(Belated) Chinese New Year Meal #4: Stir-Fried Oyster Mushrooms with Chicken (Ping Gu Ji Pian) and Blanched Choy Sum with Sizzling Oil (You Lin Cai Xin)

I wasn't going to include this dish as one of our (Belated) Chinese New Year meals because we have already included a chicken dish and I had another that I was considering making, but I loved this recipe so much that I couldn't resist.  The flavors were different from everything we have featured thus far - relatively fresh, simple and subtle.  Rather than being hit over the head with spice, fermented black beans or Sichuan peppercorns, this dish features the more subtle flavors of oyster mushrooms, ginger and garlic.  It was just so lovely and so very satisfying.  I wanted to keep eating and eating and eating.  This is a dish that I can imagine serving my kids (first I have to get around to having kids, but you know what I mean).  We served the chicken with some blanched greens that were equally homey and delicious. Pouring sizzling oil over a pile of aromatics on top of the lightly blanched greens and then drizzling a mixture of soy sauce and water over the whole kit and caboodle imparts a lot more flavor to the greens than you would think.  Alex mentioned that he was totally surprised by how flavorful the greens were.  Again, the flavors are subtle (rather than in your face), but each bite of choy sum is nicely seasoned and flavored.  And for once, Alex didn't complain or comment that he wished dinner was spicier.  

Recipes after the jump!

(Belated) Chinese New Year Meal #1: Cold Chicken with a Spicy Sichuan Sauce (Liang Ban Ji) and Stir-Fried Broccoli with Chili and Sichuan Pepper (Qiang Xi Nan Hua Cai)

Look everyone - I finally put together our first (belated) Chinese New Year meal!  And we have a bunch of other meals planned so stay tuned.  I am trying my best to not just cook from our new Fuchsia Dunlop cookbook, but there are so many recipes that I want to cook that it is difficult.  But I had to start off with two recipes from the cookbook that I have been dying to make.  As you can see, I am still squarely stuck in my broccoli phase.  And I threw in some chicken because why the heck not?  You can't have Chinese New Year without chicken.  Granted, the chicken is usually served whole and not shredded for New Year, but I'm taking a little creative license here.  Don't worry - the dumplings and noodles are both coming, but it's going to take a little time so you are going to have to be patient.  Whole fish is also traditional but as of right now the only concrete plan we have for seafood is for shrimp.  We might still make a whole fish because our plans aren't set in stone yet (and I have a few recipes set aside in case I switch things up), but I'm just giving you a sense of what is to come.  There will also be tofu, some more veggies, another chicken dish...  And then we will have to see what we decide on for our final Chinese New Year meal.  We went to Chinatown today for ingredients and noodle inspiration (more on that later), so we should be on track to post 3-4 more (Belated) Chinese New Year meals by the end of the week!  We might need to re-stock a bit or pick up a few minor ingredients along the way, but we are now re-stocked with the essentials.

As for the chicken and broccoli, if every dish we make from this cookbook turns out as well as these two, I will be very happy.  These recipes were not the best Chinese dishes we have ever cooked, nor did they particularly stick out amidst the other Chinese New Year meals we have prepared.  However, they were so easy to make that I really can't complain and I think they totally lived up to the premise of the cookbook (i.e. simple Chinese home cooking).  The broccoli was incredibly simple and it had really nice flavor.  I liked the combination of Sichuan peppercorns and whole chilis.  The broccoli was nicely cooked and lightly perfumed with sesame, heat and the sour, numbing flavor of the Sichuan peppercorns.  It's the perfect easy (and vegetarian) Chinese side dish.  As for the chicken, I have always been a fan of cold Sichuan chicken salads.  I love the combination of luscious poached chicken, spice, slight sweetness and scallion.  I have had better versions of this salad (and worse versions if we're being honest).  But I have never made a better version at home.  And that makes me happy.  We made a few minor modifications to each recipe - an extra dash of sesame oil here, a little extra sugar there, but isn't that what all home cooks do?  I would totally make both of these recipes again and bring them into the office for a fantastic lunch at my desk.  Or just make them for dinner again sometime - perhaps a potluck?  That's another totally viable option.

Recipes after the jump!

