[Book] Flavor Profile # 10 + Old Recipes Translation

Two more shiitake recipes as previously promised. Also trying out a fun little project for Patreon.

So we loving collecting old and/or weird cookbooks, and we love reading them. They're very fun to explore as we can see many different old recipes, various ways of making certain ingredient that may be obsolete by now, or simply just a good read.

I often have the urge to share these little gems we discovered along the way of collecting more and more dusty old books. But just sending a picture of that page to Discord doesn’t seem to be enough.

And then I thought, why not just keep doing what I love and been doing for more than a decade, translation.

So I decided that sometimes when I see something fun in these books or get an oral recipe from friends family, I would do a little quick translation and share the recipe/content with you guys as a simple recipe or even a transcription. And the two here would be my first attempt.

However, being mostly a translator from English to Chinese, my English writing is passable but never great, so apologies for the rough write up sometimes as I’m also mostly just having fun and not painstakingly polishing my script for hours on end.

Now sometimes these recipes may already be tested by me in the kitchen, or I've cooked that dish for a casual meal, or I never tried it out myself. No matter what, I'll label it in each case as "tested", "casual cooking", or "never tried".

Hope you enjoy!

-Steph

Recipe #3 Three crisps noodles from Shan Jia Qing Gong (The Pristine Culinary Life of the Mountains, 山家清供, by 林洪) 三脆面

So this is a recipe from the South Song Dynasty cookbook/notes Shan Jia Qing Gong (山家清供), written by Lin Hong. It’s a book full of recipes that capture the spirit of the idyllic aesthetic that’s been a pursuit of ancient Chinese intellectuals for thousands of years. Some of the recipes are not too replicable under the modern culinary context because of ambiguity or simply the author’s very creative choice of words, while some are quite simple and straightforward, just like the one that we’re looking into here.

Original text:

山家三脆

嫩笋、小簟、枸杞头入盐汤焯熟，同香熟油、胡椒、盐、少许酱油、滴醋拌食。赵竹溪密夫酷嗜此，或作汤饼以奉亲，名“三脆面”。尝有诗云：“笋簟初萌杞采纤，燃松自煮供亲严。人间玉食何曾鄙，自是山林滋味甜。”簟亦名菰。

Translation:

Three crisps of the mountains

Blanching tender bamboo shoot, small mushroom, and goji shoots in salt water, mix with toasted sesame oil, white pepper, salt, a touch soy sauce and vinegar. Zhao Mifu (a.k.a. Zhuxi) loves this dish. He would also make it with noodles for his parents and name it “three crisps noodles”.

Zhao once wrote a poem about this (apologies for my really rough and not rhyming translation here).

“When bamboo and mushroom are sprouting, I shall as well pick the tender goji leaves;

Pine would be my firewood and the three produce would be my folks’ food;

No shame enjoying delicacies, the mountain and forest bring the sweetness.” 

"Xun(簟)" is also called "gu(菰)".

Before jumping into turning it a recipe, there’s one tricky ingredient we need to decide on. From the script we know it’s bamboo shoot season so that means spring. However, the writer didn’t specify which mushroom is used. We can choose any seasonal spring fungi and because late winter and early spring is still shiitake season, so I’m gonna use shiitake as the mushroom component here. But of course, morel also seem to be a spring time delicacy. And if you’re trying this, feel free to play around your local spring mushroom.

Also, this can either be a soup or a mixed noodle, it's not clear in the script. I always make it a soup.

Ingredient:

• Fresh bamboo shoot (or anything crunchy), julienned or minced, 40g
• Fresh shiitake (or your seasonal fungi of choice), julienned or minced, 40g
• Tender goji leaves (or pea shoots), 40g
• Thin noodles, dried 100g, fresh 160g

For the soup:

• Stock (or water), 1 2/3 cup
• Soy sauce, 1/2 tbsp
• Pure rice vinegar, 1/2 tsp
• Salt, 1/4 tsp
• White pepper, 1/8 tsp
• Toasted sesame oil, 1/2 tsp

Process:

Cut bamboo shoot and mushroom into thin julienne about the thickness of your noodle, or alternatively mince them into half cm cubes. Using only the goji berry leaves, set aside.

Cook your noodles according to the package, once done, lay it into the serving bowl.

At the same time, bring 1 2/3 cup of stock or water to a boil in a separate pot, toss in the mushroom and bamboo shoot, then turn heat to medium and let it simmer for 3 minutes.

