Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking by Fuchsia Dunlop

cleaver or a rolling pin to loosen (don’t smash them to pieces). If using Sichuanese pickled chilli, discard the seeds as far as possible.
    Heat the oil in a wok over a medium flame. Add the spring onions, ginger and garlic and stir-fry gently for a couple of minutes until the onions are golden and the oil smells delicious. Pour in the stock with the tofu and salt and bring to a boil (if you are using storebought stock that is already salty, you may not need this extra salt). Boil, stirring intermittently, until the liquid has almost completely evaporated. Towards the end of the cooking time, add the red pepper or chilli strips. Turn off the heat, stir in the sesame oil and allow to cool.
    Lay the sections of “bamboo” neatly on a plate to serve, with the chilli or pepper for a splash of color.

COLD CHICKEN WITH A SPICY SICHUANESE SAUCE
LIANG BAN JI 涼拌雞
    This is one of the most marvellous of all Sichuanese culinary ideas. The cold chicken is dressed with seasonings that generally include soy sauce and chilli oil, with sugar, sesame oil, vinegar, crushed garlic and ground, roasted Sichuan pepper added according to taste or mood. It’s very easy to make and stunningly delicious, as I hope you’ll agree. Ever since I first lived in Sichuan, this kind of dish has been part of my everyday kitchen repertoire. I’ve often served a spicy chicken salad alongside other dishes that are more ambitious or complicated to make, and yet this tends to be the one that everyone raves about the most.
    I don’t actually use a recipe for this, any more than I would use a recipe to mix up a vinaigrette, so it’s different every time I make it. The following version and its variation, which I’ve measured, are lip-smackingly wonderful, but do please think of them as templates rather than immutable instructions, and improvise as you will. You might want to add more chilli oil in winter, or more refreshing vinegar when the weather is hot and sultry, while a spritz of crushed garlic can be quite enlivening. You can also serve the dressed chicken on a bed of sliced cucumber, or toss some salad greens, perhaps arugula or watercress, into the mix.
    In China, they normally poach a whole chicken (tap here ), then chop it up bones and all, but you can equally well use boneless meat. And don’t forget that this is also a marvellous way of using up leftover roast chicken or turkey: the meat won’t be quite as moist and fresh-tasting as that of a poached bird, but it’s still delicious (and you can add extra chicken stock to the sauce to moisten, if necessary).
About ¾ lb (300–350g) cold, cooked chicken, without bones (tap here for poaching instructions)
3 spring onions
¼ tsp salt
1 tbsp sesame seeds (optional)
    For the sauce
2 tbsp light soy sauce
1½ tsp Chinkiang vinegar
1½ tsp sugar
1 tbsp chicken stock
3–4 tbsp chilli oil with ½ tbsp of its sediment (or more, if you wish)
¼–½ tsp ground, roasted Sichuan pepper, to taste
1 tsp sesame oil
    Cut or tear the chicken as evenly as possible into bite-sized strips or slivers and place them in a deep bowl. Cut the spring onions at a steep angle into thin slices. Mix them and the salt with the chicken. If using sesame seeds, toast them gently in a dry wok or frying pan for a few minutes, until they are fragrant and starting to turn golden, then tip out into a small dish.
    Combine all the sauce ingredients in a small bowl.
    When you are ready to eat, pour the sauce over the chicken, and mix well with chopsticks or salad servers. Arrange on a serving dish and sprinkle with sesame seeds, if desired.
    VARIATION
Another sauce for cold chicken
2 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tsp finely chopped or crushed garlic
2 tbsp chicken stock
3 tbsp chilli oil (with or without its sediment)
½ tsp ground, roasted Sichuan pepper
½ tsp sesame oil

COLD CHICKEN WITH GINGER AND SPRING ONION
YOU LIN JI 油淋雞
    This is my recreation of a dish I ate in a Hong Kong restaurant with my friend Susan and some of