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Growing up, my mom often made stir-fried Napa cabbage as part of our meals. In my mind, Napa cabbage always came cooked, as part of a Chinese family-style meal, with rice and the works. And it IS really good cooked, simply stir-fried with some minced garlic. It has a slight sweetness to it, and doesn’t make you as gassy as normal cabbage (oops, did I just say “gassy” on a food blog? That’s gotta be a big no-no).
It took a trip to California to visit the in-laws for me to learn about this simple, no-brainer, and absolutely delicious way to prepare Napa cabbage. IN A SALAD!!! Hello, light sweet flavor? Crisp, refreshing texture? Wrinkly leaves perfect for catching and holding the flavor of a light sesame dressing? Napa cabbage salad, where have you been all my life? Thank you, thank you, mother-in-law!
It’s so easy to make. Just slice up a whole cabbage with a big knife (discarding the bottom 2 inches or so which are mainly stem), then rinse the leaves and spin them dry. Chop up a cucumber and a yellow pepper – oh how I love the crunch of this salad – and add some soy candied walnuts for extra crunch and sweetness (you can get these pre-made at your local Asian supermarket). A slightly sweet honey-sesame dressing rounds out the flavors and makes this salad distinctly Asian.
Asian Napa Cabbage Salad
1 medium head Napa Cabbage
½ English cucumber, sliced thinly
1 yellow bell pepper, chopped
¼ cup candied walnuts, coarsely chopped
2 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tsp honey
2 tbsp toasted sesame oil
2 tbsp olive oil
Slice the whole head of cabbage crosswise into ½ to ¾ inch sections, discarding the bottom two inches of the cabbage. Rinse the cabbage and spin the leaves dry in a salad spinner. Toss cucumber, pepper, and walnuts with cabbage.
Whisk together vinegar, honey, sesame oil and olive oil. Toss with salad. Adjust seasonings to taste, adding more vinegar if needed.
Asian Napa Cabbage Salad
Growing up, my mom often made stir-fried Napa cabbage as part of our meals. In my mind, Napa cabbage always came cooked, as part of a Chinese family-style meal, with rice and the works. And it IS really good cooked, simply stir-fried with some minced garlic. It has a slight sweetness to it, and doesn’t make you as gassy as normal cabbage (oops, did I just say “gassy” on a food blog? That’s gotta be a big no-no).
It took a trip to California to visit the in-laws for me to learn about this simple, no-brainer, and absolutely delicious way to prepare Napa cabbage. IN A SALAD!!! Hello, light sweet flavor? Crisp, refreshing texture? Wrinkly leaves perfect for catching and holding the flavor of a light sesame dressing? Napa cabbage salad, where have you been all my life? Thank you, thank you, mother-in-law!
It’s so easy to make. Just slice up a whole cabbage with a big knife (discarding the bottom 2 inches or so which are mainly stem), then rinse the leaves and spin them dry. Chop up a cucumber and a yellow pepper – oh how I love the crunch of this salad – and add some soy candied walnuts for extra sweetness (you can get these pre-made at your local Asian supermarket). A slightly sweet honey-sesame dressing rounds out the flavors and makes this salad distinctly Asian.
Asian Napa Cabbage Salad
1 medium head Napa Cabbage
½ English cucumber, sliced thinly
1 yellow bell pepper, chopped
¼ cup candied walnuts, coarsely chopped
2 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tsp honey
2 tbsp toasted sesame oil
2 tbsp olive oil
Slice the whole head of cabbage crosswise into ½ to ¾ inch sections, discarding the bottom two inches of the cabbage. Rinse the cabbage and spin the leaves dry in a salad spinner. Toss cucumber, pepper, and walnuts with cabbage.
Whisk together vinegar, honey, sesame oil and olive oil. Toss with salad. Adjust seasonings to taste, adding more vinegar if needed.
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Summer comes early in our little town in Southern China, and right now in early March it’s already strawberry season. One of the joys of living seasonally is anticipating the various fruit seasons, enjoying the fruit to the utmost while it’s in season (and perhaps canning some for the months to come), and then looking forward to the next seasonal fruit. Strawberries will only be around for about a month, and the brevity of this season makes them all the more delicious. No woody, grassy-tasting strawberries for me in November – no thanks – I’d rather have the best tasting, melt-in-your mouth berries for a few weeks than have less than the best all year.
