Guess what? We finally finished our week of Chinese New Year meals! It only took a couple months... When I first started posting a week's worth of Chinese New Year meals on the blog I spent hours pouring over recipes trying to represent the different regions and cuisines of China. I wanted seven meals made from different ingredients, some spicy, some meaty, some vegetarian, some noodles, some dumplings... It was quite a process. This year I didn't have a lot of time to plan. And since I was so behind the ball in getting started I rushed into things a little. Fuchsia Dunlop is always a good source for a few Chinese New Year meals. I love all three of her cookbooks. In the past year or two I have come to rely more and more on Serious Eats for new recipes. I love that they make up their own recipes in addition testing out cookbooks. I also love that their recipes run the gamut of different types of Chinese cuisine. Four out of the seven Chinese New Years meals I made this year (including this one) were from Serious Eats. There were a few other recipes I found elsewhere, but for one reason or another they didn't make the cut. Some were a little too fusion-y, others involved ingredients that I couldn't find. But what tended to happen was that I stumbled across a recipe that I wanted to make more. This recipe for pan-fried noodles wasn't one that I originally planned on making. I don't typically make more than one noodle dish, but I really love pan-fried noodles. But other than the double-up on the noodles, I think we did a pretty good job of diversifying our meals. We did one Sichuanese dish with beef and another with chicken, one Taiwanese dish with pork belly, one Xinjiang dish with lamb, one Cantonese dish with seafood...
This dish was surprisingly successful. I was pretty happy with it. When we tried to make pan-fried noodles in the past we always ended up with burnt noodles that stuck to the wok, which resulted in burnt noodles and made it far more difficult to transfer the noodles from the wok in order to flip them over and cook the other side. But these worked out pretty well! There was some sticking on the first side after we added the water, but the second side worked perfectly. And the process of parboiling the scallops and blanching the greens worked out really well because both ended up perfectly cooked. The original recipe on Serious Eats calls for the addition of calamari and fish balls, but the grocery store was out of calamari and I don't really like fish balls so I decided to leave them out. I really liked the combination of bay scallops and shrimp, but I might try the calamari next time if it was available.
Recipe after the jump!
Some recipes are far more trouble than they are worth. We have made more than our fair share of dishes that take hours and involve dirtying up every single pot and pan in the kitchen, but turn out to be just ok in the end. Other recipes are so simple and come together so quickly that you can't imagine that they will be that good in the end. And then they end up blowing you away. Those recipes are few and far between, but this dish happens to be one of them. There are less than 7 ingredients total in the entire dish, but there is so much flavor. The broad bean paste gives the dish heat, but what I really enjoyed is the combination of ground beef and Chinese celery. The meaty, rich flavor of the ground beef is a really good counterpoint to the grassy, distinctly herbal flavor (and crisp texture) of the Chinese celery. I don't know how substituting regular celery for the Chinese celery would affect the dish, but I would definitely be willing to give it a shot. I think if you use regular celery the recipe says that you need to peel the little celery strings off, which seems a little finnicky and irritating, but such is life. If the flavor of the final dish is a rough approximation of the flavor of the Chinese celery in this dish, I would make it again and again.
Recipe after the jump!
I have to admit - it is more than a little ridiculous that I am still posting Chinese New Year meals. It's almost June. But I started posting them back in March and promised to post another week's worth of Chinese New Year meals so we are committed. I'm sure I could stop doing it and no one would notice, but we're just going to keep slowly trucking along because that's what we do. We finally had time to visit Chinatown this past weekend for another few meals' worth of Asian groceries, so we should be making a few other Asian recipes this week (the goal is to knock off 2 belated Chinese New Year meals this week and they we will only have ONE left to do). Whoo-hoo! I refuse to let this carry on into June if I can help it... I want to make some seafood panfried noodles and another meat or tofu dish with Chinese celery (this Celery and Tofu recipe from the NY Times has been taunting me for years) and then I will call it a day for this year. The noodles might need to wait until next weekend, but I'm thinking the other dish is definitely do-able next week without another trip to the grocery store.