Stir-Fried Lettuce with Seared Tofu and Red Pepper

This recipe is one that I found a few weeks ago when looking for new tofu recipes.  It sounded a little weird, but intriguing.  I have never used lettuce in a stir-fry before.  And we don't use a ton of red bell peppers in our cooking because I often don't think they add much of anything to a dish.  But this dish was the exception - I thought the red pepper peppers were totally crucial here.  They add a nice sweetness and a crunch that would otherwise be lacking.  I really liked them.  As for the lettuce, Alex said that he would have preferred cabbage to lettuce in the stir-fry, but I liked the lettuce.  Napa cabbage would have been a little sweeter, but similarly crunchy.  So I guess it's a matter of preference.  I really liked this dish.  I think I liked it more than Alex did, but I generally like tofu dishes more than Alex (at least I think I do, although he might like ma po tofu more than I do).  But I thought this dish was light and healthy, but very flavorful.  Given the small amount of jalapeno in there I didn't know if you would get any heat, but the heat was definitely there.  I wouldn't call it a spicy dish, but you could taste the heat of the chili in every bite.  You could also taste the garlic and the ginger in every bite.  I really liked it.  And I felt very... virtuous and healthy eating it, which was a plus.

Recipe after the jump!

Asparagus and Shiitake Mushroom Stir-Fry

By the end of May you guys might get a little sick of my asparagus obsession.  I just can't help myself.  And I have another 4-5 recipes that I intend to make before the spring is over.  So I am going to apologize in advance because I'm going to be on an asparagus kick for at least a little while longer.  But I promise to start mixing in a few other veggies once they become available at the farmers' market.  I have been waiting anxiously for sugar snap peas, which one of the vendors assured me would be ready this weekend.  Yay!  But the first few recipes I make will probably include both asparagus and sugar snap peas.  I just can't help myself.  But I promise that I will at least try to mix it up a little in terms of the types of asparagus recipes we make - both in terms of types of cuisine and entrees vs sides vs salads.

Anyway, if you are looking for a nice easy vegetarian stir-fry dish and you enjoy asparagus even half as much as I do, you totally want to make this dish.  Fresh in-season asparagus has a great sweet, slightly grassy flavor that pairs well with the meaty, earthy dried shiitakes.  And the sauce is sweet and savory, and with the asparagus and mushrooms it made for a very interesting combination of flavors.  Because of the meaty flavor of the mushrooms the dish is very satisfying and hearty.  I didn't miss meat at all in this stir-fry.  Served with some white rice it was a wonderful meal.

Recipe after the jump!

Quick Khmer Pork with Green Beans

Cambodian food left the least impression on me out of all of the countries I visited in Asia.  The Angkor Wat ruins in Cambodia left a huge impression on me, but that is a different matter entirely.  All I remember about food in Cambodia was that their curries were pretty good (less spicy and different from a Thai curry, with lots of coconut milk) and in Phnom Penh most of the restaurants serve what they call "happy pizza" (which is pizza with marijuana on it).  Other than that, I don't remember many specifics.  Cambodian food wasn't as fresh and bright as Vietnamese food, or as spicy as Thai food, but there were many similarities to those cuisines.  The Cambodian food I ate during the week that I traveled around Phnom Penh and Siem Reap was... simple (for lack of a better word), with mild flavors and little complexity.  That isn't to imply that the food wasn't very good.  It was good.  It just lacked the flash and liveliness of other Southeast Asian cuisines to really distinguish it.

 

This Cambodian dish is mild and simple, but flavorful - it just screams home cooking to me.  It's the type of dish I can easily imagine my mother or grandmother throwing together in the kitchen at home (of course this is all presupposing that my mother actually served pork at home, which she never really did and also that she has some familiarity with Cambodian cuisine, which she doesn't).  But that is beside the point.  The point is that this dish is simple, comforting and easy to make.  It's not the best dish we have ever made, but after a long day at work, it was a really nice homey thing to throw together for casual dinner.

Recipe after the jump!

Chinese New Year Meal #6 - Stir-Fried Squid with Black Bean Sauce

I wanted to do something entirely new for our second to last Chinese New Year meal - no more Sichuan or Hunan dishes from Fuchsia Dunlop for at least the next few days.  And I have picked out a traditional Shanghai dish for our last Chinese New Year meal so I think we have done a pretty good job mixing things up this time.  I looked around for awhile before deciding that this dish fit my goal of trying a new dish really well.  We rarely made squid and when we do, we tend to make Mario Batali's Two-Minute Calamari Sicilian Lifeguard Style or some form of calamari salad.  We also rarely make anything with a black bean sauce.  We buy fermented black beans and use them for a number of dishes, but they are usually only one of many flavoring components.  And black bean sauce is such a classic Chinese sauce that I find it hard to believe that we have made so many dishes without ever making black bean sauce.  So this was an interesting alternative.

