Chicken in Tart Garlic Sauce and Everyday Cabbage-Shallot Refresher

I don't have a lot of experience with Burmese food, but I got pretty excited when I saw that Naomi Duguid had a new cookbook.  Hot Sour Salty Sweet is one of my favorite cookbooks and I'm always thrilled to try new cuisines and cookbooks, especially when I have reason to think that they might be good.  Given the author and the general beauty of the cookbook I had pretty high hopes from day one.  For our first meal I bookmarked a number of recipes and then let Alex pick which one(s) to make.  One of the great parts of being an attorney is an endless supply of flags and post-its, which I put to good use marking documents (as well as cookbooks).  He picked the chicken and I decided that we should make the simple cabbage-shallot salad to serve on the side.  It didn't occur to me (although it really should have) that both recipes would be on the spicy side.  I'm pretty good at entirely ignoring aspects of a recipe while salivating over it.  I usually do that with the amount of time it will take to make something (long marinades or braises always kill me), but it never really occurred to me just how many cayenne chilis these recipes called for.  Granted, the chicken is much spicier than the cabbage-shallot refresher, but neither one is suitable for people with a wimpy palate.  If you like just a hint of heat, go with the cabbage-shallot salad and maybe cut back on the chili a little.  I would pick an entirely different entree because the spicy punch of the chicken really makes the dish shine.  It's spicy and funky and fun.  The next time I make the chicken I will probably cut the amount of water in half and/or add a little cornstarch slurry to the dish to thicken it up a bit.  The ju-ju (for lack of a better term) is pretty thin and watery, but if you thickened it up a bit I bet it would be delicious.  The chicken itself absorbed a ton of flavor from the ju-ju - heat being one of the predominant flavors, along with the savory flavors of ginger and garlic and the tartness of the lime juice.  It was really good, and very different.

As for the cabbage-shallot refresher, I would totally serve this with both Asian and non-Asian meals (with a few minor twists).  For instance, I could totally see skewing it a little Latin and using it on top of tacos or serving it with enchiladas.  I liked how bright and fresh it was.

Recipes after the jump!

Red Cabbage Salad with Warm Pancetta-Balsamic Dressing

Sometimes my meal planning get a little weird.  Take this salad for instance.  We made it for lunch last Sunday.  We had 3/4 of a head of red cabbage leftover in the fridge from our shrimp tostadas and I wanted to do something different with it.  This seemed to fit the bill.  I wanted something salad-like, but a little more filling than slaw and I didn't want to go out and buy a dozen ingredients in order to make an Asian chicken salad.  So I poked around a bit online and this is what I came up with.  We still had to go out to buy the pancetta because we don't typically keep it in the apartment but I didn't need to buy (and then chop) a ton of veggies.  When we made this Saigon Chicken Salad for example, it took almost 30 minutes to prep and chop all of the ingredients.  The green papaya alone took forever.  The only things that required chopping here were the red cabbage itself and the pancetta, shallot, almonds and parsley.  I considered that pretty easy.  Granted, Alex did most of the chopping and prepping (although I did chop the cabbage) because I was doing work.  But it looked fairly easy to put together.  And it was tasty.  I liked the combination of different flavors and textures.  The sweetness of the currants and balsamic was a nice match for the crispy, salty, porky pancetta, the crunchy almonds and the crispness of the cabbage.  It worked on a number of fun and interesting levels.  One thing I will say - the leftover salad kind of creeped me out.  I brought it into work on Tuesday and the dressing had turned gritty and strange.  I had a few bites and tossed the rest.  Don't let that deter you from making the salad in the first place, but don't plan on making extra salad for leftovers. 

Recipe after the jump!

Spicy Soba Noodles with Smoked Tofu, Shiitakes and Cabbage

I'm not sure when I first stumbled across this recipe (or why), but it has been sitting in my draft post folder for some time.  My best guess is that I was looking for recipes using soba noodles and decided to bookmark this one for future use.  Who knows?  But I'm a sucker for shiitake mushrooms, edamame and soba noodles, so it totally makes sense that this recipe sounded good to me.  I decided to use more edamame than the recipe called for (it originally wanted a cup of edamame, but I figured why not use the entire 12 oz bag of frozen edamame) and to add some smoked tofu.  I figured that the tofu would add some smoky flavor, and both ingredients would up the amount of protein in the dish to make the dish more filling.  I also cut back on the amount of noodles in the original recipe after reading through some of the reviews posted on Epicurious.  I love soba noodles, but why not make the healthy choice and go a little heavier on the veggies and a little lighter on the carbs?