Anyway, these pork belly buns are one of my favorite pork belly dishes we have ever made. When we tried to make the Pork Belly Ssam with Mustard Seed Sauce from the Momofuku cookbook our pork belly was way salty and verging on burnt. Previously our most successful pork belly dish was this Red-Braised Pork Belly (Hong Shao Rou), which was lovely and very flavorful. But it was a little heavy and very rich. Even though the flavor was really good, you felt like you were eating a heart attack on a plate. This pork belly was super flavorful - savory and a little sweet with just a hint of lingering heat from the Thai chili (I highly recommend you include it). The cilantro gives the dish some freshness and crisp texture, the peanut powder is nicely sweet and crunchy and the pickled mustard greens are vinegary and tangy. It is the perfect balance of the fatty pork, tender steamed buns and a variety of flavors and textures.
Recipe after the jump!
I love traveling but sometimes, when I get back, all I want is salad. I was in Miami for work last week and when I got back yesterday all I wanted was a salad. So we made some brook trout with this Make-Ahead Radish Fattoush Salad. And then I also had a salad for lunch. Tonight for dinner I wanted something relatively light, but flavorful. I also wanted something that didn't remind me of all of the buffet meals (some of them were pretty decent, but most were pretty blah) I had all last week. This dish was basically the antithesis of the random meats, pastas, sandwiches and salads I had last week. The best part of each meal was the desserts so I had more than my share. Strangely enough, one of the best meals I had last week was the shrimp po' boy that I had at the Fort Lauderdale airport. How random is that? Granted, it had coconut shrimp in it - and who doesn't love coconut shrimp? Given the number of desserts I ate and the shrimp po' boy, it's no wonder I feel like I gained 5 lbs while in Florida.
This post has been weeks in coming. I keep planning to make more Chinese meals for my very very belated Chinese New Year meals. I'm 3 months late at this point, so I guess another few weeks won't make much of a difference. I really am going to try to finish all of the posts up by the end of May. I actually had another tofu recipe picked out for Chinese New Year but I decided in the end to make this dish because it looked easier (and healthier). Everything in the dish worked together in a really interesting way. I loved how soaking the celery, cilantro and scallions in an ice bath made them crisp and refreshing. The sauce was really savory - nutty, spicy and funky. It wasn't my favorite sauce, but it was one of the more interesting Chinese sauces we have made recently. One thing I might recommend is another cooking/heating method for the tofu itself. Microwaving it made it release tofu water which diluted the sauce. So I would either microwave it in another bowl and then transfer it (minus the water) into the serving bowl. Or I would try steaming it. Steamed soft tofu ends up with a better silkier and more custard-like texture to it.
Recipe after the jump!
There are a few cookbooks out there that I have been thinking about buying for years. Some of them are by cookbook authors whose cookbooks we already own. One cookbook that I have been thinking about buying for years is Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. But everytime I convince myself that I don't need yet another cookbook. We easily have 30-40 cookbooks in the apartment, some of which we have never used. I tried to make a deal with myself a few years ago that I wouldn't buy another cookbook until I made at least one recipe from each cookbook. Clearly that never happened. Earlier today I was trying to find a recipe for Uyghur laghman noodles and after finding out that Beyond the Great Wall had a recipe for laghman I went ahead and ordered it on Amazon. My compromise was to buy the cookbook in Kindle format so it doesn't clutter up the apartment. I thought it made a lot of sense (although it does make it more difficult sometimes to find and use the recipes).
This dish is one of the dishes that I remember fondly from China, but haven't eaten since I left. You don't get a lot of Uyghur food in the United States. And when I showed Alex the recipe, he was a little shocked by how un-Chinese it all was. This dish screams Italy more than China - it's like a pasta with a tomato and meat sauce. It's a relatively homey and simple flavor combination - no spices (although we added cumin), no heat, just lamb, bell peppers and tomatoes.
Recipe after the jump!
Alex and I love dumplings and wontons enough that we use the word "dumple" as a verb. It usually means that we are going out to eat dumplings, but every once in awhile we get ambitious and decide to make dumplings at home. These big wontons were our last attempt at "dumple-ing". I have been waiting for a little while to make these Big Wontons and the Little Wontons (both available on Serious Eats). I was originally planning on making the little wontons, but I wasn't sure how thin our dumpling wrappers were so I didn't want to take the chance that they would be too thick. But I'm pretty sure that they were plenty thin enough so we will go for the little wontons and make some wonton noodle soup next time. Yum. What I liked best about these wontons was the addition of the bok choy (or cabbage) and chives in the filling - I like nice meaty dumplings but sometimes it's nice to have a little more veg mixed in. I took a quick look at my Andrea Nguyen Asian Dumplings cookbook and tried a few different folding methods. The one that I had the most luck with this time was "nurses caps" (my "flower buds" were a little wonky). Actually, both Alex and I commented on the fact that my dumplings were unusually well-formed this time. None of them broke apart while cooking, nor was there any filling ooz-age out the sides. I was pretty impressed with myself. We made 50 dumplings and only ate 20 or so (and froze the rest). I can't want to make some wonton noodle soup with some of the leftover Asian chicken stock we made for our Khao Tom Thai Rice Soup! Even more yum. I am also tempted to try pan-frying them, although the skins are thin enough that I am a little nervous to pan-fry. But let's be honest, when has that ever stopped me in the past? Wish me luck.
