my foodie impulses then, failed to take much notice of this lovely passage:

'Lunch on this occasion began with soles, sunk in a deep dish, over which the collage cook had spread a counterpane of the whitest cream, save that it was branded here and there with brown spot like the spots on the flanks of a doe.

After that came the partridges, but if this suggests a couple of bald, brown birds on a plate you are mistaken. The partridges, many and various, came with all their retinue of sauces and salads, the sharp and the sweet, each in its order; their potatoes, thin as coins but not so hard; their sprouts, foliated as rosebuds but more succulent.

And no sooner had the roast and its retinue been done with that the serving-man…set before us, wreathed in napkins, a confection which rose all sugar from the waves. To call it pudding and so relate it to rice and tapioca would be an insult.’

Surely one of the most vivid descriptions of food you’re likely to find in literature. This lunch, at one of the male colleges, provides a stark contrast to Woolf’s dinner later the same day, at Girton, then Cambridge’s only college for women. This second meal is an altogether sparser affair, consisting only of ‘plain gravy soup’, beef, potatoes and greens, prunes and custard, and finally, cheese and biscuits served with water. Girton’s difficulty in obtaining funds, because it is an all-female establishment, mean that ‘the amenities' (ie. good food) 'have to wait.’

All this got me thinking about the food provisions at Sussex University, where I studied, and which were, to put it bluntly, pretty crap. There wasn’t even a canteen. At times, there was nothing to be found except tired, pre-packaged sandwiches. Anybody who cared about what they ate invariably brought their own food. It was, as I said, dire.

But miraculously, magically, once or twice a week we were saved by Gordon and Elena. This middle-aged couple from nearby Lewes, sometimes helped out by their children or friends, would arrive on campus with two enormous paella pans, portable gas burners, spices, and dozens of boxes of chopped-up vegetables. In the hour or so before the lunch break, they would fry up the vegetables in one pan, and an accompanying bean and tomato sauce in the other. ‘Poor Man’s Potatoes’ was what they dubbed their cheap but delicious concoction, which was served in aluminum take-away boxes, heaped with fresh coriander and spicy pickles. I and my friends adored this food, and would always arrive early to ensure we got some before it all sold out (and it usually did).

In the end though, Poor Man’s Potatoes’ popularity proved to be its undoing. The university catering services realized that they were losing business to this outsider, and Gordon and Elena’s license to serve on campus was revoked. There was a brief campaign to bring them back, but in the end, faced with the brick wall of university bureaucracy, Gordon and Elena gave up and found other places to serve their food.

My friends and I have reminisced many a time about Poor Man’s Potatoes, which was fuel for much of our thinking, loving and sleeping while we were at university. Virginia Woolf would, I think, have approved greatly of Gordon and Elena, and so, in grateful thanks to them, here is my own interpretation of their legendary dish.

Poor Man’s Potatoes

For the potatoes:
Potatoes, cooked
Cabbage
Onions
Any other vegetable you happen to have lying around
Garlic
Coriander seeds
Cumin seeds
Fennel seeds
Turmeric
Any other spice you fancy
Cooking oil

For the bean and tomato sauce:
Any bean (kidney, butter, chickpea are all good), cooked
Tomatoes or tomato puree
Onions
Garlic
Paprika

To serve:
Fresh coriander leaves
Spicy pickles

1. Chop all the vegetables into bite-sized chunks.
2. In a pan, fry the onions and garlic. Once slightly brown, add the garlic and paprika, and then add the tomatoes and beans. Turn the heat down low, cover and leave to simmer.
3. In a large frying-pan or wok, fry the onions and garlic. Add the potatoes and all other vegetables, mix well and stir-fry until cooked.
4. Add the spices to the vegetables, mix well and cook for a couple more minutes.
5. Serve the potatoes with a generous topping of the sauce, fresh coriander, and spicy pickles on the side.

This post is a long time in the coming - I went to the workshop where they make this quintessential Sichuan product way back in May, but at the time had all sorts of website problems and so couldn't post. Then, when I'd finally sorted out the lovely new site that you see before you, I'd been recruited to write an article about doubanjiang for Chengdoo Citylife Magazine as the first installment of my new column, so I had to wait until that came out before posting on my blog.

Luckily, the issue carrying my doubanjiang piece came out last week, so I am now free to post the article here! If you don't live in Chengdu and want to see it in the magazine, you can view a PDF version at this address.

So, here it is, with a few minor changes for those living outside China. Enjoy!

Doubanjiang, or in English, chilli bean paste, is one of the most essential foodstuffs in the Sichuanese kitchen. It is a vital ingredient in many of the most famous dishes of the region – Mapo Tofu, Shuizhu Beef, Twice-cooked Pork – and it is also often added in small quantities to jazz up a simple dish like fried rice or noodles.

The literal meaning of doubanjiang, ‘beans mixed into sauce’, hints at one of its two main ingredients: hu dou, the fava or broad bean. Legend has it that these beans were brought to Sichuan by immigrants from the central plains of China after the population of Chengdu was decimated at the end of the Ming Dynasty. By the time they had finished their long journey, it is said, the beans had started to go off in the humid new climate; not wanting to waste what they had brought, the immigrants mixed their beans with local chillies, thereby inadvertently creating what we now know as doubanjiang.

The traditional ingredients in doubanjiang are minimal – fresh chillies, beans, salt and wheat flour. The method for producing it is similarly simple, but makes up in length for what it lacks in complexity. First, fresh chillies are pulverised and left to ferment in large earthen-ware containers; after 5 months the beans and other ingredients are added, and then the whole lot is left to ferment for another several months.

