Vegetables in Water (素瓜豆/蘸水菜)
How to put vegetables inside of water - a Guizhou homecooking classic.
In this video, we wanted to show you how to put vegetables inside of water.
You can use any sort of hearty vegetable for this. What you’ll do is bring a pot of water up to a boil, and boil you vegetable in it. For example:
Green beans: 3 minutes
Squash: 3 minutes
Zucchini: 30 seconds
Broccoli: 30 seconds
Bitter melon: 30 seconds
Pour the vegetable together with the hot water into a bowl, allow it to cool down.
Drink the water as a sort of 'soup' alongside your meal. It has a nice mellow sweetness to it. And if you're one of those people wondering how to boil vegetables without losing nutrients, hey, there's an idea right there.
To eat, just take that vegetable out of the water, and dip it in your awesome homemade Guizhou style chili dipping sauce… which is, of course, the actual centerpiece of this dish:
Classic Deep Toasted Chili Dip (煳辣椒蘸水)
First, make a batch of deeply toasted chili flakes – we used 15g of a Guizhou cultivar called Guizhou longhorn, but you could use Arbols, Cayennes, Sichuan erjingtiao, etc etc. Any medium-spicy red dried C. Annum or Frutescens is fine. Snip into ~1 inch sections, then toast them over a medium-low flame for ~8 minutes, or until chestnut colored. Discard any leftover seeds in the bottom of the pan, then pound or blitz the toasted chilis into flakes.
We’ll use 2 tbsp’s worth for this dip, save the extra for other dishes.
Deep toasted chili flakes, 2 tbsp. Thai Prik Bon would also work well for this.
Sichuan peppercorn powder (花椒粉), ¼ tsp.
Salt, ⅛ tsp.
Sugar, ⅛ tsp.
MSG (味精), ⅛ tsp.
Soy sauce (生抽), 1 tsp.
Fermented tofu (腐乳), 1 cube.
Garlic, 1 clove. Minced.
Ginger, ½ cm. Minced.
Scallion, 15g. Chopped.
Cilantro, 15g. Chopped.
Cool vegetable water, 3 tbsp.
Mix all of the above together.
Guizhou Chili Oil Dip (油辣椒蘸水)
Lao Gan Ma Chili Crisp (香辣脆油辣椒) or Fried Chili in Oil (油辣椒), 2 tbsp.
Soy sauce (生抽), 1 tsp.
Dark Chinese vinegar (陈醋/香醋), ½ tsp or rice vinegar, or whatever vinegar.
Salt, ¼ tsp.
MSG (味精), ⅛ tsp.
Garlic, 1 clove. Minced.
Scallion, 15g. Chopped.
Cilantro, 15g. Chopped.
Toasted sesame seeds (熟芝麻), 1 tbsp. Optional.
Cool vegetable water, 3 tbsp.
Mix all of the above together.
Roasted Fresh Chili Dip (烧椒蘸水)
We used 250g of fresh mild chili (青辣椒) for this. Poblanos would be perfect. Jalapenos would work but I’d worry about seed quantity (you might want to use a bit more, and de-seed them). Anaheims would also work but it might be a little on the mild side.
Roast 30 minutes at 190C, flipping halfway through. Once roasted, remove the stems and chop the rest up into a paste.
Roasted chili paste from above.
Salt, ¼ tsp.
MSG (味精), ⅛ tsp.
Soy sauce (生抽), 2 tsp.
Dark Chinese vinegar (陈醋/香醋), ½ tsp or rice vinegar, or whatever vinegar.
Garlic, 1 clove. Minced.
Toasted sesame oil (麻油). Amount not specified.
Scallion, 10g. Chopped.
Cool vegetable water, 3 tbsp.