Let's see.  What were my thoughts on the meal?  I thought the squid was really tender and the dish had a very different flavor from everything else we made for Chinese New Year.  I was really happy with both of those things.  However, I didn't think the flavors were that amazing.  I would say they were...pretty good.  I'm still going to consider this dish a win because it was a new technique (poor Alex was in charge of scoring the calamari so that it curled up all nice and pretty), a new sauce, and a new flavor that we threw into the mix.

Recipe after the jump!

Chinese New Year Meal #5 - Fragrant-and-Hot Tiger Prawns with Stir-Fried Yu Choy with Oyster Sauce

My one pet peeve with this recipe (and with a lot of Chinese cooking) is the amount of peanut oil that you end up using.  So much Chinese cooking requires large amounts of peanut oil or vegetable oil to "pass through" (aka deep-fry briefly).  I try to cut down on the amount of oil whenever possible, but there is only so much you can do with some recipes.  While I dislike disposing of this much oil, I have to admit that briefly deep-frying the shrimp in their shells gave the dish great flavor and texture.  The shrimp were succulent and juicy.  And the other ingredients in the stir-fry gave the shrimp a slightly spicy, finger-licking good shrimpy flavor.  Alex thinks these prawns rank right in the middle of our Chinese New Year meals thus far - #1 was the Pork and Napa Cabbage Water Dumplings, then the Ants Climbing a Tree, Fragrant-and-Hot Numbing Tiger Prawns, Xinjiang Lamb Kebobs and his least favorite meal was Peng's Home-Style Bean Curd.  I'm not sure exactly where I would rank the shrimp, but they would definitely be in the top 3.  I think I would rank the Ants Climbing a Tree above the dumplings and I might rank tonight's prawns above the dumplings.  The daikon slivers were by far my favorite side that I have made thus far (followed by the naan and sauteed watercress), but if we are just judging the meals based on the entrees themselves, I would probably rank the dishes in that order (followed by the lamb and then the tofu).

We served our shrimp with some white rice and some sauteed yu choy.  It was a very nice meal.  I think we are going to take the next few days off from our Chinese New Year mission, but stay tuned later this week or this weekend for another installment!

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!

Stir-Fried Mongolian Lamb with Scallions

As a precursor to things to come, Alex and I have to decided to start slowly ramping up for our week of Chinese New Year meals by cooking one to two Chinese meals per week.  Last week Alex made Red-Braised Pork (Hong Shao Rou) and tonight we made this Stir-Fried Mongolian Lamb with Scallions.  This dish was one that I was considering for Chinese New Year, but it didn't quite make the cut.  Rather than forgo making it entirely, I decided to go ahead and make it tonight.

And as much as I generally like the combination of lamb with scallions, this dish was just ok to me.  I didn't think it was anything special.  I really didn't get the flavor from the Sichuan peppercorns and when I did, I wasn't sure that it actually went with the hoisin mixture.  Actually, I'm fairly certain that it didn't because the flavors didn't seem to meld together for me at all.  The flavor of the lamb was fine - a little gamey, a little savory, a little sweet, but it just didn't do it for me.  I guess if I had to give the dish a letter grade, it would be a solid B/B- (probably the B-, although I hate being that harsh).  If I were to make the recipe again (which I probably won't but if I were), I would throw the scallions in after the hoisin mixture.  I think stir-frying them for 30 seconds is more than enough to soften and mellow them, but leave a little crispness and texture.  Cooking them for the amount of time specified in the recipe was overkill.  Oh and we cut our lamb a little on the large size.  If I were to make this dish again, I would definitely cut the lamb into smaller pieces.  Oops.

Recipe after the jump!

Spicy Long Beans with Sausage and Mushrooms

One of the thing I love most about Asian grocery stores is the rather random assortment of fun ingredients like long beans.  I always think about buying them, but I never do because I end up buying pea shoots, yu choy or gai lan.  About a month ago I finally pulled the trigger and bought some.  Then I got busy at work and forgot all about them.  They turned up in the bottom of the crisper about a week or two later, moldy and gross.  Fail.  But I decided this past weekend to try again so I picked up another bunch.  And we finally made long beans!  One of the things that immediately drew me to this recipe (aside form the long beans of course) was the fact that everything in the recipe is a staple that we keep in the pantry or refrigerator.  We didn't have to go out to buy anything.  Go us.  However, this recipe used up the rest of our sesame oil so before we can make it again we need to stock back up.  Here's hoping that I remember to pick up some more sesame oil on my next trip to the grocery...