This is the first time I’ve made strawberry shortcake, and I gotta tell ya – this recipe’s a keeper! Cobbled together from an Epicurious recipe and a few others from around the web, this dessert couples meltingly sweet, ripe strawberries with a lemony buttermilk biscuit and fluffy whipped cream. It’s got the perfect blend of crispness from the biscuit and lusciousness from the macerated strawberries. And I love, love, LOVE the contrast of the lemon zest and the strawberries.
PLEASE don’t use strawberries that are anything less than ripe. This recipe is basically a strawberry delivery system, and if the star ingredient isn’t up to par, it falls flat.
Lemony Strawberry Shortcakes
loosely adapted from Epicurious
Serves 6
Sweet Lemon Buttermilk Biscuits
2 cups flour
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tsp baking powder
1 scant tsp baking soda
2 tbsp sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
½ tsp salt
½ tbsp grated lemon zest
2/3 cup buttermilk, well shaken, plus extra
Strawberries
2 pounds ripe strawberries, washed and hulled
1/3 cup sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice
Whipped Cream
1 cup chilled whipping cream
3 tbsp sugar
Preheat oven to 375 F.
Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar and salt together in a bowl. Using your fingertips, rub in the butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add the lemon zest and buttermilk. Fold gently into dry ingredients until incorporated.
Transfer dough onto a lightly floured surface and pat (with floured hands) into a circle about 1.5 inches thick. Cut dough into 6 wedges and transfer to baking sheet.
Brush wedges with extra buttermilk and sprinkle with extra sugar. Bake for about 15-18 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into middle of biscuits comes out clean.
Meanwhile, cut the strawberries into quarters (or halves if they’re small), and mix with the sugar and lemon juice. Let macerate for about 15 minutes.
Beat the whipping cream with the sugar until it forms soft peaks.
When biscuits are done, let them cool about 5 minutes, then cut them in half. Pile with strawberries and whipped cream, and serve immediately.
I love salads that can double as main courses. Sometimes I really crave fresh vegetables, but I’m also really hungry, so I end up eating salad, plus a bunch of other stuff (PB&J, muffins, cookies, etc…). I love it when I can just scarf down a salad, and it’s good enough and satisfying enough that I’m shoveling it down my throat and don’t need anything more… This Chickpea Veggie Salad is that kind of salad. Definitely shovel-down-the-throat material.
This salad is just plain GOOD! The combination of flavors is bright and fresh, but earthy and nutty at the same time. I forgot how good chickpeas are, even just from a can. The nice thing about this recipe too, is how easy it is to throw together. You don’t need a lot of exotic ingredients; in fact, you probably have everything you need to put this salad together right now.
And of course, you could doll it up a little more. Add some olives and feta for a Mediterranean slant, or some more spices (I feel like a sprinkle of cumin would go well in here) for extra kick.
Chickpea Veggie Salad
Serves 2 as a main, or 4 as a side
1 can chickpeas
1 English cucumber, chopped (seeded if necessary)
1 ½ cups halved grape tomatoes
3 tablespoons thinly sliced red onion
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
1 tablespoon chopped mint (optional)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
½ tablespoon apple cider vinegar
3 tablespoons good olive oil
salt and pepper
Mix together vegetables (chickpeas, cucumber, tomatoes, onion). Toss with cilantro and mint (if using). Sprinkle with freshly ground pepper.
Whisk together lemon juice, cider vinegar, and ½ tsp salt. Add olive oil and whisk until emulsified. Toss with salad. Taste for seasoning and adjust (you may want to add more lemon juice or vinegar depending on how acidic you like it).
I felt like scones this morning (my husband would say, “But you don’t look like one!”), but I didn’t want to use the recipe I normally use, which is for a sweet scone with currants. I was craving something more savory. Half an hour of experimentation in the kitchen, and I came up with THESE!
Now, not to toot my own horn, but these are, I think, the best biscuits I’ve ever made (by the way, what’s the difference between scones and biscuits? I have no idea.).
