A Miao man carries home a piglet bought at a weekly market in eastern Guizhou.
Pigs can live in small spaces, but they also forage widely if given the chance. They do best in hot-to-warm climates where there is adequate water. They are not suited to deserts or to cold high-altitude climates.
Consequently, the regions and cultures featured in this chapter are the complement of those in Beef and Lamb. Instead of recipes from the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, the oases of Xinjiang, and high-altitude Tibet, there are mainly dishes from many of the peoples of the well-watered subtropical hills and valleys of Yunnan and Guizhou.
In Mandarin Chinese, the word for meat, rou (pronounced “roe”), is also the word used for pork, which mirrors the importance of pork in Chinese tradition. The various peoples of Yunnan and Guizhou also depend on the pig. Pork is used to flavor vegetable dishes and soups and is also eaten on its own. It may be dried into jerky (see Hani Slow-Baked Pork Jerky, page 294) or rubbed with a simple spice paste and slow-roasted over coals (see Lisu Spice-Rubbed Roast Pork, page 314). Both the Lisu and the Hani depend on the meat of pigs, as well as wild game, to accompany their meals of rice and vegetables. The pigs run free, so the meat has good flavor.
The Dong and Miao of Guizhou and the Dai of Yunnan also depend on pork. They stir-fry sliced pork with vegetables in simple and delicious combinations: see Miao Pork with Corn and Chiles (page 298), Stir-Fried Pork with Pickled Greens (page 303), and Stir-Fried Pork and Potato Ribbons (page 304). We’ve also included one Tibetan dish of pork stir-fried with spinach (see page 305) and a delectable deep-fried pork from rural Guizhou (see page 310).
Tomatillos
I was a very happy person the first time I tasted this thin-cut, jerky-like pork. I was standing outside a bus station with my backpack on, very early in the morning in the junction town of Jiangcheng, deep in the big hills of Yunnan just a few miles north of the Lao border. I’d arrived in Jiangcheng late the night before, after a very long, slow, crowded bus ride. I was expecting a tribal center of sorts (Jiangcheng is the largest town in a predominantly Hani and Yi area; see page 316), but the town looked new and sterile, all the buildings veneered with white tiles, just like any one of a hundred different small cities anywhere in China. At the hotel, people had confirmed that the town was indeed a Yi and Hani town, but it sure didn’t look like it to my uneducated eye. For dinner I found a jiaozi (dumpling) place, but that was it. My hotel room had a television with the usual cast of sixty primarily awful stations, and by my bed there were packages of condoms (and a pamphlet with helpful advice).
I was feeling a little let down by Jiangcheng the next morning as I waited for the bus. Then I spotted a Hani woman with a woven basket sitting on the sidewalk at the entrance to an alleyway. She was serving sticky rice, first putting some rice in the middle of a big green leaf, then adding a piece of pork and a little preserved vegetable, and finally wrapping up the leaf package to be carried away. I went over, bought two, and began eating. Suddenly my long trip into Jiangcheng began to feel good. I was eating local food, food that tasted more like Laos than China. And everything got better from there on.
This Hani pork jerky isn’t at all difficult to make. And it probably keeps pretty well, but we always eat it too quickly to find out. We like it with sticky rice, accompanied by a side salad or sauce such as Dai Tart Green Salsa (page 22) or Hani Soy Sprout Salad (page 73) and a clear soup. It also makes a great appetizer served on its own, to accompany drinks.
About 2 pounds boneless pork butt, fresh ham, or other pork roast
About 1 tablespoon coarse salt
About 2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
Place a rack in the upper third of the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F.
Slice the meat against the grain into slices ¼ inch thick or less. Lay on one or two broiling pans, stretching the slices to make them even thinner. Sprinkle on the salt and black pepper.
Bake for 1 hour, turning the pieces of meat every 20 minutes or so. The pork will become light, like jerky; it should be a little chewy and completely dried out.
Serves 6 as a main course, 8 to 10 as an appetizer
Pork jerky to go, with sticky rice and preserved vegetables, photographed in Jiangcheng, Yunnan.
Having small pieces of pork stashed in the freezer can be a great safety net, especially when company arrives unexpectedly, or when you’ve lost track of time and need to get supper on the table quickly. You can slice the meat still frozen (a cleaver does a better job than a chef’s knife), to help it defrost more quickly, and then stir-fry it with whatever combination of flavors and ingredients you like.
This pork stir-fry from Yunnan uses chives for flavor and color. The strands of green are very pretty among the strips of pork. You can substitute garlic shoots if you wish, or else scallions, cut into ribbons.
Serve the stir-fry with a soup such as Dai Chile-Fish Soup with Flavored Oil (page 54); a salad or vegetable dish, such as Dai Carrot Salad (page 83); and, as a condiment, Guizhou Chile Paste (page 35) or Bright Red Chile Paste (page 18) if you wish.