Recipe after the jump!
Given how much I always thought I hated congee, I find it pretty shocking how much I now enjoy it. I haven't tried it in many restaurants because I'm still a little weirded out by ordering rice gruel with a potential surprise inside, but I love making it at home. We don't do it very often, but that's because I tend to forget all about it until hit with an intense congee craving. Usually that happens when it is cold out and I am feeling under the weather. I swear this stuff is almost better than chicken noodle soup.
This congee is in some ways not that different from the Rice Soup, Khmer Style we made a year ago (both use ground pork and Southeast Asian ingredients like fish sauce and lemongrass), except that this congee added tofu and was even more flavorful, which I expected given we used a homemade broth that was very flavorful in and of itself. I also liked the texture of this congee better because it wasn't quite as thick. You could totally play with this recipe to adjust the seasonings and ingredients if you felt like playing around in the kitchen (or if your kitchen is simply missing one or more ingredients). If you're not a fan of pork you could use ground chicken or turkey and if you wanted to be a little more Chinese (and less Southeast Asian) you could use ginger instead of lemongrass, peanuts instead of fried shallots and a combination of soy sauce and salt instead of fish sauce. You could also omit the Thai chili if you're not a fan of spicy food. Personally, I thought the dusting of Thai chili gave it the perfect kick, which was muted by the congee, but gave it a little extra zing.
Recipe after the jump!
Oops. I totally missed Chinese New Year again. That's ok. We all knew it was going to happen. And I swear that I will post a week's worth of Chinese meals eventually. It might take me a month or so to get through it all, but I do have a lot of recipes picked out and/or ideas on tap. I want to make some noodles (I'm thinking Uyghur laghman with lamb), some dumplings, some seafood... The plan is to make another Chinese recipe tonight (provided that we can find everything we need at the grocery). Sadly, we made this meal last weekend (it was one of the first things we cooked upon our return from Whistler) but I just haven't had the time to post about it. Fingers crossed I will be able to post about tonight's meal a little more promptly.
There are a number of different simple Sichuan chicken dishes in Land of Plenty: Authentic Sichuan Recipes Personally Gathered in the Chinese Province of Sichuan that I love to make because they are easy and tasty. You can easily poach a few chicken breasts (or a whole chicken if you want to make some stock, which is what we were doing) and then shred the meat and toss them in one of several different dressings that vary from this sauce, which is very sesame-y or others which are full of Sichuan peppercorns. It's all a matter of what you have in the kitchen and/or what you are craving. The last time we made one of these recipes we made the "Hot and Numbing Chicken Slices (Ma La Ji Pian)", but we the shredded chicken on top of a bed of broccoli and just made a little extra dressing to coat the broccoli as well as the chicken. It was delicious and easy. I actually might prefer the hot and numbing sauce, which is lighter and spicier than this heavier, more sesame-y sauce. Either way, I find these dishes to be perfect for summer when you really want something light, but flavorful that doesn't involve an extended period of time in the kitchen. It's a nice alternative to yet another salad.
Recipe after the jump!
For a long time I had a strict no dark (poultry) meat policy. Considering how much I love duck it made absolutely no sense. Clearly I don't a problem with greasier, moister meat. I just don't like dark meat chicken or turkey. It's both a textural and a flavor issue for me. I know it doesn't really make sense, but I just can't help it. In the past few years I have discovered that I do like dark meat in a few limited applications. When I order Indian or Chinese chicken dishes I try to plan my orders around those dishes that will involve chicken breasts, rather than chicken thighs or legs. When I order fried chicken, I eat the breast and then give Alex the legs, thighs or drumsticks. The Perfect Pan-Roasted Chicken Thighs and Mario Batali's Leo Maya's Chicken with Green Sauce are among the only recipes we have made at home using dark meat chicken that I have enjoyed. There are a few Asian stir-fries where I haven't minded the use of chicken thighs, but left to my own devices I would use chicken breasts and deal with the potential dryness if necessary.
