There was a stretch of time, several years ago, when a group of America’s Test Kitchen staffers made a monthly pilgrimage to FuLoon, a (now sadly shuttered) Sichuan restaurant in the Boston suburbs, after work. We’d settle in at a table, pour tea, and flip through the huge menu to strategize our order. Inevitably, a double order of suan la bai cai was on the list.
The napa cabbage stir-fry, prepared in the sour-hot style (“suan” means sour; “la,” spicy) that is iconic in Sichuan and northern Chinese cuisines, was the most unassuming part of the spread but would disappear almost as soon