When I was explaining the recipe to Alex, he called it "Korean vegetable spaghetti."  And he kept referring to it as "Korean spaghetti" all evening.  Spaghetti wasn't the first thing that came to mind for me when I saw or tasted the dish, but to each their own.  I see what he was saying.  It's a noodle dish with lots of veggies - in theory it's like a pasta primavera, only not so much.  First of all, I have never had a spicy pasta primavera before.  Second, none of these ingredients (except for the garlic) would go anywhere near a pasta primavera recipe.  Some of the reviews complained that the sauce here was bland, but I totally disagree.  I know we went light on the noodles (and noodles typically soak up and therefore require a lot more sauce than veggies) and added smoked tofu (which is pretty flavorful on its own), but I actually liked how the addition of the soba noodles mellowed the sauce a little and offset the spicyness of the gochujang.  I was worried that the recipe didn't call for the addition of any salt prior to the addition of the sauce (with the exception of the salt in the boiling water for the noodles and edamame), but after adding the sauce I'm glad we didn't salt it initially.  If we had salted the vegetables I think the dish would have been too salty overall.  If I were to make the dish again I would probably keep the ratio of sauce to noodles the same, but I could vary the vegetables according to what I happened to have on hand.  I think you could play with those proportions to your heart's content without detracting from the dish at all.

Recipe after the jump!

Bacon Braised Cabbage

I will be the first to admit that I have been in something of a blogging and cooking funk recently.  We have made several recipes lately (including a lackluster kale salad on Sunday and a few other things that aren't immediately coming to mind) that just haven't been worth posting.  And that makes me sad.  I almost didn't post this recipe either, but what the heck.  I know that cabbage isn't exactly groundbreaking, earthshattering stuff but I wanted to eat the cabbage in the fridge and was feeling a little lazy.  So we braised the cabbage very simply with some bacon, garlic, Worcestershire sauce, butter and chicken stock.  Et voila - dinner is served.  Before I go any further I must admit that this was not my favorite cabbage recipe we have ever prepared.  If we are sticking with braised or sauteed cabbage, I thought Thomas Keller's Sauteed Savoy Cabbage with Speck and Lemon was richer (without feeling heavy) and much more flavorful.  And if we are branching out to recipes that included cabbage, I would say I preferred this Pasta with Caramelized Cabbage, Anchovies and Bread Crumbs and this Vietnamese Cabbage and Egg Stir-Fry.  We also make a number of variations on Asian chicken salads that include cabbage and are quite delicious but I am going to ignore them for now because cabbage plays far less of a role in those preparations.  This cabbage was good, but we had to add hot sauce to give it a little extra flavor.  Otherwise it was just kind of... blah.  The Worcestershire sauce was an interesting touch and I do enjoy the combination of cabbage, chicken stock and bacon, but it didn't really seem to come together here.  And it just felt really heavy, which, if you ask me, defeats the purpose of eating cabbage for dinner. 

Recipe after the jump!