So I guess it's not too surprising that I didn't love this dish. Don't get me wrong - it was fine. And the sauce was actually quite flavorful. I was pretty happy with the sauce and would definitely use it to braise things in the future. But the sauce didn't really penetrate the chicken legs. If it had, the dish would have been immeasurably better. Once you got past the surface layer it was just... dark meat chicken. And maybe if you actually like the flavor of dark meat chicken that's not such a bad thing. But I don't... Like I said, it's no surprise that I didn't love it.
Recipe after the jump!
Happy Belated Thanksgiving! I don't know about y'all, but as much as I enjoy Thanksgiving, it wrecks me for weeks to come. Too much starch, too much dairy, too much dessert, too much...well everything really. Alex and I got back to NYC last night after spending Thanksgiving with his family and all I wanted for dinner was either straight up veggies or seafood. We settled on sushi - low carb, no dairy and simple. Well, I assume it's not that simple for the people preparing it, but it doesn't get much simpler for us than picking up the phone and ordering delivery. Today we are having a very simple kabocha squash soup for lunch and some swordfish for dinner. I can't even think about another plate of turkey, stuffing or corn pudding for at least another month.
This tofu dish would have made a good weekend after Thanksgiving meal too - it is satisfyingly spicy and tasty, while still being pretty simple to prepare. We actually made it the weekend before Thanksgiving, but I didn't have time to post it before the holiday. If I have my way I will be digging into the leftovers shortly. My favorite thing about this recipe was how the flavors of the smoked tofu and the 5-spice seasoned tofu combined with the sauce. We used a combination of the two because we had both in the fridge and it just seemed like a good idea. We also didn't have quite enough of either to make the full recipe - either we made a half recipe with one type, or we combined both and made the full recipe. And as much as I love smoked tofu it can get a little overwhelming. The sauce is assertive enough that you would probably be ok using just smoked tofu, but we figured why not combine the two? I love the texture of pressed tofu, which is firmer and has more of a springy/chewy texture than even extra-firm tofu does. We typically use smoked or seasoned pressed tofu in simple salads with celery and peanuts, like this Smoked Tofu with Celery and Peanuts. Mark Bittman also has what looks like an interesting take on the classic Celery and Tofu Salad that I want to make the next time we hit Chinatown for groceries. We served the tofu with some sauteed bok choy with garlic and it was a perfect, light and easy meal. And it was about as un-Thanksgivingy as it gets. Yum.
Recipe after the jump!
I was really intrigued when I saw a recipe for broccoli rabe in Naomi Duguid's Burmese cookbook. Broccoli rabe is not a traditional Asian ingredient so I had to pause and take a look. I'm a big fan of broccoli rabe, but Alex doesn't enjoy the inherently bitter flavor of broccoli rabe quite as much as I do. And to be perfectly honest, it took me awhile to learn to like it. I keep hoping that one day it will grow on Alex too. Left to his own devices he likely would not have made this recipe, but I took the decision out of his hands by going to the farmers' market near my office and picking up the broccoli rabe specifically to make this recipe. Unsurprisingly, he said the dish was "fine" but "not his favorite." I knew going in that would be another dish that I would probably like more than him. There are a few things I can say unequivocally about this dish. First, it has a lot of flavor. Broccoli rabe has a lot of flavor in and of itself, but as with the other recipes we have tried from Naomi Duguid's Burmese cookbook, the dish picked up a surprising amount of heat and flavor from simmering for 3-4 minutes. Second, it seems that all of the recipes from this cookbook are quite... wet. It seems that the Burmese are really into simmering dishes in very thin sauces. The Chinese tend to add cornstarch slurries to their stir-fries to thicken the pan juices into a sauce. They also tend to stir-fry rather than simmer. Given the dishes we have made from our cookbook, it seems that the Burmese have a different (but equally flavorful) philosophy.
Recipe after the jump!
