Some recipes are far more trouble than they are worth. We have made more than our fair share of dishes that take hours and involve dirtying up every single pot and pan in the kitchen, but turn out to be just ok in the end. Other recipes are so simple and come together so quickly that you can't imagine that they will be that good in the end. And then they end up blowing you away. Those recipes are few and far between, but this dish happens to be one of them. There are less than 7 ingredients total in the entire dish, but there is so much flavor. The broad bean paste gives the dish heat, but what I really enjoyed is the combination of ground beef and Chinese celery. The meaty, rich flavor of the ground beef is a really good counterpoint to the grassy, distinctly herbal flavor (and crisp texture) of the Chinese celery. I don't know how substituting regular celery for the Chinese celery would affect the dish, but I would definitely be willing to give it a shot. I think if you use regular celery the recipe says that you need to peel the little celery strings off, which seems a little finnicky and irritating, but such is life. If the flavor of the final dish is a rough approximation of the flavor of the Chinese celery in this dish, I would make it again and again.
Recipe after the jump!
It turns out that it's a good thing that I made those two homemade stocks while Alex was sick. Guess who caught the head cold now? I guess it was hubris to assume that I would be immune to Alex's most recent cold. In my defense, I only get sick about 50% of the time when Alex brings something home. It just happened that my body decided now seemed like a good time to catch a cold. When I have a cold the only thing I want is wonton noodle soup. It is my absolute favorite cold remedy. If I can't have wonton noodle soup (or I am too lazy to make the wontons) I will settle for a bowl of homemade Vietnamese chicken noodle soup. Since I didn't have any homemade wontons and we had just made homemade dumplings the day before, I decided to mix things up and make some sort of Chinese noodle soup. I didn't want to do a chicken noodle soup because we had just made matzo ball soup with chicken and we had homemade pork-chicken stock in the fridge, so I decided to go with a pork noodle soup. Once I settled on pork I knew that I would make homemade char siu and make a char siu noodle soup. For the char siu I used a combination of two char siu recipes that we have made in the past. I know that I said that I would never make char siu another way after I made Char Siu Take 2, but I didn't want an entire pork shoulder worth of char siu for my soup. I just wanted a few slices for each bowl. Plus, the grocery store nearest our apartment only had pork tenderloin. So I used the marinade from Char Siu Take 2 and the cooking instructions from Char Siu Pork (Chinese Roast Pork) which used pork tenderloin. I threw the marinade together and put it in the fridge, went to the gym, took the dog for a walk, etc. And later that night we made soup. Once you had all of the components prepared, it really didn't take that long to make your soup but preparing each component takes awhile - the broth takes about 3 hours, the char siu marinates for at least 2 hours (although you could easily do it overnight as we have done in the past) and then cooks for 30 minutes...
The thing I liked most about this meal was how homey it tasted. Variations on both of these dishes are available in restaurants, but everything tasted comforting and homemade. The flavors were there, the textures were there (particularly with the tofu with celery and peanuts), but it was all very simple and homey. The char siu wasn't the best that I have ever tasted (or made) and I wanted a little more depth of flavor and richness to the broth, but it just made me (and my head cold) happy. It reminded me of something my grandmother would have made for me. Granted, she probably would have picked up some char siu from the local Chinese grocery instead of making it at home, but the point still stands. It wasn't a perfect dish by any means, but it was very satisfying. And sometimes that is exactly what you want/need. It has been a long time since I have had any smoked tofu and I almost forgot how great it can be. I love the meaty, smokey flavor and the extra firm texture. It works really well with the crisp, grassy celery and the sweet and spicy sauce. I brought in the leftover smoked tofu for lunch this week and I thought it made for great leftovers.
Recipes after the jump!
We occasionally try recipes for the blog that I can't decide if I like. They are interesting. And I enjoy eating them because they interest me, but I just can't figure out if I actually like them or not. This recipe... intrigued me. It had a really interesting combination of flavors and textures - a healthy dose of acidity from the sherry vinegar, the grassy flavor of the celery, the sweetness of the pomegranates, the floral warmth of the allspice and the flavor of the herbs. It was a very strange but interesting dish. I can't say it was my favorite thing we have ever made, but it was one that will not soon be forgotten. Alex was a little worried about the recipe since it includes a number of ingredients (like celery, dill and parsley) that he isn't particularly enamored of. In the end he liked the recipe, but didn't love it. I definitely liked it more than he did. After some debate we served the barley salad with a riff on Alex's Roast Chicken Breasts. To stick with the Middle Eastern theme we dusted the chicken breasts with a combination of za'atar, sumac, s&p before roasting it. At the end we added a few thinly sliced rounds of fresh lemon to the hot pan when we added the butter and then topped the cooked breasts with the roasted lemon slices.
I wonder if all of Yotam Ottolenghi's recipes will be similarly intriguing. Thus far, I have found the three recipes that we have attempted from his cookbook to be interesting and unusual, but I have yet to be overwhelmed with how delicious they are. I'm going to keep trying new recipes from the cookbook because thus far I have yet to be really disappointed, plus the pictures are so stunning that I can't resist them. And I like recipes that push us outside of our comfort zone. We are not as adept with Middle Eastern flavors and ingredients, but I really want to become more familiar with them. And I keep saying that we are going to eat more vegetables, so a vegetarian cookbook seems like the logical place to start. The next few recipes I have bookmarked to try are his Black Pepper Tofu (definitely not Middle Eastern, but interesting nonetheless) and maybe the Roasted Butternut Squash with Sweet Spices, Lime and Green Chile.
Recipe after the jump!
