Love2Chow: Green tips

Tortellini Primavera with Smoked Salmon & Dill

April 20, 2020

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A Perfect Bowl of Hot and Sour Soup

April 05, 2020

Hot and Sour Soup 酸辣汤 is one of the most beloved Chinese restaurant soups. The gentle white pepper heat and vinegary tang are perfectly balanced in a velvety smooth broth, enlivened by delicious slivers of earthy ingredients and lacy egg. Its flexibility and comforting nature make Hot and Sour soup the perfect "shelter-at-home" dish. Following a trip to an Asian market to pick up shelf-stable pantry staples, you can enjoy this delicious soup any time!

While the specific ingredients, from dried to fresh mushrooms, bamboo shoots, carrots or different forms of tofu may vary, the medium-thick broth that suspends these earthy ingredients in Hot and Sour soup should always be peppery and warm with a pleasant vinegary "bite". In Chinese characters, the name of this exciting yet comforting soup 酸辣汤 (suān là tāng) literally means "sour spicy soup."

Shortcut to the vegetarian-friendly Love2Chow recipe.

By the 4th century BCE, in the late Zhou dynasty, Chinese concepts of the five flavors of spicy-hot, sweet, sour, bitter and salty were well recognized, and copiously discussed in ritual, political, moral, cosmological, medical and gustatory contexts. Food ingredients and flavors, particularly in soups, are regarded for their medicinal properties in correcting imbalances within the body.

While Beijing has its version of a peppery soup, most food historians believe Hot and Sour soup originated in Sichuan and the western region of China. It exemplifies the art of harmonizing strong, zesty flavors, which characterizes Sichuan cuisine. Indeed, hot and sour soup is famous for curing a Ming Dynasty Chinese official, Yu Qian, from a bad cold. When passing through Henan 河南, he ordered a Hot and Sour soup that caused him to sweat profusely, breaking his fever and clearing his sinuses by the next day.

Although Sichuan cuisine is well known for its hot dried red peppers, numbing Sichuan peppercorns, and many varieties of sour pickled vegetables, Hot and Sour soup has none of these ingredients. This may be because it predates the introduction of red Capsicum peppers from the Americas in the late 15th or early 16th centuries.

While Sichuan peppercorns from the prickly ash of the Zanthoxylum genus are native to that region of China, linguistic evidence suggests that peppercorns of the genus Piper were introduced to China via the Silk Road as the "foreign pepper" 胡椒 (hú jiāo). The adjective 胡 signifies an origin with non-Han ethnic groups to the north and west of China, or Eurasia. Sometime between the third and 12th centuries, these peppercorns became widely used in Chinese cuisine.

According to theories of traditional Chinese medicine, chicken broth is believed to confer healing qualities by showing warming effects. The black wood ear fungus, with its pleasing, almost crunchy texture, and ground peppercorns are believed to help boost circulation, while vinegar aids digestion. This homestyle soup may also contain cubes of coagulated fresh poultry blood, although this has fallen out of favor in modern times.

Hot and Sour soup commonly contains a triumverate of earthy, dried pantry staples believed to have healing qualities: dried wood ear mushrooms, dried shiitake or winter mushrooms, and dried daylily flowers called golden needles. The soaking water used to rehydrate these ingredients is very flavorful, and can be used to help flavor the soup, or reserved for use whenever a umami punch is desired.

Clockwise from top: rehydrated winter mushrooms or shiitakes, caps sliced thinly; rehydrated dried "wood ear" or "cloud ear" fungi, torn into bite sized pieces; rehydrated day lily buds, cut in half and shredded lengthwise.

Protein is traditionally added through cooked slivers of pork or chicken, and various forms of tofu. Most commonly strips of white, firm tofu or caramel-colored "dry tofu" are used along with yellow bamboo shoots for a multihued earthy palette, punctuated by lacy strands of egg, amber droplets of toasted sesame oil and fresh green scallions and cilantro, added just before serving.

While restaurant versions of this soup are often overly thickened with cornstarch or potato starch, making the soup at home guarantees a perfect consistency to your preference. You mix the starch in a bit of the mushroom soaking water, and add it by the tablespoon until the desired consistency is reached. In testing several recipes, I found myself loving the texture and lighter colors in Grace Young's recipe, which yields a delightfully subtle balance of flavors.

Hot and Sour soup from Wisdom of a Chinese Kitchen by Grace Young.

However, I preferred the stronger flavors of Bruce Cost's recipe, which is more similar to the best restaurant versions. This recipe contains strips of pork, which did not add much in the way of flavor, but often ended up tough and chewy if cooked according to that recipe. I also thought this recipe resulted in an insufficient amount of overly thickened broth, which should ideally form the heart of this warm and comforting soup. I modified the marinade for the pork (See Tips at bottom of post) to yield tender, tasty strips of pork, and adjusted the water levels and the amount of cornstarch for an improved texture.