I am pretty impressed with our first attempt at long beans.  They were really tasty and interesting.  Every time we make a dish with dried shiitake mushrooms I am reminded of just how much I like them as an ingredient.  We made Stir-Fried Rice with Pork and Shiitake Mushrooms back in February that was absolutely delicious, which I totally attribute to the earthy, funky flavor of the mushrooms.  The same held true here - I loved the flavor of the mushrooms.  The preserved vegetables added some funk of their own to the dish too, but in a slightly different way.  The mushrooms are more deeply umami whereas the preserved vegetables are pungently salty and garlicky.  I also thought that the ground pork and Chinese sausage together were a really nice combination.  The Chinese sausage is rich and porky, but sweet and has a nice crisp texture to it, while the ground pork is meaty and homey.  I thought this was the type of dish (with slightly different proportions to be heavier on the green beans and lighter on the meat) that I could totally have seen myself eating in a back alley restaurant in China with plastic stools and little tables set up outside on the sidewalk.  It was totally satisfying and not at all pretentious.  Two thumbs up.  I told Alex that this is my favorite recipe we have made from this particular cookbook yet.  The Five-Spice Chicken with Sugar Snaps was pretty good, but as far as I am concerned this dish was better.

Recipe after the jump!

Thai Basil Chicken (Gai Pad Krapow)

Look!  I finally made it home for dinner!  I haven't been ignoring you guys for the past week.  I have been eating dinner at my desk (along with breakfast and lunch).  But I made it home tonight!  Granted, I didn't make it home until 10:00 pm so it was a late dinner, but I made it home!  And Alex waited until I was in the car headed home from work before cooking dinner for both of us.  Isn't he a nice husband?  I told him to go ahead and cook/eat while I was still at the office (and really, where else but NYC would you be at work on a Saturday and be downright excited to leave the office by 10:00 pm?), but he decided to wait for me anyway.  Like I said - don't I have a nice husband?

Anyway, for my first home-cooked meal in over a week, this was an excellent choice.  It was amazing.  It had such a great balance of spice, sweetness, and the aromatic freshness of the Thai basil.  And the flavors were so authentically Thai.  Thank you Rasamalaysia for the recipe that we based our dish on.  I order a version of this dish quite often from a Thai restaurant near my office and this version is every bit as good.  And I don't make that claim lightly.  It really was that good.  I was a little shocked by how delicious it was.  I picked up the Thai basil that we used for this dish last week at the farmers' market and I have been just dying to make this dish ever since.  I was really worried that the Thai basil would be long past its prime by the time I had a night off from work and could eat dinner at home.  Luckily the basil was just fine - better than fine actually.  The heady perfume and flavor of the basil really permeated the entire dish.  It was just glorious.   And not only was it glorious, it was remarkably easy to make.  Once you have the dish prepped it comes together very quickly and with very little effort.  And it doesn't require a ton of ingredients.  Hurray for a very successful home-cooked meal!  And here's to hoping that fairly soon work will calm down for me and we will be able to cook more at home.  Fingers crossed.

Recipe after the jump!

Chicken and Broccoli Stir-Fry

I periodically feel like Alex and I should make more of an effort to eat healthy.  It's not that we are terribly unhealthy eaters, but everyone could use a few diet tweaks from time to time.  Our current diet tweak is to try and eat more vegetables and maybe a few less carbs.  Don't get me wrong, I love carbs and I refuse to cut them out of my diet entirely.  What self-respecting Asian (or half-Asian as the case may be) refuses to eat rice or noodles?  I mean seriously.  But if I can substitute one or two servings of pasta or bread a week with some veggies, then why not?  The tweak actually has a dual purpose.  We end up wasting so much produce every week and I am hoping that this diet tweak will help us stop wasting produce so we can save a little money on groceries.  Groceries are expensive.  We have been pretty good this week with our squash blossoms, sugar snap peas, pea shoots, salads, etc.  And then tonight we had broccoli.  I'm actually planning on cooking more broccoli later this week because I bought two bunches.  My plan right now is to roast the second bunch of broccoli, but I will figure that out later.