½ pound boneless lean pork, such as loin or trimmed chops, thinly sliced into 1½-by-½-inch pieces
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons peanut oil or vegetable oil
3 or 4 dried red chiles
1 garlic clove, minced
½ teaspoon salt, or to taste
A large handful of chives or garlic shoots, cut into 2-inch lengths (l cup), or 4 medium scallions, smashed, cut lengthwise into ribbons and then into 2-inch lengths (about l cup)
½ cup mild broth or water
l tablespoon soy sauce
¼ cup coriander leaves (optional)
In a small bowl, combine the pork and cornstarch and mix to coat the meat well. Set aside for 30 minutes to 2 hours (refrigerate, covered, if letting stand for longer than 30 minutes).
When ready to proceed, place a wok over high heat. When it is hot, add the oil and swirl a little. Toss in the chiles and cook briefly, until they puff, 20 to 30 seconds. Lift them out so they don’t scorch and set aside, then toss in the garlic and stir-fry briefly, until starting to change color, about 10 seconds. Toss in the pork and the chiles and stir-fry vigorously until all the pork has changed color, about 3 minutes. Add the salt and chives or other green and stir-fry for another minute. Add the broth or water and bring to a boil. Add the soy sauce and stir briefly, until the sauce thickens. Taste for seasonings, and adjust if necessary.
Turn out onto a serving plate and garnish with the coriander leaves if desired. Serve with rice or rice noodles.
Serves 4 as part of a larger meal or 2 as a main course in a simple meal with rice or noodles
In the beautiful Miao village of Lande, south of Kaili in Guizhou, lengths of newly indigo-dyed cotton are hung to dry, and under the eaves of the tall graceful wooden house hang bunches of bright yellow corn.
A Miao woman in Lande—dressed in traditional silver head dress, jewelry, and clothing—has just participated in a dance performance in the open piazza-like space in the center of the village.
Miao Pork with Corn and Chiles
In Jenny’s family’s apartment (see “Jenny,” opposite), her mother made a delicious and attractive Miao stir-fry of corn kernels cut from the cob, small pieces of thinly sliced pork, and chopped red chiles (rather like cayennes, which we substitute here), which gave a fairly chile-hot flavor.
⅓ pound pork loin
3 or 4 large ears corn (to yield 3 cups kernels)
1 tablespoon lard or peanut oil
2 teaspoons minced garlic
¼ teaspoon coarsely ground Sichuan pepper
2 red cayenne chiles, thinly sliced, or 3 tablespoons thinly sliced Pickled Red Chiles (page 34)
1 teaspoon salt
Thinly slice the pork, then cut into small slices, about ½ inch by 1 inch. Set aside. Cut the kernels from the corncobs: one at a time, stand each cob on a cutting board and use a cleaver or chef’s knife to slice the kernels off the cob; set aside.
Place a wok or large skillet over high heat. Add the lard or oil, and when it is hot, toss in the garlic. Stir-fry for a moment, then add the pork and Sichuan pepper. Stir-fry for several minutes, then add the chiles and ½ teaspoon of the salt and stir-fry until the pork has changed color all over, another minute or so. Add the corn and stir-fry for about a minute, then add the remaining ½ teaspoon salt. Stir-fry until the corn is cooked through and tender, another 3 to 4 minutes.
Turn out and serve hot or at room temperature, with rice.
Serves 2 as a main course, 4 as one of several dishes with rice
Jenny’s mother made this stir-fry, hot and beautiful with freshly minced red chiles, and pleasantly crunchy with barely cooked stem lettuce (celtuce) strands, the first time I ate supper with them (see “Jenny,” opposite). Later, in a Miao household outside Chong’an, I had another version of the same dish, just as delicious, cooked in lard rather than in the vegetable oil Jenny’s mother used. We substitute Napa cabbage for the stem lettuce; see Glossary for more on celtuce.
We have made this dish with fresh red cayenne chiles and with minced pickled chiles. The pickled chile version has a nice little vinegar edge to it, very characteristic of the pickled and soured flavors in many Miao dishes.
About 1 tablespoon lard or peanut oil
2 tablespoons minced ginger
2 or 3 red cayenne chiles, seeded and minced, or 3 tablespoons minced Pickled Red Chiles (page 34) (see headnote)
½ pound boneless pork loin, butt, or tenderloin, thinly sliced
About ½ pound Napa cabbage, preferably from the stem end, thinly sliced (4 cups loosely packed)
1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1 large or 2 small scallions, smashed, cut lengthwise into ribbons and then into 1-inch lengths
Place a wok over high heat. When it is hot, add the lard or oil and swirl to coat the bottom of the wok, then toss in the ginger and chiles. Stir-fry for about 30 seconds, to a well-blended bright red mass, then add the pork slices and stir-fry until they have all changed color, 1 to 2 minutes. Toss in the cabbage and stir-fry for about a minute. Add the salt and stir, then cover and cook for about 1 minute. Remove the lid and stir-fry a little longer, just until the cabbage is softened but not limp.
Toss in the scallion ribbons and stir-fry for another 30 seconds or so. Turn out into a wide shallow bowl and serve.
Serves 3 to 4 with rice and a side dish
She’s so valiant, Jenny, with her straight back and determined stride, her jacket a fashionable denim number with a little embroidery on it. She navigates cultural divides and the rapid changes in her world with style and grace. Jenny is Miao, the name given in China to a culture that in North America is known as Hmong (see page 183).