In total, the process of making doubanjiang should take at least a year, although nowadays less scrupulous producers add various extra ingredients – soy sauce, MSG and others – to enhance the flavour and cut down on the fermenting time.

The real, slow-baked deal, however, can be found just outside Chengdu in Pixian, where the Zhao Feng He company has been producing doubanjiang using only traditional methods since 1666. In their courtyard, thousands of earthen-ware pots are neatly arranged according to their level in the fermentation process. The doubanjiang here is mixed everyday, the lids of the pots taken off in good weather, and the product is left to ferment for at least two years before being sold to private customers only. Various ages of doubanjiang are available at Zhao Feng He, including an eight year-old, limited vintage - the finest and most unadulterated doubanjiang in China.

It’s also probably the most expensive doubanjiang in China, so unless you’re a total Sichuan food obsessive I recommend getting something a bit less pricy. In China, you can buy doubanjiang loose from the market, but the packaged versions are, I think, better quality. Various companies advertise their product as real Pixian doubanjiang; check that the ingredients list has no more than five ingredients to be sure you’re getting the good stuff. In Britain and the US, Lee Kum Kee’s chilli bean sauce is a good imitation and available at most oriental shops.

Finally, note that doubanjiang should be used sparingly – it can be almost overwhelmingly pungent if added with a heavy hand.

Doubanjiang Recipe:
Fish-Fragrant Eggplant (Yu Xiang Qiezi)

Adapted from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Sichuan Cookery

2 medium-sized eggplants
Vegetable or peanut oil
1 ½ tablespoons of doubanjiang
3 teaspoons of freshly chopped ginger
3 teaspoons of freshly chopped garlic
150ml of water
1 ½ teaspoons of sugar
1 teaspoon of light soy sauce
2 teaspoons of black vinegar
4 spring onions, sliced into 3cm chunks
1 teaspoon of cornstarch mixed with 1 tablespoon of water
1 teaspoon of sesame oil

1. Remove either end of the eggplants, cut into 4 quarters and then slice each quarter lengthways into 3 or 4 chucks.
2. In a wok, heat up about 3 tablespoons of oil. Add the eggplants when hot, and stir-fry until almost done (about 3-5 minutes). Place into a serving bowl.
3. Wash the wok if necessary, and then heat up another 1-2 tablespoons of oil. Add the doubanjiang and stir-fry for about 20 seconds until the oil is red and fragrant; add the ginger and garlic and continue to stir-fry for about another 30 seconds. Take care not to burn the flavourings – turn down the heat if necessary.
4. Add the water, sugar, soy sauce and mix well.
5. Once the liquid is boiling return the eggplants to the wok and let them simmer for a few minutes to absorb the flavours.
6. Now add the vinegar, spring onions and salt, and cook until the onions are soft. Add the starch and water mixture and stir to thicken the sauce.
7. Finally, turn off the heat, stir in the sesame oil and serve.

Last Saturday, while I was at the Earth Day event at the Bookworm, I picked up some purple potatoes grown by a local organic farm. I would have bought some anyway, but I was particularly impelled to do so having had a conversation with a Chinese friend about them the very night before. Rui waxed lyrical about the purple potatoes he'd eaten in Gansu province, and how they are very hard to find in Chengdu. Seeing them not 12 hours after Rui's words, of course I had to buy him some, and a few for myself too.

This week I've been rather busy and haven't had much time to cook, but the other day, almost a full week after I bought them, I finally got to use my purple potatoes. I decided to make a simple potato salad, using a mixture of the purple potatoes and normal ones, dressed with lemon juice, sesame oil, garlic and sesame seeds, and sprinkled with some finely chopped red onions and cucumber. The result was both rather pretty and rather tasty – although having said that, I couldn't really discern a difference in taste between the purple and normal potatoes in the salad; and at about 3 times the price of normal varieties, a purple potato habit is not one I think I should get into.

Although it's been quite a while since I studied Mathematics (and even then I was not, to be honest, ever any good at it), nonetheless I've recently been feeling like a modern-day Archimedes. Why, you ask? Because I've discovered a culinary formula equal in brilliance to e=mc2!

OK, so maybe that's exaggerating it a little, but really, this is quite a discovery.

First, take a vegetable; any plain, not very flavorsome vegetable – courgette perhaps, or better still, bamboo – you know, the kind of vegetable that lies around for ages after you've bought it, the kind of vegetable you see and think “Ooo, that'll be nice”, and now you're wondering what to do with it. Take said vegetable, and cut into thinish slivers (about half a cm thick).

Now, finely chop perhaps 3 cloves of garlic, and cut up a few spring onions into 5cm long chunks.

Next, the cooking part. Heat up a couple of tablespoons of vegetable/groundnut/canola oil in your wok, add the garlic, and almost immediately afterwards add the vegetable slices. Stir-fry on a high heat until pretty much almost cooked, leaving it for a minute or so every now and then so the veggies get nicely golden. Add the spring onions, and a minute or so later add 1-2 tablespoon of soy sauce. Fry the whole lot for another 30 seconds, season with salt, turn off the heat, add about half a tablespoon of sesame oil and.......

TAA DAA! A rather boring, somewhat tasteless vegetable is transformed into a delicious, mouthwatering piece of edible art. Served with freshly steamed white rice this dish is a brilliant quick, healthy and ridiculously easy dinner for one; or, of course, it can be served alongside other dishes as part of a larger meal. Feel free to improvise; my current favourite is bamboo shoots (竹笋 zhu2sun3) and green pepper slices, but as long as you stick to the magic formula (garlic+spring onions)+(soy sauce+sesame oil) you really can't go wrong.