(Belated) Chinese New Year Meal #5: Xi'an Potsticker Dumplings (Xi'an Guo Tie), Tofu Shreds with Baby Bok Choy and Tiger Salad (Lao Hu Cai)

When I first saw this recipe for Xi'an Potsticker Dumplings I got really excited because they look like the pan-fried pork dumplings from A&J Restaurant in Rockville, Maryland (pictured below).  A&J is one of my all-time favorite Chinese restaurants and I try to visit every time I find myself in Maryland.  The filling is different - I'm not sure that I have ever had Chinese dumplings with a beef filling, but I can't swear to it.  I know that I have never made beef dumplings at home.  I will be the first to admit that my dumplings don't exactly look like the ones at A&J (and their bottoms are a little bit more cooked than I had intended for them to be), but I did my best.  And I was really happy with the way they turned out.  I thought these wrappers were easier to make and less doughy than the wrappers from the Pork and Napa Cabbage Water Dumplings (Shuijiao) that we made last year for Chinese New Year.  There were errors in execution both times.  I am not a proficient dumpling maker and I am happy to admit that.  But I thought that all things considered, these wrappers turned out better and the dumplings themselves were easier to wrap.  And they they fried up really nicely.  While I really liked the wrappers, I was less enamored of the filling.  It was good, but when I want a dumpling I really want a nice juicy pork filling.  I think I would like to make the dumplings again (with pork) because the skins were awesome and they were easy to throw together. 

The tofu noodles were something of a challenge.  The problem with buying ingredients at an Asian grocery store is that sometimes you end up with ingredients with no instructions on how to cook them.  And that's what happened to us here.  Ours were labeled "tofu rolls."  When I got home and tried to search for "tofu noodles" all I ended up with were tofu skin noodles or yuba noodles that are much thinner.  So I had to wing it.  And it didn't occur to me until after we had already made dinner that I should have searched "tofu shreds."  Oops.  Luckily, our dish came out just fine.  I tasted a few of the tofu shreds prior to blanching them and decided that 2-3 minutes in a pot of boiling water should warm them through and make them tender enough to eat.  I originally wanted to make a variation on the liang pi cold noodles from Xi'an Famous Foods since we were making Xi'an dumplings, but it has been so long since I had them that I wasn't sure I could replicate them.  Instead we tossed them simply with the ingredients we had in the fridge - baby bok choy, garlic, ginger and dried chilis.  They were yummy.  I love how just a few ingredients - garlic, ginger and dried chilis tossed in the wok can really give a dish great flavor.  I know that some people might be put off by the texture of the tofu noodles, but I happen to enjoy how springy they are. 

The tiger salad was a last second addition to lunch after I realized that we only ended up with 12 dumplings.  I think we were supposed to have 16 (although the recipe never specified), but I ran out of filling after we made 12 dumplings.  I really liked the freshness of the dish and the bright flavor, but if I were to make it again I would cut down on the amount of Chinkiang vinegar because the dish was a little too acidic for me.   

Recipes after the jump!

(Belated) Chinese New Year Meal #2: Kung Pao Shrimp and Smacked Cucumbers with Sesame and Preserved Mustard Greens

The funny thing about this recipe is that I started thinking about kung pao shrimp after Alex pulled down all of our various nuts and complained that we had far too many nuts in the apartment and needed to go ahead and use some of them.  I already had a recipe in mind that required some peanuts but the first thing that came to mind when it came down to using more peanuts was to make kung pao.  And as we have already made kung pao chicken and I was looking for a seafood recipe anyway, kung pao shrimp seemed like a really good alternative.  I can't say that I have ever tried kung pao shrimp before, but since when has that stopped me before?  I briefly considered taking the kung pao chicken recipe we made some time ago and modifying it to use shrimp, but then I decided to try something new and go with a recipe I found online.  I was looking at two recipes - one from Rasamalaysia and another from Appetite for China and I ended up deciding to use the one from Appetite for China because I thought the picture was prettier.  As you can see, I'm not above admitting it when I make a decision for purely shallow reasons.  And rather than deviating from the recipe at all, I decided to make it exactly as written.  I was pretty proud of myself for sticking with it.  And we threw in yet another variation on smacked cucumbers from Fuchsia Dunlop's new cookbook because I wanted some sort of easy veggie to go with our shrimp.

