Ashy's vegetarian recipes ©2005
Potatoes, for the purpose of this recipe, is potatoes. Peel them, chop them - any kind will do. The kind of chillies used, on the other hand, will have a noticeable effect on the final outcome.
I was prompted to include this recipe after being served the dish several times during a two-week stay on Pu Ti Island in the Bay of Bohai. It's a rather muddy, marshy island about four or five hundred km east of Beijing and there's not much there to see except migratory birds so if you're not into them, a visit could be a bit disappointing. This makes one wonder why such a huge carpark has been constructed by the ferry terminal on the mainland. There are rows of restaurants and souvenir shops too, but like the car park, they are all eerily empty. Guess not many Chinese guys are into migratory birds. Maybe the authorities should have figured that out before they built the tracks across the island and installed swings and stuff for the kids. I saw a billboard poster on the way down from Beijing. It showed a montage featuring an attractive young couple in swimwear, a diver in clear blue water looking at coloured fish and someone sailing. Our driver told us that the Chinese characters read, 'Come to Pu Ti Island.' There isn't any diving round Pu Ti Island. There isn't enough water. The local fishermen get kitted up in chest-high waders with an inner-tube round their waist for safety and head out two kilometers from the shore with their wee fishing rods. That's when the tide is in. When it's not, there's just mud.
I met a few tourists on the island during my stay. They were mostly young well-to-do Beijing couples, just like the ones on the billboard. They weren't wearing swim suits though. They usually wandered a few hundred meters into the interior, looked at the broken swings and the 300 m high pile of mud that is rumoured to have been built to support a five star hotel sometime in the future, then returned to the ferry terminal and huddled shivering behind the kiosk to wait for the next boat off the island.
I enjoyed my stay on Pu Ti. I spent all day every day looking for birds along with three other nutcases and when we were hungry, we went and ate in the 600 seater restaurant. In the first week, there were another six guests at meal times: four French and two Belgians. At the beginning of the second week, it was down to us and the Belgians, then it was only us. Us and about twenty-three waitresses who spent all their time playing cards, doing Karaoke in the empty disco hall or trying to stop the dog eating one of the foreigners.
About the chillies.... I mentioned how different chillies affect the final outcome. Let me elaborate. I had a similar dish to this a few years ago in a remote part of Kyrgyzstan (I know, they're all remote....) but it was made with sliced hot green chillies. The island dish was made with whole dried red chillies which produced a very different dish. I don't know which dish was tastier - they were both good. The chillies used in the Chinese dish were a sort that I've encountered several times in China - small (about 3 or 4 com long), dark reddish-brown and not too hot. You could chew on a whole pepper without losing the top of your head, although it might make your eyes water a bit. I'm not sure how globally available these peppers are, but at home I got by with a couple of large pinches of crushed dried chillies of the generic sort. So, basically, we're saying that any chillies will do. Let's go...
Ingredients
Potatoes
Chillies
Salt
Oil
Peel the potatoes and slice them very thinly. Cut the slices into strips about a centimeter wide. Heat a little oil in a pan or wok until it begins to smoke. Throw in the potatoes, chilli and salt and stir fry for seven minutes or so - until the potato strips begin to bend but before they break up.
This dish can be served on its own as a tasty snack. In fact this recipe is ideal if you have nothing in the cupboard but potatoes. I enjoyed it alternately with Happy Island eggplants, or tofu with spinach. On Pu Ti Island, an accompaniment of cold glutinous rice and a side dish of roasted peanuts is de rigeur.