This week’s recipes are a nod to Chinese new year which takes place next weekend, celebrating the year of the dragon. It would be easy to fall into the trap of fakeaway when it comes to these dishes, but I hate that word. I don’t know what it is; perhaps it’s the suggestion that what you make at home is a fake version of the real thing, when in fact you can cook far more authentically in your own kitchen.
Having said that, I’m often the first person to pick up the phone to order food when even a hint of fatigue crosses my mind, but it’s usually for the local pizza place or Indian. For the record, my go-to pizza topping is nduja, my Indian order is anything slow-cooked lamb and the chipper is goujons and chips. The latter basically monsooned in vinegar with a heavy dusting of salt, wedged between batch bread with mayonnaise for company. More on that some other time.
Chinese takeaway in this country often has little to do with real Chinese food. When I studied on Cathal Brugha Street, a group of us would often break up the study sessions around exam time with dinner at M&L restaurant on Cathedral Street. It was like stepping into a time warp, and certainly out of Dublin’s north inner city. It specialised, and still does, in regional Sichuan cuisine.
The key was to ask for the Chinese menu and have the server translate. There was everything from soft-shell crab to stir-fried whelks and the famous green beans with pork and chilli. One that stood out was the authentic version of kung pao chicken, a dish of roulette where getting caught out with one of the mind-numbing dried chillies could spell the end of dinner (and definitely the end of study).
This dish was nothing like the generic version; it was packed with crisp chicken glazed in sauce, with just-cooked vegetables, loads of garlic and highly seasoned peanuts. To this day I still don’t know what M&L stands for, but I know it’s some of the best Chinese food I’ve ever eaten.
The first recipe today – Kung Pao chicken – is a nod to the real thing. You can play roulette if you wish by adding some whole dried chillies. I’ve left them out for now.
The second is a recipe inspired by the late, great Anthony Bourdain. For me he was, and will always be, the greatest narrator of food and its wider meaning. His TV shows were three-dimensional, bringing you beyond food into the belly of what it meant to a society, its people and a place.
I vividly remember one of his earliest episodes of No Reservations, exploring the underground scenes of New York’s multicultural cuisine. Xi’an Famous Foods was the location, just off St Mark’s Place, near Broadway.
It focused on regional western Chinese food, with influences from the Middle Eastern spice traders that travelled the Old Silk Road. The dish was hand-ripped noodles with braised oxtail and chilli, served in white bowls atop beaten wooden tables. I’ve basically just stolen his narration from the episode here, but it proves how lasting his words on food have proved to be. I was lucky enough to retrace his steps in 2016 and taste the dish, and I have created a recipe you can replicate at home. Raise a beer to Bourdain if you do.