The inspiration for this recipe came from Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge by Grace Young.  She had a recipe for beef with broccoli and it occurred to me that I had a massive chicken breast defrosted in the fridge.  I briefly considered just substituting the chicken for the beef in that recipe, but decided it sounded a little heavy.  The cookbook also has a bunch of recipes that call for velveting chicken (marinating the chicken in a mixture of egg white and cornstarch before stir-frying) and since I had never tried that before I decided to give one of those a try.  So this recipe is actually an adaptation of another recipe in the book for Chinese Indian Chicken Manchurian, which we tweaked a bit before adding some broccoli.  And it was a total success.  The chicken was very moist from the velveting and it had a very tender, silky texture.  It also had a surprising amount of flavor.  Chicken breast is usually the most disappointing part of any stir-fry, dry and bland.  This was the exact opposite.  Not only was the chicken delicious, the broccoli was perfectly cooked and flavorful.  I loved the hint of heat from the chili and the fresh flavors of the scallions and cilantro.  The combination of chicken stock and soy sauce made a really simple and nice stir-fry sauce.  I might use it on future stir-fry variations in the future.  We usually add sesame oil to stir-fry and some rice vinegar, but I didn't miss them at all in this recipe.  It was all a lot fresher and brighter than our normal stir-fries and made me think that maybe simple is better.  A stir-fry made of chicken and one fresh vegetable might just be better than chicken stir-fry with a variety of canned and fresh vegetables.  Just a thought.  In the name of healthy eating we served our stir-fry with brown rice.  Go us.

Recipe after the jump!

Chili Shrimp Stir-Fry

I have very little experience with Sri Lankan and Goan cuisine, but if the authors of Mangoes & Curry Leaves: Culinary Travels Through the Great Subcontinent say that this dish is Sri Lankan or Goan, I believe them.  In my experience Sri Lankan food is much spicier than this dish was, but I could always amp it up in the future to make it a little more "chili-hot."  When I tasted the stir-fry I said that it was interesting and "not Indian, but similar."  Alex said that it reminded him of Singaporean food because every time he has had a dish labeled Singaporean in a Chinese restaurant, it tasted like this shrimp.  I sort of get what he is saying because the lime, garlic, onions and turmeric reminds me of Singapore Rice Noodles without the curry powder.  But for the record, I won because was closer geographically than he was.  But enough of that - back to the shrimp stir-fry!  The chilis we used were rather mild, but that was my only complaint.  I wanted the dish to be much spicier.  I thought that the flavor was really interesting - I loved the aromatics (cardamom, cinnamon and cloves), the lime, and the sweetness of the onions.  I kind of wished there was another vegetable in the stir-fry, just to mix things up a little, but in the future I will just saute some snow peas or something and serve it on the side along with some basmati rice.  If I had to give the dish a letter grade I would give it a B+.  If it had been spicier I think I would bump that up to an A-, but better luck next time.

Recipe after the jump!

Five-Spice Chicken with Sugar Snaps

Stir-fry is wonderful because it is one of the quickest, easiest things you can make.  You just need to get your ingredients prepped and toss them in a hot wok, then minutes later you have a wonderful meal.  And you can really let your imagination go wild with stir-fry - you can throw in a variety of veggies, meats or seafood, different seasonings, etc.  I enjoy stir-fry so much that I actually bought an entire cookbook devoted to stir-fry.  I have easily a dozen recipes that I have already bookmarked to try.  This was one of them.  I had it down to either this recipe or one for Sichuan Pork with Peppers and Peanuts, but I ended up picking this one.  But don't worry, I will make the Sichuan Pork soon.

My favorite thing about this dish was the sugar snap peas.  I love sugar snaps, but for some reason when I am thinking stir-fry I usually default to snow peas.  But after this, I am going to use sugar snaps in more future stir-fries.  Overall, I thought the dish was good.  It was tasty, the chicken was flavorful and moist, it was simple to make, and it put a whole new spin on stir-fry.  I have never thought to use five-spice in a stir-fry marinade.  And I have certainly never thought to add ketchup to a stir-fry.  The only use for ketchup in my apartment is generally burgers, french fries, and onion rings.  And I'm not sure that I will add ketchup to any future stir-fries, but it was an interesting addition.  I will however use chicken thighs rather than chicken breasts in some of my future stir-fries.  I won't forgo chicken breasts entirely in favor of chicken thighs, but I will mix it up in the future.  And I will definitely experiment more with five-spice!

Recipe after the jump!

