[BOOK] Flavor Profile #7: Laoyou, Ol' Buddy

Laoyou, the quintessential Nanning flavor 老友

Introduction

Just like what we talked about in our Ol’ Buddy noodle soup video, the Ol’ Buddy combo is a flavor that, just works.

I’d venture to say the one ingredient that infuse its unique “Guangxiness” to this flavor combo is fermented sour bamboo shoots, which is an ingredient that you’ll find in many famous Guangxi rice noodles and dishes, the most well-known being River snail rice noodles (Luosifen/螺蛳粉).

If you have fresh bamboo shoots, making your own sour bamboo shoot is supposed to be surprisingly easy. Here’s the general approach: you peel off the fiberous outer layer till all you have left is the white and smooth edible core, wash it clean and let the surface dry completely.

Put the shoots in a fermentation crock, pour in drinking water (without salt), submerge it and just let time do its thing, for at least a month in an environment that’s between 20C-30C. If it smells funky, don’t panic, that’s the characteristic and you’re not gonna taste it at all. For me, sometimes it got a smell that’s reminiscent of cat poop because of the skatole derived from decomposition of the amino acid tryptophan. (Not the best selling point but trust me, it tastes umami.)

The best sour bamboo in Guangxi is made with local spring water, so mineral water would be ideal for this application.

Besides using mineral water, I’ve also seen people using a 10%-15% salt solution for the fermentation.

(Disclaimer: as of the date of writing, Dec 1st, 2021, we’ve never made our own sour bamboo shoots, the above is what we learn about the making process. So, no guarantee that this will work, or not.)

While soup form is the most classic for ol’buddy flavor, there’re many other dishes that use this flavor combo, like pig trotter pot, braised duck feet, stir fry beef or pig offal, and fried rice noodles. Nanning is truly a town of ol’buddy.

A couple general notes on ol’ buddy:

The format of these two recipes will be a bit different from the others. For this one, the ol’ buddy base and sauce are the same as shown in the video. The different ingredients will be listed in “The rest” section.

If you’re planning on making this regularly, you can make a bigger batch of bamboo shoots and keep a jar handy. Cover well and keeps in the fridge for up to a month.

On the same front of making a bigger batch, some shop would chop their douchi and garlic together, add some salt, sugar, and baijiu liquor to the mixture, mix well, and store that mixture on the side for a month. You can try to do the same and store it in the fridge. Smell and check if there’s mold before using just to be safe.

Recipe #1 Ol’ Buddy Tofu (Mapo Style) 老友豆腐

During testing, we wanted to simply try out the flavor combo on other things and make a simple dinner at the mean time. So we decided to make a saucy ol’ buddy tofu in the form that’s similar to mapo. And the result? We finished the whole pot of white rice with it. We feel like the more “watery” and less “oily” quality of this dish works better as an “over-rice” dish than mapo tofu, at least in our opinion. The smoothness of the tofu and the sauce together form a more “substantive” thick sauce that got a full body of “slurpiness”.

Ingredients:

For the ol’ buddy base:

• Sour bamboo shoot (酸笋), cut into matchstick size, 40g
• Garlic, minced, 3 cloves
• Douchi, Chinese fermented black beans (豆豉), ½ tbsp
• Hunan chopped chilis (剁椒), ½ tbsp

For the ol' buddy sauce:

• Soy sauce (生抽), 1 tbsp
• Rice vinegar (米醋), 1 tbsp
• Oyster sauce (蚝油), 1 tsp
• Salt, 1/8 tsp
• Sugar, ¼ tsp
• Chicken bouillon powder (鸡粉), 1/8 tsp

The rest:

• Soft tofu (嫩豆腐), 1 block or 400~g
• Stock or water, 2 cups

The Slurry:

• Tapioca or potato starch, 2 tsp
• Water for slurry, 2 tbsp

Aromatics:

• Scallion (小葱), a sprinkle

Process:

Cut tofu into half inch cubes. Bring 3 cups of water to a boil, heat off, add in 1 tsp salt, mix well. Soak the tofu in the water for 10 minutes. Then strain or dip the water out, set aside.

Squeeze some liquid out of the bamboo shoots and slice up into matchstick size, toast them for ~2 minutes over a medium high flame in a dry wok. Take out and side aside.

Finely mince the garlic and the douchi together, measure out the chopped chilis and put it together with the garlic & douchi mixture. Then mix the sauce. Set both aside.

Now we can cook. First long yau, get your wok piping hot, shut off the heat, add in the oil, preferably lard, here about 1 tbsp, give it a swirl to get a nice non-stick surface.

Then heat on medium high, fry the garlic, douchi, and chili till fragrant. Then toss in the bamboo shoot, quick mix.