Alex and I are currently in disagreement about which of our two (Belated) Chinese New Year meals we preferred.  I preferred Sunday night's Cold Chicken with Spicy Sichuan Sauce and Stir-Fried Broccoli with Chili and Sichuan Pepper whereas Alex preferred last night's kung pao shrimp and smacked cucumbers.  While the shrimp was perfectly cooked, I thought the flavor balance was off - the sour flavor and numbing sensation of the Sichuan peppercorns overwhelmed the sweet and spicy flavor that I was hoping for.  I love the flavor of Sichuan peppercorns, but my biggest complaint about some of the "Sichuan" restaurants in New York City is that they abandon developing layers of flavor in favor of dumping on a bunch of Sichuan peppercorns or hot chilis.  A lot of these restaurants would do well to cut back on the amount of Sichuan peppercorn in their dishes so that the peppercorns perfume but don't overwhelm the dish.  But enough of that.  If I were to make this dish again I would cut the amount of Sichuan peppercorn by half, or forgo them entirely.  I would probably modify the sauce recipe to leave out the hoisin and perhaps play with the proportions of the other liquids.  As for the cucumbers, I am a total sucker for Chinese cucumber salads of all sorts.  We have made several different variations on smacked cucumbers from Fuchsia Dunlop's cookbooks and while this one wasn't my favorite, it was different and easy.  It was nice to have a non-spicy version for a change.  I think her new cookbook has another two variations on smacked cucumbers so we will have to give those a try at some point and I'll see which one I like best.

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!

Panzanella Salad

I know this recipe isn't exactly original or innovative.  Recipes for panzanella salad are everywhere.  Some add bell peppers, capers, olives or cheese, but all of them are made with bread, tomatoes, basil and cucumbers.  We didn't try for anything new and exciting here - we just went with the staples and made ourselves a standard panzanella salad, although we used a lemony vinaigrette, rather than red wine vinegar, which I tend to find a little harsh.  And then we added some seeded and minced jalapenos for a little something new.  I really enjoyed it.  But I love bread, tomatoes and basil.  And what could possibly be better at the height of summer?

Recipe after the jump!

Thai Cucumber Basil Salad

This salad was a last minute replacement for our planned dinner.  We had everything out on the corner ready to cook dinner and then we realized that we were missing cilantro.  But we already had rice in a pot cooking and I refused to order dinner because all I have eaten recently is take out.  I just couldn't stomach the idea of ordering on a night when we could cook.  So we fried up a few eggs and served them on top of the rice and whipped up a quick cucumber salad.  This salad recipe was one that I found on Serious Eats that was intended to be served with grilled salmon.  I'm wondering if my mistake was in taking the salad and assuming it could stand alone.  Because it was good, but not great.  It just felt like it was missing something.  If I were to change this recipe in some way I would perhaps swap out the basil for Thai basil to give it a little more pop.  But I'm not sure if that would save the recipe.  I think the ideal solution would be to swap out the basil for Thai basil and serve over our favorite salmon recipe with crispy skin.  I think the richness of the salmon would do a lot for the cucumber salad.  It wasn't bad, it just felt a little... one note?  Alex kept asking me if I thought that some chili peppers would help, but I'm not sure that heat is what the dish was missing.

Recipe after the jump!

