Radish 3-ways with hazelnut brown butter couscous |
Outdoor wokking on a propane powered Volcano Grill. For more on Szechuan green beans, click here. |
Chinese-Jamaican Stir-fried Beef and Carrots in Calypso sauce from Stir-frying to the Sky's Edge |
Spring rolls with homemade wrappers deep-fried in the wok. Click here for recipes. |
Long before I discovered the secrets to making dan dan noodles, lo mein or drunken noodles, I had clipped a recipe for Spicy Szechuan Noodles from a local neighborhood newspaper. This simple, but flexible and pleasing dish has been a family favorite since 2002. The kids call it Peanut Butter Noodles and it is fantastic served simply or with optional toppings. As it tastes equally good hot or at room temperature, a big bowl of these noodles disappears rapidly on the potluck or buffet table.
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If you love the taste and texture of sushi rice, sticky, vinegary and slightly salty-sweet, you will love these easy vegan maki rolls. While you are frying the sweet potato tempura, it is easy to add in stretched tempura shrimp for a pescatarian delight. Like the famed California roll, these Japanese-American adaptations have no raw fish at all, and are fun to make, serve and eat!
Shrimp tempura or portobello mushroom maki rolls with wasabi and homemade sriracha mayo. |
Vegan futomaki rolls with sweet potato tempura, carrots, portabello mushrooms and sesame spinach |
A wok-fried vegetarian spring roll with homemade wrapper. Filling recipe from The Breath of a Wok by Grace Young: the Sept. 2020 Wok Wednesday recipe of the month. |
Left: Spring rolls from Spicies in Cambridge, MA; Upper right: Huge egg roll from the Moonlight Express food truck in the Pittsburgh Strip District. Lower right: Homemade summer rolls or goi cuon. |
Recipes from Seventeen magazine and Wisdom of a Chinese Kitchen.
I loved spring rolls so much that I clipped a recipe from the April 1976 issue of Seventeen. This magazine had a section called "Now You're Cooking" that featured delicious and approachable recipes from all over the world. But it would take another 44 years, and a global coronavirus pandemic, before I worked up the courage to try making my own spring roll wrappers from scratch.Wok-roasted Basil Eggplant |
Basil Eggplant with Szechuan-spiced ground pork |
Love2Chow General Tso's Cauliflower |
On Independence Day a year ago, the Love2Chow blog began with these words "One of the most popular Chinese-American dishes, General Tso's chicken with its spicy, sweet-tart umami-laden bites is in many ways emblematic of the American experience." It somehow seems fitting to celebrate its 1 year birthday with a revised version. General Tso's cauliflower is just as satisfying as the spicy, sweet-tart original, but with added dimensions of texture -- crisp caramelizing edges melting into a creamy-soft interior.
Eating Malaysian is like having all of your favorite Asian cuisines rolled up into one. Whether it is Indian curries, Chinese vegetables or noodles, or hot Indonesian sambals that you desire, you can have all that and more with additional influences from the Middle East and several European countries including Portugal (source of the egg custard tarts enjoyed in Hong Kong).
Malaysian-Style Turmeric Salmon with Crispy Skin. |
Four dishes from one batch of Chinese barbecue pork. Jump to the descriptions. |
While I am willing to take extra steps if it noticeably affects the outcome of the dish, caramelizing vegetable toppings for pizza, for example, I am all for simplicity. That is one great feature to Grace's recipe -- the ingredients in the marinade are all measured as 2 Tablespoons, except the sesame oil, which is 2 teaspoons. This means it is easy to remember, and there are fewer measuring spoons to wash afterwards. Since I skip the sugar rub step in the beginning, I use 2 Tbs for the sugar, same as all of the other sauce ingredients except the sesame oil and white pepper. I have also found that this marinade amount can easily support double the amount of meat, perfect for a 4-5 pound shoulder, plus generate enough sauce to serve with it.
African-American Cookbooks to Explore
The front piece of this 5 pound half-shoulder yielded 14 oz after trimming off the thicker areas of fat. |
My dad always served this with a pork, cabbage, bean sprouts stirfry, as the soft centers of the noodle cakes soak up the sauce even as the golden outer crusts remain crisp and crunchy. This give rise to a delectable eating experience: something that neither deep fried ultra thin egg noodles nor oil-tossed lo mein noodles can do. I, however, had pretty slim pickings for vegetables -- I had used up all the broccoli, cauliflower, leafy green beet tops, the rest of the cabbage, all of the mushrooms, baby bok choy, spinach. So inspired by the photo of Helen Chen's pork and cucumber stir-fry in Breath of a Wok by Grace Young, I figured I could at least make the zucchini look like cucumber slices.
Marinating pork, sliced zucchini, purple carrot and garlic, rinsed and smashed Chinese fermented black beans. |
I was completely floored by how delicious the stir-fry came out. The pork was unbelievably tender -- I've made lots of pork stir-fries over the years but the flavor and texture was truly superior even in just an ad hoc stir-fry using ingredients at hand. I now get what Michael Pollan said, that once you have tasted "better-raised" meats, it actually makes you want to eat meat less often. When the pandemic is over, I will no longer be buying grocery store meats raised in factory farms. Not sure why it took me so long, given that my kids had long been able to recognize when the chicken that I cooked came from the local farm instead of the supermarket...
After dinner, the shoulder was thawed enough to be broken down. The majority of the meat was cut into 1 inch thick strips and marinated overnight to make Chinese barbecue pork - another Grace Young recipe, this time from Stir-frying to the Sky's Edge. I was not too concerned with getting everything off the bone, as that would be frozen to make future homemade ramen. The fat trimmed from the meat was rendered slowly with the assistance of some water to make tasty cracklings, which we immediately ate before I could take any photos, and lard, frozen for future pastries.
Love2Chow Pork Slivers & Vegetables in Black Bean Sauce
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