Long time gone...

I read somewhere that you should never comment on why it's taken a long time between blog posts, since people are more interested in your content than your personal life.
With that in mind, I won't dwell much on why I haven't posted in a long time. I spent some time this winter and spring doing recipe testing for a cookbook that's coming out in the fall, and that kind of took me out of action for long enough that it's been hard to get going again.

Hopefully, I can get my mojo back, and start blogging a lot more. Not much food related to say today, except that I did a sweet boston butt over the weekend, which was pretty tasty, and easy. I'll post pics of it later.
I also bottled some beer recently that I'd had in the garage for 5-6 months, and rather than do regular bottles, I chose to use growlers. I didn't have high hopes for using growlers, but I also didn't think the beer would be very good anyway, so....
The beer turned out ok though. It's got a slight aftertaste that I'm not sure if I like or not, but other than that, it's a decent homebrew. I'll post a pic of the beer tonight as well.

Finally, check out this great looking cucumber salad link from today's Washington Post food section: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/recipes/2009/05/27/sweet-and-sour-cucumber-salad

The fat is where the flavor is...

When I was in school for the second time, I took a class called "Food Selection and Preparation" (which was a great class, btw), and I remember vividly the instructor, Dr Frank Conforti, saying "the fat is where the flavor is".

I have to say, truer words have never been spoken. When I think of my favorite foods, they are all high in fat (or at least have fat as an essential component). Potatoes au gratin? fat (cream and cheese). Steak? rib-eye, well marbled and with nice fat on the edges and in the middle. Pasta? Cream sauce, or something like a tuna sauce (packed in oil, of course). Gravy? Fat in the roux. The list is endless.

The larger point is, of course, that fat really is where the flavor is, and cultures where they recognize that, and practice moderation instead of deprivation, are usually much happier and healthy (ie, the "french paradox").

Well, you can add this week's recipe to the list of "high fat goodness", because there is nothing low fat about this dish. This time, I decided to take a whack at "red-braised pork". Pretty much every cuisine has a couple "low and slow" dishes, and sichuan cuisine is no different.

Red-braised pork is basically pork belly, cut into chunks, and then braised for a couple of hours in a sweet/salty sauce until the meat is really tender and the fat has a really cool texture.
This dish is definitely a different kind of dish. For one thing, most people are used to eating pork belly in the form of bacon, and when you cut up the belly into chunks like stew meat, you get these really cool bands of meat and fat. When you cook them for a while, the meat gets really tender, but the fat doesn't melt away, but rather it gets a unique texture. Tasty, but different. Along with the fat, pork belly comes with the skin attached, and you don't remove the skin when you cook it. I had serious doubts about this part, thinking that the belly chunks would have this rubbery strip along the top, but I was way off base. The skin has a lot of collagen in it, and over the course of several hours, it all gets rendered out into the sauce. To be honest, you don't even realize it's skin. (I know my youngest daughter loved this dish, and ate all that I gave her, skin, meat and fat, and she is ridiculously picky, as only a 5yr old can be).

I served the pork with some rice, and also some roasted green beans. I was inspired to roast the beans because I was at a party a couple of weeks ago, and somehow I got involved in a conversation about roasting green beans, and I figured since I needed something to serve with the pork, I'd have a go at roasting beans, and then I'd have something else to write about.
Roasting green beans is pretty much like roasting asparagus, I think. You clean your beans, trimming them if necessary, then you dry them, toss them with some olive oil, kosher salt and fresh ground pepper, and then spread them out on a sheet pan. Roast them in a 450deg oven for about 10-12 minutes, and you're done. The only thing I'd change about the way they turned out was that I used pretty thin beans (haricot vert thin), and I think this would work better with thick beans.

So there you go, some fat pork, some roasted beans, and some nice rice, and a sauce that's pretty darn good. What's not to like?


