For one of the world’s great cuisines, you need remarkably little to get started with Chinese cooking. The Chinese call basic ingredients 油盐酱醋 (yóu yán jiàng cù), meaning oil, salt, soy sauce, and vinegar. I’ve added a few essentials to expand the repertoire a bit. Everything here is what I use in my own kitchen. My picks are based on extensive reading of taste tests and, more importantly, from trying many brands myself.
A low-oil version of authentic Sichuan Yu Xiang eggplant, featuring flavors that are traditionally used to cook fish.
The dish is 炒三丝 (chǎo sān sī), which translates to “sauteed three threads”. It’s a homey stir fry of three+ different components whose flavor and color complement each other to become more than the sum of the parts. It’s a particularly humble dish because it uses whatever random veggies and optional meats you have in the fridge.