Jenny and her family now live in two rooms facing a small courtyard in the middle of Kaili, a small city in Guizhou. A number of other families, all Miao, also live around the courtyard. It’s the place where the women do laundry and prepare soured cabbage, a delicious staple (it’s soaked in a bath of fermented rice overnight), while their children play. There’s a constant coming and going through the covered passage that leads to the small street outside. Many of the other families live from selling textiles on the street; some have vegetable stalls or small street-food stands.
Jenny’s family is from a village about two hours from Kaili. They’ve led a nontraditional life for many years: “My family doesn’t have enough rice fields, so we can’t grow enough rice to feed ourselves. My father decided we should go to the city…. We lived in Shanghai and then in Guilin. We go back and visit the village sometimes. Now we’ve been in Kaili for six years. My father decided to start a business selling textiles. Then he got sick and needed help. I had to leave school when I was fourteen to help him.”
Now she’s a street-savvy nineteen, trolling near the main hotels for tourists who might want to buy textiles (“At least have a look!”). Her English, mostly learned from foreign tourists, is amazingly good. Jenny’s mother also works selling textiles, but her style is different. She has a very traditional Miao look: her hair is pulled up smoothly into a bun and anchored with a decorative pin. Her calm, almost regal demeanor declares her traditional Miao roots, whereas Jenny’s look declares her participation in the new modern China of money and ambition. N
Jenny and her mother, photographed in the courtyard outside their rooms in central Kaili, Guizhou.
All I remember clearly about our motorcycle crash is coming around a corner, probably a little too fast, hitting a patch of gravel and spinning, then hitting the ground and skidding while trying to keep my head and body up as best I could. Serik, who was driving, held on to the bike, and I held on to him. Lucky for us both we didn’t go off the road and down the steep mountain slope, or we’d probably have died.
We got right up, looking at each other, looking at ourselves. Serik’s face was badly cut, and so were my hands and knees, but we were okay. One of my two cameras, which I had hanging around my neck, was smashed, and the motorbike was twisted and bent, but we yanked the steering column back in line. We got back on and headed on our way, both of us shaking badly.
Twenty minutes or so down the road, we came upon a Tuvan-style log house, and Serik stopped to ask for help. The young couple living in the house, a tall thin Chinese man and a Kazakh woman, took us in and fed us salted and lightly buttered Kazakh tea. They washed our wounds and applied a Chinese topical powder. Their daughter, two years old, watched every move. Serik and the man shared cigarettes. Serik was still very shaken.
By evening, we had arrived in Hom (marked on maps as Hemu, its Mandarin name), a beautiful mountain village, one of three Tuvan villages in this far northwestern corner of China. Rain was falling when we arrived, and there was a mist so heavy it felt as if we were traveling through a cloud. We pulled into a compound with a large canvas yurt and a Tuvan log house. There was smoke coming out of the chimney of the house, and as we drove up, several Kazakh and Tuvan men and women came out, friends of Serik. They took us inside around the fire, and again there was salted butter tea, tasting as good as anything could possibly taste.
For the next few days, Serik and I were companions. We had been strangers, the two of us, having met just the day before, but after our crash, we trusted each other absolutely. We drove back along the same mountain road, five hours on the motorbike, driving slowly and so cautiously that we were probably more at risk. But by evening we made it to his sister’s yurt, and then to his, and finally, in the dark of night with a large September full moon, he drove me to a friend’s large yurt near Kanas Lake. There, shivering with cold, we said good-bye and hugged before he got back on the bike and rode home. J
Serik’s motorcycle, with Jeffrey’s pack strapped on the back, parked on the road outside the house of a Han-Kazakh couple, shortly after the accident.
Miao and Ge people travel across the river to the market held every five days at Chong’an, in Guizhou.
A Dong woman in Zhaoxing pounds indigo into cloth using a wooden mallet. The pounding makes the cloth shiny and forces color into the fibers.
The Dong (see page 120) preserve vegetables, meat, and fish by pickling, so there’s often an enticing tart or sour note in the flavor balance of their dishes. This simple take on stir-fried pork and greens tastes like the best kind of peasant cooking, a Dong version of a dish from Italy’s Abruzzi or from Southwest France, earthy and direct.
I watched it being cooked in a wok set over a wood fire in the kitchen of a Dong family in Zhaoxing village. The temperature was medium-hot, so the initial frying of the shallot and ginger was gentle, rather than the high-temperature frying of many stir-fries. The cook’s job also involved keeping an eye on the fire and adjusting the heat by using tongs to move small pieces of wood around, but she made it all look seamless and effortless.
The pickled greens (suan cai in Mandarin, meaning sour vegetable) she added after the meat had browned were locally made and delicious. We substitute store-bought pickled mustard greens, a favorite of ours, moist-textured and widely available in Chinese grocery stores. They keep well in the refrigerator and are a useful pantry staple.