Moroccan Garbanzo Bean and Feta Pitas

I have one complaint about this dish - the chickpea salad is all one texture, a little mushy.  I wish there had been something crunchy to liven it all up.  One of the reviews suggested roasting the chickpeas for some crunch.  But we didn't want to take the extra time.  I wish we had.  If it hadn't required another trip to the grocery store (our 5th trip in 3 days), I would have picked up some kalamata olives to throw in for some salty kick.  I thought about adding some red bell pepper for crunch and a little sweetness, but I decided against it because the red bell peppers at the store didn't look that good.  I also thought about just serving the filling as a salad over a bed of romaine lettuce and serving it with pita chips for crunch, but Alex wanted pita sandwiches so we went with pita sandwiches.  I know I have already said it, but I really missed the crunch.  If I were to make this again (and I'm not sure that I would because nothing about the recipe really stood out for me), I would roast the chickpeas so they are nice and crunchy.  And I might still serve it with pita chips.  And I might kick up the flavor a little bit (or serve with hot sauce).  The flavor wasn't bad, but it didn't jump out at me either.  The Greek yogurt added a really nice flavor that I was initially skeptical of, but I ended up wanting more of it.  The yogurt was probably my favorite component.  Even though we had wonderful fresh tomatoes and cucumbers from the farmers' market, it was really the yogurt that shined.

Recipe after the jump!

Cucumber and Watercress Salad

I was really excited about this salad because I love playing with random simple salad ingredients (and it received very high reviews at the FoodNetwork website).  I have to say that for a number of reasons it was just ok for me.  First, I thought the dressing was a little too sweet.  I love adding a little honey to salad dressing, but this was more honey than I wanted (or needed).  Our other big problem was that our grocery store cucumber had less than no flavor (which was the fault of the cucumber and not the recipe).  It literally just tasted like water - there was no flavor to it at all.  And the watercress wasn't as peppery as some I have had, which I thought would make for a great salad, but that extra peppery flavor might have done more to balance out the sweetness of the dressing.  Overall, if the cucumber had that fresh cucumber taste that I really enjoy the salad would not have been quite as disappoinging.  It would have been a little sweet, but still tasty.  Instead I'm just going to have to settle for the salad being pretty and easy to make, but a little blah.

Recipe after the jump!

Ajam Seitan (Devilled Chicken)

Happy Sunday everyone.  I love lazy Sundays.  This one has been less lazy than most thus far - we hit Costco early this morning to stock up on meat, seafood and toilet paper, then we went to the farmers' market, and then we cooked lunch.  I was planning on hitting the gym too but my instep and Brady's canine had an unfortunate run-in, so running shoes and spinning shoes are a little uncomfortable right now.  Oh well.  I kept telling Alex that Brady harpooned me, but the truth is that we were equally at fault.

This recipe was another of Alex's selections.  Alex has a particular affinity for all things Dutch.  I have an affinity for all things Asian - so a Dutch/Indonesian recipe is right up both of our alleys.  This dish is fun because it is new and different.  I'm not used to the combination of mustard, lemon juice, sambal oelek, and ketjap manis.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with ketjap manis, ketjap manis is a thick, sweetened soy sauce.  It never would have occurred to me to marinate chicken thighs in mustard and then braise them in soy.  Those flavor combinations don't sound like they would work together.  And yet, they really do.  I'm not sure that I could taste the flavor of the mustard in the chicken, but the chicken was very flavorful.  The onions and ketjap manis gave the chicken a wonderful sweetness, and the lemon juice and the mustard gave it a nice acidity.  And then there is the spice and flavor from the sambal.  It is all very complex, but in some ways very familiar.  With the depth of flavor packed into the chicken, the cucumber salad is understandably light (almost bordering on bland).  And the yellow rice (basmati rice with some ground turmeric added in) was a really nice touch.  I didn't think that the turmeric would provide much flavor, but that subtle flavor worked really well with the chicken.  As far as meals go, it was a very successful one (aside from the fact that Alex had to run out halfway through when we realized we didn't have enough ketjap manis).  The flavors melded together really well and the components complimented each other nicely.

Recipe after the jump!