Red Braised Pork:
1 - 1 1/4 lb pork belly, with skin
2 in. piece of ginger, unpeeled.
2 scallions, white and green parts
1 tbsp peanut oil
2 cups chicken stock
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
2 tbsp shaoxing rice wine
3/4 tsp salt
3 tbsp brown sugar
1/2 of a star anise

Blanch pork for a few minutes in boiling water, and then rinse in cold water. Cut into 2 -3 in. chunks, leaving skin on. Crush ginger with flat side of a cleaver or chef's knife, and cut scallions into 3 to 4 sections.

Heat oil in a dutch oven, and brown pork chunks on all sides. Work in batches if necessary. After all the pork is browned, add it all to the pot, and add stock and the rest of the ingredients. Bring to a boil, and then simmer uncovered for 2-3 hours over a low flame.

When meat is fork tender, if the braising liquid is not reduced enough (it should coat a spoon), remove the pork to a serving dish, and reduce the braising liquid over high heat until it coats a spoon. Pour braising liquid over the pork and serve immediately with rice.



Roasted Green Beans:
1/2 -1 lb green beans (thick)
2-3 tbsp olive oil
coarse kosher salt
fresh ground pepper

Clean and trim beans as necessary, and dry. Toss in a bowl with olive oil, salt and pepper, and then spread beans on a sheet pan. Roast in a 450deg oven for 10-12 minutes, or until nicely browned.
Serve hot.

Chinese food for people who don't like chinese food...

It's there on every menu you get at a Chinese restaurant. Nuggets of pork, coated in a greasy batter, covered with a gloppy sweet sauce colored a shade of red that couldn't possibly come from nature. I'm talking, of course, about sweet and sour pork (or chicken). It's the "safe" choice on the menu, the one that the person who doesn't like chinese food always gets (although, if that's the chinese food you're eating, is it any wonder you don't like the food?).

This week's recipe is, you guessed it, sweet and sour pork. But it's light years from what you get in most restaurants, with a brown sauce that manages the balance between sweet and sour quite well. I'm not much on "sweet and sour" anything (although my wife always gets this, go figure), but I have to admit this dish was pretty good. Aside from having to deep-fry, it was pretty easy, and came together in a flash.

Sweet-and-Sour Pork:
3/4 lb boneless pork loin, cut into 1/2 in thick strips
peanut oil (for frying)

batter:
2 eggs
3/8 cup cornstarch (or more)

marinade:
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp shaoxing rice wine

sauce:
1/4tsp salt
3 tbsp white sugar
2 tbsp black chinese vinegar
1 tsp light soy sauce
3 3/4 tsp cornstarch
3 scallions, green parts only, finely sliced
3 tbsp peanut oil
2 tsp finely chopped ginger
2 tsp finely chopped garlic
3/4 c chicken stock
1 tsp sesame oil

Place pork strips in a bowl, add marinade ingredients, mix, and let sit for 20 minutes.
Combine the first 5 sauce ingredients (salt, sugar, vinegar, soy and cornstarch) in a bowl and set aside.

Heat oil for deep frying to 300deg. Beat eggs together and add cornstarch to make a thick batter (you may need more cornstarch, that's fine). When the oil's hot, add the pork to the batter and stir to coat the strips. Deep fry the pork strips in batches for about 3 minutes or so, just to cook the pork through. You may need to stir the pork with a chopstick or metal spoon to prevent clumping. Drain on paper towels.
After all the pork is fried, raise the temperature of the oil to 375deg, and deep fry the pork in one or two batches, this time until crisp and golden. Drain on paper towels and keep warm while you prepare the sauce.

Heat the oil in a clean wok or saute pan over medium heat. Add the garlic and ginger and stir fry until fragrant (about 30 seconds). Add the stock, bring to a boil, and then add the sauce ingredients you prepared ahead of time. Stir briskly to thicken.
When it's reached the desired consistency, add the scallions and sesame oil.
Put the pork in a serving dish, pour the sauce over, and serve immediately with rice.

And there you go, sweet and sour pork that it is far removed and vastly superior to the "red glop".

Climbing a tree...

Next recipe up in my attempt to cook through Land of Plenty is "Ants climbing a tree".

