Szechuan Style Wan Tan

Dough bags, with pork, spices and the yellow of the egg

Slowly and quietly, autumn creeps in. What is associated with rainy weather, whipping wind and shorter days for some can be an impressive spectacle of colour for others, in which colourful foliage sits on the still lush green meadows and reflects its soothing red colour in all directions with the help of the sun. If you are just lucky and none of the neighbours throw the leaf blower, the thought workshop rattles. You follow your intuition and think about what you can do with the red, the warmth and the depth and think about it.

It should be a strong dish, with red, not too heavy but after the last bite you have to feel comfortable. Keep it simple.

Singapore. 8 months earlier:

Ok, I’ve also understood: “The Asia Road Trip won’t last long.” The Maxwell Hawker Center is barely filled and half of the street food stalls have already closed. When you are on a culinary journey, you will usually find something but in the end you are surprised by almost always the unexpected. So off to Chinatown in one of the Szechuan restaurants, which have settled between the colorful facades of the small rows of houses.

“Noodles, Egg and Chili”. Sounds simple, but it was anything but “simple”. Those who now, like me, expect fried noodles with egg, were unfortunately mistaken, because what was served here was much better. Similar to a “cabonara”, alkaline noodles were briefly swung through a little egg yolk before hitting an insanely intense chilli spice oil. Cinnamon, anise, szechuan, fennel, clove and chilli gave the insanely intense taste of the 5 spices and the sharpness of the chilli was skilfully kept in check by the creamy egg yolk. Optionally you could choose “crispy pork belly” or “fried vegetables”, but I renounced because I was absolutely overwhelmed by the elegance of the few ingredients.

Back on the home balcony:

As if it was yesterday, it captures exactly what I’m about right now. In order to manifest the depth even more, I have invited dried tomatoes and pistachios against every culinary reason. They support the warm and warm taste and give this dish a balanced balance and since I have a penchant for stuffed dough bags, the rest is actually history.

Szechuan Style Wan Tan. Ingredients for 2 people:

Szechuan Style Wan Tan: Preparation:

1. For the spice oil, mix the vegetable oil with the oil of the dried tomatoes. Add the cinnamon, star anise, fennel seeds, clove, szechuanpeffer and chilli flakes to the oil and heat to 140°. Bake the ingredients in the oil for 30 seconds and then cool down with ingredients. Then pass through a fine sieve.
2. For the Wan Tan season the meat with pepper and salt. Then finely chop the chilli and add. Crush the pistachio seeds and add them as well. Add garlic, ginger, sesame paste, soy sauce and sliced chives. Mix all ingredients well together.
3. Now you take a Wan Tan leaf and put it on a board. Place a TL of the filling in the middle of the sheet. Then moisten the edges of the dough with some water and close them so that a triangle is created. The two corners on the elongated side of the triangle are reconnected and glued together.
4. Then place a bamboo basket on a pot of boiling water and lay it out with some baking paper. Sit a few holes in with a pointed object so that the water vapor can penetrate to the dough pockets.
5. Now put the Wan Tan in the basket and dampen it for about 6 minutes.
6. Then put the gardened Wan Tan in a bowl, add half of the spice oil and swing through it vigorously.
7. Finely chop the dried tomatoes and roughly crush the pistachios. Cut the black garlic into thin slices. Add the ingredients to the Wan Tan and swing through everything neatly.
8. Dan put the wan tan in a deep plate, put the raw egg yolk in the middle and sprinkle everything with the finely sliced chives. Add some of the spice oil over it.