A map of the ‘other China’

IMAGINE the cookbook as Lonely Planet guide -- trail-stained, river-logged, loaded with maps and pictures, the recipes like scrawled postcards -- and you get an idea of the kind of books Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid write.

“Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China” is the sixth cookbook by Alford and Duguid, the Toronto-based husband and wife team who met as travelers in Tibet. In this, their first book to tackle the cuisine of a single country, Alford and Duguid are interested not in codifying Chinese food (a questionable task anyway) but in the cooking of the nation’s mountains and steppes, its silk roads and peripheries, the “other China” beyond the increasingly Westernized urban centers.

The book’s recipes -- gorgeously photographed in studio by Richard Jung -- are interspersed with terrific location shots taken by Alford and Duguid, as well as with vignettes written by the couple over the course of their trips through the region. It reads like a tattered food diary, an expat travel journal, a far-flung love story, a Graham Greene novel unbound and reassembled with recipes.

The recipes are easy to follow, and use techniques that are as familiar as most of the ingredients, even the most obscure of which can be found at farmers markets or Asian grocery stores. Pretty impressive for a book that combines the cuisines of Guizhou and Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, and features recipes for dishes that are built from fermented pastes, hand-pulled noodles and bone broths.

China opened its borders in the early ‘80s; Alford and Duguid traveled there extensively in the intervening years. But it was the outlying provinces that caught their attention, as much for the profound changes that were taking place as for the diverse and fascinating food they discovered there.

This food is well worth the trip -- or trips. The recipes are loaded with flavor, torqued with spice and fraught with heat, either from fiery chiles or the open flame. And they’re balanced too.

A dish of fresh soybeans, or edamame, sounds far more ordinary than it looks -- or tastes. The beans are cooked simply, boiled in a water bath that’s spiked with star anise, chiles and five cloves of garlic. The dish has a bright heat and glorious color that belies its simplicity.

Dried tofu batons get a brief soak, a quick stir-fry in a pungent blend of sesame oil, rice vinegar, soy sauce and chile flakes, and a generous sprinkling of fresh cilantro. It’s a revelation of how good tofu can be in the right hands.

The list goes on. I cooked 14 recipes and not one of them disappointed. It helps that the authors have as much of a range -- they’ve written books on Indian and Asian food; their last cookbook was on baking -- as the food they’re profiling.

The Kazakh family loaf, a recipe from the mountains of northern Xinjiang, is a basic yeasted bread but with yogurt stirred into the simple dough. Baked in a lidded pot, the bread has a dense, moist crumb and a glorious burnished crust.

Uighur nan is similarly user-friendly, the easy flatbreads rolled out, pricked with a fork and sprinkled with salt and cumin seeds before a quick bake on a hot stone. Crisped yet pliant, the breads are the perfect foil for a simple tomato salsa made with fresh tomatoes, sesame oil and minced scallions.

Alford and Duguid are great with main courses too. Lamb kebabs are doused with an easy marinade of chopped onion, garlic and pomegranate juice, then grilled on an open flame. Terrific Mongolian lamb sausages, ground lamb cooked into little patties, are jazzed by generous amounts of fresh ginger, scallions, garlic and cilantro.

And deep-fried whiting, the delicate pieces of fish neither skinned nor boned, get a spicy tempura coating with a simple paste of cornstarch and homemade chile sauce. It’s a wonderful recipe and, sans cornstarch, the sauce makes a great marinade for grilled meat too.

Among the few desserts, Tibetan rice pudding is a simple, subtle standout. It’s just milk and “broken” rice (literally, grains of jasmine rice that have been broken), dried apples and honey. But after slow cooking, the simple ingredients are transformed into a creamy dessert, subtle with fruit, adorned with rivulets of additional honey and low clouds of tangy yogurt.

More involved dishes, such as some of the spicy condiments and pickled vegetables, might require a few more steps. A recipe for pickled radish threads instructs readers to mix grated daikon with aromatics and seasonings, layer in salt, Sichuan pepper and vinegar, then “place in a sunny spot by a window for 2 to 4 days.”

This is that rare book that works on each of the levels to which it aspires: travelogue, cultural anthropology, cookbook. Most important, the food -- as storied and diverse as the people who inspired it -- works too.

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amy.scattergood@latimes.com

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Mongolian lamb patties

Total time: 55 minutes

Servings: 4 to 6 (makes 16 patties)

Note: From “Beyond the Great Wall” by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. Ground lamb is available at select meat counters.

1 1/4 pounds ground lamb

4 large garlic cloves, coarsely chopped

1 cup chopped scallions (white and tender green parts)

2 cups chopped cilantro leaves and stems

3 tablespoons minced ginger

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper (optional)

Vegetable or peanut oil

1. Place the lamb in a bowl and set aside. Place the garlic in a food processor and pulse to finely chop, then add the scallions, cilantro and ginger and pulse to mince them. (You can also do this by hand.) Add the mixture to the meat, along with the salt and pepper, and use your fingers to blend. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

2. Scoop a scant 3 tablespoons (about golf-ball size) of the chilled meat mixture and shape into a firm patty about 2 1/2 inches across and about an inch thick. Set the patties on a plate and repeat with the remaining mixture to make

16 patties.

