The Sinosphere · Volume 34, The Chilli Jar, the Smoke Room and the Mountain the Tusi Ruled
Sanxiaguo
Xiangxi
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 45 minutes
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Xiangxi. A tusi-era military call-up dish, said to have brought the new year forward by a day so as not to miss a war.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. 45 minutes.
Ingredients
- 250 g larou (or preserved pork), sliced
- 200 g firm tofu, cubed
- 200 g white radish (mooli), cut into chunks
- 150 g pork offal or tripe, cleaned and blanched (optional, traditional)
- 3 dried chillies
- 3 cloves garlic
- 20 g ginger, sliced
- 500 ml pork or chicken stock
- to taste salt, to taste
Method
- Blanch the offal or tripe, if using, in boiling water for a few minutes, then drain and slice.
- Fry the larou in a dry pot first until it renders some fat and the edges crisp.
- Add the garlic, ginger and dried chilli, fry until fragrant.
- Add the radish and stock, bring to a simmer, and cook 15 minutes until the radish begins to soften.
- Add the tofu and offal, if using, and simmer a further 10 to 15 minutes, until everything is tender and the flavours have combined.
- Season with salt and serve straight from the pot, in the spirit of the dish's own three-stage, one-vessel origin.
Notes
Chinese sourcing gives this dish's history and its component ingredients in real detail but no fixed commercial ratio; the quantities below are a reasonable serves-4 scaling of the documented method, not a claimed canonical formula.
What a modern chef changes
The layering, timed rather than left to chance.
Method
- Cook each element to its own correct doneness separately, the larou rendered and crisped, the radish braised in stock to just tender, the tofu barely warmed through, then combine only in the final few minutes, so no single component overcooks while another catches up.
- Build the stock itself from the same larou-smoking programme (Rung 2), simmering a larou bone or trim for several hours beforehand, so the pot's savoury base carries the same smoke character as the meat sitting in it.
- Serve in individual cast-iron pots kept over a low flame at the table, closer to the "portioning into individual pots" reading of the dish's own name than a single shared vessel, so the broth stays at temperature through a whole meal rather than cooling on the way from stove to table.