Peppered Tuna and Hoisin Dipping Sauce with Asian Cucumber Salad

Alex and I made a trip out to Costco today and stumbled upon some thick cut amazing tuna steaks.  They were beautiful.  So we decided to pick some tuna steaks up and make them for dinner!  This has been a very seafood week for us - striped bass one night, then shrimp, then salmon last night and now tuna.  Up until now the shrimp was my favorite dish, but this tuna has supplanted it as my favorite.  Everything about the dish just works.  The recipe was supposed to come with Asian guacamole instead of an Asian cucumber salad, but it is foul outside (wintry mix in late October is not my friend) and we didn't want to go pick up avocados.  We picked up some Persian cucumbers today while we were at Costco and I think cucumbers go really well with seared tuna.  I briefly considered doing asparagus instead, but decided that cucumbers would be the better choice.  So we went with cucumbers and I was not disappointed with our choice at all.  It was fabulous.  The cool and vinegary cucumbers were the perfect contrast to the warmth and spice of the Sichuan peppercorns and star anise of the tuna, and the richness of the hoisin dipping sauce.  Actually, I was pleasantly surprised by the cucumbers.  Sometimes cucumber salads are so lightly flavored that they are forgettable and only really work when served as an accompaniment to a really flavorful meal.  While the cucumbers were a great compliment because they were refreshing and didn't compete with the flavors of the tuna, they were also tasty enough that they stood on their own.  They were really good.  I would definitely make them again, with or without the tuna.  And I definitely plan on making the tuna again.  Maybe next time we will make the Asian guacamole that Susan Spicer intended to go with the dish.  I think if we fried up some dumpling wrappers as if they were tortilla chips to eat with the guacamole that would be pretty fabulous.  This was a really excellent meal - one of my favorites that we have made recently.

Recipes after the jump!

Cherry Tomato Salad

This salad came about as part of an effort to use up things in our kitchen.  We had cherry tomatoes from the farmers' market, plus an English cucumber, feta cheese, kalamata olives and fresh parsley, all in the fridge.  It was also part of our millionth resolution to eat healthy.  As always, I have my doubts that our resolution will stick, but that's ok.  At least we get a few healthy meals out of it.  

I found this recipe on The Way the Cookie Crumbles, which originally found the recipe in Cook's Illustrated.  And then I also saw it on Annie's Eats.  Both blogs had much prettier pictures than mine.  Oops.  I am perfectly happy to admit that food styling is not my forte and my dishes are pretty boring.  If only I had a house with a decent sized kitchen I would own a variety of fun serving dishes, but I just don't have the cabinet space in my little NYC apartment kitchen!  I am always oogling pretty new dishes from Anthropologie, Fishs Eddy and Crate and Barrel.  I went through an Etsy obsession too, but I had to rein myself in.  Anyway, this salad might not look pretty but it was pretty nice to eat.  It's not one of those "oh my god, where have you been all of my life" recipes, but I didn't think it would be.  I liked the concept of using the tomato liquid to create a vinaigrette so the salad really is all about the tomatoes.  The shallots that are simmered in the tomato liquid while it is reducing become super sweet and delicious, which I thought was really nice.  I might follow the lead of The Way the Cookie Crumbles and Annie's Eats and omit the kalamata olives in the future.  I love olives, but I felt like they were a little overwhelming in this recipe.  The ingredients are very similar to other quasi Greek salads we have made before, but somehow the salad tasted pretty unique.

Recipe after the jump!

Cucumber, Tomato and Feta Salad

This is yet another dish to make use of the delicious summer tomato bounty.  Boring, huh?  I know.  It's just a salad.  And not even a particularly inventive one as isn't a huge departure from other Greek-ish tomato and cucumber salads we have made in the past, including this Tomato, Cucumber and Red Onion Salad with Mint.  But I can't get enough of salad/veggies this week and I can't get enough of the delicious tomatoes from the farmers' market.  It is tasty nonetheless and just different enough that I thought it was worth posting.  I would say that the lemon-based vinaigrette and the scallions are much gentler on the palate than the red wine vinegar-based vinaigrette and red onions.  So if you want a more subtle salad (with a punch of saltiness from the olives), this would be a better bet.  It's fresh and easy - the perfect side dish for a bit Greek-inspired meal because you can prep it and throw most of it together while cooking other things and then just toss in the feta and the dressing at the very end when you are ready to serve. 

