Vicky Wasik

Turkish hot pepper paste, found in Turkish markets or online, adds heat to an emulsified sauce made with tomato, anchovy filets, egg, capers, tuna, Dijon, and oil. Pour it over the freshest in-season tomatoes you can get your hands on and garnish with basil leaves for a cool. spicy, summery salad.

This is the spicy slaw everyone at the picnic or cookout will love. Cabbage, red onion, cilantro, Thai bird chiles, lime juice, and salt combine for a side dish with a kick for grilled meats, fish, or vegetables.

"For slightly sweet dishes like mushu pork, I would recommend full-bodied whites or reds. Juicy red varietals include Zinfandel, Merlot and Syrah. Rich whites would be like Viognier. ( Try L’Ecole Merlot and Mark Ryan Viognier!)"— Lee Spires, AQUA by El Gaucho (Seattle)

Making excellent tomato soup from scratch at home is almost as easy as opening a can, and the return on your minor time investment is significant. This version is sort of like a hot gazpacho, in that it's emulsified with bread and olive oil.

"Riesling with some fruitiness and a bit of age pairs nicely with heavy and complexly spiced Chinese sauces. Riesling from older vintages can be hard to come by at an everyday wine store, but they do make appearances from time to time. Stock up when you see a nice Riesling with age and save it for a rainy Chinese takeout day! I did this with a Riesling Spatlese from Mosel, Germany 1997 for less than $20 that I found at my neighborhood wine store and enjoyed it with a few savory, dark-sauced Chinese dishes—the flavors balanced each other perfectly. Additional choices from the other side of the Rhine River are Alsatian Pinot Gris, Muscat, Riesling and Gewurztraminer—these all contain a lot of complex spice notes, and occasionally a touch of residual sugar, which allow them to work with Chinese food."— Caleb Ganzer, Eleven Madison Park (NYC)

These 'shrooms are marinated in a miso-based sauce that adds a rich, meaty flavor to the already umami-filled mushroom. They're then roasted and sliced thin, served carpaccio-style: sprinkled with coarse salt, black pepper, lemon zest, greens, and really good olive oil. Crushed pistachios add their nutty sweetness.

The pork is the odd man out in the traditional recipe. Fortunately, much like with the beef in Sichuan mapo tofu, the pork is not the star player of the dish. Its role is mainly textural, adding a bit of meaty, bouncy chew that clings to the slippery noodles as you slurp them up. Having already addressed an identical issue when finding a suitable replacement for ground beef in my vegan mapo tofu recipe, I knew what I had to do here: I chopped up a bunch of mushrooms in a food processor, then employed the Chinese technique of dry-frying—cooking them slowly in oil—until they were mostly dehydrated, lightly shriveled, and deeply browned. The resulting little nuggets have great texture and a flavor that is not really pork-like, but savory and rich in its own unique way.

Stir-frying is a very quick cooking technique, so it works well with thin cuts of meat . Skirt steak satisfies that requirement and brings the added benefit of a loose texture that's perfect for soaking up marinades. This stir-fry—which takes only half an hour, including the marinating time—pairs the beef with snap peas, oyster sauce, chicken broth, Shaoxing wine, sugar, sesame oil, and soy sauce for a super-fast and flavorful dinner.

I use my patent-pending, copyrighted Minced Mushroom Mix (A.K.A. M 3 ) to replace the ground meat in this vegan mapo tofu, noodle game walkthrough|Https://noodleinsight.Com/ giving it a chewy texture and a rich flavor all its own. I like it even better than the original.

A riff on tandoori-style chicken, these chicken kebabs are marinated in a yogurt mixture with smoked and hot paprika plus cayenne for at least four hours. Thread onto water-soaked skewers and grill for an easy chicken kebab dish you'll return to again and again.

Place mushrooms in the bowl of a food processor and process until pieces no larger than 1/2-inch remain, about 6 short pulses. Transfer to a small saucepan. Add vegetable oil and stir to combine. Place over medium-high heat and cook, stirring occasionally, until mushroom pieces shrink and are deep golden brown, about 8 minutes. Pour through a fine-mesh strainer set over a small bowl. Reserve mushroom pieces and discard all but 1 tablespoon oil.

Transfer noodles to serving bowl and top with pork mixture. Stir vinaigrette and spoon over and around the noodles (you may not want to use all of it). Sprinkle with roasted peanuts, Sichuan peppercorn, grated garlic, and scallion greens. Serve immediately.

There are all kinds of variations on the dish that you'll find in Chinese restaurants in the U.S. Some go the ultra-authentic, hardcore traditional route, while others remove some or even all of the heat from the dish, instead replacing it with a creamy sesame (or even peanut butter!) based sauce. To me, picking one version of dan dan noodles as the best is kinda like choosing my favorite Beatles album: It's a constantly shifting debate, even with myself. Best plan is to just pick a path and run with it. This time I'm going for the more traditional approach. Obviously, modifying it for my vegan needs is going to alter that approach in practice (though not in spirit).