Hot and Sour soup, modified from the Epicurious website by Bruce Cost, after adjusting recipe to improve the broth consistency.

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Dan dan noodles 擔擔面 with delicious meat or vegan toppings

March 23, 2020

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My Dad's Chili Mac -- a rediscovered crowd pleaser

March 06, 2020

At almost every family gathering, from ski weekends to Labor Day at the lake, my nieces and nephews have come to expect a delicious, cheesy beef macaroni casserole in a slightly tart-sweet chili tomato sauce. Part of my own childhood memories, the dish was lost for 30 years until a chance conversation with our children's nanny...

Tart, slightly sweet, tomato sauce with lots of cheese, complemented nicely with Sriracha for a bit of extra heat

Shortcut to the Love2Chow recipe.
In the late 1970's, my father was inspired by a short squat jar of "Old-Fashioned Chili Sauce" to create this mild, beef chili macaroni dish. It was a huge hit! My dad was so proud, amazing his friends when their kids, who were too picky to eat anything other than frozen chicken nuggets or hot dogs, eagerly consumed my dad's potluck dish. Before I went to college, I got the recipe from him and tried to make it. However, we could no longer find the right sweet-tangy old fashioned chili sauce, and the dish just was not the same.

Shortly before Christmas in 2004, I was reminiscing about this dish with our nanny from Utah. It turned out that she knew of a yummy chili sauce in a short squat jar that her dad used for sloppy joe sandwiches. She brought back a jar for me to try, and it was exactly the same shaped jar with the same type-face on the lid. Instead of "Old-Fashioned" it has been rebranded as "Homade Chili Sauce." As soon as I opened it, I knew it was the same sauce from my childhood. I made Chili Mac as a surprise for my sister, and she recognized it at once!

It turns out the sauce can be still be purchased in grocery stores in at least Utah and Indiana. I scoured the internet and found that I could also mail order it by the case. It was made by Ventura Foods in Cerritos, CA, and then later acquired by Allied Old English in NJ.

In my own version, I have cut back the meat by half and added zucchini and/or yellow squash and/or carrots. It becomes a complete meal with all the food groups. At one gathering, my sister-in-laws thought that some of their kids would never eat anything with any vegetables in it and that I should leave out the zucchini. But I had been adding vegetables for years, and their kids had already been happily eating large quantities of it! Nevertheless, I started grating instead of chopping the zucchini.

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Cookbooks

Wok with Me: Saucy Braised Tofu with Mushrooms, Scallion or Black Sesame Pancakes and Riffing the Szechuan Master Meat Mix

February 16, 2020

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Cookbooks

Making Fish Dumplings for a Pre-Chinese New Year Send-off

January 25, 2020

While many people know about the fabulous Shanghai-style soup dumplings 小籠包 (xiǎo lóng bāo) at the worldwide Taipei chain Din Tai Fung, their fish dumplings 魚餃 (yú jiǎo) stand out even more from the crowd. Craving these, I turned to Andrea Nguyen's recipe for Fish & Chives Dumplings just before my daughter returned to college, so she could get in both her New Year's fish and a dumpling wrapping session to usher in the Year of the Rat!

Steamed Fish & Scallion Dumplings with Scallion pancakes in the background

Dumpling wrapping as a family, eating fish, and the red packet of money 紅包 (hóng bāo) are the Chinese New Year traditions that I have tried to impart to my children. The first two stemmed from my childhood, whereas my husband and I added the red packet when our children were small.

My parents grew up in a war-torn China, fleeing their homes, country and hemisphere in search of stability, liberty and democracy. As one of the only Chinese families in a neighborhood dominated by Mexican-American and Filipino families, we did not grow up with a deep sense of tradition for celebrating either Chinese or American holidays. Thanksgiving became our favorite holiday, celebrated initially with roasted duck, and then at the kids' request, turkey roasted with the same Chinese seasonings. Ever so often, we would go watch the colorful lion and dragon dances in the Los Angeles Chinatown. And my mom always served whole fish sometime during the New Year season. The Chinese phrase for "having fish" 有魚 -- yǒu yú -- sounds the same as the words for "having surplus" 有余, signifying prosperity, abundance and the ability to share with others.

https://www.theyucatantimes.com/2020/01/chinese-new-year-2020-year-of-the-rat/

When relatives came to visit, the grown ups would sit around wrapping Chinese pork dumplings. While we liked eating them, we kids gave one or two desultory tries at wrapping leaky, deformed (criticizable) dumplings before running off to play. It was not until I got to college that I made my first dumplings at a huge New Year's event. Other Chinese-American students assumed I knew how to do it, and asked me to teach non-Asian participants. I was able to surreptitiously watch the guy next to me, and picked it up quickly enough to fake my way through the lesson. See one, do one, teach one...

