Patron Exclusive Recipe #2: Hani People's Pounded Potato with Fresh Herbs (哈尼珍珠洋芋粑粑)

Hey guys, happy weekend! Sorry, this week’s written recipe is a bit late, been busy. In the future, I’ll try to upload between the window of Wed-Sat. 

This week, I want to show you a very interesting dish from the Hani people. In Yunnan, they’re the ethnic group living mostly around Ailao Mountain Area (it's really gorgeous there btw, ask me for travel tips if you're going to that area). Hani people are known for their World Heritage listed rice terrace fields. Hani food uses a lot of fresh herbs from the mountain, which is quite difficult for us to get. But by using similarly taste ones, we’d still be able to get some delicious versions. This week, let’s begin with a pounded/mashed potato dish. The technique involved is quite interesting and yields you a totally different texture mashed potato dish.

**Ingredients**

1. Baby potatoes, 300g. In Yunnan, they use a specific type of potato called "珍珠洋芋/pearl potato" that's very starchy. And for me, I’m using these red ones from Yunnan, but you can use other small and *starchy* cultivars. 

2. Chinese chives/green garlic, 20g. 

3. Cilantro (preferably roots included), 20g.

4. One small red chili. I’m using chaotianjiao (similar to Thai bird’s eye). 

Red baby potatoes

**Seasoning**

Since we’re using fresh herbs, the seasoning is super simple here. 

1. Salt, 1/2 tsp. 

2. MSG, a small pinch, optional but recommended. 

Super simple seasoning again, salt and/or MSG.

Before we jump into the process, let’s talk about herbs.

One major herb used in this dish (and many other ethnic dishes in Yunnan is “Piecaigen/苤菜根”), it's the root of "Piecai/苤菜". Don’t think you can get it outside of China, I also need to get it on special herb vendors on Taobao. 

This is Piecaigen/苤菜根.

Its flavor is like a mix of Chinese chives and garlic, then a very slight undertone of Chinese celery. 

So I tested using Chinese chives or green garlic, it works really well. In fact, Chris and I actually prefer it with Chinese chives better than the one using Piecaigen. 

Chinese chives works well. 

So is green garlic.

Besides this pungent herb, we’ll also need 20g cilantro. It’d be better you can include the root too, it gives out great flavor. But it also works without the roots, I heard that in the US you don’t get vegetables with roots so that you can’t grow it yourself, wonder if it’s the case. 

The cilantro roots lends a great flavor to the dish. They use in Thai food too. There's also a Chinese cold dish I really like, which uses purely cilantro roots.

This dish is more about the technique in handling the potato and it’s totally up to you which herb you use. I saw people in Pu’er put fresh fennel leaves + spring onion in their mashed potato, which is awesome too. So don’t be afraid with experiment! 

And now let’s cook.

**Process**

1. Preheat oven at 200⁰C. Wash the potatoes, poke some holes in them with a fork.

Fork the potatoes.

2. Cover the plate and bake for 30 minutes, 200⁰C. Traditionally they steam it, but we want to keep as little moisture gets in as possible (because we want it to be starchy), so baking it is.

Covering it so that the steam helps it cook better, kinda mimicking steaming.

3. When it’s baking, cut the herbs into 1~2cm dice. Cut the chili same size sections, deseed if you don’t want it to be too spicy. 

When the potatoes are baking, let's prep the herbs.

4. Take out the potatoes after 30 mins and set aside to cool down. When the potatoes are cool to touch, peel them.

Peel the potatoes.

5. Now break out your mortar and pretzel, we can start pounding.

6. Add salt to the potatoes and pound it for a few minutes.

Add in salt and potatoes, pound for a few minutes.

7. About 3-4 minutes in, it’s starting to get sticky. Now it’s time to add the herbs.

Starting to get sticky.

Time to add in the herbs.

8. Add the herbs in batches if your mortar is small like mine. 

Doing it bit by bit if you have a small mortar.

Then in with cilantro and chili.

9. Keep pounding till the texture is obviously smooth, sticky and kinda silky, like shown in the picture. I pounded it for 10 more mintues after adding in the herbs. Then it’s ready to serve.

Texture really changed during the pounding process.

Serve it up~

Without a single drop of oil or dairy, yet smooth, thick and creamy, a completely different mashed potato texture. This is a very cool technique to make mashed potatoes. In fact, it’s so sticky that Hani people call it “珍珠洋芋粑粑”, the latter two characters “粑粑” referred to rice and flour product like rice cake in southwestern dialect. This dish does have some similarity with the gooey rice cake.

You can really form it into a cake, or even use a piping bag to form them into little fancy shapes. But I was lazy and hungry.

My lunch for today, pounded potato with shittake mushroom and spinach egg pancake (菠菜香菇烘蛋).

So right, this is the dish for the week. Hope you give a try, it's quite an interesting way and texture to have mashed potato~

For next week, I’m still undecided on what to make, it’s either a Cantonese dried shittake mushroom and dried seafood tofu stew, or the Dongguan style umami soup with sticky rice balls. We’ll see~

Hope you have a great weekend!