Love2Chow: Cookbooks

Wok with me: Mu Shu Pork 木須肉 with homemade Mandarin pancakes 薄饼

January 18, 2020

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The Best Beef and Broccoli Stir-fry Recipe, Simplified and Greener

January 12, 2020

Beef and broccoli is a classic Chinese restaurant dish that is so much better when made at home! The secrets to a great beef and broccoli dish is both a perfectly balanced sauce and techniques to make sure the broccoli is sufficiently cooked without overcooking the slices of beef. Inspired by the wok evangelist Grace Young's delicious recipe, I sought an even simpler, greener method to achieve the outstanding flavors and textures of this dish.

Beef and Broccoli modified from Stir-frying to the Sky's Edge.

Shortcut to the printable Love2Chow recipe.

Homemade beef and broccoli used to be hit or miss for me. I marinated the meat in soy sauce, rice wine, garlic and black pepper, but the slices came out tougher than I liked until I learned the secret of including a bit of cornstarch in the marinade. And unless the broccoli was finely cut, there would be pieces that still had the raw, slightly bitter taste. I have also had many disappointing restaurant versions of the dish, with huge, coarsely cut, raw rather than crisp, broccoli.

In contrast, I had learned from my mother a great way to cook all sorts of vegetables in a 12-inch stainless skillet with a lid. This involved heating oil and adding sliced garlic. Then any type of cut up vegetable would be tossed in and stir-fried until the outside turned a bright shade of green and the vegetable released its subtle fragrance. For spinach, that was all that was needed aside from seasoning with salt and pepper. For other vegetables that required longer cooking times such as carrots, broccoli and even cabbage, she would sprinkle on some salt, splash a bit of water on the inside of the lid and cover the pan for 2-3 minutes to allow the vegetables to steam in their own fluids. It was amazing how flavorful and delicious vegetables cooked this way tasted and looked, with their intensified color. The raw edge or bite was gone, but they retained their body and crispness.

Beef and Broccoli modified from Stir-frying to the Sky's Edge.

When I discovered Grace Young's recipe for Beef and Broccoli, in Stir-frying to the Sky's Edge, a number of light bulbs went off for me. Although the recipe ended up being a bit too salty (to my taste) for the 3/4 lb of beef, the sauce had a rich, complexity that elevated this popular dish to new heights. In addition to unami-laden soy and oyster sauces, she adds a bit of the funky flavors of Chinese dried, fermented black beans (click here for brand info) with a hint of mellow sweetness from onions. I knew instantly that I would never again be happy with restaurant versions.

Watch this American Test Kitchen video to see how easy it is to make this beef and broccoli recipe in either a wok or a skillet!

The recipe makes just the right amount of a light, savory sauce to soak up with rice.

Grace achieves the marriage of perfectly cooked broccoli with tender steak by blanching the broccoli in advance. While this results in a delicious dish, I try to avoid blanching vegetables for a number of reasons. You have to bring a large pot of water to boil so the water is not cooled too much upon addition of vegetables. This takes a lot of time and energy as water has a high heat capacity. Water soluble vitamins are leached out and discarded. And you have to expend energy on ice-making for the ice water bath to prevent overcooking. Plus there are extra pots, strainer scoops and bowls to be washed. While blanching is efficient in the restaurant workflow, it adds quite a bit to the time, energy and cookware used to make a single dish.

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Cookbooks

Shortcut Szechuan-style Dry-fried Green Beans: vegan-friendly, popular with teens and adults alike

January 04, 2020

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Cookbooks

Baked Challah French Toast: easy breakfast for a crowd

December 30, 2019

Challah French toast is an elegant, delicious and carefree breakfast to prepare for overnight guests. A light spread of apricot or peach jam perfectly complements the rich vanilla custard that plumps up each slice, and it is easy to dress up with powdered sugar and blackberries. Baked in sheet pans, this dish can even be assembled the night before.

Reminiscent of a good rich bread pudding dessert, a few slices of French toast is like eating dessert for breakfast. French toast can even be made into fancy grilled breakfast sandwiches, but is often messy and time consuming to cook on the stove. That is why this recipe from Molly Gilbert's Sheet Pan Suppers cookbook is so fantastic! This book also has some great one pan dishes combining salmon with bright vegetables, or fish cooked on little potato galette rafts.

Although a few of the recipes are not terribly creative, simply using the sheet pan as a baking sheet, there are enough gems in here to justifying buying two sheet pans. They stack nicely, and are useful for oven roasting tomatoes or root vegetables or honey glazed bacon for a crowd. Be sure to get the matching racks that set inside. They work great for cooling cookies and serve admirably to eliminate paper towel waste in draining deep fried items, allowing them to crisp up beautifully.

The sheet pan French toast recipe uses thick slices of challah bread as a starting point. This rich bread is springy, eggy and slightly sweet on the inside with a beautifully glossy tan outside. It has a buttery mouthfeel not unlike brioche, but is made without dairy products using eggs, flour, water, sugar, yeast and salt. The elongated loaves of braided bread is easy to slice, and adds a rich texture and appearance to the egg-milk-vanilla custard.

The slices of bread are spread with a thin layer of a orangey fruit jam -- we have tried it with apricot and peach jams and with orange marmalade. All three are excellent. I use the delicious challah from Loafers Bread, a small Pittsburgh area bakery and cafe that grows their own wheat on the family farm and mills it fresh in the back of the shop. That freshness really comes across in the most amazing whole grain and white flour breads, scones, rolls and muffins. The housemade granola, sandwiches, salads and soups are also delicious.

I usually forget to add the turbinado sugar, as the dish looks and smells so good when I take it out of the oven, and believe it is not really necessary. On the other hand, it is worth the small effort to include freshly grated orange zest. A shake of powdered sugar and some handfuls of fresh blackberries or blueberries really rounds out a delectable and impressive breakfast!