In praise of red fermented bean curd

Did you know, EYB friends, that EYB is good not only for cataloging your gazillion recipes, but also for helping you create entirely new ones?  That’s what happened to me today.

I was trying to come up with a Chinese spare rib recipe–something with a roast pork bun flavor, on a spare rib, but not deep-fried the way they would be in a Chinese restaurant.  I had a hunch I wanted to use red fermented bean curd, an ingredient I barely know but ran across in last year’s Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking.  Like a lot of Chinese condiment jars, it had been sitting in my fridge for months since its last recipe-testing foray.  It looked tempting, but also scary.

By looking it up on EYB, I could see the way this obscure ingredient is supposed to be used–that it goes well with garlic, with hoisin, and – yes!- indeed, with pork.  After a bunch of scribbling and scrawling and scrounging around for other weird jars, I had a plan.  An hour later, I had something so fantastic I can’t even believe I made it.

The recipe?  Ah, the recipe! You’ll have to wait till September, when my book comes out.   But in the meantime, try some experimenting with your friend EYB. You’d be amazed at the kind of secrets you can uncover–not least among them, your own wildly creative inner cook.