Chinese New Year Meal #2 - Ants Climbing a Tree

Now that we have started on our Chinese New Year meals for 2012, we are on a roll!  Well, it might be a bit premature to really claim to be on a roll since this is only our second meal this week, but I'm going to make the claim anyway because it is our second meal since Sunday and I have at least one more planned for this week (two if I get really ambitious).  So there.  I'm staking my claim.  With this meal I think we have accomplished the two traditional Chinese New Year dishes that I like to make every year - noodles and dumplings.  From here on out I am going to try to make a variety of different proteins (lamb is defrosting in the fridge right now, along with some chicken thighs) and a variety of different preparations.  I know that we tend to make a lot of recipes from our Fuchsia Dunlop cookbooks around Chinese New Year, but I am going to try to mix it up a little and throw in at least one Cantonese recipe, one northern Chinese recipe (although I guess the dumplings technically count there), and one Xinjiang-type recipe in with our typical Hunan and Sichuan dishes.  It's go time people.

There were two things that I really liked about this dish.  First and foremost, it was incredibly easy to make.  Literally anyone could make this dish if they had access to the equipment (a wok) and the ingredients (cellophane noodles, ground meat, soy sauce, chicken stock, chili bean paste, oil and scallions).  The only ingredient that might be hard to find is the chili bean paste.  Everything else should be readily available at your neighborhood grocery store.  Second, given how easy it was to make I was impressed by the level and layers of flavor.  The sauce is well balanced between salty and spicy, with a hint of funk from the chili bean paste.  And the cellophane noodles do a wonderful job of absorbing all of that wonderful flavor.  I was worried that they would become overcooked and mushy, but they held up to the cooking process quite well and were glossy and flavorful.  They were also a wee bit slippery so I would recommend wearing dark colors when eating this dish with chopsticks.  I thought we would have enough noodles for leftovers, but it was so tasty that Alex and I scarfed it all down.  We couldn't help ourselves.

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!

Roasted Beet Salad with Goat Chese and Pistachios

Let's see...  What is there to say about our newest take on beet salad?  We are still in our vegetarian kick, so I wanted to do a hearty salad for dinner with some stracchiatella soup and beet salad sounded like the perfect option.  The funny thing is that we made almost this exact meal (with a slightly different beet salad and homemade chicken stock on the blog almost two years ago).  And in a lot of ways, I preferred that meal - particularly the sweet and spicy candied pecans, the homemade chicken stock for the soup.  I was expecting more sweetness from the roasted beets here, but once I tossed them with the dressing all of that wonderful beet sweetness was obscured.  Granted, grocery store beets in the middle of winter are never quite as sweet as beets are when they are in season, but I tasted the roasted beets before and after adding the dressing so I can definitively say that the dressing definitely masked some of their natural sweetness.  I think beets go wonderfully with goat cheese and this salad was no exception.  The pistachios were an interesting touch as well.  I love roasted salted pepitas with beet salad and candied walnuts or pecans, but I have never tried pistachios.  They are a milder, slightly sweeter alternative, but I might go back to the candied nuts or pepitas. 

Recipe after the jump!

Soy Sauce Roast Chicken Breasts and Edamame with Meyer Lemon and Chilis

After a few nights of vegetarian meals, Alex and I are slowly working our way back to eating meat.  Not that I didn't enjoy my vegetarian meals earlier this week - I truly did, but there are only so many dishes I can cook before I want to add meat (or seafood) back into the mix.  All things in moderation, right?  So tonight we made chicken and maybe this weekend we will make some pork.  Actually, I really want to make some dumplings in honor of Chinese New Year so pork is a must.  Yes, I know that I am a bit behind the ball on Chinese New Year this but I can't help it.  I have been busy.  I'm still going to make seven meals worth of Chinese food, but our first Chinese meal (and maybe our second meal too) is going to come this weekend.  

Anyway, back to tonight's meal.  Alex gets the credit for coming up with this chicken recipe.  We were trying to decide what to do with the chicken breasts I had defrosted and I knew that I wanted to serve a knockoff of an edamame dish we had this past weekend with dinner.  So he decided to come up with some sort of Asian-marinade.  He proposed a soy sauce and mirin marinade and I warned him to be very careful that the chicken didn't burn because of all the sugar in the mirin.  You have to be careful when you marinate chicken (or any other meat) in a marinade with honey, sugar, barbeque sauce, or any other sauce with a decent amount of sugar in it because the sugar burns very easily.  One second you have a nicely browned skin and the next you have cinders.  Alex wanted to stick with the soy and mirin marinade so he modified our usual roast chicken breast recipe to sear it for a less time on the stove top.  And in the end, the chicken was quite tasty and very juicy.  The skin on his chicken breast got a little charred, but mine was perfect (although it would have charred in a matter seconds).  The mirin and sake gave the chicken a nice balanced sweetness and the soy sauce made it savory.  The edamame we tossed with sliced Fresno chilis, Meyer lemon zest and juice.  We had the "house edamame" at a restaurant called Imperia this past weekend where they tossed whole edamame with Fresno chilis, a ton of coarse salt, and what they called "lemon essence."  When the waitress put it down at the table I was totally skeptical, but it was really tasty.  Our version was slightly different than the restaurant version in that it was a lot spicier (the restaurant must have removed the seeds from the chilis) and a little less oily.  In the future I will remove the seeds of the chilis because the heat overpowered the more delicate flavors of the lemon.  One other difference was that we used frozen shelled edamame instead of whole edamame.  All things considered I thought our dinner was a pretty successful experiment. 