Recipe after the jump!

Fried Meatballs and Simple Cucumber Salad

Sorry for being so delinquent lately.  Work has been really crazy.  But I have a few posts that are teed up and ready to go, so you guys can expect a flurry of posts over the next 4-5 days!  Hurray!  This meal was one of Alex's picks.  Actually, the Fried Meat Balls were his pick and the Simple Cucumber Salad was mine.  I had asked him to figure out a recipe to use up the rest of the ground pork in the fridge and this recipe from Rasamalaysia was what he came up with.  And since Alex rarely comes up with recipes that he wants to make I decided to go with it, even though I was a little skeptical.  Don't get me wrong - I love pork, I love meatballs and I love Chinese food.  So I'm not exactly sure what there was to be skeptical about with the exception of the name.  "Fried Meatballs" sounds a little weird and a lot heavy.  So I decided to make this cucumber salad to counteract that heaviness inherent in both meaty food and fried food.  According to Chinese tradition cucumbers are "cooling" (which to me means fresh and light).  I tend to pair cucumber salads of various sorts with dishes that either sound really heavy or sound really spicy.  It just seems like such a perfect pairing to me.

Fried Meatballs are (as most would expect) quite tasty.  They had really excellent flavor and a nice texture.  When I took my first bite I asked Alex if there was any cinnamon in there and then I remembered that there was some five-spice.  The perfume and flavors of the five-spice powder really comes through in the meatballs in a delicious way.  For those of you who turned your noses up at the addition of fish paste and fish sauce, it's like adding anchovies into sauces.  It doesn't make the dish taste fishy - it just gives it a really nice depth of flavor.  My one complaint about the meatballs is that I wish there had been some sort of sauce.  They weren't dry exactly, but I think that almost every meatball or meat patty could use some sort of sauce.  Alex and I briefly discussed how some sauce with a thick, aioli-type consistency would have been marvelous with these meatballs because it would have provided some moisture, flavor and textural constrast.  A really loose sauce (like a dumpling dipping sauce) would have made the meatballs soggy.  I guess sriracha would work in a pinch.  Actually, I kind of wish I had thought of that at the time.  We could have made some sort of sriracha mayo or something.  Oh well.  As for the cucumbers, they are exactly what they claim to be - simple.  I think I have made (and eaten) cucumber salads that I like more, but they were a really nice light, simple side dish for our meatballs.

Recipes after the jump!

Warm Tofu with Spicy Garlic Sauce and Korean Cucumber Salad

I have been meaning to try out this recipe for awhile.  It wasn't exciting enough to make the list of "must try" recipes, but I bookmarked it a year or two ago for a nebulous future (vegetarian) dinner.  It was something along the lines of an experiment because we have never cooked soft tofu before.  Somehow we always pick out recipes that call for firm tofu.  And this recipe seemed so perfectly simple that it was hard to resist.  Who doesn't love the idea of throwing something in a pot and forgetting about it for awhile?  And by awhile, I mean 5-10 minutes.  According to the recipe you can keep the tofu warm in the simmering water over very low heat for up to 4 hours, so if you wanted to forget it for a few hours, that is an option too.  Either way, simmering the tofu gave it a really nice texture.  I expected it to make the tofu softer and mushier, but instead it seemed to firm it up a little.  It was still definitely soft tofu, but it almost felt like it retained its shape a little better than soft tofu generally does due to the bath in simmering water.  You drizzle the spicy garlic sauce over the warm tofu and voila.  The spicy garlic sauce is really potent and it gave the tofu a lot more flavor than I expected, especially considering the tofu was simply simmered in water without any seasonings.  There wasn't even any salt in there.  Actually, I found the sauce to be a little too salty - perhaps I should have used a low sodium soy sauce or simply cut back on the amount of soy sauce a little.  We did leave the sauce out on the counter for a few hours, which might very well have contributed to the overall saltiness.  Oops.  Our bad.  But it was a very satisfying vegetarian main course.  We served the tofu with a Korean cucumber salad that we found in our cookbook Korean Kitchen and some white rice.  The cucumber salad was nice and fresh and spicy, all at the same time.  It was a really nice side for the tofu and I think it would be a nice accompaniment to any Korean meal.