The dried chiles and ginger in the finished dish give some heat, and the mustard greens give a cooling hit of sour to balance the sweetness of the shallots and pork. Serve with rice, and perhaps with a clear soup on the side.
½ pound boneless pork shoulder or loin
¼ pound pickled mustard greens (see Glossary)
1 tablespoon lard, peanut oil, or vegetable oil
2 tablespoons minced shallots
1 tablespoon minced ginger
3 dried red chiles, or to taste
½ teaspoon salt
1 scallion smashed, then cut lengthwise in half and crosswise into 2-inch lengths
1 teaspoon soy sauce
Thinly slice the pork, then cut into bite-sized slices, about ½ inch by 1 inch. Set aside.
Rinse the mustard greens well in cold water, then chop into medium dice; you’ll have about 1 cup. Set aside.
Place a wok or large heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Add the lard or oil and swirl gently. Toss in the shallots, ginger, and chiles and stir-fry for about a minute. Add the pork and sprinkle on the salt, then raise the heat and stir-fry vigorously, tossing the pork and pressing it against the hot wok. Once most of the pork has changed color, add the mustard greens and stir-fry for 2 minutes. Add the scallion and stir-fry for another 30 seconds or so. Add the soy sauce and stir-fry to blend it in.
Turn out into a wide shallow bowl and serve hot or warm.
Serves 4 as part of a rice meal, 2 as a main course
People all over the world work with potatoes in amazing ways. I thought I knew potatoes pretty well, but in Guizhou I discovered how different they can taste and look, depending on how they are cut and cooked.
This dish is from a large Miao village called Xijiang in rural Guizhou. The potatoes are peeled, sliced, and then cut into strips, rather like fettuccine-width julienne. The pork is also sliced into ribbons, ¼-inch-wide strips about 2 inches long. Though we call this a stir-fry, it’s a bit of a hybrid, stir-fried and then simmered. There’s an amazing depth of flavor here, a bonus for the cook in a hurry.
4 medium-small potatoes, preferably waxy (about ¾ pound)
½ pound boneless pork loin or butt, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
3 tablespoons peanut oil or lard
1 tablespoon sliced garlic
2 dried red chiles
½ cup water
1 tablespoon soy sauce
Peel the potatoes, thinly slice, and then cut the slices into strips about ¼ inch wide (this goes more quickly than you might think, fewer than 5 minutes in all). You’ll have 2½ to 3 cups. Set aside.
Stack several pork slices at a time and cut them into ¼-inch-wide strips about 1½ to 2 inches long. Place the pork in a bowl, add ½ teaspoon of the salt, and toss; set aside.
Heat a wok or large heavy skillet over high heat. Add about 1 tablespoon of the oil or lard and swirl a little, then toss in the sliced garlic and stir-fry for 10 seconds. Add the pork and stir-fry for another minute, or until the meat has just changed color all over. Turn out onto a plate or into a bowl and set aside.
Add the remaining 2 tablespoons oil or lard to the pan and swirl around. Toss in the chiles and potatoes and stir-fry for about a minute. Add the remaining ½ teaspoon salt and cook, stirring occasionally, for another minute or two. Add the water and bring to a boil. Cover and cook for about 1 minute. Remove the cover, add the pork, and stir-fry to mix, then add the soy sauce. Cook, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking, until the potatoes are just cooked through but still firm. Taste for salt, and adjust if you wish.
Turn out and serve hot or warm with rice.
Serves 2 as a main course, 4 as part of a rice meal
An older Miao man herds his geese along a pathway in the large Miao village of Xijiang, in eastern Guizhou.
Though the most traditional meat animal by far in Tibet is yak, in one region east of Lhasa, around Gonbo, pigs are also raised for meat. Gonbo pigs are black, with long snouts, and are known for the exceptionally good flavor of their meat. Because the market for them has grown (probably because of the rapidly growing Han population in central Tibet), there are now so many pigs in the Gonbo region that they have rooted up trees and shrubs and are making rather a mess of the local environment. Or that’s what the locals told me when I was last in Lhasa—we haven’t yet been to Gonbo to see for ourselves.
Meanwhile, here is a Lhasa recipe for stir-fried pork with spinach. It’s a fusion dish, spiced with Sichuan pepper as well as with ginger, the familiar Tibetan flavor. The spinach provides a nice balance with the pork and gives a touch of mild sweetness to the dish. There’s a little pan sauce too. Serve with rice.
½ pound boneless pork loin or shoulder
5 cups spinach (about ½ pound)
1 tablespoon peanut oil or vegetable oil
2 teaspoons minced ginger
2 tablespoons minced scallions (white and tender green parts)
¼ teaspoon coarsely ground Sichuan pepper
1 teaspoon salt
½ cup water
Thinly slice the pork and then cut into bite-sized pieces (no larger than 1 by 1½ inches). Set aside.
Wash the spinach well in several changes of water, drain, and set aside.