Add in the prepared sauce & fry for ~15 seconds.

Add in the stock, then add in the tofu, bring it to a simmer, cover and let it cook for 10 minutes.

10 minutes later, the tofu should look a bit swollen, taste and see if it needs more salt.

Add in the slurry in three stages so that you don’t over thicken. Once the sauce is thickened to spoon coating consistency, heat off.

Scoop into a bowl, sprinkle on some scallions, then serve.

Recipe #2: Ol’ buddy fried rice cake 老友炒粉利

In the many forms of Guangxi rice noodles, one of them is called “fun lei/粉利”, which means “rice noodle tongues”. I guess that it’s called this way because its long rectangle/roundish shape slightly resembles pig tongue.

“Fun lei” is the Chinese type of rice cake that’s made with short grain rice (Oryza sativa subsp. japonica). Unlike its cousin that’s made with sticky rice, this kind of short grain rice cake is a bit less chewy and sticky.

In the context of Guangxi food, it’s often used as a thick hor fun rice noodle and one of the most common way is stir frying. In Nanning, the town of ol’ buddy, you’ll find ol’ buddy fry noodles everywhere, among which, ol’ buddy fun lei is a less common but equally tasty offer.

The exact type of fun lei rice noodle is not available outside of Guangxi, but we have the next best thing, which is sticky rice cake. You should be able to find them at the refrigerate section at Asian supermarkets, the Korean one (usually called Tteokbokki) seems to be the safest bet after looking at the confusing translations of all kinds of “Asian rice cakes”.

Ingredients:

For the ol’ buddy base:

• Sour bamboo shoot (酸笋), 40g
• Garlic, minced, 3 cloves
• Douchi, Chinese fermented black beans (豆豉), ½ tbsp
• Hunan chopped chilis (剁椒), ½ tbsp

For the ol' buddy sauce:

• Soy sauce (生抽), 1 tbsp
• Rice vinegar (米醋), 1 tbsp
• Oyster sauce (蚝油), 1 tsp
• Salt, 1/8 tsp
• Sugar, ¼ tsp
• Chicken bouillon powder (鸡粉), 1/8 tsp
• Water, 1/4 cup

The rest:

• Rice cake (年糕), any shape, 250g
• Dark soy sauce (老抽), 1/2 tsp
• Pork loin (里脊), 50g
• Scallion, a sprinkle

For the pork marinate:

• Salt, 1/8 tsp
• Sugar, ¼ tsp
• Cornstarch, ½ tsp,
• Light soy sauce (生抽), 1/8 tsp
• Liaojiu a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), ¼ tsp
• Oil for coating, ~1/2 tsp

Process:

Bring a small pot of water to a boil, heat off, toss in the rice cakes, cover and let it soak for 10 minutes. After that time, strain it and rinse with water, set aside.

Slice the pork into about 2-3 mm thick pieces and marinate with the seasoning listed in “For the pork marinate”. Set aside.

Squeeze the liquid out of the bamboo shoots then toast in the wok, chop the garlic and the douchi fermented black beans together, measure out the chili, and mix the sauce (note that there’re also 1/4 cup water included for the sauce), set aside.

Now let’s fry the rice cake first. Rice cake’s gonna stick a bit, feel free to use a non-stick pan.

So first long yau, get your wok piping hot, shut off the heat, add in the oil, here about 2 tbsp, give it a swirl to get a nice non-stick surface.

Then heat on medium, arrange the rice cakes into one layer, let one side gets slightly charred, then flip, and char the other side. It’ll stick a bit, but it’s ok.

Once both sides got some nice browning, swirl in 1/2 tsp dark soy sauce to give some base coloring to the rice cake. Quick mix, heat off, take it out.

Same wok, no need to wash, scrap off the rice cake stickage if needed, heat on medium high, add in 1 tbsp oil, give it a swirl then toss in the pork. Fry till it changes color.

Then add in the douchi, garlic, and chili mixture, fry them together for about half a minute, then in with the bamboo shoots, quick mix.

Next, add in the sauce, quick mix. Toss the rice cake back in once it’s bubbling.

Fry everything together, the rice cake should absorb the sauce very quickly, once it's all mixed well and there’s no liquid left, toss in the scallion, mix and out.

Note:

For the rice cake, the 10 minute soak is basically for the bog-standard supermarket rice cake sold at the refrigerate section. Soaking is to prepare it to stir-fry ready stage. If you fry it directly without soaking, it'll stay rock solid. Soaking is not needed if using it in soups. Sometimes there's the more traditional type that may require a longer soak. Rule of thumb is that the rice cakes should be soft and pilable and won't break if you apply a folding motion to it.