Stir-Fried Eggs with Cellophane Noodles

So I had a few bites of these eggs and told Alex that I found this dish "surprisingly delicious."  Alex took issue with my use of surprising.  He didn't think it was surprising that the eggs were delicious.  But there were so few ingredients - eggs, cellophane noodles (and who has ever heard of tossing cellophane noodles in with scrambled eggs), fish sauce, lime juice, shallots, scallions, etc.  I don't know why but I had this idea in my head that it would be good, but not amazing - an easy satisfying lunch that wouldn't blow anyone's socks off.  I was totally wrong.  And I like to think that I am pretty honest about it when I am wrong about a recipe.  I found the recipe in Hot Sour Salty Sweet, which designates the recipe as Laotian or Thai.  I have to admit that if the recipe wasn't in one of the cookbooks that we have had such success with, I probably wouldn't have looked twice at it and I certainly wouldn't have bookmarked it for the blog.  One of the best things about the dish was that you could taste every ingredient in every bite, and every ingredient worked so well in the dish.  It was light and flavorful, but totally delicious.  And it was incredibly easy to make.

Alex said that if all brunch dishes tasted like this, he would actually like brunch.  I love brunch, but I thought this dish was pretty freaking amazing.  It is my favorite dish that I have made in the past few weeks.

Recipe after the jump!

Vietnamese Shrimp and Pork Stir-Fry

This is another dish that I have been wanting to make for some time.  According to Blogger, I put this recipe in my queue back in early September 2010.  Granted, I have recipes that I picked out years ago and haven't made yet saved in my Gmail account.  The fact that I picked a recipe out so long ago and haven't made it yet doesn't necessarily bear any relation to how much I want to make the dish.  Sometimes I sit on a recipe for ages because I just cannot manage to find one particular ingredient.  Then there are the times that I pick out a recipe and then misplace it or forget about it.  That happens a lot.  Sometimes I sit on a recipe because it just never quite comes together - everytime I get ready to make it something comes up or I find that I am missing something that I could have sworn we had in the apartment.  Usually we discover that we are missing something before we actually start cooking, but every once in awhile there is a late stage panic when we realize that we are out of some absolutely necessary component halfway through the cooking process.  Anyway the component that we were always missing for this dish was the 1/4 pound of thinly sliced pork shoulder/butt.  Since pork shoulders tend to be so large, they aren't something we generally stock in the freezer.  And most normal grocery stores don't stock pork shoulder so buying one always requires a special trip to Fairway or Whole Foods.  But the last time we cooked pork shoulder I hacked off a chunk and threw it in the freezer so I would have it the next time I thought about making this dish.  Good thinking on my part, huh?

Not to quote Alex's favorite phrase twice in a row, but this dish was kind of awesome.  Vietnamese food is always a huge winner in our apartment - neither Alex nor I can get enough of the flavors of nuoc cham (Alex actually claimed that he likes it so much he could drink it), fresh herbs, fish sauce and lime juice.  Vietnamese food just tastes so fresh and bright.  It is also perfect for hot, steamy weather (like mid-80s over Memorial Day weekend in NYC), which is really no surprise given the steamy climate in Southeast Asia.  The pork and shrimp in the stir-fry itself had a surprising amount of flavor given that they were quickly marinated in fish sauce and sugar, before being simply stir-fried with lemongrass and garlic.  They didn't really need the nuoc cham at all.  But if you are going to serve the stir-fry over rice noodles like we did, I would recommend the nuoc cham for the noodles.  We quickly stir-fried our noodles in the pork and shrimp juju that was left in the wok after we cooked the stir-fry to loosen the noodles up and flavor them.  If you don't have noodles, you could also serve the stir-fry with rice and a sauteed vegetable of some sort.  Any way you serve it, I think you will have an excellent meal.

Recipe after the jump!

Chinese New Year Meal #4 - Liuyang Black Bean Chicken and Smacked Cucumbers

Get excited!  It's time for Chinese New Year Meal #4!  Low and behold, it's another Fuchsia Dunlop recipe.  We are mildly obsessed, can you tell?  We just have so many of her recipes that we have been wanting and/or dying to try that it seemed a little silly to try to track down other recipes if we're going to be cooking 7 Asian (I think at this point I am committed to making 7 Chinese recipes) this month.  And all of her recipes are just so good that we can't resist.  I mean, we could resist if we had to, but that would just be silly.  