That summer, I came home and asked my mom to show me how to make dumplings from scratch. She makes a pretty stiff dough, as she enjoys the toothy springiness of Northern style boiled dumplings, as opposed to the thin, unsubstantial gyoza-style wrapper that fades from the senses after conveying what are essentially meatballs to the mouth. To my surprise, it was a lot easier and less messy to wrap dumplings using the freshly made two-ingredient (flour, cold water) dough than using store bought circles that required dipping an increasingly messy, starchy finger into cups of water. And the dumplings made with fresh dough stay sealed easily throughout the boiling, pan-frying or vinegar-dipping process to deliver all the tasty juices into the mouth.

Fish Dumplings 魚餃 (yú jiǎo)

The first time I had fish dumplings was at the Din Tai Fung restaurant in Arcadia, CA, which we had visited for their Xiao Long Bao soup dumplings, so named because each dumpling contains a bit of delicious, steaming soup. I still think they have the best soup dumplings I have ever tried. The skins are always thin, translucent and bulging with rich, savory broth. But, comparably tasty (if more expensive) soup dumplings can be had in many cities around the US, in a smaller city like Pittsburgh. The best soup dumplings in Pittsburgh are served at a Taiwanese bistro, Cafe 33.

Juicy Pork Soup Dumplings or Xiao Long Bao at Din Tai Fung

While the soup dumplings are delicious, the Din Tai Fung fish dumplings were really special. Elegant, elongated dumplings zipped closed with an abundance of fine pleats, they were filled with tender, white flaky fish with a delicate, yet distinct, savory richness. What they lacked in color, they more than made up for in pleasurable flavors and texture.

Din Tai Fung Fish Dumplings with side of Seaweed & Beancurd in a Vinegar Dressing

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Cookbooks

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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Feeding 32 for Thanksgiving: Make Ahead Oven Dishes

December 06, 2019

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Edinburgh UK

Edinburgh on Foot in 1.5 days: Edinburgh Castle, Grassmarket, Golden Mile, Chocolate Cafe

October 07, 2019

It's amazing how much you can see exploring the compact World Heritage area of Edinburgh! We were charmed by Dean Village, ventured up and down eerie closes, hunted for the best shortbread from Edinburgh Castle down the Golden Mile, shopped cashmere and wool, followed the footsteps (and hand prints) of JK Rowling, climbed to the highest point and swooned over the concept of a chocolate cafe.

Inside the Edinburgh Castle Complex

Sculpture in the Princes Street Gardens

Day 2. Edinburgh Castle; Oink; Grassmarket; Golden Mile; Arthur's Seat; Coro the Chocolate Cafe

We were blessed with sunny weather for our main day on foot in Edinburgh. We walked 11.9 miles, up and down the equivalent of 68 flights of stairs visiting Edinburgh Castle and many sights in Old Town. We finished the afternoon with a hike to Arthur's Seat for a grand overview of the city we had just explored while the surrounding green countryside beyond the Firth of Forth beckoned.

Street performer on High Street

In Search of Breakfast.

We wandered the pedestrian paths of Rose Street and Rose Street Lanes, part of the original phase of New Town designed in 1766, seeking an early morning shop where we could buy sandwiches. We had an ambitious driving itinerary planned for the next day and needed a quick lunch plan.

We stumbled upon a gem called Social Bite at 131 Rose Street, one block east of Castle St. Painted wall text proudly proclaims their mission to end homelessness, through a combination of job opportunities and donations, including 100% of their profits. The French-Scottish meals are designed by Martin Wishart, a Michelin-starred chef, who personally cooks in the restaurant once a quarter. I had a breakfast potato roll enveloping two divine Scottish sausages (which kept trying to escape), a fried egg and some brown sauce. They also had baked goods, but scones were not their strongest suit. Most importantly for us, they had a fabulous selection of pre-made sandwiches and boxed salads available early in the morning.

Edinburgh Castle - the Crown Jewels

Like many other people, we resolved to arrive at Edinburgh Castle before the doors opened. Once inside the Edinburgh Castle complex, we decided to head straight to the Crown Jewels. We actually saw them twice. The first time, we asked where they were and went in a door that led directly to the Crown Jewels, missing the longer exhibit leading up to that room. Known formally as the Honours of Scotland, the crown jewels had been stuffed forgotten in a chest after the Scottish and English parliaments merged in 1707. There they languished for 111 years before being rediscovered and placed on exhibit.