The month o’ vegetable bounties is upon me! I’m drowning in gifts and CSA shares of squash, peppers, potatoes, tomatoes. TBH, I’m pretty happy about it.
When it comes to cooking the veg bounty, some folks have time and $$$ to attend to protracted recipes filled with a million ingredients.
For the rest of us, there’s Lao Gan Ma.
Lao Gan Ma (老干妈) is dried chili flakes steeped in peanut oil. I was introduced to it about 10 years ago by my friend and roommate Li. She was an amazing cook and she taught me so much about Cantonese cuisine [ahem including her bangin’ homemade dumpling recipe]. The deal Li struck with me was that I’d help her improve her English reading skills and she would vastly, vastly improve my life by occasionally cooking dinner for us both. Here’s Li getting down to business in our kitchen in 2005:
And here’s me eating what should only be described as a reasonable portion of homemade dumplings…with Lao Gan Ma and soy sauce on the side, incidentally:
YES.
Lao Gan Ma was Li’s Franks–she put that shit on everything. And now, when I want things to taste awesome with little hassle, I do too.
You can find Lao Gan Ma in any asian grocery store in the U.S. (but you probably won’t find it in the Asian food section of your local grocery store). It is hugely popular across mainland China. There are chili crisp, black bean, and chili oil varieties–chili oil is my go-to but chili crisp won’t let you down. It’s not non-GMO and it ain’t health food, but it will add a peanutty, spicy, salty kick to any dish you got on the burner. It costs $2 per jar. Buy 10 of them at a time. Don’t look back.
I can’t tell you enough how tasty this sauce is. Here’s where I use it most:
- Topping rice and pasta bowls
- Adding to noodly soups, ramen, etc.
- Tossing with steamed or grilled veggies
- Marinating meat and poultry for grilling
- Tossing with fried or steamed tofu
- Mixed with soy as a dumpling sauce
- Mixed into stir fry with a little oyster sauce or fish sauce
- Mixed with peanut butter as a fresh roll sauce
My most common (and maybe most thug) application: I add a tablespoon or so along with a little sea salt and cracked pepper to radiatore pasta and steamed crookneck and yellow squashes, of which I have like 30 at the moment. But I’ve done all sorts of veg before: Broccoli, cauliflower, eggplant, etc. Sometimes I add tofu if I have it on hand. I don’t know what cuisine you’d classify this as (lazy lowbrow American?) but trust me, you want to eat it.
If you’ve got tips on sauces and spices you use on veggies, I’d love to hear about them…seriously. Because I’m drowning in the most wonderful, August-vegetable-y of ways.
Haricot 