I don't have a lot of experience with Burmese food, but I got pretty excited when I saw that Naomi Duguid had a new cookbook. Hot Sour Salty Sweet is one of my favorite cookbooks and I'm always thrilled to try new cuisines and cookbooks, especially when I have reason to think that they might be good. Given the author and the general beauty of the cookbook I had pretty high hopes from day one. For our first meal I bookmarked a number of recipes and then let Alex pick which one(s) to make. One of the great parts of being an attorney is an endless supply of flags and post-its, which I put to good use marking documents (as well as cookbooks). He picked the chicken and I decided that we should make the simple cabbage-shallot salad to serve on the side. It didn't occur to me (although it really should have) that both recipes would be on the spicy side. I'm pretty good at entirely ignoring aspects of a recipe while salivating over it. I usually do that with the amount of time it will take to make something (long marinades or braises always kill me), but it never really occurred to me just how many cayenne chilis these recipes called for. Granted, the chicken is much spicier than the cabbage-shallot refresher, but neither one is suitable for people with a wimpy palate. If you like just a hint of heat, go with the cabbage-shallot salad and maybe cut back on the chili a little. I would pick an entirely different entree because the spicy punch of the chicken really makes the dish shine. It's spicy and funky and fun. The next time I make the chicken I will probably cut the amount of water in half and/or add a little cornstarch slurry to the dish to thicken it up a bit. The ju-ju (for lack of a better term) is pretty thin and watery, but if you thickened it up a bit I bet it would be delicious. The chicken itself absorbed a ton of flavor from the ju-ju - heat being one of the predominant flavors, along with the savory flavors of ginger and garlic and the tartness of the lime juice. It was really good, and very different.
As for the cabbage-shallot refresher, I would totally serve this with both Asian and non-Asian meals (with a few minor twists). For instance, I could totally see skewing it a little Latin and using it on top of tacos or serving it with enchiladas. I liked how bright and fresh it was.
Recipes after the jump!
Clearly I am fickle because I just found my new favorite watermelon salad. And I think I declared my previous favorite (Hugh Acheson's Watermelon-Feta-Arugula Salad with Serrano Chili Vinaigrette) about two weeks ago. So it had a short but well-deserved reign. Both watermelon salads have a wonderful balance of sweet, spicy and savory, but this one won by a nose. I think it was the addition of the Thai basil and radishes. I really liked the crunch and the slight peppery flavor of the radishes, as well as the peppery fragrance of the Thai basil. And the fish sauce. I don't know. It just works so well. I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about the radishes with the watermelon, but it worked. It's light and refreshing, but full of punch Asian flavors. And Asian flavors beat feta cheese for me 9 times out of 10. I really enjoy feta cheese but I love fish sauce. After eating a fairly heavy meal at The Marrow last night (duck schnitzel, crispy kale with scallops and bone marrow with uni anyone?) and greasy Chinese at my desk for lunch, I really needed something light for dinner. This salad couldn't have been more delicious. Note to those who don't love spice - you're going to want to cut back on the amount of sambal oelek and chili or seed your chili prior to throwing it in. Just like Hugh Acheson's recipe, there is some fairly serious kick to this dish. Another note, if you're a Top Chef nerd like I am, it's kind of funny to compare recipes between Tom Colicchio and Hugh Acheson since they are both judges on the show and Hugh was a contestant on Top Chef Masters a few seasons ago.
We served the watermelon salad with sizzling ginger-lemongrass tofu. We had a block of handmade firm tofu from The Bridge that I picked up at Fairway that I wanted to use and I wanted something different. So we went with another recipe from Food & Wine that sounded like it would be a good pairing with the watermelon salad. If you can find tofu from The Bridge in your local Whole Foods I would highly recommend it. It had a really nice firm, but still creamy texture and it had more flavor than your average block of supermarket tofu. It was really good. I can't wait to try it in other dishes. As for this dish, it was good. I'm always surprised how much flavor a dish can pick up by just sizzling some aromatics. And it did go very well with the watermelon salad. I would totally make them together again in the future.
Recipes after the jump!
Last June I saw this recipe on Serious Eats for Corn Som Tam and got all excited. Then life got in the way and before I knew it corn season was over at the farmers' market so I never had the chance to make it. It was very sad. But as soon as I saw the fresh corn at the farmers' market this morning I knew we had to make this. So I spent a little time on my iPhone figuring out exactly what ingredients we needed (the rock shrimp was an impulse buy yesterday afternoon) and we picked up cherry tomatoes, some beautiful haricots verts and corn. Then I hit the grocery store for more limes and shredded carrots. It has been a really long time since I have had the time to sit in the kitchen and take my time making a meal from scratch so this was something of a fun zen experience for me. Most meals of late have been hurriedly thrown together (mostly by Alex, with some fly by assistance from yours truly) in brief breaks between doing work, but I had the whole afternoon to myself today to play in the kitchen. I made a hell of a mess (and Brady helped by leaving green bean bits all over the floor), but I got to make lunch all by myself! This might not sound exciting to most of you, but I really miss cooking when work becomes all-consuming. Don't get me wrong, it's great when Alex cooks dinner because he is a pretty darn good cook, but I miss being able to cook and menu plan at my leisure.