This meal was another winner.  The Liuyang Black Bean Chicken is packed full of deep, hearty flavors - a combination of the black beans, ginger, garlic, with a touch of heat.  And it's really easy to cook.  I mean, you have to reconcile yourself to "deep frying" the chicken chunks in peanut oil.  It's a traditional Chinese cooking method of "passing through" in which you briefly deep fry the protein you're using, then remove most of the oil, and stir-fry everything together to finish the cooking process.  I know it sounds labor intensive and intimidating, but I promise that it's really simple to do.  The chicken is tender, just cooked through, and delicious.  And then there are the cucumbers.  They are the perfect counterpoint to the heavier flavors of the chicken.  They are almost unbearably fresh and I mean that in the most delicious way possible.  The flavors there are very light and subtle - a little heat from the chili, a touch of acidity from the rice vinegar, and a hint of garlic.

Recipes after the jump!

Chinese New Year Meal #2 - Salt-Fried Pork

For our second Chinese New Year meal, I had to make pork.  I told Alex to look at our two Fuchsia Dunlop cookbooks and pick a recipe to try.  This is what he picked, which is no shock whatsoever because Alex loves pork above all proteins and pork belly in particular.  Plus he loves Sichuan food, so it was practically a given.  I took one bite, turned to look at him, and told him "you're really going to like this."  And he did.  The dish isn't as spicy as you would expect given its Sichuan origins, but it reminds me of everything good about homestyle Chinese cooking - a few fresh ingredients, a lot of flavor, and a short cooking time.  Homestyle Sichuan cooking tends to be salty, beany (and like I said in my previous post on Fisherman's Shrimp with Chinese Chives and Hand-Torn Cabbage, those beans are crazy pungent, but delicious) and just a little spicy rather than blow your tastebuds incendiary.  We served the pork with some baby bok choy sauteed with ginger and garlic and plain white rice.  Such a fantastic meal.  I honestly can't think of a single way in which I would change the pork, it was absolutely perfect as it was.

Next up, Lamb with Chili, Cumin and Garlic and some fried rice!

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!

Chicken with Chilies (La Zi Ji)

La zi ji (Chicken with Chiles) was one of the dishes from one of my first meals with a bunch of expats at a Sichuan restaurant in downtown Shenzhen.  Well, that's not entirely true.  I had already been in China for several days at that point and it's not like I refrained from eating until then.  Instead I was teaching English at a summer camp where we were stuck eating at the cafeteria with the students and other teachers everyday.  Gourmet food it was not, but what grade school cafeteria actually serves good food?  Anyway, this dish made an impression.  Nestled in a bowl of flaming red dried chilies were little nuggets of succulent chicken.  It looked scary hot, but so long as you stayed away from the chilies themselves you were fine and the chicken was barely spicy at all.  So after coming across this recipe in Fuchsia Dunlop's Land of Plenty I knew we had to make it.  I tried to track down Sichuanese chilies, but short of another trip to Chinatown, didn't think I was going to find any.  In the end I found some dried Tiensin Chinese chilies at Kalustyans that I decided to use.

As usual, I dug into my dinner first.  Alex is slow.  Once dinner is on the table I tend to dig right in.  Conversely, Alex wanders into the kitchen to pour himself another drink and then meanders on over.  So I dug into the bowl and plucked out a piece and chicken that I threw in my mouth.  And then I said "hmmmm" and nodded.  Alex's response was "well that's a good sign."  He knows me so well.  This chicken isn't exactly the same as the dish that I first ate in China, but it's really close.  And it's really good.  And I mean really really good.  In Alex's words, it's "not like your standard Americanized Chinese dish with a gloopy sauce."  Instead the dish is meant to be dry - not that the sense that the meat is withered and dried out because it's overcooked, but more in the sense that the chicken stands alone without a sauce.  And the chicken itself is has a nice and crispy exterior from being fried.  We didn't deep fry the chicken - instead I shallow fried it in a Le Creuset in 2/3 of an inch of peanut oil.  Then the chicken is tossed in the flavorful chili oil and suddenly it goes from just cubes of cooked marinated chicken to something else entirely.  Something totally delicious.  After you eat an entire bowl of chicken your tongue starts to go numb and tingly.  But your lips never burn because the chicken really isn't that hot and spicy, it's really just lightly perfumed by the all of the chilies.  I love it.  Alex loved it too.  Now he just has to remember not to rub his eyes after de-seeding all of those chilies...

Recipe after the jump!