Sauteed Savoy Cabbage with Speck and Lemon

Say hello to what might be my new favorite cabbage variety.  There are a few reasons for my changing allegiance, including aesthetic ones - Savoy cabbage is way prettier than regular green cabbage.  Plus, the leaves were much more tender than regular cabbage.  It was also pretty sweet, although the chicken stock and the speck in this recipe masked the sweetness a little with their meaty, savory flavors.  I'm sure if you simply sauteed some Savoy cabbage until lightly caramelized it would pack a lot of sweetness.  I am going to have to buy a few more heads of Savoy cabbage at the farmers' market this fall and winter to experiment.  As a side note, I know that I promised you guys that I would be making this recipe in my last post, Warm Mushroom Salad with Shallots and Sherry Vinegar, although I thought it would take me at least a few more days to get around to it.  But we decided to scrap our original plans and make this sauteed cabbage recipe last night because it was a little chilly out so the warm savory cabbage sounded delightful and (more importantly) the Savoy cabbage was taking up a lot of space in the refrigerator.    It was warm and comforting and very flavorful.  Sauteing the cabbage in the chicken stock really imparted a lot of flavor into the cabbage.  And every once in awhile you got a nice meaty bit of speck that gave the cabbage some of its smoky, porky flavor.  That generous squirt of lemon juice right at the end gives the whole dish some brightness and acidity to counterbalance the heavier, meatier flavors of the stock and speck.  Yum.

In the end, this simple little sauteed cabbage dish outshone the salmon we served with it.  In the salmon's defense - this wasn't a really nice $20+ per pound piece of wild organic salmon.  It was organic salmon, but it was farmed.  I know, I know.  It is my own fault for buying farmed salmon (which incidentally still cost about $14 per pound).  But the wild salmon at the grocery store didn't look particularly nice so I decided to be lame and buy farmed salmon.  Lesson learned - this particular salmon had literally no flavor whatsoever.  I won't stray again.
Recipe after the jump!

Corn and Pepper Jack Quesadillas with Radish and Cabbage Slaw and Mexican Tomato Salad

I'm not quite sure how this happened (because it was not intentional), but this week we did Meatless Monday and then ended up with a Meatless Tuesday.  I hadn't actually thought about the fact that we were serving vegetarian meals two nights in a row.  Granted, it would not have made much of a difference because I wanted to use up our corn and tomatoes from the farmers' market.  It just kind of happened...  And when you buy as much produce from the farmers' market as I did this past Sunday, a few vegetarian meals are inevitable.  I have another vegetarian meal on tap for later in the week.  Don't worry though - tonight for dinner we will be making pork schnitzel.

I have to admit that this dinner came together kind of randomly.  We picked up tortillas and a shredded pepper jack blend this weekend at Trader Joes, so quesadillas sounded like a natural use for both of those ingredients.  And I had one ear of corn left over from Monday's Corn on the Cob with Lime Salt, so I figured I would throw some corn in the filling to the quesadillas.  And I got the idea to add mayonnaise to the filling from a recipe I found on Epicurious.  I was a little skeptical but I went with it and it really worked.  I had tomatoes to use, so I was going to make a salsa, but I decided to make a pico de gallo-esque tomato salad instead.  We also had radishes left over from the farmer's market so I wanted to make some sort of cabbage and radish salad/slaw of sorts.  So we ransacked the fridge (and I picked up some new cabbage from the grocery store since ours had seen better days) and we threw in a little bit of this and a little bit of that and made dinner.  I thought that considering how random my meal planning was this time, dinner turned out surprisingly delicious.  The brightness of the slaw and the acidity and faint heat of the tomato salad paired beautifully with the richness of the quesadillas.

Recipes after the jump!

Korean Chicken Salad

I am of the opinion that most things in life are not improved by the addition of mayonnaise.  I know that BLT's and other sandwiches need at least a touch of mayonnaise to be palatable (otherwise they are just too dry) and you need a little mayo in tuna salad.  But I can't really think of anything else that is improved by the addition of mayonnaise.  I have heard that you can use mayonnaise instead of butter when making grilled cheese sandwiches to help the outside of the sandwich toast up golden brown but I haven't tried it out so I can't speak to that.  But when Alex wanted to add mayonnaise to our Korean chicken salad I was very skeptical.  I think I made stink face at him when he brought it up.  And again when I tried it.  Had I been about two decades younger I probably would have thrown in an "ewwwww - mayonnaise!"  But it was really good with just a touch of mayonnaise!  The kewpie mayonnaise somehow pulled it all together - it thickened the dressing a little and gave it body, plus it balanced all of the flavors out somehow and added some sweetness and a touch of tartness/acidity.  It was yummy and it made the chicken salad (which was already pretty good but missing something), just that much better.  I heart this chicken salad, which by extension might mean I heart kewpie mayonnaise.  But let's not be too hasty.