Place a large wok or skillet over medium-high heat. Add the oil and immediately toss in the minced ginger, scallions, and pepper. Stir-fry for about a minute. Add the pork and ½ teaspoon of the salt and stir-fry, pressing the meat against the hot pan to brown it, until almost all of it has changed color, about 1 minute. Toss in the spinach and begin stir-frying it. It will seem voluminous and may feel a little unmanageable at first, but after several turns of your spatula, it will start to reduce in volume. Once it starts to wilt, add the water and the remaining ½ teaspoon salt. Stir-fry until the spinach is cooked, another 30 seconds to a minute, then turn out into a shallow bowl and serve.
Serves 2 as a main course, 4 as part of a rice meal
BEEF AND SPINACH STIR-FRY: If you’d like, use ½ pound boneless beef (round steak or tenderloin works well) instead of pork. Increase the minced ginger to 1 tablespoon, the water to ¾ cup, and the salt to 1¼ teaspoons. Follow the directions above; once the beef has changed color all over, lift it out of the pan and set aside. Add the spinach and stir-fry, then add the beef again once the spinach has started to wilt, when you add the water and the remaining salt.
This Evenki ger south of Hailar is framed by traditional fencing. In a region that has few trees, the Evenki gather the low-lying willows that grow along the streams and rivers and braid or weave the branches to make barricades and fences that are used to reinforce their gers and, when necessary, to fence off young livestock.
Lin was a wild character. I knew it the moment I saw him heading toward me, shouldering others out of the way. I’d just arrived at the little airport in Hailar, a small town in the north of Inner Mongolia not far from the Siberian border. He wore the standard taxi-driver’s uniform, a black leather jacket and dark pants, and he had the usual taxi-driver’s voice, gruff and raspy with cigarette smoke. But in his alertness and solidity, he stood out from the crowd of other drivers, each beckoning to me to choose him for the drive into town.
Lin and I spent a lot of time together over the next seven days. Though my Mandarin is not great and his had a heavy local accent, we had long conversations. He was so smart, and such a good driver, that even the longest days were a pleasure. He quickly understood what I was interested in: local food, material culture, good light (for photography), anything that helped me understand how people lived. One day we drove to Manzhouli, on the Russian border, taking a looping route through miles of grassland dotted with grazing animals so we could stop in to visit a huge Tibetan-style Mongol Buddhist monastery (see photo, page 268). Another time we headed north out of town looking for yurts, herds, and food. We ended up drinking tea and chatting with a Mongol mother and daughter who had just moved their ger (yurt) to its winter site, near a stream in the valley bottom in the Hulun Buir grasslands.
Later we feasted on platters of lamb at a small eatery in the grasslands. Lin ate with the same gusto and physical confidence that he had when he drove, slicing the meat and sausages into easy mouthfuls for us both, and urging me to have more of everything to keep him company.
Lin knew no fear. He drove his small black stripped-down VW Jetta across the grasslands as if it were a horse. Once when we were driving south of Hailar, he abruptly headed off the road, without slowing down at all, and straight up a grassy untracked hill. He was showing me Japanese gun emplacements, there since the ten-year Japanese occupation of the area (at the westernmost edge of Manchuria) in the 1930s. Later the same day, he again headed cross-country, this time to get us to several low domed gers, home of an Evenki family. (The Evenki [sometimes written Ewenke] are a Siberian aboriginal people who live from their herds and from hunting and gathering.)
The next day, Lin took me to the airport and insisted on waiting around until I got on the plane. “What if they cancel the flight?” he said when I urged him to head off. “And anyway, when the plane lands, I’ll have passengers to take to town.” I couldn’t argue. N
Women chop large pieces of deep-fried pork in preparation for a funeral feast in Chong’an. Notice the ginger waiting to be sliced.
In the small market town of Chong’an, an hour up the road from Guiyang, capital of Guizhou province in the semitropical hills of southern China, I had a small lesson in fats and oils. My teacher was a Miao man who ran a small café. He was making supper, several stir-fries, including stir-fried pork with stem lettuce (see Pork with Napa Cabbage and Chiles, page 298), and an omelet flavored with a little tomato (see page 242). His wok was well used, seasoned, and gleaming, nearly black. Like every other wok cook, he was careful each time he turned out a finished dish to rinse the wok with water (which heats quickly on the hot surface) and scrub it a little, then toss the water into a slop pail (that in rural households would go to the pigs or the hens) and wipe out the wok before placing it back over the hot flame to start cooking the next dish.
“You see,” he said, as he cleaned the wok and then began again, this time to make the omelet, “with meat stir-fries, we cook with lard, but for cooking eggs, we use vegetable oil.” He passed me the oil so I could smell and taste it. It was a mild oil with no distinctive odor.
We’ve learned, watching wok cooks from China to Thailand to Vietnam, that rendered pork fat, lard, makes the most delicious and stable cooking oil. We also know that the idea of using lard is not to everyone’s taste, and that it can feel like too intimate a dance with saturated fats, especially for people doing a lot of stir-frying. Our own compromise is to use peanut oil for stir-frying most of the time and lard occasionally. Many of the stir-fries in this book call for either peanut oil or lard; the choice is yours to make. If you want to try the pleasures of lard, then you will want to render your own. It takes very little time and effort, and the resulting fat can be stored in the freezer, well sealed. We find that store-bought lard can have an intrusive smoky taste. Also, we like to know where our lard comes from. Pure rendered lard has almost no flavor, but it gives a depth of flavor to whatever is cooked in it. For instructions on rendering lard, see Cooking Oils and Fats in the Glossary.