Recipe 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!

Quinoa with Spinach, Goat Cheese, and Sauteed Shiitakes

I don't know about you but sometimes I crave veggies with a vengeance.  And after a weekend of stuffing my face, all I wanted was something between a salad and a pile of cooked veggies.  This dish fit the bill nicely (and coincidentally was one of the first few recipes that really drew my eye in my new Jean-Georges cookbook).  Quinoa is a lovely healthy grain that Alex and I don't make nearly enough of.  I also feel the same way about shiitake mushrooms (although it's obviously not a grain).  So this dish combined two of my favorite underutilized ingredients in a wonderful way.  I was afraid the dish might be a bit bland, but it was surprisingly tasty.  I really should have known better than to doubt Jean-Georges Vongerichten!  No one component of the dish really stood out for me, but I really enjoyed the combination of woodsy, meaty shiitakes, creamy goat cheese and nutty quinoa. Our goat cheese tasted faintly lemony to me, which I thought was nice.  The flavors are somewhat subtle (with the exception of the sauteed shiitakes which have a really deep and rich flavor to them), but they work together beatuifully.  Toasting the quinoa to make it a little nuttier and give it a little more texture was a great touch.  Hurray for a healthy vegetarian meal!  Over the next few weeks I am definitely planning on a few more healthy vegetarian meals until I atone for all of my recent gluttony.  Vegetables and whole grains, here I come.

Recipe after the jump!

Chili-Marinated Skirt Steak Tacos and Green Salsa with Avocado

Sometimes we get stuck in a rut.  Sometimes we try to mix it up.  This dish came about when I was trying to use one of our cookbooks that we never use - Rosa's New Mexican Table.  I bought the cookbook ages ago at Costco or Sam's Club when I saw that they had the recipe for their homemade guacamole and salsas, plus several other interesting recipes in there.  And then it proceeded to sit on the bookshelf.  For years.  We have our go to cookbooks and the rest tend to get lost in the fray.  In case you were wondering, our go to cookbooks are probably Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics: Fabulous Flavor from Simple Ingredients, Hot Sour Salty Sweet: A Culinary Journey Through Southeast Asia, our two Fuchsia Dunlop cookbooks and Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavor.  Runners up probably include The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook: Home Cooking from Asian American Kitchens and Crescent City Cooking: Unforgettable Recipes from Susan Spicer's New Orleans.  We really need to branch out into our other cookbooks more often.  I periodically page through all of the cookbooks that we don't regularly use and pick out recipes that I want to make.  We have tons of recipes on deck from those other books and yet they still don't get made.  Perhaps making at least one recipe from each of our cookbooks should be my goal for this year.  In case you're wondering, we probably have about 30 cookbooks, so that should keep us busy for awhile...

This salsa recipe came straight out of the cookbook and the taco recipe was inspired by a recipe in the cookbook.  We rarely marinate our skirt steak when we make tacos because it has so much flavor on its own, but every once in awhile I like to mix it up.  Plus we had all of these dried chilis in our pantry that I wanted to use - cascabels, ancho chilis, chipotle chilis, chilis de arbol, etc.  So I got out my blender and decided to whip up some marinade.  In the end, I thought the tacos were good, but not amazing.  The steak by itself was almost overwhelmingly smoky/aggressively flavored with the dried chilis. It wasn't exactly spicy, but it was heavily spiced (if you get what I am saying).  But the coolness and brightness of the salsa went really well with the marinated steak and gave it some much needed acidity (as did the squeeze of fresh lime juice at the end).  And I really thought the creaminess that the avocado gave the salsa was an interesting touch.  Altogether it worked, but it wasn't my favorite skirt steak taco recipe.  I  will probably make the salsa again in the future, but I think the tacos themselves are doomed to be a one time experiment.  It's not the type of salsa that I think would work well as just chips and salsas, but I think it would work well as an accompaniment to any meat dish.  I think the cookbook actually says to serve it with empanadas and other fried food, which sounds like a brilliant pairing.
 
Recipes after the jump!