Using buttermilk instead of milk made the biscuits more tender and moist, and the addition of the Gouda cheese and rosemary satisfied my salty cravings and (in my opinion), upped the “foodie factor” as well. Finally, using baking soda as well as baking powder (baking soda needs to react with an acid, so I could use it since there was buttermilk in the dough) seemed to make the biscuits lighter and fluffier.
The resulting biscuits were rich, tender, and as savory as I could desire. Try them and let me know what you think!
Rosemary and Gouda Buttermilk Biscuits
Makes 8 biscuits
1 ¾ cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
5 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into cubes
2/3 cup buttermilk (you can make your own buttermilk by adding a tablespoon of lemon juice to 2/3 cup milk and letting it sit for 5 minutes)
1/3 cup Gouda cheese, finely diced or grated
1 1/2tsp dried rosemary (double the amount if you use fresh)
½ tsp salt
1 tbsp milk for brushing
Preheat oven to 400 F (about 200 C).
Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Add the butter and rub it into the flour using your fingertips, until the mixture becomes a fine crumble, like cornmeal.
Crumble the rosemary needles in your hand and add them to the mixture. Add the cheese and toss to combine.
Pour in the buttermilk and fold in gently with a spatula until mixture forms a sticky dough. Divide roughly into 8 and drop onto a parchment lined baking sheet.
Bake for about 12 minutes until golden on top or a toothpick comes out clean.
These are best fresh out of the oven of course, though I suppose you could reheat them gently later in the day. Definitely best when the cheese is bubbling and melted though!
Check this out. No, that is not some weird oval shaped avocado up there. That, my friends, is an emu’s egg.
What, you may ask, were we doing with an emu’s egg? Well the story goes like this: my brother-in-law and his wife were taking care of their neighbor’s backyard pets while they were away on a vacation. These “pets” included a chicken coop full of chickens, and yes, an emu (it’s a big backyard). The emu lays an egg once or twice a week, and since each emu egg is about the same volume as 10-12 regular chicken eggs, they had plenty to share with us.
My husband drilled a hole in each end of the egg, and painstakingly blew out all the insides. That’s a whole lot of egg! The total volume came to about 600 ml, about 2 1/2 cups.
My brother-in-law told us that although the flavor is very similar to chicken eggs, the white of the emu egg doesn’t set quite as well as a chicken egg, so if you end up scrambling or frying the whole thing, you end up with slightly slimy fried eggs. So we decided to use it in a quiche instead, where the cream and cheese and other ingredients would compensate even if the white didn’t completely set.
Actually, we made a couple.
The result? I honestly couldn’t tell the difference between this quiche and any other normal chicken egg quiche. And the quiche itself isn’t a bad recipe.
So next time life gives you emu eggs…make quiche!
Yes, we made a broccoli/goat cheese one too, but I don’t have room to share both recipes.
Emu Egg Leek and Canadian Bacon Quiche
Williams-Sonoma Breakfasts and Brunches
1 pie crust pastry
6 slices Cdn bacon, cut into strips
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1 leek, washed and cut crosswise into slices
2/3 cup beaten emu egg, or 3 normal eggs
1 ½ cups half and half
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp freshly ground pepper
6 oz Gruyère or Jarlsberg, grated
1 ½ tsp cornstarch
Preheat oven to 425 F.
Roll out pastry and press into 9 inch tart pan. Trim pastry edges. Prick pastry all over with a fork. Line pastry with foil and pie weights (opt). Bake 8 minutes. Remove foil, bake another 4 min. Reduce oven temp to 325 F (165 C).
Sauté bacon until slightly browned, 2-3 min. Drain on paper towels.
Melt butter in pan, sauté leeks until tender, about 10 min. Set aside.
Beat eggs until frothy, add half and half, salt and pepper. Toss cheese with cornstarch. Add cheese, bacon, and leek to the liquid and stir well. Pour into pastry shell.
Bake 35-40 min until middle is set.
Cool 15 min and serve.
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About Us
We are a Canamerican (Canadian-American) couple living in China. Join us on our culinary adventures both in the kitchen and in the fascinating country where we live.
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