Delectable Deep-Fried Pork with Tribal Pepper-Salt (page 36), served alongside Pea Tendril Salad (page 66).
A funeral pig feeds a lot of people. One morning in Guizhou, in the town of Chong’an, I came across a funeral in preparation at the edge of town. A tall white pole marked the household, and outside the house sat mourners wearing white armbands, chatting and smoking. (The deceased was in her eighties, so there was not a sense of tragic loss.) On the other side of the narrow street, several tables were loaded with meat and vegetables. Seated on low benches by the tables, five or six women chopped steadily, cutting carrots on the diagonal into long careful slices, meat into chunks. There was a brazier set up near the house and over it was placed a huge wok full of rendered lard, the preferred cooking medium there. Pork cracklings were simmering their way to crispness in the wok, then were lifted out with tongs. Nearby a man was using a blowtorch to singe the hair off a pig’s head, readying it for cooking.
Four hours later, I passed by the house again. The women were still working away, chopping and slicing. They waved at me to sit down with them, then passed me a platter loaded with pieces of deep-fried pork and urged me to eat. It was just fabulous, clean-tasting and lush at the same time. Here’s a simple version of the deep-fried pork I ate that day. (There the meat was on the bone and the pieces were larger, then were cut up after cooking; we worked with the proportions below to make the frying easy and as foolproof as possible.)
Serve hot or warm as part of a meal, or as a snack or appetizer with drinks. If serving as part of a meal, include a salad such as Pea Tendril Salad (page 66) or Cucumber—Tree Ear Salad (page 79) and a soup or other moist or well-sauced dish such as Miao Red-Sauced Fish (page 229), as well as rice.
About 1 pound boneless pork butt or loin or fresh ham
1 teaspoon salt
BATTER
¾ cup rice flour
¼ teaspoon salt
About ½ cup lukewarm water, or as needed
Peanut oil or lard, for deep-frying (2 to 4 cups)
ACCOMPANIMENTS
3 tablespoons Tribal Pepper-Salt (page 36)
2 limes, cut into wedges (optional)
About an hour before you wish to serve the meal, cut the pork into slices about ¾ inch thick, then cut into approximately 1-inch squares. Place in a wide bowl, sprinkle on the 1 teaspoon salt, and mix with your hands or a spoon to distribute the salt. Cover and set aside for 45 minutes to marinate.
Meanwhile, make the batter: place the rice flour and the ¼ teaspoon salt in a medium bowl. Stir in the lukewarm water to make a loose batter and continue stirring until the batter is very smooth. Set aside.
Set up your deep-frying arrangement: Place a large wok or a large deep pot on the stovetop; make sure the wok or pot is stable (or use a deep-fryer). Pour 2 inches of oil into the wok or pot and heat the oil over high heat. Put out a slotted spoon or mesh skimmer. To check the temperature of the oil, hold a wooden chopstick vertically in the oil. If the oil bubbles up vigorously along the chopstick, it is hot enough. If the oil is smoking, it is too hot; lower the heat a little and wait a minute before retesting the temperature. (A deep-fry thermometer should read about 350°F.)
Pick up several slices of pork, using chopsticks or your fingers, drag them through the batter, and slip them into the hot oil, being careful not to splash yourself. Repeat several times, then use the slotted spoon or mesh skimmer (or chopsticks) to keep the pieces moving in the oil and to ensure that they stay separate. Cook until golden brown all over, about 2 minutes. Use the spoon or skimmer to lift them out of the hot oil, pausing a moment to let them drain, then set on a platter. Repeat with the remaining meat and batter.
Serve the pork hot or warm. Put out condiment dishes of the pepper-salt, so guests can help themselves to seasoning as they wish. We also like to put out (nontraditional) lime wedges; a little squeeze of fresh lime juice complements the pork beautifully.
Serves 4 as a main course, 6 as an appetizer
This family supper dish from the Dong people (see page 120) in southeastern Guizhou province is a delicious addition to the weeknight repertoire. You might accompany it with Dai Carrot Salad (page 83) or Pea Tendril Salad (page 66).
I had it on my first evening in the village of Zhaoxing, with a family made up of a nineteen-year-old daughter whose name in English is Kyrra, her parents, and her grandfather. After supper, we waited for Kyrra’s parents to change into their finest clothing, then walked along narrow lanes and over a covered wooden bridge to the base of the nearest drum tower (see photo, page 121), which belonged to their neighborhood.
There were rows of wooden benches set up, and Kyrra and I perched on one, along with many people from the village, under the midnight blue sky. In the open piazza beside the tower, the neighborhood troupe assembled quietly, men and women dressed in extraordinary indigo-dyed clothing, the women’s full pleated skirts shiny with pounded indigo, the men in short jackets and long indigo trousers; among them were Kyrra’s parents. They gave a mesmerizing performance of traditional singing, the harmonies dense and beautiful. They danced too, moving in long lines to the sound of the wooden pipes called lusheng (see photo, page 182). At the end of the performance, everyone watching got up and joined the dancers, stepping rhythmically in a long coiled circle beneath the stars: such hypnotic dancing, so timeless.