P.S. The chicken by itself was really delicious and would make an excellent entree, or you could use the meat for sandwiches or soups or other things.  I was set on poached chicken breasts because I think their gentle chicken flavor and texture works really well for chicken salads, but Alex prefers roast chicken breasts (hence Alex's Roast Chicken Breasts).  Since he was cooking he got to choose the cooking method and in this instance, I might have to agree that he was right as I think we will be making those chicken breasts again in the future!

Recipe after the jump!

Thai Soup with Shrimp, Cabbage and Mushrooms

I am embarassed to say that I have been sitting on this post for a couple of weeks - long enough for me to forget the finer points I might have made.  Oops.  But I wrote down a few notes right after we made the soup from Alex, who thought the soup was "pretty good," "wasn't that hard to make" and "had pretty good balance of flavors."  So there you have it.  I agree with Alex that the soup was "pretty good," although I thought the broth itself needed something to give it a little more depth of flavor.  It tasted a little thin for me.  I'm not sure that thin is the right word (although it does describe the consistency), but I just wanted the broth to be a little richer and more flavorful.  The night we made this recipe I really wanted to make this Thai Shrimp and Coconut Soup with Lemongrass by Harold Dieterle, but it required yet another trip to the grocery store for lemongrass, tamarind concentrate (I think I threw the rest of ours out) and Thai chilis.  And I just got too lazy, so we used Thai curry paste and some dried lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves to spice up the broth.  It did give it some heat and flavor, but I just wanted it to be bigger/better.  Next time, I will plan more in advance and go buy the fresh lemongrass, etc. and make the Harold Dieterle soup because it really does sound fantastic. 

Recipe after the jump!

Mindy Fox's Peanut Soba, Cabbage and Chicken Salad

This recipe was one of the many I found (and bookmarked) at Serious Eats in the past few weeks.   Until recently I read random reviews and taste tests at Serious Eats, but I never tried out their recipes.  Then I realized that they have some pretty awesome recipes.  Oops.  Take this recipe for instance.  I have never heard of Mindy Fox (and I still don't know who she is), but Serious Eats had two of her recipes on the site, both of which I was really excited to try in the future.  We just happened to get around to making this one first because we made asparagus for lunch yesterday and her other recipe on Serious Eats is for a raw asparagus salad.  That might be a little too much asparagus in one day for Alex.

The thing I liked most about this recipe is that it's hearty and filling, but still feels light because of the cabbage and radish salad.  The noodles get a little gummy once you toss them in the peanut sauce, but what do you expect when you use a peanut butter-based sauce?  Peanut butter is gummy by definition and the noodles are starchy, which just gums things up more.  We tried lightly oiling the cooking water for the noodles and then rinsed them well after cooking, but they still have the tendency to form one sticky noodle mass once you toss with the peanut sauce.  Luckily, I have no problem with sticky noodle masses provided that the flavors are good.  And once you toss the noodles with the cabbage salad the lime juice dressing from the cabbage helps to loosen things up a bit.  I guess my other complaint would be how complicated this salad is.  It takes two pots (or one if you cook the noodles in the same pot that the chicken poached in, which is what we did, but you still need to rinse the pot out/wash it between uses), a few mixing bowls, a mandoline (to shred the cabbage and to thinly slice the radishes), a knife, a mini food processor/blender, a colander and so on and so forth.  Because each element is made individually it doubles the amount of work.  However, keeping the cabbage-radish salad and the herbs separate from the noodles until the very end makes the dish feel fresher and lighter.  So I guess the sheer number of dirty dishes is something that you just have to accept and deal with if you want to make the salad.  In the end it is worth it, but it does make cleaning up something of a process. 

Recipe after the jump!

