苦菜酥红豆 (Kucai su Hongdou)

In Kunming, one of my favorite dishes was the 苦菜酥红豆 (Kucai su Hongdou) or Flakey Red Beans with Bitter Vegetable (sowthistle, if we are to believe Google’s translation services). After a couple of experiments, I’ve come up with my own version of the dish, which goes a long way to help staunch those cravings for delicious Yunnan food! If you’re looking for an interesting new dish, I’d highly recommend giving this one a try. It’s not your ‘typical’ westernized Chinese food!

Ingredients:

1 can (15ish ounces/400ish grams) kidney beans (alternately, soaked and boiled beans, same amounts)
1 cup kale roughly cut into 1cm strips
½ cup flour
½ tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ‘chicken seasoning’ (alternately, a ½ tsp cayenne pepper)
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
5 dried red chillies cut in half
1/3 cup peanut/cooking oil

After opening the can of beans, drain juice and rinse with water. In a medium-sized sealable container, combine flour, salt, baking powder, and chicken seasoning. Add beans and shake well until beans are coated in flour mixture.

Add oil to wok, and then garlic and chillies when at heat. Then add the coated beans to the oil stirring infrequently from the bottom and lifting careful so as not to break the beans. Don’t press down on the beans or you’ll mash them! Add more oil if wok is dry at this point—the beans will absorb a lot of oil at the beginning. After about one minute, add the strips of kale to the beans. Continue to stir fry until the beans move from oily/mushy to brown and crispy and the kale is wilted. Serve with rice and other delicious Yunnan dishes (more recipes to follow!). Let me know if you try it and if so what you think!