Meat

Sweet and Sour Pork

dianakuan — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:43:08 +0000

I grew up with two kinds of sweet and sour pork. Like any American child living in close proximity to a Chinese take-out, I ate a good amount of Ping-pong ball-sized pork laced with red food coloring and accompanied by canned pineapple. At home, my mother would also prepare her version, using bone-in chunks of pork encased flavored with a subtler orange-vinegar sauce.

In Beijing, I once took a home-style cooking class in which the teacher revealed that her secret ingredient for sweet and sour pork, also what "the better restaurants in Beijing use", was a bottle of locally produced ketchup. Why not the American brand Heinz? Too sweet.

Sweet and sour pork is thought to have originated in Guangdong province. But now that the Cantonese have flung themselves afar, each place they have landed has its own local variation. I'm sure Canada, the UK, Austalia, and other immigration hot spots have slightly different sweet and sour composites.

Kung Pao Chicken, the Lunch of Champions

dianakuan — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 05:37:26 +0000

It's the end of July. Which means that journalists, foreigner tourists, and mainland Chinese alike have started flooding into town for the Olympics. In the next few weeks, many of them will probably eat their fair share of Kung Pao Chicken, which has been designated the official dish of the 2008 Summer Games.

Why not a native Beijing dish, like Peking duck? My guess is because Peking duck is labor-intensive, somewhat expensive, and suitable only for large groups. The humble Gongbao Jiding(宫爆鸡丁) from Sichuan province, however, is easy to prepare, cheap, and more filling than a Clif Bar if you're eating alone. Heck, the sporting venues could even sell it in the stands, as the Chinese equivalent of caramel popcorn or hot dogs. And since Kung Pao Chicken doesn't contain offal or an awkward English translation, Westerners absolutely love it.

From my post in May on Kung Pao Tofu:

"The origin of (Kung Pao Chicken) is much debated. One popular theory is that Ding Baozhen, a Qing Dynasty emperor, enjoyed eating it so much that the dish was named after his officlal title, Gong Bao. Most people believe it to be of Sichuan or Hunan origin, though this NYTimes article says otherwise. What is important, though, is the sensational salty, sweet, sour, and spicy flavors and mingling on the palate.

Black Pepper Beef Stir-fry

dianakuan — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 02:59:42 +0000

Flank steak is something I hardly ever cook in China, mostly because I am almost never in the vicinity of a good butcher. But last weekend, I decided to treat myself to a massage to help with a sore back. Walking out blissful and somewhat painfree, I realized I was near Boucherie Michel, the only place in town where I could find quality cuts of meat and imported cheeses and wine and pricey organic food. (How I miss the days when I could pop down to the Fairway in West Harlem for all my grocery needs.)

I bought 200 grams of flank steak and made a stir-fry with peppers and onions. The sauce is relatively easy: soy sauce, oyster sauce, sugar, sesame oil, and most importantly, a copious amount of freshly ground black pepper. In fact, the only thing tricky about this dish in slicing the beef thin enough, which is made easier if you pop the meat in the freezer for about 15 to 20 minutes beforehand. Then just slice at an angle, perpendicular to the grain; doing so shortens the muscle fibers and makes the meat less chewy when cooked.

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Black Pepper Beef Stir-fry

Serves 4 as part of a multi-course meal

A is for Dining Alone on Premium-Grade Lamb Chops

dianakuan — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 09:08:00 +0000

Last week, while recovering from bad restaurant overload, I cooked at home every night. The rain and gray skies were making me thoroughly depressed. Jacob was in Shanghai on business, so I was cooking just for one. I started to rely on fast fixes for food, including my all-time quickest, unhealthiest, and yet oddly delicious comfort meal: fried eggs and rice doused in hoisin sauce. No wonder my palate was deadening.

In the essay "A is for Dining Alone" from An Alphabet for Gourmets, MFK Fisher wrote,"It took me several years of such periods of being alone to learn how to care for myself, at least at table. I came to believe that since nobody else dared feed me as I wished to be fed, I must do it myself, and with as much aplomb as I could muster." After discovering that dining out alone meant a succession of bad seats and pitying stares, she settled on making well-planned meals for herself at home.

Chicken Congee with Goji Berries

dianakuan — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 03:24:52 +0000

Every time I am at a congee shop, I wonder if the congee business might be the most lucrative and relaxing in the restaurant industry. Your main ingredients are rice and water (and stock, but that's also mostly water), which are dirt cheap. You make one big vat of porridge beforehand. Your menu can be vast, but each of those variations (pork, egg, seafood, whatever) requires just a tiny bit of cooking or heating up at the end. And congee is such amazing and versatile comfort food that people will flock to it for breakfast, lunch, or hangover relief.

My latest congee "effort" makes use of stir-fried chicken and goji berries. The latter is because I had leftover meat from my Orange Sesame Chicken, and the former because I just bought an expensive bag of organic gojis that I should cook with instead of snacking on like raisins. I don't know how many of the antioxidant claims attributed to gojis are true, but I'll keep eating them if they are reputed to help your eyesight. (Food blogging and other frequent computer usage doesn't exactly do wonders for myopia.)

Orange Sesame Chicken; or, Remembrance of Kosher Chinese Past

dianakuan — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 03:57:10 +0000

While I sometimes complain about Chinese food in the U.S., there are certain foods and restaurants I love and miss. One such place is a tiny kosher restaurant near Boston that serves unabashedly Americanized Chinese food. The food was good in the low-brow indulgent way that Kewpie mayonnaise and powdered Milo on ice cream are good. And given the depressing state of "authentic" Chinese food in the Boston area, I ended up eating there about every other week during my college career.