After that time, add in the goji leaves the immediately add in all the seasoning except the toasted sesame oil. Mix and heat off.

Pour the soup into the bowl with noodles, drizzle in the toasted sesame oil.

(A picture from one of times when I made it, using seasonal spring greens.)

Notes: 

This belongs to "Casual cooking".

I’ve made this recipe myself as quick meals and the quantity and steps are from the version I made. Feel free to adjust the amount in it.

Recipe #4 Double boiled shiitake with goose fat 鹅黄炖冬菇

This is a recipe that my dad wrote down one time when asked by my cousin about this double boil mushroom thing. I never did it myself so there’s not even exact quantities except only a rough timeline and ratio. But it’s a classic dish in Cantonese banquets and I think we can all learn something from it.

Original text:

炖冬菇分炖花菇和冬菇，做法是有区别的，首先是浸发，最起码要浸发八小时以上，先用清水浸开，约二个小时，接着清洗菇中泥砂杂物，齐根去蒂，洗净后再用净水浸过面浸泡，这时才是真正浸发阶段，等到浸发至够身，捞起，倾干水。如果系花菇，就用猪油在镬中走走油，冬菇则不用，在炖盅底放鹅黄铺底，花菇多用鸡黄，鸡黄鹅黄一定不能有皮！将冬菇或花菇排好铺上，冬菇就用原浸发之水注入，并落盐，花菇就多用二汤注入，落够盐，入柜炖三至四小时即成！用料多为鹅黄或鸡黄是菇的二成份量即够，水或二汤即与菇对半至略多即可。

Translation:

The different shiitake that’s used in double boiled shiitake soup sets them into two different dishes, one is the flowered (cracked) shiitake and the other is the regular one. And there’re some slight difference on how they’re treated.

To begin you’ll need to soak the mushrooms. Dried shiitake needs at least 8 hours of soaking.

First soak it for about two hours, then take out the mushrooms, rinse under running water to get rid of debris inside the lamella and cut off the stem neatly.

Then add fresh water to a bowl and put in the now washed mushroom, submerge the mushroom and let it go for 6-8 hours. This is considered the actual reconstituting stage.

When the mushrooms are nice and plump after 8-10 hours, take them out and drain. (Note: I would usually gently squeeze the water out from the mushroom at this stage.)

If using the flowered (cracked) mushroom, heat up some lard in a wok, give the mushroom a quick “passing through oil”.

If using regular shiitake, you can skip the passing through oil step.

Next, lay some pure goose fat at the bottom of your soup container of choice. The flowered (cracked) one usually uses chicken fat.

It’s very important (to trim) the goose or chicken fat clean so that there’s no skin sticking on it.

Now lay the shiitake on top of the fat, add in cooking liquid and your estimate amount of salt.

For regular mushroom, the cooking liquid is the reserved mushroom soaking liquid.

For flowered (cracked) shiitake, the cooking liquid is often an “ertang”, second-grade stock. (Note by Steph: 二汤, a Cantonese style run-of-the-mill restaurant stock that’s made using the same meat that’s been used in making supreme and first grade stock previously.)

(Cover your soup container), put it in the steamer and let it steam for 3-4 hours.

For ratios, the goose or chicken fat is usually 20% of the weight of the reconstituted mushroom, cooking liquid is about the same or slight more than the weight of the shiitake.

Notes:

This belongs to "Never tried it myself".

Flowered (cracked) shiitake are the ones that we used in our video, they have obvious white pattern.

My dad’s way of soaking and cleaning shiitake is more intense than ours (lazy approach), which is more similar to the restaurant way of prepping it, some places would even add cornstarch to rub the mushroom during the cleaning/rinsing stage. If your mushroom seems a bit on the dirty side, do use this method. However, most mushroom you get from supermarkets nowadays seems petty clean, so we usually would just do a rinse then soak when cooking at home.

To prevent condensation, professional kitchens usually use a special kind of traditional paper to cover the soup container before covering the lid. It’s called 沙纸/shazhi or 玉扣纸/yukouzhi in Chinese, which is the same kind paper for salt baked chicken 盐焗鸡.

The container for double boil is called 炖盅 (Cantonese: den jong; Mandarin: dun zhong). If you like making this kind of intense Cantonese soup, do get one because it’s a great utensil for this particular purpose, and I think almost every Chinese supermarket carries it.