As far as som tams go, I might prefer the version with green papaya for the interplay of texture and sweetness, but this was a nice summery alternative. I love Thai flavors, fresh corn salads and great summer produce so this recipe combined a number of things that I enjoy. I think this would make a really nice component of a larger meal but it's pretty light to be the only dish. If I had been cooking lunch or dinner for 4 (or more) people, I would have made a larb or maybe this Crying Tiger Grilled Steak to go with the som tam.
Recipe after the jump!
Kohlrabi is one vegetable that I just can't into. It's fine. But I'm just not sure that it is worth the trouble to peel and cook at home. The flavor and texture is vaguely turnip or potato-like and since I'm just not that into turnips or potatoes, it makes it hard for me to really enjoy kohlrabi. The first time we tried to cook kohlrabi at home we didn't peel off enough of the outer layer, which was incredibly fibrous and hard. The second time we roasted it with garlic and Parmigiano-Reggiano. It was pretty tasty that way, but it was pretty ugly so we didn't bother to take pictures and post the recipe. This recipe is obviously more photogenic and it is also pretty tasty, but it didn't blow me away. We made this recipe previously with daikon and I think I liked both the crunchier texture and the slightly peppery flavor of the daikon better in this dish.
Recipe after the jump!
For the record, Alex rocks. Sometimes my job explodes and I basically disappear. I would say that it's like magic, only the use of the word "magic" makes it sound fun and exciting when it is often exhausting for both of us. Last Sunday he did the laundry, made us both dinner and cleaned up after dinner while I was on an epic conference call for work from 6:00 pm to nearly midnight. And that's after I basically worked all evening on Saturday as well. He also made me this Red Cabbage Salad with Warm Pancetta-Balsamic Dressing for lunch. I picked out all of the recipes and bought most of the ingredients, but he handled everything else and there is a lot to be said for a meal magically appearing in front of me while I tap away at my laptop. It's pretty awesome. This meal started with the Japanese sweet potatoes that I picked up at a little Japanese deli near my office. Once I had the sweet potatoes I needed to figure out what to do with them. This sweet potato recipe seemed like a perfectly simple recipe to feature the Japanese sweet potatoes but not drown them in sugar and other stuff. And the chicken naturally followed. If we were making a miso-scallion butter for the sweet potatoes, why not marinate the chicken breasts in miso and aromatics?
In some ways this dish was exactly what I needed to get me through that conference call. It was warm, conforting and had good flavor. It was also easy to eat one-handed (and relatively easy for Alex to prepare on his own). I really liked the combination of miso-scallion butter with the sweet potatoes. The delicate sweetness of the sweet potatoes worked really nicely with the savory butter. I was surprised by how the texture of the sweet potatoes differed from the American sweet potatoes that I am used to. The flesh was a little drier and starchier (which required more butter than I typically use with sweet potatoes). I also liked the marinade for the chicken and was pleasantly surprised by how much flavor the chicken picked up. I could imagine using these chicken breasts in a number of dishes. They would be delicious either in a salad or a sandwich. They were also quite nice as a stand alone entree. They didn't have any noticable heat to them, but I was ok with that. I think that the addition of more Korean red pepper flakes would have detracted from the overall comforting quality of the dish. And after hour 3 of my conference call I was dying for some comfort.
Recipes after the jump!
First things first - I know that I have been awfully delinquent with my
final Chinese New Year meal. I wanted to make seafood but I couldn't
find any seafood recipes that really appealed to me. Then I tried to
make salt and pepper squid (aka salt baked squid) at home and failed.