Pasta with Caramelized Cabbage, Anchovies and Bread Crumbs

First things first - I have some friends to thank for this recipe.  I didn't find this recipe on my own.  Usually I am in charge of tracking down recipes, but this one was emailed to me by my friends Jay and Verna.  Thanks guys!  They told me it was a really hearty/homey recipe.  And they were right.  Those are exactly the words that I would use to describe it.  I feel like cabbage is inherently hearty and homey.  I'm not sure I can picture an elegant or refined dish that is cabbage-based (which isn't to say that cabbage isn't delicious).  If you think about it, cabbage usually features in dishes like sauerkraut and coleslaw, not fine dining.  But I'm not usually aiming for fine dining on a random Thursday night.  What I really want during the week (for the most part) is to come home from work and cook a nice, not too complicated, tasty meal.  It doesn't have to be fancy.  And this pasta isn't fancy.  It is comforting and homey, but it has great flavor.  You get to experience the sweet cabbage, the salty/nutty bread crumbs, the spice from the red pepper flakes, the rich fruity taste of the evoo and the bite of the cheese.  Yum.  Alex says it reminded him of a pasta dish his mom used to make him with caramelized onions, only with more flavor (red pepper flakes and anchovies pack a wallop, one that neither of our parents experimented with regularly but one that we both enjoy).  I was actually sad that Alex claimed the rest of the pasta for lunch today because I wanted it.  And you know a dish is good when I go to the trouble of fighting Alex for the leftovers.

As a side note, I'm going to go ahead and call this recipe vegetarian, even though it contains anchovies.  If you don't want anchovies you can leave them out, but I really like the salty, nutty flavor they impart.  Speaking of anchovies, we are on a real anchovy kick this week because we used them in our Simple Roasted Cauliflower with Garlic, Onion and Anchovies earlier in the week.

Recipe after the jump!

Chinese New Year Meal #7 - Lion's Head Meatballs

 

I'm not sure if I am happy or sad that this is our last Chinese New Year meal for 2012.  The funny thing is that I sat down in January and got really excited for our Chinese New Year meals and picked out a bunch of recipes.  I got so excited that I couldn't wait until Chinese New Year and picked some recipes to make as a warm up - Chicken with Ginger (La Jiang Men Ji), Red-Braised Pork (Hong Shao Rou) and Stir-Fried Mongolian Lamb with Scallions.  Somehow I managed to not make a single recipe that I had originally selected for Chinese New Year.  Instead, I went out and found a whole new set of recipes.  I did stick to some of the same categories - I wanted to make dumplings and noodles, I wanted to make seafood, I wanted to make tofu and I wanted to make meat.  Plus I wanted to throw in a few new sides so I did that too.  Alex and I are in total agreement with each other on our favorite meal.  Our favorite new side was definitely Daikon Slivers in a Spicy Dressing.  And our favorite entree was Ants Climbing a Tree.  

This recipe falls somewhere in the middle of our Chinese New Year meals.  The meatballs were incredibly moist and tender and had really good flavor.  Somehow the broth didn't have quite as much flavor as I had expected.  Therefore the cabbage didn't soak up quite as much flavor as I would have hoped, although the Taiwanese cabbage is inherently nice and sweet.  Although this dish wasn't as labor-intensive as the Pork and Napa Cabbage Water Dumplings (Shuijiao), it didn't exactly come together quickly and easily.  And while the meatballs were pretty good, I don't know that I would go to the trouble of making them again, especially as they didn't rank among my favorite Chinese New Year dishes.  Strangely enough, my favorite Chinese meal of late was the Red-Braised Pork (Hong Shao Rou) we made back in January.  It was amazing!

Recipe after the jump!

Chinese New Year Meal #1 - Pork and Napa Cabbage Water Dumplings (Shuijiao) with Daikon Slivers in a Spicy Dressing

Gong Hei Fat Choy!   It took us a little while to get around to it, but we finally made our first Chinese New Year meal!  And it was a very traditional one - dumplings (shuijiao).  Dumplings and daikon, but more on the daikon later.  So before I even start talking about this recipe I have to made an admission.  I totally didn't read the recipe right.  We were supposed to make 32 dumplings total - divide the dough in half and make 16 wrappers from each half.  Instead I made 16 total.  I missed the step of dividing the dough in half.  So each dumpling was roughly the size of an empanada and each wrapper the size of a small tortilla.  They were monster dumplings.  Oops.  The size of our enormous dumplings aside, they were really tasty.  The wrappers were silky.  And maybe a little doughier than they should have been, but again, they were monster dumplings.  The filling had really good flavor and texture.  The dumplings were juicy too, not dry and hockey puck-like.  I was really happy with them.  They only took two-three hours to make from start to finish and made a mess of our entire kitchen, but I thought it was worth it.  Once or twice a year I like to take on an overly ambitious cooking project.  This was mine for the next few months.  And it was a really good one. 

