Editor’s Note: Adan here, excited to share Mind Body Globe’s first-ever guest post! This post about siwawa comes from experimental guzhengist, artist, and all-around visionary Justin “Yukes” Scholar, detailing his culinary experiences celebrating Lunar New Year with his girlfriend’s family in Guiyang.
Happy Lunar New Year!
As is tradition, most Chinese folk head home to their laojia (old home) to hang with family and do jack shit for 1-2 weeks. For the third year or so, I’m traveling with my girlfriend back to her home in Guiyang, China, and every time we have local food, I feel compelled to share it with the internet. Particularly this dish, called siwawa — you’d be hard-pressed to find it *anywhere,* even in Shanghai or Beijing.
Guiyangnese cuisine has hardly spread beyond the borders of Guizhou province, let alone outside of China. The only famous foodstuff is called “Lao Gan Ma,” which is a crispy chili sauce you might find in your local Asian grocery store.
Siwawa, however, is an iconic Guiyang dish, and something you may even be able to make at home.
Here’s the whole process. You can see how the soup gets poured in at the end. I hope this inspires someone to get creative with their cooking over the new year!
Guiyang was traditionally a very, very poor region of China, and a lot of the cuisine reflects a scarcity of ingredients, featuring lesser-utilized parts of vegetables/meat/etc…
Siwawa is like the ultimate embodiment of Guiyangnese chefs doing their best with what they have. It’s sort of like an unfried dumpling, or maybe a taco, served with soup.
Basically take a collection of whatever vegetables & pickled vegetables you have lying around. That’s like half a carrot, half a cucumber, a quarter potato…a real kitchen sink dish. You don’t need much, but the more variety the better.
You’ll have to forgive me for not knowing every ingredient. My guesses were radish and…some kind of pepper? Having some cooked noodles is a great addition.
The *real* Guiyang flavor comes from that bitter root in the top right, which is…indescribably terrible, like eating grass roots. I’d avoid the bitterness.
The true flavor comes from these little guys. This is dried, rendered pork fat. In most of the country, the pork fat is left on choice cuts, or discarded. In Guiyang, they’d collect all the fat, render it, dry it, and keep these chunks around to sprinkle in other dishes.
The only way I can describe them is “jam-f*ckin’-packed with flavor.”
I’m not sure how you could find these, though I reckon you could use some good smoked back bacon.
But my god if you can find them on Aliexpress or Ebay or something, it’s definitely worth the effort. A big jar will run you about $10.
Wrap it like a taco. Apparently, the reason siwawa hasn’t traveled far outside the city is because the dumpling skin is very special, doesn’t keep long, and is specific to the region.
I’ve had a lot of dumplings in my time. To be honest I don’t think it’s some ultra-secret recipe. You can probably make due with some simple dumpling skins from the shop.
You finish up by pouring in some tomato soup with a bit of chili sauce and green onion, then eat it before the soup leaks out of the dumpling.
Not to be confused with the very popular “soup dumplings,” most notably 小笼包 Xiaolongbao like you can buy at Trader Joe’s. Those are from Shanghai, steamed already have the soup in them. This is like a lofi version.
Happy New Year and 新年快乐, everyone!
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