The potato flour breading we tried to use on the squid just fell off and
gunked up the oil. The flavor was fine (if a little oily) but it was
definitely not worth posting. I spent hours poking around in our
various cookbooks and online to find another recipe that I really wanted
to make but nothing really appealed to me or if a recipe did appeal to
me, it either required ingredients that were difficult to source or
required entirely too much time and effort. I seriously considered
buying a new Chinese cookbook (either Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo or The Hakka Cookbook: Chinese Soul Food from Around the World
by Linda Lau Anusasananan) for some inspiration but decided that was a
little silly. I might still buy them at some later date, but buying an
entire cookbook to come up with one last Chinese New Year meal seemed a
little extravagant. It is entirely possible that I am in a cooking rut
(but that's another post altogether). I briefly considered making
lobster (both because I have never made lobster at home before, and also
because it seemed luxurious enough to make up for the fact that I have
been MIA on this final Chinese New Year meal for over a month now), but
discarded it as being too expensive. But this past weekend we had a
rental car (that I booked to visit a friend in Westchester) and I decided that a trip to Costco and Target was in order. While at Costco I saw some (relatively) inexpensive lobster tails and decided to go ahead and bite the bullet and try to make ginger-scallion lobster. I poked around online for a little while and ended up watching a video of Ming Tsai and a Chinese chef making ginger-scallion lobster. I also found a Rasa Malaysia recipe for ginger and scallion crab that I was about to use until I decided that fish sauce just didn't belong in my final Chinese New Year meal. So I went ahead and improvised, using the video for basic guidance.
I will be the first to admit that this dish wasn't perfect. I wish more flavor from the ginger and scallions permeated the lobster, particularly the ginger. I also wish we hadn't (slightly) overcooked the lobster. But such is life. As a side note, the reason that our lobsters aren't the fire engine red that you expect from Maine lobster is because the lobster tails at Costco were either Caribbean spiny lobsters or Brazilian lobsters (our two tails looked substantially different from one another and one had serious spines on the shell) and not Maine lobsters. So this certainly wasn't a restaurant-worthy version of ginger-scallion lobster but I was pretty happy with it considering (1) we didn't follow a recipe and (2) this was our first attempt at cooking lobster.
Recipe after the jump!
I'm not sure when I first stumbled across this recipe (or why), but it has been sitting in my draft post folder for some time. My best guess is that I was looking for recipes using soba noodles and decided to bookmark this one for future use. Who knows? But I'm a sucker for shiitake mushrooms, edamame and soba noodles, so it totally makes sense that this recipe sounded good to me. I decided to use more edamame than the recipe called for (it originally wanted a cup of edamame, but I figured why not use the entire 12 oz bag of frozen edamame) and to add some smoked tofu. I figured that the tofu would add some smoky flavor, and both ingredients would up the amount of protein in the dish to make the dish more filling. I also cut back on the amount of noodles in the original recipe after reading through some of the reviews posted on Epicurious. I love soba noodles, but why not make the healthy choice and go a little heavier on the veggies and a little lighter on the carbs?
When I was explaining the recipe to Alex, he called it "Korean vegetable spaghetti." And he kept referring to it as "Korean spaghetti" all evening. Spaghetti wasn't the first thing that came to mind for me when I saw or tasted the dish, but to each their own. I see what he was saying. It's a noodle dish with lots of veggies - in theory it's like a pasta primavera, only not so much. First of all, I have never had a spicy pasta primavera before. Second, none of these ingredients (except for the garlic) would go anywhere near a pasta primavera recipe. Some of the reviews complained that the sauce here was bland, but I totally disagree. I know we went light on the noodles (and noodles typically soak up and therefore require a lot more sauce than veggies) and added smoked tofu (which is pretty flavorful on its own), but I actually liked how the addition of the soba noodles mellowed the sauce a little and offset the spicyness of the gochujang. I was worried that the recipe didn't call for the addition of any salt prior to the addition of the sauce (with the exception of the salt in the boiling water for the noodles and edamame), but after adding the sauce I'm glad we didn't salt it initially. If we had salted the vegetables I think the dish would have been too salty overall. If I were to make the dish again I would probably keep the ratio of sauce to noodles the same, but I could vary the vegetables according to what I happened to have on hand. I think you could play with those proportions to your heart's content without detracting from the dish at all.
Recipe after the jump!