I chose the Daikon Slivers in a Spicy Dressing (Liang Ban Luo Bu Si) as the side because it was simple and didn't need to be cooked.  I wanted a vegetable side dish that would be tasty and refreshing, but not too much trouble to prepare.  I was trying to avoid making smacked cucumbers or Sichuan cucumbers because I feel like we make them too often.  So I decided to go with daikon radish instead.  And in the end, it was the daikon dish that really stood out for me.  I loved the freshness of the cilantro and scallion, added to the hint of sweetness that all offset the spicy, saltiness of the dressing.  And I really enjoyed the crunch of the raw daikon.  Don't get me wrong, the dumplings were delicious.  But they were a lot of trouble to make.  The daikon was equally delicious (albeit in a very different way), and it was relatively easy to throw together.  I could definitely see myself making the daikon again in the future to round out a nice Chinese meal.

Recipes after the jump!

Vietnamese Cabbage and Egg Stir-Fry

The most apt description I could come up for this dish was "surprisingly pleasant."  It is just so simple and it uses ingredients (like cabbage) that Alex and I don't typically find very exciting.  We made it because I think we need to reboot our digestive tracts with vegetables and healthy food.  So I decided to make this dish, even though it had the potential to be really boring.  There are so few ingredients and none of them sound like they should really have any wow factor.  However, it all works together brilliantly.  The cabbage is nice and sweet, with a little crunch to it.  And the egg somehow makes the whole dish feel and taste creamy, even though there is no cream or dairy whatsoever.  I really didn't think that one egg could have much of an effect on that amount of cabbage, but it really does.  Make sure you do what the recipe says and leave the egg a little custardy for the full effect.  Then you add the freshly ground black pepper for some spice and it's adds another level of flavor.  It is simple, but every element really works together to make for a nice meal served with some steamed rice.  It's not going to win any awards, but it really is good.

Recipe after the jump!

Vietnamese Chicken and Cabbage Salad

The idea for this salad came from a dish we ate at LUCKYRICE 2011's Night Market.  An Choi served an amazing chicken and cabbage salad on top of prawn crackers.  There was a recipe for a Spicy Chicken and Cabbage Salad in Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavors but it didn't incorporate some of the things that I wanted in it - namely the prawn crackers and a healthy squeeze of lime juice.  Plus I wanted to use red cabbage instead of green cabbage, because I think it's so much prettier.  So I took the recipe as inspiration and a starting point and went to town.  Our recipe was spicy, fresh, and bright.  It carried a lot more heat and acidity than the version we had at LUCKYRICE, which I think made it a little less fresh and clean, but no less delicious.  The poached chicken was moist and very flavorful.  With poached chicken you often end up with a somewhat flavorless piece of meat, but the dressing packed more than enough punch to make it incredibly delicious without obscuring the flavor of the chicken itself.  And the texture of the chicken was almost lusciously tender.  I once read a description of a steamed chicken with breast meat as "soft as custard" and this is the first time that I have ever understood that description in the context of chicken.  And when you contrasted the tenderness of the chicken against the crunch of the cabbage, the carrots and the prawn crackers you get a pretty fabulous salad with lots of flavor and lots of textural contrasts - a perfect refreshing summer meal.

Recipe after the jump!

