Same here more often than not! Except for Every Grain of rice, I’ve used Dunlop’s books more for navigating restaurant menus than for cooking.
I had a fun time going through Land of Fish and Rice alongside a menu from Little Shanghai, a San Mateo restaurant which has wider breadth than most local Shanghainese restaurants. It’s cool to read backstories of dishes and her personal take.
BTW, if you have a list of 660 Curries recipes that you frequent, please start a thread (I’m looking to make some speedier recipes).
While I’m writing, I’ve cooked some other dishes:
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Mashed fava with snow vegetable: Interesting dish— except for the mashed potatoes with blueberry some Beijing restaurants serve, this is the only mashed Chinese dish I’ve had. I made this with fresh fava beans as a snack, and think it would be best as a side dish to other, textutally contrasting but not assertive flavors. The seasonings are very subtle, you need to pay attention, so much so that putting the mash on a saltine distracted from it. Even though I enjoyed it, I don’t think I’ll make this again – –the yield is small and there’s a lot of fava bean peeling. I also prefer the whole bean texture you get in her other fava bean dishes.
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Plain stir fried greens : I’ve made this twice, and will continue to make it whether I’m making a Chinese meal or not. It’s a foundational recipe that I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never made before. Like her tatsoi recipe earlier in the book, the simplest greens recipes in my 1970s and 1980s Chinese cookbooks have garlic or other seasonings added to them, and require water/broth to finish cooking. This recipe uses only Shanghai (green) bok choy, oil, and salt and its simplicity allowed me to focus on the greens, rather than avoiding burning garlic or the timing of adding other ingredients (which I’m prone to when I’ve got the rest of the meal on my mind). Kudos to Dunlop for appreciating its simplicity and utility.
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Bok choy broth with pickle: a quick briney/pickley soup ideal for a weeknight, or to lighten up a rich meal. I’d probably make this in a pot rather than a wok next time. Zha cai, which they sell in buckets at the Asian market and fresh stock would have made this even better— I was perfectly happy using vegetable Better than Buillion and a foil packet of Sichuan preserved greens (zha cai).
