Potato gnocchi drenched in a madly moreish chilli crisp sauce
And why loving some foods means you're old. Apparently.
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Reason one million that I’m feeling the sun is now well and truly over my lifespan’s yardarm? The LA times has suggested that Sriracha sauce - with which I frequently adorn my eggs and smuggle into mayonnaise and whip up crispy fried rice - is “an old lady condiment”.
To be honest, I couldn’t be arsed to delve very deeply into this, as I’m already in possession of a glut of reasons to feel old. But apparently it came up on the
podcast with Ruth Reichl, Nancy Silverton and the LA Times’ Laurie Ochoa. Have a listen to it if you like - I did scan the transcript and it’s interesting.But for sriracha answers I turn to my barometer of what’s hip and cool, my 23-year-old daughter. “Yes, it’s mainly a thing for Millennials,” she confirms (evidently being born between 1981 and 1996 means you’re old). There are just too many chilli condiments competing for our bucks, she says; Sriracha, it seems, is heading the way of ubiquitous boring old ketchup.
My daughter’s right about the hot competition on the chilli shelves. Someone on the Three Ingredients podcast recalled the days when Tabasco was the only hot sauce in the village. I’m pretty sure I remember those times. My father used to anoint his fried eggs with a few rusty orange tear drops of it - there were no other hot sauce options - and I swear one single tiny bottle lasted my entire childhood. When did supermarket shelves become awash with all the different kinds?
I’m wondering, also, whether chilli crisp, the hugely popular Chinese condiment, will soon be officially passé, too. Not that I care, because my love for it is deep and abiding and impervious to ageists. The traditional version Laoganma Crispy Chilli in Oil is a favourite. But there are dozens of competitors vying for a piece of the chilli crisp action now that it’s become universally adored.
(Momofuku, the food empire founded by David Chang, has rightly abandoned its attempt to control the name “chili crunch” and “chile crunch” on labels of the condiment. Cease-and-desist letters had been sent to companies who’d had the temerity to use these terms on their bottles, and Momofuka had tried to trademark “chili crunch”. But after a totally understandable (and, surely, an entirely predictable) backlash, the action has been dropped, and an apology issued by Chang (too late to redeem him in my eyes.) Such is the competition in the chilli sauce aisles.
For anyone out there still unfamiliar with this crunchy, spicy, savoury catnip, chilli crisp is a combination of soybean oil, chilli, onion, fermented soybeans, salt, sugar and Szechuan pepper powder. Some versions include peanuts. It’s a heady cocktail of flavours and textures that send my neurotransmitters into overdrive and deliver a full-on dopamine rush.
Which brings me to today’s recipe, wherein chilli crisp plays a starring role. The origins of the dish can be found at Cafe Paci, one of of my favourite Sydney restaurants. One of their most popular dishes, and one I order every time I visit, is XO trout dumplings, “an Italian- and Cantonese-inspired take on Finnish staples: potato and trout.”
Essentially, it’s little gnocchi-like dumplings smothered in XO sauce, which is another deeply delicious umami bomb but, unusually, made with trout. The chef has shared the recipe here but I’m afraid that making my own XO sauce - a multi-ingredient, time consuming recipe - is a culinary project too far for me.
Instead, I’ve come up with a cheat’s version of a sort-of XO sauce and, like Cafe Paci, I’ve paired it with plump and fluffy home-made potato gnocchi. I have to warn you, this dish delivers such an explosion of umami and lovely textures that it‘s very difficult indeed to stop eating it. It’s also very much Not Health Food. But us oldies need something to keep a spring in our step, don’t we?