Details
Chongqing-style hot and sour vermicelli, the street-stall bowl that is sour, hot and tingling all at once. The vermicelli is made mostly from sweet potato starch, so it cooks up glassy, springy and slippery and holds the soup well. Four seasoning packs do the work: a Pixian bean paste sauce for depth, a chilli oil with ginger, shallot, sesame and Sichuan pepper for fragrance and numbing heat, a vinegar sauce for the sharp sour note, and a powder pack to round it out. Boil the vermicelli for 3 to 5 minutes, add the packs to the bowl, stir and eat. Top with roasted peanuts, chopped coriander, pickled mustard greens or minced pork for the full stall-style bowl. Each pack holds a generous 200g of vermicelli.
