The Sinosphere · Volume 34, The Chilli Jar, the Smoke Room and the Mountain the Tusi Ruled
Caidoufu
Fenghuang, Xiangxi
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 20 minutes
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Fenghuang, Xiangxi. A famine-era survival food, and a genuinely different technique from anything eastern Hunan does with soybeans.
As tradition built it
Serves 4 as a side or light main. 20 minutes, once the soybeans are ground.
Ingredients
- 150 g dried soybeans, soaked overnight and finely ground with their soaking water (unfiltered, pulp and milk together)
- 600 ml cold water
- 150 g pumpkin leaves, spinach, or another tender green, chopped
- to taste wild spring onion (or ordinary spring onion), chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tsp chilli powder
- to taste salt
Method
- Stir the ground soybean mixture into the cold water in a pot, mixing until smooth.
- Bring slowly to a simmer, stirring regularly to prevent catching, until the mixture starts to thicken slightly.
- Add the chopped greens and continue cooking on low heat until the liquid clears and separates slightly from the solids, the dish's defining visual cue that it is ready.
- Stir in the spring onion, garlic and chilli powder, season with salt, cover, and let it steam briefly off the heat before serving.
Notes
No exact commercial ratio is documented; the quantities below scale the sourced method for a home kitchen.
What a modern chef changes
The phase change, watched and controlled.
Method
- Hold the pot at a closely monitored, gentle simmer with a probe thermometer, rather than judging "when it clears" by eye alone, since overheating this specific unseparated soy mixture curdles it unevenly rather than letting it clear cleanly.
- Blanch the greens separately and fold them in at the very end, preserving their colour and bite against the soft, porridge-like base, rather than cooking them down inside the pot from the start.
- Finish with a spoon of the chinois-strained duojiao liquor (Rung 1) stirred through at the table, a genuinely cross-regional pairing this chapter has not found documented but that follows directly from the shared logic both halves of the province apply to a fermented chilli base.