Korean-Style Napa Cabbage

So I got the idea for this recipe from the Korean-Style Romaine that I first made back in February 2010.  We liked the romaine so much that we have made it several times, playing with the recipe a little each time.  I keep thinking that I should turn the Korean-Style Romaine into a full entree salad with some shrimp, some sort of crunchy fried noodle, and maybe some grated carrot and shaved red onions.  But we never get around to it because I have so many recipes that I want to try.  To be perfectly honest, there are a ton of recipes that we have made for the blog (and loved) but have yet to make again because I get a little ridiculous about trying new things.  I have hundreds of recipes that I have bookmarked to make for the blog and for the most part I can't resist cooking and tasting new recipes.  There are recipes like our Roast Asparagus, Spicy "Fried" Chicken Cutlets, and Alex's Roast Chicken Breasts that we make all the time with a few modifications here and there, but those recipes are few and far between.  Mostly we make something once and don't revisit it again (if at all) for a really long time.  Anyway, I was pretty excited that we built off the Korean-Style Romaine to make this napa cabbage dish because I thought the cabbage was really yummy.  The flavor of the sesame, garlic, ginger and the chili flakes is light and fresh, but really savory at the same time.  I wish we had some scallions to throw in with the cabbage.  If so, I would have thinly sliced some on the bias and tossed them in for some mild oniony flavor.  But even without the scallions I thought the cabbage was very successful.

Recipe after the jump!

Chinese New Year Meal #1 - Fisherman's Shrimp with Chinese Chives and Hand-Torn Cabbage with Vinegar

Look, it's February 1 and I am already living up to my Chinese New Year promise of giving you seven Asian dishes in the month of February!  I was actually considering amending my promise so that it was 7 Chinese dishes in the month of February, but I can't make up my mind.  I love Chinese food, but I have all these other Asian recipes and dishes that I want to make too!  So I'm reserving judgment.  But I am going to use this month to make a lot of the Chinese recipes that I have bookmarked to try, but not gotten around to in my Fuchsia Dunlop cookbooks because there are a ton of them.  So for this first recipe I decided to make a shrimp recipe from her Hunan cookbook.  I promise that I will get around to noodles and dumplings (because both are traditional dishes served at a Chinese New Year banquet/meal), but I wanted to whip up a quick stir-fry tonight.  And I wanted to use some shrimp because I feel like Alex and I have been gorging ourselves on pork lately and there is definitely more pork to come later in the week.

This stir-fry came together quickly and beautifully (as many stir-fries do).  You get the wok screaming hot, drizzle in some oil, add your aromatics and your protein, stir a little and WHAM - your meal is finished.  I love it.  The most onerous part of putting together a stir-fry is prepping all of the ingredients, although this one really wasn't that bad.  And it was really delicious.  The shrimp has this wonderful garlicky, mildly spicy flavor.  And the potato flour and egg white marinade creates this... crust isn't quite the right word because it's soft, extra texture to the outside of the shrimp, and also works to help the garlic stick to the shrimp.  Then you have the wonderfully mellow onion flavor from the chives.  And it's all just wonderful.  We served the shrimp with some steamed rice and Hand-Torn Cabbage with Vinegar, another Fuchsia Dunlop recipe.  I really really enjoyed the cabbage.  It was super easy to put together and very flavorful.  We both agreed that it made an excellent side dish.  It was a little spicy and had a nice sour tang from the vinegar, and a sweetness from the cabbage.  I thought it was an excellent meal, and an excellent start to my Chinese New Year project!

Recipes after the jump!

Jalapeno-Roast Pork, Braised Red Cabbage and Jalapeno-Cilantro Rice

I received a few cookbooks from good friends as wedding gifts.  Some of them we registered for, others were sent to us by friends who knew how much Alex and I love cooking.  My friend Jen gave me the Susan Spicer cookbook because she and her boyfriend (who lives in New Orleans) both love the cookbook.  Actually, Jen went through and starred all of the recipes that they have cooked from it and thus far all of their starred recipes have been delicious.  I think my favorite recipes that we have tried are the Asian Noodle Salad with Spicy Peanut Sauce and the Watermelon, Cucumber and Feta Salad.  Actually, I think that all of the recipes we have tried from the cookbook have come from the salad chapter, which is totally random.  This recipe was the first one from the cookbook that really caught my eye and I have been waiting to make it since last summer.  I proposed it to Alex on a number of occasions as a wonderful entree for a dinner party, but somehow we have never made it.  But we are rectifying that mistake tonight!  And as a side I decided to try the Braised Red Cabbage, also from the Susan Spicer cookbook.  I'm not sure why pork makes me think cabbage, I guess because when I was younger my dad used to make me pork and sauerkraut and I tend to like my pulled pork sandwiches with coleslaw on top or on the side.  The two just go hand-in-hand for me.  Then I read the blurb in the cookbook and saw that Susan Spicer recommends serving the pork with Green Rice for a Latin-inspired meal.  So I made up my own Latin-inspired rice with jalapenos, scallion and cilantro.  As a meal it was a little schizo with the Latin-inspired rice and pork and the braised cabbage, but that's ok.