Recipes after the jump!

Thai Cucumber Salad with Roasted Peanuts

I was looking for another random Thai vegetable side dish and came up with this recipe.  At first I was a little worried at first that it would be too similar to the Tomato, Cucumber and Red Onion Salad with Mint, but after reading the ingredients I decided it was different enough.  Both recipes have cucumbers, fresh mint and red onion, but the dressings were completely different.  I'm not sure which one I preferred, but Alex said he might have preferred this Thai Cucumber Salad with Roasted Peanuts to the more Greek-inspired recipe.  I think I agree with him because I love the combination of fish sauce, lime juice and sugar.  It beats red wine vinegar any day.  Both recipes are fresh, light and summery.  This one is a little spicy, a little funky from the fish sauce and a whole lot tasty.  I love the addition of the salted roasted peanuts for texture (and flavor). 

Recipe after the jump!

Tomato, Cucumber and Red Onion Salad with Mint

 

Sometimes I come up with meals by picking an entree and then hunting around for a side dish of some sort to pair with it.  Sometimes the choice is quite obvious - with a stir-fry, serve rice, with a steak or roast chicken breast, serve salad.  Sometimes the choice is less obvious.  And every once in awhile, I find a side dish (or salad) that I want to make and then I have to figure out an entree to go with it.  For last night's dinner, I stumbled across this recipe, decided that I wanted to try it, and then started hunting for something Greek-inspired to go with it.  I briefly considered making gyros or souvlaki, but decided against it.  Then I thought about making some sort of chicken brochette, and promptly discarded that idea as well.  So I did what any internet savvy person would do and typed in "Greek" in Epicurious.  Eventually I came up with the Greek Grilled Cheese Sandwiches that we served last night.  Perfect.  We really don't make enough Greek food in this apartment, but this was a step in the right direction.i

This salad is everything that I love about cucumber salads - bright, fresh, and light.  It is incredibly summery.  My favorite thing about the salad was the mint.  With every bite you get these little bursts of delicious mint flavor that I just loved.  I guess you could substitute another herb if you don't like mint, but I am going to stick to the mint.  Also, If you don't love the taste of onion, or if your onion is just particularly fierce, then go ahead and soak the chopped onion in some cold water to lessen the bite.  And if you want to add another flavor/texture to the salad, you can go ahead and throw in a little chopped feta.  But go ahead and play around with this salad - have fun with it.  You might just discover your new favorite summer picnic dish.

Recipe after the jump!

Chinese Barbecued Pork (Char Siu Take 2)

This is the second time we have tried to make char siu at home.  The last recipe came from Into the Vietnamese Kitchen:  Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavors by Andrea Nguyen.  It called for pork shoulder, but I was too lazy to deal with pork shoulder, so we used pork tenderloin instead.  The flavor was great, but the texture wasn't quite right because the pork tenderloin is so lean compared to the pork shoulder that you don't get the slightly fatty texture of real char siu.  So this time I decided to just bite the bullet and use actual pork shoulder for our char siu.  It would have been a whole lot easier if any of the grocery stores nearby sold boneless pork shoulder, but I was sadly out of luck.  The pork shoulder that Alex ended up coming home with had both bone and skin still on.  So Alex got to spend some quality hours with our Shun boning knife trying to get the skin off and the bone out without completely wrecking the tenderloin.  Did I mention the pork shoulder he bought was also 9 1/2 whopping pounds of meat?  So we have another 4+ pounds of pork shoulder now sitting in the freezer for some future use.

