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.

New Music Wednesday (Wombats and Bon Iver)

I got a hankering for new music tonight, and since I still have a little cash in my bank account here at the end of the month, I figured I'd scratch that itch.
I picked up two new albums tonight, the first being a very excellent album by The Wombats, called A Guide to Love, Loss and Desparation . It's a pretty poppy album, that reminds me a lot of bands like Franz Ferdinand and Arctic Monkeys. It's good stuff, and I'm sure I'll be listening to it in the car a lot for a while. One stand out song from the album is this little ditty:




The other album I bought was Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago. This album is definitely different from The Wombats, but of what I listened to tonight, it seems really good. I think I'll have to give it a least a couple of concentrated listens before I go up or down on it. Interestingly, Bon Iver (like Bright Eyes, I guess) is really a vehicle for one artist (in this case Justin Vernon, according to Wikipedia), and while that's not all that interesting, it is interesting that they released two albums while based in Raleigh(!).

Rather than embed a Bon Iver video, I'll embed a Bon Iver/Lykke Li video (I really dig Lykke Li. I have no idea why, but her music just gets me going for some reason):



Enjoy!

Deep fried fun...

Here in North Carolina, the State Fair just ended. One of my favorite parts of the fair is seeing what new thing that someone has decided to deep-fry. One year it's twinkies, the next it's oreos. I never end up getting deep-fried anything (I always look at the people cooking the stuff, and the people eating the stuff, and say "I don't want to be lumped into this group". Hey, I'm a snob on some things. I'm not ashamed to admit it), but the idea of deep-fried goodness is always pretty tempting.

Well today, I gave in to the temptation, and decided to take a shot at deep frying some candy bars.
If you google "deep-fried candy bars", you'll find lots of info on how to go about doing it, but it's actually pretty simple. All you need is:
1. a pot suitable for deep-frying (I used a 4 1/2 qt sauce pan),
2. some oil (I went with plain vegetable oil),
3. candy bars (in my case, I took a variety of snack-sized snickers, almond joys, kit kats, and reeses' peanut butter cups)
4. batter
5. and most importantly, a thermometer (you need one that will go up to ~400deg, not a regular meat thermometer)

I pulled a batter recipe off the internet, threw my candy bars in the freezer to get cold, and then after dinner, went to work.

The batter:
2 eggs
2tbsp oil
2 cups milk
2 tsp baking powder
2 cups flour

Whisk together the eggs, oil, and milk, and then add the baking powder and flour, and stir until smooth. Place in refrigerator to cool and thicken slightly.

After the batter was mixed up, I dumped about a half gallon of oil into my saucepan, and turned on the heat. Once the oil was at 375deg, I took out the batter and the candy bars, and made a little assembly line of candy bars, batter, oil, and paper-towel lined plate, so that I could have a relatively smooth operation.

From that point, it was pretty simple. You unwrap your candy bar (which should be close to frozen), dip it into the batter to coat it thoroughly, and then you drop it (carefully) into the hot oil. When the batter turns golden, it's done. Then you take out the candy bar and set it on a paper-towel lined plate to drain, and keep doing those steps until you're out of candy bars.

All told, it turned out about as well as I expected. I had some chocolate leakage, particularly with the peanut butter cups, but they all seemed to be edible when I got done. After plating up the candy bars, I dusted them with some powdered sugar and some cocoa powder, and the girls and I enjoyed a little taste of the state fair at home.

As for taste, they were pretty good, especially the almond joys. Those were nicely gooey, and I like coconut like nobody's business, so warm coconut and melty chocolate works for me. I thought the snickers were pretty good, too. The kids grabbed the kit-kats, and peanut butter cups before I could try them, but I was assured that they were good.

If I do it again, I think I'd add more flour to the batter, since it was a little thin. I'd also try dusting the candy bars with powdered sugar or something to get better adhesion between candy and batter. I think fruit would be good for this treatment, too, especially something like a banana (maybe chocolate dipped?) or an apple. Apparently, this year the big thing is deep-fried coke, and I have some ideas on that. And I'd have to try doing oreos, too....

Anyway, here are some pics of the whole thing:

The batter, cooling in the freezer:

The candy bars, next shelf down:

The oil (and thermometer!)

My assembly line:

The first candy bar, into the pot:

And several candy bars later, the oil is a little less clear:

I didn't make too many of these, since how many candy bars can you eat at one sitting?

Dusted with powdered sugar and cocoa:

Another view: (you can see part of Gretchen on the left and Bridget on the right)

A bite out of the almond joy:

And the snickers:

By the way, that's Bridget in the background.

Anyway, that's all I've got for today. Hope you enjoyed this post, and maybe you've even been inspired to take a shot at it yourself. I'm thinking deep-fried poptarts might be good...