It's yet another noodle dish, and it's also a classic sichuan noodle dish. These kind of recipes are great, since they're pretty simple dishes without a lot of ingredients or advance preparation, and they're packed with flavor.

In the case of "Ants...", this was about as quick and easy as you can get. The noodles are bean thread noodles, so they don't need to be boiled, just soaked in hot water for about 15 minutes (I guess that's kind of a wash, though, since you're either boiling for 15 minutes or soaking for 15 minutes).

The recipe, like many of the noodle recipes in the book, doesn't use much meat (only 1/4 lb of pork (but I went with ground turkey, since it was on sale)), and other than some scallions that need to be sliced, there's no prep other than measuring out the various seasonings, which include chili-bean paste, light and dark soy sauces, and shaoxing rice wine. Other than some chicken broth (and I admit, I cheated and went with the stuff in a box because I didn't feel like thawing out some homemade), that's it.

I paired the noodles with an eggplant dish I made long ago (see the write up )

The eggplant dish paired well, since the eggplant softened some of the heat of the noodles (which were, like many of the dishes in this cookbook, pretty spicy), even though the eggplant was liberally spiced with chili flakes. Plus, I plain love cilantro, and I made sure to liberally sprinkle cilantro all over.

Overall, tasty, fast, and good on a wednesday night. What's not to like?

Here's the recipe for "Ants climbing a tree":
1/4 lb bean thread noodles
1 tsp shaoxing rice wine (or sherry)
1/4 lb ground pork or beef (or turkey)
peanut oil
3 tsp light soy sauce
1 1/2 tbsp chili bean paste
1 2/3 cups chicken stock
1/2 tsp dark soy sauce
3 scallions, green parts only, finely sliced

Soak the noodles in hot water for 15 minutes. While the noodles soak, add the rice wine and a couple pinches of salt to the ground meat, and mix well.

Stir fry the ground meat with 1 tsp of light soy sauce in 2 tbsp oil in a wok (or frying pan) until lightly browned and crispy. Add the chili bean paste, and stir fry until the oil is red and fragrant. Add the stock and the drained noodles, and stir well. Add the dark soy (for color) and season with the remainder of the light soy to taste.

Bring the stock to a boil, and simmer over medium heat until most of the liquid has evaporated/absorbed. Add the scallions, mix well, and serve.

Belly laughs...

My second Land of Plenty recipe is a recipe for "salt-fried pork". This recipe's important to me, because it's the first dish I've ever made that uses pork belly as an ingredient.

As a properly hip food guy, I know that pork belly is a kind of cool ingredient, popping up in cookbooks, and on menus from places like Momofuku and even the local Jujube. For such a hip ingredient, though, if you limit your shopping to "regular" markets like Lowe's, Harris Teeter and the like, you'll never find pork belly.
It's in that "ethnic" ghetto, where other meats that don't conform to the generic grocery vision live (like liver, or veal breast, or even lamb for the most part). To get something like pork belly, you have to go over to the asian market side of things (although, having never been to an ethnic market that wasn't asian, I can't say if you could find pork belly in a hispanic market, for example). Regardless of where you find it, I think of pork belly as "uncured bacon" or "streak o' lean". The belly I bought just looked like slab bacon (but differently colored, since it wasn't cured), and it had the skin still attached (perfect for cracklings, I guess. I wonder if chinese cooking has those?).

Enough belly talk. My recipe today was salt-fried pork, and it was described in the book as being a very "homestyle" recipe. I don't know enough about homestyle chinese cooking, but it was easy, and the flavors were definitely basic. I was just looking for a pork belly recipe that didn't take a lot of work, since I've had a busy week, and I wanted to be able to bang something out relatively quickly for dinner.