2 tablespoons peanut oil or lard
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon minced ginger
About ⅓ pound boneless pork butt or shoulder, thinly sliced and cut into bite-sized pieces
¼ teaspoon salt
1 to 3 dried red chiles, broken into 2 or 3 pieces each (see Note)
2 cups (about ½ pound) bean sprouts, well washed
2 teaspoons soy sauce
Heat a wok or large skillet over high heat. Add the oil or lard, and when it is hot, toss in the garlic and ginger and stir-fry for about 10 seconds. Toss in the pork slices, salt, and chiles and stir-fry, tossing and turning to expose all surfaces of the meat to the hot wok. When the pork has changed color all over, add the bean sprouts and stir-fry for about 30 seconds, then cover and let cook for about 2 minutes. Remove the lid, add the soy sauce, and stir-fry briefly.
Turn out into a shallow bowl or onto a plate.
Serves 3 to 4 as part of a rice meal
NOTE ON CHILES: With 3 dried chiles, the dish has a definite hit of heat that seems to bring out all the other flavors; if you want a milder flavor, use only 1 or 2 and leave them whole rather than breaking them.
A house built around a courtyard in traditional style, in southern Yunnan.
My seat number was 26. It said so right on my ticket, but when I got onto the bus and found the seat (the second single seat on the side opposite the driver, a very good seat), there was a young Miao guy already sitting there. I showed him my ticket and pointed to the number 26, and then pointed to the number 26 right beside his seat, but he didn’t budge. I couldn’t really blame him for playing clueless. It’s worked for me a couple of times too.
Right then the driver climbed up and into his seat, and in an instant he read the situation. He smiled, slapped the seat directly in front of the young Miao—the very front window seat, the best seat in the bus (and for some reason unoccupied), and motioned for me to sit. And so I did. Then the rest of the bus filled and off we went.
Jiangcheng to Jinghong, in southern Yunnan. It took eleven hours the first time I came this way, much of it dirt road, fifteen miles per hour, switchbacks and washouts. The driver this time is Han, maybe older than me, maybe not. He’s a cautious driver. He isn’t going to rush. Before starting out, he put old-style Chinese music in the tape player, and got comfortable in his seat, his jar of tea beside him. He’s going to take whatever time it takes.
Two or three hours in, everyone else on the bus is asleep. The driver pulls up alongside a simple single-story house by the road. Without stopping the engine, he scrambles into the back of the bus and grabs a long narrow wooden bench, then jumps out and runs up to the house. An old man is already coming to meet him, and he beams when he sees the bench. The driver hands it over with a smile, then rushes back onto the bus, and away we go.
My driver has friends all along the way, like a much-loved postman. People wave and he honks back. And I watch him watch his route, taking note of everything, a fallen tree that shouldn’t have been cut down, a section of road that is about to give way.
His route is not just any old route. In our bus we have Miao, Hani, Yi—the entire bus is tribal. We pass through Dai villages, and Yao villages, and resettled Hans, tea pickers I think. Every once in a while I ask the driver, “Shenme minzu? (What ethnicity?),” and he answers without hesitation. The bus moves along slowly, deliberately, around one switchback, up another, down another. The mountains here are big, covered with tropical hardwoods, or planted with tea or rubber trees, or terraced with rice. The area feels sparsely populated, but I know it’s not. There are people living throughout, though sometimes a day’s, sometimes several days’, walk from the road.
Finally we reach a checkpoint, and we all get checked by the police. Then on we go, but a mile or so down the road the driver stops the bus. A few new passengers appear from nowhere and get on, and then a few more, and then a few more, until finally the bus is absolutely packed, seats doubled up, aisles without a square inch of open space. The driver orchestrates it all, happily, thoughtfully. There’s a rule about one seat, one person, but now we’re past the checkpoint.
There’s money to be earned, of course, by packing the bus, a lot of money. But I think there’s more to it than that, at least for the driver. There are two very different worlds, the country and the city, and his bus connects the two.
Nine hours it takes us this time. Slow and steady. J
Lisu Spice-Rubbed Roast Pork, served with Hani Soy Sprout Salad (page 73).
The Lisu are one of many distinctive cultural groups who live in the mountains of southwestern Yunnan province, high above the valleys of the Mekong and Salween Rivers. Their language is Tibeto-Burman and they follow the Chinese calendar (celebrating Lunar New Year, for example, when the Chinese do, in late January or early February). Traditionally they live by raising pigs and cultivating rice.
At New Year’s and other celebrations, pork and sticky rice are the main foods. The pork is roasted over coals or cooked in broth, then served on a large communal platter to accompany mounds of steamed sticky rice or grilled sticky rice cakes. We adapted this recipe for spice-rubbed pork, originally cooked over glowing coals, for cooking as a roast in an oven; we call for a little lard to compensate for the leaner pork that is now standard in North America.