After having this char siu I will never make it any other way.  I literally think it was perfect.  There is nothing that I can think of to improve upon it.  And it was better than some of the char siu that I have had in Chinatown.  I'm totally not kidding about that either.  The last plate of char siu I had in Chinatown a few weeks ago was absolutely and utterly disappointing - overly fatty and dry.  This char siu was moist and really flavorful.  The glaze was perfectly sticky sweet, with a hint of star anise and five-spice.  And you didn't even have to add red food coloring for the glaze to develop that nice reddish color.  Don't skip the step of reducing the marinade down to drizzle it over the pork and rice.  That glaze is crazy good.  I was actually inclined to just skip that step because I was being lazy, but it was totally worth the extra effort because I think that extra glaze really made the dish.  You also have to just suck it up and go for marinating the pork as long as you can.  We marinated it overnight in the fridge and the flavors of the marinade really permeated the pork.  We served the pork with rice and some version 1 of the Smacked Cucumbers that we first made back in February.  I think that I slightly preferred version 2 of the cucumbers, but I don't know for sure since it has been some time since I made that version.  Alex's complaint about these cucumbers was that he didn't get enough sesame oil flavor.  I just preferred the homemade chili oil to the chopped salted chilis.  Even though I preferred the other version of the Smacked Cucumbers to the one we made with the char siu, it was still a fabulous meal.  I will definitely be adding the char siu to my permanent homemade dim sum rotation.

Recipes after the jump!

Grilled Lime-Curry-Rubbed Hanger Steak with Fresh Melon-Cucumber Chutney

Since we just had Korean Bulgogi Tacos (Alex had them for dinner on Saturday and I had the leftovers today for lunch), it seemed a little weird to make steak tacos, which is what I usually do with hanger steak.  My other initial thought was to make a traditional French hanger steak with a shallot sauce (aka onglet aux echalottes).  But I decided that sounded boring.  Then I saw this recipe from Gourmet, which sounded really interesting and not at all boring.  So we went for this one.

I wasn't sure how I felt about the individual components when I first tasted them.  The lime-curry rub is quite intense.  Delicious, but I wasn't sure that I could eat an entire steak rubbed in it.  And the chutney was good, but on its own it felt like it was missing something.  I thought about adding more jalapeno and more spices, but I wanted to wait and see how the steak tasted before doing so.  I'm glad I did wait because when you put them together the sweetness and freshness of the chutney really complements the intense curry and lime flavor of the hanger steak.  And the rice soaks up the juices from the steak, combined with the juices of the chutney.  It's a really fresh, flavorful and savory dish.  I actually started thinking about what other types of dishes the chutney would work with.  And the success of this dish made me even more interested in a recipe for Jamaican Jerk Salmon and Mango Pineapple Salsa that I recently saw in the April issue of SELF.  I think both recipes share a similar combination of a sweet fruit salsa/chutney with an intensely flavorful protein.  Hopefully that recipe turns out as well as this one did.

Recipe after the jump!

Tikka Kebabs with Homemade Flatbread and Cucumber Raita

I'm not sure what drew me to this assortment of recipes, but I have been thinking about making these Tikka Kebabs with some homemade flatbreads or naan for some time now.  I originally wanted to make the Home-Style Tandoor Naan from Mangoes & Curry Leaves: Culinary Travels Through the Great Subcontinent so that the entire meal would come from the same cookbook, but I didn't have the patience (or the time) to begin preparing the dough for the naan about 4 1/2 to 10 hours before I wanted to eat the naan.  So I went with a recipe for homemade flatbread that I cobbled together from a bunch of recipes I found online.  There are hundreds of recipes for homemade naan or flatbread online so I had a lot of resources to work with.  If you don't want to make homemade flatbread or naan, the kind you pick up at the grocery store will work just fine.  Alternatively, you can serve the tikka kebabs with basmati rice and a nice salad, instead of serving it with flatbread.