We are currently on a bit of a Korean kick. We made six (Belated) Chinese New Year meals (I know that I still owe you guys one (Belated) Chinese New Year meal) and then a bunch of southeast Asian meals. Now we have cycled through to Korean or Korean-inspired meals. Randomly enough, we even went out to dinner at a Korean restaurant last night. The inspiration for this meal actually came from a vegan food truck that I like called The Cinnamon Snail. About a month ago I tried one of their dishes that they served with a kale salad. I liked the dish, but I liked the kale salad better. And two weeks ago I tried another of their dishes (Korean barbeque seitan) that also had kale in it. The kale in both dishes had a spicy vaugly Korean flavor to it. When I noticed how nice the Tuscan kale looked at Fairway last week I decided to buy a few bunches and try to make a Korean-y kale salad. And then I started thinking that if I was going to do a Korean-y kale salad I could probably figure out some sort of Korean-y seafood recipe to go with it. Cod immediately came to mind and I went home and did some Google research and came up with these two recipes. The kale salad (recipe available here) wasn't eactly what I was looking for, but I figured it was easy and would give me somewhere to start. I wanted to add some salted cashews but by the time I got home and went for the cashews Alex told he he had finished them off as his afternoon snack. Oh well.
Both dishes were a little salty for me, but otherwise good. I thought the cod had nice flavor - a little spicy, a little sweet. I liked it. Our cod fell apart when I tried to flip it but we have a pretty good habit of ruining fish so there is nothing new there. Alex massacred one of our Dover sole filets the other night too. At least he only destroyed one fillet - I managed to destroy both here (although I reassembled one of them nicely for the photos). I am going to keep working on the salad to perfect it. I like kale salads better when the kale is cut into thin strips (I find it easier to eat that way), although I left the kale in larger pieces for this recipe because it was going to be sauteed briefly in the warm dressing. In the future I would probably skip the step of sauteing the kale in the warm dressing and if I wanted to wilt the kale down, I would make a warm dressing and pour it over top of the kale (like this Korean-Style Romaine).
Recipes after the jump!
It turns out that it's a good thing that I made those two homemade stocks while Alex was sick. Guess who caught the head cold now? I guess it was hubris to assume that I would be immune to Alex's most recent cold. In my defense, I only get sick about 50% of the time when Alex brings something home. It just happened that my body decided now seemed like a good time to catch a cold. When I have a cold the only thing I want is wonton noodle soup. It is my absolute favorite cold remedy. If I can't have wonton noodle soup (or I am too lazy to make the wontons) I will settle for a bowl of homemade Vietnamese chicken noodle soup. Since I didn't have any homemade wontons and we had just made homemade dumplings the day before, I decided to mix things up and make some sort of Chinese noodle soup. I didn't want to do a chicken noodle soup because we had just made matzo ball soup with chicken and we had homemade pork-chicken stock in the fridge, so I decided to go with a pork noodle soup. Once I settled on pork I knew that I would make homemade char siu and make a char siu noodle soup. For the char siu I used a combination of two char siu recipes that we have made in the past. I know that I said that I would never make char siu another way after I made Char Siu Take 2, but I didn't want an entire pork shoulder worth of char siu for my soup. I just wanted a few slices for each bowl. Plus, the grocery store nearest our apartment only had pork tenderloin. So I used the marinade from Char Siu Take 2 and the cooking instructions from Char Siu Pork (Chinese Roast Pork) which used pork tenderloin. I threw the marinade together and put it in the fridge, went to the gym, took the dog for a walk, etc. And later that night we made soup. Once you had all of the components prepared, it really didn't take that long to make your soup but preparing each component takes awhile - the broth takes about 3 hours, the char siu marinates for at least 2 hours (although you could easily do it overnight as we have done in the past) and then cooks for 30 minutes...
The thing I liked most about this meal was how homey it tasted. Variations on both of these dishes are available in restaurants, but everything tasted comforting and homemade. The flavors were there, the textures were there (particularly with the tofu with celery and peanuts), but it was all very simple and homey. The char siu wasn't the best that I have ever tasted (or made) and I wanted a little more depth of flavor and richness to the broth, but it just made me (and my head cold) happy. It reminded me of something my grandmother would have made for me. Granted, she probably would have picked up some char siu from the local Chinese grocery instead of making it at home, but the point still stands. It wasn't a perfect dish by any means, but it was very satisfying. And sometimes that is exactly what you want/need. It has been a long time since I have had any smoked tofu and I almost forgot how great it can be. I love the meaty, smokey flavor and the extra firm texture. It works really well with the crisp, grassy celery and the sweet and spicy sauce. I brought in the leftover smoked tofu for lunch this week and I thought it made for great leftovers.
Recipes after the jump!