The combination of peppery fresh nutmeg and Sichuan pepper makes a knockout spice rub for pork (you can also use it on lamb). The pork comes out of the oven with a delicious salty spiced crust and moist interior. Serve with sticky rice or plain rice, and a vegetable dish such as Tibetan Ratatouille (page 101) or Market Stall Fresh Tomato Salsa (page 18). Put out a condiment or salad as an accompaniment, such as chopped pickled mustard greens, Tenzin’s Quick-Pickled Radish Threads (page 25), or Hani Soy Sprout Salad (page 73).
About 2 tablespoons lard or bacon drippings
About 1½ pounds boneless pork butt or loin, no more than 2 inches thick at its thickest
2 teaspoons freshly grated nutmeg
1½ teaspoons dry-roasted Sichuan peppercorns, ground
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F. Use a little of the lard or bacon drippings to grease the bottom of a roasting pan.
Rinse off the meat and dry thoroughly. Set aside.
Put all the spices and the salt in a small bowl and stir to mix well. Use your fingertips to rub the spice blend all over the meat. Place the meat in the roasting pan with its largest surface facing up. With your fingers or a spoon, dab the remaining lard or drippings all over the top of the meat.
Roast for 50 minutes to 1 hour, until cooked through (timing will vary with the thickness of the meat; if it is 2 inches at its thickest point, it will take closer to an hour). Remove and let stand for 5 minutes.
Thinly slice the meat. If you wish, deglaze the pan with a little water and pour the pan gravy over the slices of meat.
Serves 5 to 6 as a main course
GRILLED SPICE-RUBBED PORK: You can come closer to the original fire-cooked pork of the Lisu if you cook the meat over a charcoal grill. Use pork butt or loin cut crosswise into ¾- to 1-inch-thick slabs. Rub on both sides with the spice blend, then grill slowly (over medium heat), turning the meat once partway through, and basting it with a little lard or oil to keep it moist, until it is cooked through (20 to 30 minutes). Thinly slice before serving.
The Yi are one of the largest non-Han populations in present-day China, with approximately seven to eight million people. They live over a wide area, in towns and villages in the mountainous regions of four different provinces: Yunnan, Sichuan, Guizhou, and Guangxi. There are also Yi populations in Vietnam and in Laos. The Yi were at one time referred to as Lolo, but it’s not a term the Yi use, and it is in fact a derogatory name.
Both the Yi and the Hani languages are in the Tibeto-Burman language family, but the Yi have by far the larger population and are spread out over a much greater area. Much of what we have learned about the Yi comes from the work of American anthropologist Stevan Harrell of the University of Washington. Harrell writes about the concept of ethnicity in China, and those writings have helped us understand what are often very complicated issues.
The mountain town of Yuanyang in southeastern Yunnan seems to be primarily Yi, while the surrounding terraced hillsides are home to the Hani, the people who built and still work the terraces. (For rice-terrace fanatics like us, the Yuanyang terraces are as awe-inspiring as any we have ever seen.) A large town farther south, Luchen, is predominantly Hani, as is another district center, Jiangcheng, still farther south.
The total Hani population in China is approximately 1.3 million. The Hani live mainly on the high southwestern plateau of Yunnan and in the mountains and valleys between the Red River (whose delta is near Hanoi) and the Mekong River. We have always understood that the Hani in China are closely related to the Akha people in Laos and northern Thailand; the distinctive textiles and clothing of the village people in all three countries are very similar.
The Hani and Yi of Yunnan live in a subtropical region, mountainous and forested. There they grow corn, rice, and potatoes, as well as a wide variety of other vegetables. Hani markets in southeastern Yunnan, such as those in the towns of Jiangcheng and Luchen, are colorful and extremely interesting. As in markets in neighboring Laos, there’s always a section where you can eat breakfast, lunch, or simply a snack, sitting on a little stool. (The Hani have a particularly beautiful style of low stool with bamboo supports that curve up like buttresses.)
The markets have an almost jungly feel, with much of the produce very specific to this mountainous region of Yunnan. Some of the produce was familiar to us from markets in northern Laos, but many other fruits and vegetables we’d never seen before. There was also a large part of each market for vendors selling tobacco, and always a vendor or two selling three-foot-long bamboo pipes, for smoking the tobacco.
Particularly remarkable to us were the enormous quantities of fresh sprouts that we saw for sale in the Hani markets of Luchen and Jiangcheng. An entire long aisle of each open-air market was full of soybean sprouts, chickpea sprouts, and mung bean sprouts, all in vast quantities. There was also a kind of tofu that we had never seen before (which was also available in the Yi markets in Yuanyang), a little “package” about one and a half inches square, and somewhat firm. It was commonly grilled by street vendors, together with chunks of potatoes, and then dipped in chile sauces. Delicious.
A small Hani market in southeastern Yunnan; the woman on the left is wearing a modern version of traditional Hani clothing.
In the town of Yuanyang, in southeastern Yunnan, a Yi woman carries her child in an embroidered baby carrier.
