酸辣白菜 Sour and Spicy Cabbage

Pinyin: Suān Là Bái Cài

A way way spicy version of a classic dish. This dish normally is a bit less red and has a bit fewer peppers.

But the fact of the matter is, nearly every take on this dish is good. It's so basic and as such is more or less a staple of home style Chinese food.

I've actually made this dish a few times so I'll attempt a recipe here:

Ingredients:

• 3-4 cups of cabbage cut into pieces
• 10-12 peppercorns
• 3-4 dried chili peppers
• 1-2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
• 1 tsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp sugar
  
• 1 tsp cornstarch
• pinch of julienned ginger
• salt

Steps:

1. Sprinkle salt over the cabbage and let it set for about ten minutes. It's important that the salt touches as much of the cabbage as possible, it's intended simple to extract some of the water from the cabbage.
2. Mix the rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, ginger, salt and cornstarch together in a small bowl with a bit of water.
3. Pour the excess water out of the cabbage
4. Put a few tablespoons of oil in a wok and set it over high heat.
5. Add the peppercorns and dried chili peppers to the hot oil and cook for about twenty seconds.
6. Add the cabbage to the hot wok and stir the cabbage in with the oil.
7. After several minutes and the cabbage is cooked, add the mixture in the bowl to the wok and continue to stir.
8. Remove from heat and place into a bowl for serving.

You'll notice right away that your mixture looks significantly less red and significantly more brown. That's the lack of chili sauce and the addition of soy sauce.

So give it a try and tell me what you think.