umami

As promised, here are the photos from my culinary adventures in Chengdu two weeks ago. We arrived on a Thursday night, right on time for dinner at famed Baguobuyi, a traditional Sichuan restaurant. Since we hold the keys to the vip, we watched the chefs prepare our food in the back kitchen. What a kitchen. The largest work stations I've ever seen, with few equipment but high utility from each one. Every dish except soup is cooked in one large wok, and complicated utensils are whittled down to one multi-purpose soup ladle with which they stir, separate, and fry. Each station also has a constant-flowing tap that speeds up the cooking process. What marvel!

Notice the silver tins of seasoning on the side. There are only 6 or so because that's all there is to Sichuan cooking. Salt, Sugar, MSG, cumin, chili powder, pepercorns. This is incredible considering how many varieties of flavours can be achieved just with different combinations of those! A delicious dish called Huiguorou. Twice cooked pork that is thinly sliced fatty meat cooked in chilli paste and sometimes eaten in between guokui, small baked buns.
Dry-cooked green beans. Deliciously fiery beans fried without any water to preserve flavour
A traditional Sichuan face-changing show after dinner. They just nod their head and the mask changes in a flash to new colours!
Our table getting some face-changing love.
The next day, visiting the Sichuan Culinary Institute, one of the foremost cooking schools in China, where we took a tour and had a master class in four staple Sichuan dishes by one of the most sought-after chefs in the country!
Here the students are hard at work rolling dough for dumpling wrappers.

How come all the boys are rolling the dough and the girls are wrapping the dumplings? Inequality if you ask me.

The ingredients set up for our master class.
Teacher cooking a batch of ground pork as a condiment for our Dandan noodle dish later.
Deep frying a batch of eggplant coated in cornstarch to make it soft on the inside.
The final product. This is called Fish-fragrant eggplant. There's no fish in it, but the sauce used is a little sweet and sour from a combination of sugar, vinegar, chilli paste and garlic. I suppose a lot of sweet and sour fish dishes have a similar flavour, hence the name.
One of the most famous products out of Sichuan, the green peppercorn. It is more sharp and pungent than the red version, but has less lingering flavour. The two are used in combination sometime to add a more multi-dimensional ma (numb) to the la (spicy).
No dish is complete without a dash of ground peppercorn powder.
Preparing for our Hot Pot Fish dish.
Instructing us not to try this at home.
Admirable knife skills! Clearly I'm still transfixed!
And still...
Fish is thrown in to simmer in a pot full of chili oil, water, dried chili peppers, and peppercorns
The finished product!
Our dandan noodles!
In each bowl, we place some preserved vegetables called "yacai", some of the fat from the fried pork earlier, a bit of the minced meat itself, and adjust to taste.
Cooking the noodles is an art.
Said "yacai". This brand called "Yibing" is the most famous so watch out for it at the grocery store! It makes a great condiment to any stirfry; with mushrooms, greens, and meat.
Topping up our noodles.
The finished product. How cute in their little bowls!!!
Trying our own hand at the four dishes. Check out how pro I look. Teehee
My precise knifework that unpeeled an entire eggplant. Naw, that was the instructor. Look at those veins popping!
Slicing to make a decorative flower!
Glorious tofu.
Cooking Mapo Tofu. Anyone who knows an inkling about me knows this is my ride-or-die dish. In my memory, my mother made the best version. But I think this weekend may have topped hers! oops.
Final product. With a dash of peppercorn powder.
A visit to the Pixian Preserved Chilli Bean Paste factory. Where factory operations consist of thousands of terra cotta pots just chilling in the sun, chilli bean paste fermenting away inside.
Oh, process #2 is an old man who walks around mashing the concoction up every hour or so. Some high technology here.
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A lunch-time visit to the Sichuan Food Museum. Beautiful presentation but slightly lacking in taste.








A traditional tea ceremony. This is the tea master who hosted the LVMH event last weekend. She's a tiny lady who packs a feisty punch, cute and definitely knows how to pour an Oolong tea.
A delicious meal in a "fly" (hole in the wall) restaurant. So much baijiu. So much plum wine. So much delicious.
One of the most memorable trips. Hope you enjoyed the visual feast!