3. Place a large heavy skillet over medium-high heat and add about 1 tablespoon oil. Add the patties in batches and pan fry for about 4 minutes on each side to cook through; add a little more oil if necessary. Alternatively, prepare a medium-hot fire in a charcoal grill or heat a gas grill. Grill the patties for about 4 minutes per side, or until done as you like. Serve with your choice of condiments.

Each patty: 93 calories; 7 grams protein; 1 gram carbohydrates; 0 fiber; 7 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 21 mg. cholesterol; 239 mg. sodium.

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Chile-hot bright green soybeans with garlic

Total time: 15 minutes

Servings: 8 as an appetizer or side dish

Note: Adapted from “Beyond the Great Wall.” This recipe is traditionally made with fresh fava beans.

1 pound (2 cups) fresh or frozen shelled soybeans

Scant 2 tablespoons peanut oil

5 dried red chiles

5 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

1/2 teaspoon star anise pieces

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup chicken or pork broth or water

1. Rinse the beans under cold water, drain and set aside.

2. Heat a wok over high heat. Add the oil, swirl it around in the pan and heat until hot. Add the chiles and garlic and stir-fry until aromatic, about 30 seconds. Add the soybeans and the star anise and stir-fry for 1 minute.

3. Add the salt and broth or water and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until the beans are very tender, about 7 minutes. (Fresh and frozen take about the same time.) Turn out and serve.

Each serving: 130 calories; 13 grams protein; 10 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams fiber; 7 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 0 cholesterol; 350 mg. sodium.

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Tofu batons with hot sesame dressing

Total time: 55 minutes

Servings: 4

Note: Adapted from “Beyond the Great Wall.” Tofu sticks, also known as bean curd sticks, are available at Chinese and other Asian markets.

3 ounces tofu sticks (4 to 6 sticks)

1 tablespoon peanut oil

1 teaspoon roasted sesame oil

1/2 teaspoon chile pepper flakes

1 tablespoon rice vinegar

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1/2 teaspoon sugar

1/4 cup fresh cilantro leaves

1. Add 2 inches of water to a medium pot and bring to a boil. Add the tofu sticks, breaking them if necessary to submerge them. Remove from the heat. Weight down the sticks with a plate that fits inside the pot. Cover and let sit for 30 minutes.

2. Remove the plate and drain the tofu well. Cut the sticks into 2-inch lengths, trimming and discarding any tough bits. Cut the sticks lengthwise in halves or into quarters, to make narrow batons. Set aside.

3. Heat a wok or wide heavy pot over medium-high heat. Add the peanut and sesame oils. When the oil is hot, add the chile pepper flakes and the tofu batons and stir-fry for 2 minutes, stirring and pressing on the batons to expose them to the hot surface of the pan.

4. In a small bowl, combine the vinegar, soy sauce and sugar and whisk well, then pour over the tofu batons. Stir-fry briefly to distribute the flavors, and continue to cook until the liquid is mostly absorbed. Remove from the heat.

5. Turn out into a wide shallow bowl. Sprinkle with the cilantro and serve warm or at room temperature.

Each serving: 79 calories; 4 grams protein; 2 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram fiber; 6 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 0 cholesterol; 506 mg. sodium.

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Tibetan rice pudding

Total time: 1 hour, 20 minutes

Servings: 8

Note: Adapted from “Beyond the Great Wall.” Broken

rice (the broken grains that result from rice milling) is available at most Asian markets.

1 cup broken rice

Pinch of salt

3 cups whole milk

1/2 cup packed dried apples, preferably organic, chopped into one-half-inch or smaller pieces

3 tablespoons clover or other flower honey, plus extra for drizzling

Yogurt for garnish

Butter (optional)

1. Bring 3 cups water to a boil in

a small heavy pot with a

tight-fitting lid. Place the rice

in a fine-mesh strainer and rinse with cold water. Add the rice to the pot. Bring back to a boil,

then reduce the heat to medium-low and cook, covered, until

most of the water is absorbed

and the rice is soft, 10 to 15

minutes.

2. Add the salt, then stir in the milk and apples. Increase the heat and bring back nearly to a boil, then reduce the heat to very low, cover, and simmer until very thick, 45 minutes to 1 hour, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon to prevent sticking. After 30 minutes, stir in the honey.

3. Serve with a drizzle of

honey and a generous dollop

of yogurt and, if desired, a bit

of butter.

Each three-fourths-cup serving: 189 calories; 5 grams protein; 35 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram fiber; 3 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 9 mg. cholesterol; 6 mg. sodium.