My mis-en-place:


Salt-fried pork
1/2 lb boneless pork belly, sliced into thin 2x3in slices
2-3 baby leeks or 5 scallions, white and green parts
peanut oil
salt to taste
1 1/2 tbsp Sichuanese chili-bean paste
1 1/2 tbsp fermented black beans
1 tsp light soy sauce
1/2 tsp sugar

Heat 3 tbsp oil in a wok or large pan until hot, but not smoking. Add pork and stir-fry briskly for 3-4 minutes, until oil has cleared and pork has lost most of its water content. Add 1/8 tsp of salt halfway thru cooking. Push pork to one side of pa, and tilt pan/wok until oil runs into the space cleared. Drop chili bean paste and black beans into oil and stir-fry for 30 secs until oil is red and fragrant. Mix in pork slices, add soy and sugar, and throw in leeks/scallions. Stir fry until leeks/scallions are just cooked.
Serve over rice.


Of the ingredients, the chili-bean paste is your typical "hot chili deal", but I thought the black beans were pretty unique. I made sure to taste some before I started cooking, and I guess I'd describe them as salty beans with a complex chocolaty flavor. It's hard to nail down, but they're definitely a special flavor. Overall, it was a good quick meal. The girls looked at it in their usual skeptical way, but I thought it was tasty. The leftovers are definitely going to make it to lunch this week. There are a ton (ok, more than a few) pork belly recipes in the book, so this won't be the last time I cook belly, and I'm looking forward to trying other recipes. Once you get past the "belly" name, it's just a fatty cut of meat, and lord knows, things like shank, oxtails, short-ribs and what-not may look or sound gross, but they're all really really good eating, so there's no reason why belly can't slide into that repertoire.

Music to cook by tonight:
Spoon's "The book I write":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNmG3A7YQto

Tingly Lips...

I'm excited about cooking from Fuchsia Dunlop's Land of Plenty, since I've always wanted to understand Chinese cuisine, and I'm hoping this will be the way I finally "get it".

The book is pretty well laid out, and a good portion of the book is taken up with a discussion of
technique, ingredients, customs and what-not. It's all interesting stuff, and Chinese cuisine
definitely differs tremendously from "western" food in many ways, so reading the background
material has been quite valuable for me.

The first recipe I made from the book was actually a "pre-recipe", and was the "chili oil" described in the "pantry" section, since the first dish I planned to cook was a rendition of dan-dan noodles, which requires chili oil.

Chili oil is a common condiment in Sichuan cuisine, and it couldn't be easier to make.
What you do is, you take 1/2 cup of red pepper flakes (I ran a bunch of whole chilis through my mini food processor to make the flakes), put them in a quart mason jar and add a couple of pieces of star anise.

Then you heat 2 cups of peanut (or canola oil) with a crushed piece of ginger (the recipe said until "smoking hot", but I just went to about 375-400degs, since I didn't want to burn the house down).
Once it's heated, you take it off the heat for about 10-15 minutes to cool to around 225-250 deg, and then (carefully!) pour it into the mason jar. Then you just let the oil sit for about a day or two, and there you go, homemade chili oil.




As I said above, my first dish from the book was a rendition of dan-dan noodles. Dan-Dan noodles are a famous streetfood from China, and like many "famous foods" from a particular area (like, say, North Carolina BBQ), there are as many versions as there are people. In Dunlop's book, there are 2 versions of dan-dan, and in our house we've enjoyed a different version, the recipe for which came from Cook's illustrated.

The Cook's version (which has been Americanized a bit) is interesting, b/c it shares so little
with the recipes in Dunlop's book (which have some common ingredients between them).
The Cook's version is something like this (I'm going from memory, since I lost the recipe long ago, and I just cook from memory on this one anyway):

Cook's Illustrated:
1/2 lb ground pork
2 tbsp sherry or shaoxing wine
fresh ground pepper
1 tbsp oil
4 garlic cloves minced
1 inch piece ginger, minced
1/2 - 1 tsp red chili flakes
3 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
4 tbsp creamy peanut butter
1 - 1 1/2 cups chicken broth
8 oz linguine or asian noodles
Bean sprouts
sliced scallions (white and green parts)
Combine the port with the sherry, 1 tbsp soy sauce and ground pepper, and set aside to marinate for 15 min.
Bring a pot of water to boil, and boil noodles according to package directions. They need to be "done", not just "al dente".
Meanwhile, combine oyster sauce, vinegar, remaining soy sauce, and the peanut butter in a bowl, and stir until smooth. Stir in chicken broth and stir until smooth. Set aside.
Heat a pan over high heat until hot, add oil, and stir fry pork until browned. Add garlic, ginger and red pepper flakes and fry for 30 secs or until fragrant. Add sauce, and turn heat down to low, and simmer until thickened to desired consistency.
Serve over noodles, garnished with bean sprouts and scallions