Taam China was close to my very Jewish university, so it seems that everyone who patronized the restaurant either attended or graduated from the same school. I was frequently the only Asian face there other than the staff's, which probably lent the place a tiny whiff of authenticity for the duration of my meal.

Guide to Wrapping and Pan-frying Dumplings

dianakuan — Wed, 21 May 2008 07:38:12 +0000

I have to admit that I have a strong bias towards jiaozi (饺子). Besides Shanghainese soup dumplings (xiaolongbao), my favorite dumplings are thin-skinned and pan-fried, the kind found mainly in Southern China or New York's $1-for-5 fried dumpling joints. Northern Chinese-style dumplings, which offer more thick doughy skin than filling, just can't compare.

What's better than anything a restaurant or dumpling stall can offer are homemade jiaozi, hot off the skillet. On my last day in Zhongshan my mother and I bought dumpling skins from a lady specializing in doughy things like wrappers and noodles, and spent an hour or two wrapping dumplings for dinner.

Since I have so many photos from that afternoon, I thought I would do a pictoral guide on jiaozi-making. (Often dumpling recipes fail to show the step-by-step process in folding.) Also included is my mother's fool-proof method for getting perfectly crisp pan-fried dumplings without burning them.

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Pan-fried Pork and Cabbage Jiaozi, a Recipe in Pictures
猪肉白菜饺子

Makes 50 to 60

Lightly dust your work surface with flour and keep some extra flour within hand's reach.

Dumpling wrappers: When I lived in the US, I always got my wrappers from Chinatown markets (the round kind, labeled for jiaozi（饺子) instead of for wontons (馄饨).). They are a hassle to make at home, but if you really want to give it a try, check out this post from Noodles and Rice.

For the filling, mix together: 1 lb ground pork, 1 cup shredded Napa cabbage, 2 tablespoons minced shallots, 1 tablespoon cornstarch, 2 teaspoons salt or 1 tablespoon soy sauce, a pinch of ground pepper.

Egg wash: Gently beat 1 or 2 eggs.

(The hands shown are Mom's. They are beautifully rough from decades of lovingly cooked meals.)

Garlic Lamb Stir-fry with Broccoli

dianakuan — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 12:05:40 +0000

Until 3 or 4 years ago, I had an aversion to lamb. My father hated lamb, so we never ate it at home. My first experience with lamb (that I can remember) was at a Greek restaurant in Boston when I was a teenager; I ate a decidedly unfresh hunk of meat that left a horrible aftertaste for hours. After that, I swore off lamb. And Greek food.

Fortunately, after college, I decided I needed to expand my culinary horizons. In The Man Who Ate Everything, Jeffrey Steingarten writes about how moderate exposure to hated foods is the key to getting ride of aversions. He creates a 6-step program to dealing with a bunch of his own food phobias, including kimchi, Indian desserts, and yes, Greek food, by trying everything 8 to 10 times. I can't say my own culinary enlightenment was this organized, or steadfastly recorded for publication. But I do know that over the years of going out of my comfort zone I have come to love anything Greek I used to loathe, including olives and feta. And especially lamb.

Lamb has become, quite possibly, an addiction. Cooking at home or dining out, I can't help but crave the gamey taste of this meat. (Of course, Steingarten also writes that repeatedly eating the same foods is also as bad as specifically avoiding certain foods. Let's hope I'm not one of those people.)

Mongolian Lamb Stir-Fry

dianakuan — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 09:29:51 +0000

Living in Beijing has made me develop a severe addiction to 羊肉串 (yángròuchuàn), otherwise known as lamb skewers. The intense aroma of cumin- and chilli- coated lamb on a grill makes me salivate like nothing else. And the heavy Mongolian and Xinjiang influence on Beijing's foodscape means that 羊肉串 is everywhere, on the street, in regular restaurants, in chuan bars.

If you're nowhere near Beijing, or want to satisfy your lamb-and-cumin craving at home without a grill, this stir-fry is the next best thing. Mark Bittman, who writes The Minimalist column in the NY Times' Dining Section, is a pro at translating mouth-watering dishes into simple recipes for home cooks. He based this stir-fry off the same lamb skewers I often dream about. It's a good dish to serve on busy weeknights or hectic dinner parties, because all the prep is done beforehand. Once you're ready to cook, take the lamb out of the fridge, toss it in a hot wok, and you have a mouth-watering stir-fry in about 5 minutes.

To get the most out of this dish, it's imperitive to use fresh cumin seeds. Ground cumin has nowhere near the aroma or bite of just-toasted seeds. For the garnish, Mark Bittman suggests cilantro. I didn't have any cilantro on hand, so I heated up some fresh red chillis in a wok until they're blistered.

Mapo Doufu / Mapo Tofu

dianakuan — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 12:43:43 +0000

If I had to make a list of my top favorite comfort foods of all time, mapo doufu would be at the top along with lamb curry, roast chicken, and anything in a clay pot. I almost always order it at Sichuan restaurants, despite that voice in my head pushing me to try something new. But the craving is too hard to resist. Thinking about the mala taste, the thick sauce that wraps sublimely around white rice, and the silken-ness of the tofu contrasting with the slightly crispy pork all make me surrender to the tried-and-true.

Fortunately, mapo doufu also very easy to make at home. This recipe is adapted from Land of Plenty: A Treasury of Authentic Sichuan Cooking by Fuchsia Dunlop, one of the very few Western food writers to delve deeply into Sichuan cuisine. I highly recommend this book if you're looking for not only recipes but also great writing that brings the sights, smells, and tastes of Sichuan province to life.