While the pork roasted in the oven, the entire apartment started to smell absolutely wonderful.  You could smell the aroma of garlicky meaty goodness wafting out of the kitchen for hours.  By the time the pork was ready I was starving and super excited to finally try my pork!  Yum.  The pork was good.  Actually, the entire meal was good!  The braised cabbage was a standard braised cabbage, no surprises there, but Alex and I both enjoyed it.  I think it would be the perfect side dish with schnitzel or sausages.  I also thought that the rice was pretty fabulous.  It had good mix of flavors to it - jalapenos, lime, cilantro, and scallions.  It actually had a really nice balance to it and all of the flavors really worked together.  But back to the pork.  We made a pulled pork in the slow cooker a month or two back (I have been sitting on the post for that one forever, but I promise to post it soon), which I think might beat out this roast pork by a nose.  Cooking the pork in the slow cooker after rubbing it with a pretty intense spice rub meant that the meat itself was really tender and moist, as well as flavorful.  Some of this pork got a little dry so it really needed the pan sauce.  And not all of the meat picked up the flavor from the orange, jalapenos, garlic and thyme.  Perhaps in the future I will leave the pork in the marinade for a few hours in the refrigerator before cooking it.  Or I will use the same marinade, but cook it in the slow cooker and see what happens.  Either way, it was a very satisfying meal - one that I would make again, but I would want to tweak the pork just a tad to make it a little more flavorful and a little more moist.

Recipes after the jump!

Cabbage with Miso

Cabbage is not one of my favorite things.  I'm just never quite sure what to do with it and up until this summer, I can't recall cooking cabbage more than once in an entire year.  About once a year I cook up a batch of sauerkraut, or put together some sort of slaw.  But with our CSA we have ended up with head after head of cabbage and it has taken some serious thought to come up with recipes using cabbage that don't remind me of (for lack of a better term) nursing home food.  I originally thought about making tofu to go with our soba noodles, but then decided that I would rather use up another CSA vegetable and leave the tofu for another day.  Once I settled on either cucumbers or cabbage I went and looked in Madhur Jaffrey's World of the East Vegetarian Cooking and found this recipe.  The cabbage we had was a green cabbage that was rather conical in shape.  If I were more familiar with cabbage I might be able to say exactly what variety of cabbage it is, but all I know is that it was a type of green cabbage - not savoy and not napa.

This dish was fine.  It wasn't amazing, but it wasn't bad either.  We ate the entire bowl so it obviously wasn't bad.  The dressing was very thick and savory, but all about the miso.  Alex and I both thought that the recipe was missing something - the balance was somehow off and it was really one-note.  But what do you expect with a big bowl of cabbage?

Recipe after the jump!

Asian Kohlrabi Slaw

Our meal tonight was another attempt to use up produce from our CSA, as well as food from our freezer.  Since we had frozen pork and chive dumpling filling and frozen wonton wrappers, we made pork dumplings.  To go with it we threw together an Asian slaw with the kohlrabi and cabbage from the CSA.  I'm not usually a huge coleslaw component - all of that cabbage and mayo together just throws me off.  But what else do you do with a head of cabbage and some kohlrabi?  I liked the idea of an Asian-inspired slaw because it wouldn't require the use of mayonnaise.  I know that I am ridiculous in my bias against mayo, but I just can't help it.  So instead of mayo I made a dressing with toasted sesame oil, rice vinegar, fish sauce and lime juice.  Yum.  This slaw is a lovely side dish for any meal, Asian, Asian-inspired, or not, and is perfect for a hot summer day when the thought of eating anything heavy just makes you cringe.  It is light, fresh, and very tasty.

Recipe after the jump!