Land of Plenty:
8 oz dried chinese noodles
sauce:
1 tbsp peanut oil
4 tbsp Sichuanese ya cai or Tianjin preserved vegetable, diced small
3 scallions, green parts only, finely sliced
1 1/2 tbsp light soy
1/2 tbsp dark soy
2 tbsp chili oil (to taste)
1 1/2 tsp black chinese vinegar
1/2 - 1 tsp ground roasted sichuan peppercorns
topping:
a little oil
4 oz ground pork (I actually used turkey, b/c it was on sale)
1 tsp shaoxing rice wine or sherry
2 tsp light soy
salt to taste

Heat the 1 tbsp of oil, and stir-fry preserved veg for about 30 secs, until fragrant. Set aside.
Stir-fry ground pork, and as meat separates, add wine and soy sauce. Continue to cook until well browned, but not too dry.
Combine the fried vegetable and the rest of the sauce ingredients in a bowl and mix together. Cook the noodles according to the package, and add to the sauce. Sprinkle with the meat mixture, and then stir well to combine. Serve.


As you can see from the two recipes, there are slight similarities, but the (what I'm assuming is) "more authentic" version is much simpler, and lighter. It also had some ingredients that I'd never had before, like the "ya cai" (preserved mustard tuber) and some of the other sauce ingredients. The ya cai was actually pretty good, even though it looked kind of alien.
Note: whoops! This is NOT ya cai (which is actually mustard greens that have been preserved. This is sichuanese preserved vegetable, which is not the same thing. My bad. Please continue reading, and don't think less of me for the mistake).

It tasted sort of like a garlicky, chilified pickle, which I guess is what it is. The sauce also had black chinese vinegar in it, which is somewhat sweet, and not very high in acid. The other ingredient that I'd never had before was dark soy sauce, which is thicker than the light soy, and more intense.

So how'd the Dunlop version taste? They were good. Different from the Cook's version, primarily because the Cook's version has the peanut butter in it, which gives it a "saucy" texture. The LoP version is a simpler affair, and without the peanut butter to soften the flavors, it's a different experience. When the book first mentioned Sichuan peppercorns, the author made a point of saying that the peppercorns aren't really hot, but that impart a pleasant tingling sensation to the lips of the person eating. I can definitely vouch for that, b/c when I was done eating my noodles, my lips were a-tingling! (I was also sweating, that chili oil definitely is hot)
Here's a pic of the finished product:

So, I've gotten my feet wet on this cookbook, and I like it. It's got some weaknesses (for example, there's not a lot of detail on how to prepare certain ingredients, like the preserved vegetable(ya cai)), but overall, the subject matter is interesting enough to overcome that.

The next dish I'm cooking will be the salt-fried pork, which will be my first experience cooking
pork-belly, so I'm looking forward to this!

Stay tuned.

A trip to the market...

I've been trying to think of ways to spice up my blog, and one idea that appeals to me is doing my own version of "French Laundry at Home". If you're not familiar with this blog (and you should take the time to read some of the posts, it's a great read), the idea is that the author cooked her way thru the "French Laundry Cookbook", and wrote about it. That's a pretty impressive feat. I remember reading thru the book when I checked it out from the library and thinking, "wow, not a home cooking cookbook".

For my take on "cooking your way thru a book, one recipe at a time", I'm thinking about taking on Fuchsia Dunlop's "Land of Plenty", which is a pretty good cookbook focusing on Sichuan cuisine.
To that end, Bridget (my 5 year old daughter) and I took a trip this afternoon to the local Asian market to pick up some pantry staples.

