Sunday night I made the Shrimp- or Fish-Stuffed Chiles in Black Bean Sauce recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook.

I opted for the shrimp-stuffed version of the recipe, because I like shrimp much more than mild white fish. Also, since the shrimp would be minced, I got the 120+ count shrimp for only $5.99/lb! The black bean sauce uses the fermented black beans (douchi), an ingredient uncommon enough for me that I’m happy to use some of my supply. The recipe has a note on Chinese long green chili substitutes, but the YDFM usually has them in stock , and I had no problem getting them. (They’re used in one of our favorite recipes, salt and pepper tofu, too, so I am familiar with them.) Otherwise ingredients were fairly straightforward.

The preparation was simple enough, but it took me much longer than the recipe’s estimated 35 minutes. The shrimp mixture was sticky and did not want to fill the chili halves cleanly. In the middle of cooking, a storm knocked our power out. We luckily have a gas stove, and I could continue with a headlamp, but the cooking was still harder than it normally would have been.

I thought they were quite tasty, and my opinion improved with the leftovers. The shrimp filling was delicious, the chilis had a wonderful flavor to them (kind of like a chile relleno), and the black bean sauce brought a good salty-savoriness to it all. My wife thought they were fine with the caveat, “I don’t really care for stuffed peppers.” My daughter did not try them, but my son did and said that he didn’t care for the chilies, but “liked aftertaste of the insides.”

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.