I was very happy with this meal.  The lamb was tasty and very tender.  The flavors were very simple, but delicious.  If I were to make the tikka kebabs again I would probably add some more cayenne pepper to the marinade to give the dish a little more kick.  The yogurt in the marinade, plus the yogurt in the raita cooled down all hint of spice and I wouldn't mind if just a little more heat had come through (although I didn't really miss the heat, Alex did bring up that criticism/comment so I thought I would pass it along).  I also might add a little more garlic or something to the marinade - perhaps a little ground cumin?  I don't know.  It smelled delicious while it cooked and it was really nice, but it could be improved.  Our homemade flatbread turned out better than our last experiment with Instant Flatbread.  I might play with the recipe in the future and try to use different toppings with the flatbread.  Or brush it with melted butter once it's done to make it taste more like naan.  I thought that the Cucumber Raita was a very nice accompaniment, particularly if you are planning on serving the tikka kebabs with flatbread.  If you are serving the kebabs with basmati rice I think that the raita would be unnecessary and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice would be more than sufficient.  We added some scallions for color and flavor to the kebabs, but again if you were serving them with basmati rice I'm not sure that they would be necessary.

Recipes after the jump!

Seared Tuna with Green Onion-Wasabi Sauce

I went on a grocery shopping spree the other day at Fairway and on a whim ended up popping into Citarella to see what they had at their fish counter because I have been craving fish recently.  I have this halibut recipe that I have been wanting to try, but after I saw the ahi tuna loin the Citarella fishmonger was handling I had to buy it.  I don't cook tuna often at home because it's kind of pricey and you can't be cheap about it because you really need to get high quality tuna to be able to sear it lightly and leave it raw in the center, but every once in awhile you just have to indulge.  And while it wasn't cheap by any means, the tuna at Citarella was actually cheaper than the organic Scottish salmon and various types of sea bass.  There were a few different seared tuna recipes that I considered making (including a recipe for Seared Tuna with Olive-Tapenade Vinaigrette and Arugula, and another for African Adobo-Rubbed Tuna Steaks), but ended up with this one because it was the only recipe I found where we already had everything.  I just couldn't deal with going to the grocery store again.  Both of my standard seared tuna recipes were out of the question because of missing ingredients and I really wanted something quick and easy.

This recipe was good, but not my favorite seared tuna recipe.  The sauce was both too watery and too harsh at the same time.  Every once in awhile you would get this sinus-searing burst of horseradish.  And then the next bite would be bland and watery.  I liked the combination of the seared tuna and the cucumber.  I served the tuna with some forbidden black rice because I thought the nuttiness of the rice would provide a good foil to the fish.  Overall the dish wasn't a failure, but it wasn't a smashing success either.  Next time I will probably revert back to one of my go-to seared tuna recipes.

Recipe after the jump!

Squid and Rice Vermicelli Salad with Ginger-Garlic Dressing

This recipe was adapted from the Squid with Ginger-Garlic Sauce recipe from Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid.  We were originally going to follow the recipe as written and then I got the brilliant idea that rather than making the squid and then a random side dish, we should make the squid into a squid salad with some noodles.  I don't know.  It made sense in my head (and I contend that it would have made sense outside of my head too).  Anyway, it made sense, but it felt like the dish was missing something.  It was a nice and flavorful dish, not to mention light and healthy.  I just wished that there was something else to give the dish a little more texture and flavor.  Perhaps some fried shallots or peanuts for crunch?  Alex votes for peanuts.  I might have to agree with him.  The calamari itself had a ton of flavor, particularly given that it was basically just poached and tossed in a mixture of lime juice, s&p, and fresh herbs.  It also had a nice texture - a little chewy, but very tender.  The dressing (which was originally intended to be served with the calamari as a dipping sauce) had some serious kick to it.  I guess the jalapeno we threw in there was particularly fiery.  I find hot jalapenos to be much spicier than your average serrano chili and this one was HOT.  But I ate my plate full of salad and was left wanting more.  Not more calamari salad, but something else.  Something crunchy - perhaps a fritter of some sort or some prawn crackers.  Actually, I think if you served this salad with a plate of freshly fried prawn crackers that would be a fantastic meal.  Oh well.  Maybe next time!

Recipes after the jump!