Here in the Triangle, we have a very large Asian population, which we owe to the presence of 3 top flight universities (NCSU, UNC, and Duke) as well as a slew of smaller schools, and to the vibrant high-tech/biotech scene here. This presence translates to a pretty big Asian market here in Cary, called, fittingly enough, the Grand Asia Market.

I enjoy going to places like this, because it allows me to get some idea of what it's like to be both a minority and a stranger in a strange land. Walking in, you're confronted with signs in languages you (probably) don't understand, and very few people of your own ethnicity. Personally, I think it's good for you to experience this kind of dislocation, since it allows you to empathize at least somewhat with other minorities. For example, african-americans make up roughly 12% of the US population, so anytime an african-american walks into a room, it's likely that they will be the only black person in the room. Walking into the Grand Asia market, you know exactly how they feel.

But enough liberal guilt. Shopping at the Grand Asia market is definitely different from Krogering. I was primarily interested in pantry items, so I skipped the fresh fruit and veg area, but I got sucked into the fish and meat departments, and I gotta say, the next time I'm buying fish, I know where I'm going. They had a ton of fish, including live fish (which at least guarantees that it's fresh) and crabs, and it all looked pretty good.

Live fish:

Stone crabs: (they had turtles too, but I didn't get any pics of those)
Live blue crabs:


A broad selection of not-living fish, which was much more appealing than what you get at the regular grocery:
Next to the fish department was the meat department. Since I haven't tried any of the meat there, I can't say it's better than a usual grocery, but the selection was far more interesting. The only thing I bought was pork belly (which seems to be a hip kind of meat lately), but there was a ton of stuff that I can honestly say, I've never considered buying. But if I'm ever looking for fresh bung, I know where to go (snicker).

There was a great variety of cuts that you just never see at the regular grocery:

Next time you get a cornish hen, this is the "non-prettied up" version:


I'm open minded, and I can see eating testicles, but who eats uteri?

And, when you can't think of anything else to eat:
Please don't think I'm making fun of the meat selection. While I wouldn't eat some of the stuff I saw, I did see things I would eat, like pork liver and pork belly. Even though I think pictures of pork uteri are funny, someone is obviously eating it, since they're selling it fresh, and when you get down to it, meat is meat, regardless of where it comes from on the animal.

After the "pleasure" portion of the trip, checking out the meat and fish, we went and got the things I was really here for, which were the pantry staples. The hard part of shopping in a place like this is that little is in english, so you need to kind of parse what english is there to get an idea of what you're buying (or be familiar enough with the appearance of what you're buying to be confident you're buying the right thing. I think I managed to muddle thru alright, getting most of what I wanted.

Spices galore:

More noodles than you can shake a stick at:

My haul:

Pork belly, light and dark soy sauce, rice wine, rice vinegar, black vinegar, sichuan pepper corns, hot peppers, preserved vegetables, etc.

So, all in all, a good trip (we also went to a local motorcycle dealership for some parts for a bike I'm working on, and I think Bridget had more fun at the market than at the motorcycle dealership). I got most of what I needed, and I think I'm ready to take on Fuchsia Dunlop's very good cookbook. In the coming days/weeks/months, I hope to flesh out my plan a little better. I'm excited at the idea of cooking everything from a book, but it's kind of intimidating, especially since I'm sure there are things that I won't be able to find anyone to eat (and then I'll have to eat it!). Right now, I need to work out what I'm going to cook and when.

So keep reading!

Music notes:
I've been on a jag of buying lately. I picked up the new Blitzen Trapper album Furr, which is really really good. I went to see the Drive-By Truckers and The Hold Steady the other night here in Raleigh, and they totally kicked a**. I have all but one DBT album, but I only had one Hold Steady album (Stay Positive), so I went and bought "Boys and Girls in America". Awesome stuff. If you haven't heard the Hold Steady, you're missing out, and you owe it to yourself to rectify the matter. I also picked up "Boxer" by the National. It's an album that's hard to figure. Sometimes I listen to it and think "mellow", other times not. But all in all, a great album, that I've listened to repeatedly in the last couple of days. Regardless, three great albums in a week is a pretty good string of music.