When we were down in Orange County a couple of weekends ago, we stopped by at Ranch99 to pick up a few Asian goodies.  Where we live, it’s hard to find Asian ingredients, so I was pretty stoked to stock up so I can cook [...]]]>
When we were down in Orange County a couple of weekends ago, we stopped by at Ranch99 to pick up a few Asian goodies.  Where we live, it’s hard to find Asian ingredients, so I was pretty stoked to stock up so I can cook more Asian food at home.  I also bought these addictively chewy Korean rice cakes so I can make one of my favorite Korean dishes – rice cakes in a spicy red sauce.  This was my first try at this dish, and it turned out pretty good.  The chewy rice cakes are not everyone’s favorite, but I happen to just LOVE them!

I miss being able to go to a Korean restaurant whenever I want (ie. when I lived in Toronto).  Personally I think that Korean food is one of the few cuisines where Korean home cooking is quite similar to what is served in restaurants.  I love the homey (and spicy) soups and stews, just perfect for a cold winter day.  Of course, it’s not winter right now – and in California the sun is bright and the air is fresh outside my window this morning.  But anytime is right for good food, and these Korean rice cakes aren’t as steamy as a soup or stew, making it perfect for anytime you’re craving a little spicy.

Since I wanted an authentic recipe, I followed Beyond Kimchee’s version, which includes making a stock of seaweed and dried anchovies.  Not having seaweed or dried fish in my repertoire, I substituted homemade chicken stock instead, and it still turned out good.  I also didn’t have fish cakes, but I didn’t miss them.  I used Napa cabbage instead of regular cabbage, though I think either would work well.  I also reduced the sugar, as it was a little too sweet for my taste.

Spicy Korean Rice Cakes
Adapted closely from Beyond Kimchee

3 cups low-sodium or homemade chicken stock
1 package (about 600g) Korean rice cakes
4 tbsp gochujang (Korean red chili paste)
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 medium Napa cabbage, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 leek, cleaned and sliced (white and light green parts only)
1 clove garlic, chopped finely
1 tbsp ketchup
1 tsp roasted sesame seeds

In a medium bowl, soak the rice cakes in hot tap water to separate them and remove the oily coating, for about 5 minutes.

Heat the stock over medium heat. When simmer, add the gochujang (red chili paste) and sugar, stirring well until dissolved. Add rice cakes and cabbage and bring mixture back to a boil. Lower heat to medium-low and simmer until cabbage and rice cakes are tender, about 10 minutes. Add leeks and garlic and continue simmering until sauce is reduced and thickened, another 5-10 minutes.

Just before serving, stir in the ketchup and pour the rice cakes into a shallow dish. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve hot.

This is my friend Lali (on the left). Isn’t she lovely?

Nevermind the mess and the hideous orange couch.  I live in China, ok?  That’s my excuse.  Anyway, Lali is super cool. She is Peruvian-Japanese, which means her heritage is Japanese but she was [...]]]> This is my friend Lali (on the left). Isn’t she lovely?

Nevermind the mess and the hideous orange couch.  I live in China, ok?  That’s my excuse.  Anyway, Lali is super cool. She is Peruvian-Japanese, which means her heritage is Japanese but she was born and raised in Peru. She is an amazing cook. She wouldn’t say so, but she is. I know from experience.

I’ve been bugging Lali to show me how to cook some Peruvian dishes and she most graciously obliged, coming over to cook in my tiny kitchen and bearing with all my questions. We cooked up a storm, and then our hubbies and our friends got to partake in the surpassing deliciousness.

This is what we made.

This is an appetizer called Papas a la Huancaína…. It’s a delicious yellow sauce made with aji Amarillo, a yellow chili pepper found in Peru, poured over potatoes (Peru not only gave potatoes to the world, but has over 2000 varieties of potato, including purple ones) and a lettuce leaf, and topped with a boiled egg. The sauce has a creamy, nutty taste, and I could eat it by the spoonful. Unfortunately you can’t get aji amarillo in China, and Lali made this from a dehydrated powder that her sister sent her, so we don’t have a recipe for Papas a la Huancaína right now.

For the main course, we had a chicken stew, again with plenty of potatoes, served over steamed white rice. Now, this Estofado de Pollo has a real simple list of ingredients, but for some reason, it has so much flavor. I really can’t explain it, because it doesn’t call for a long list of herbs, except for a couple bay leaves, but it is so savory, rich and just…flavorful. Lali says that the sauce base – fried garlic, onion, and tomato – is the base for many Peruvian dishes. And the best part is…it is so simple even I can do it! And of course, if you’re not a huge potato fan, you can always pop in other vegetables or pretty much anything you like.

We also made a really simple aji sauce, a hot sauce made by puréeing red chili peppers, onion, lemon juice, and oil. It’s got a good kick, and unlike many hot sauces, isn’t overwhelmed by vinegar and salt. What I love about this aji is that it’s got flavor as well as heat. You can store this in the fridge for a few days and put it on anything from scrambled eggs, to roasted vegetables, to lentils, to rice…basically anything that could benefit from an added kick of spiciness. We put the aji on the chicken stew, and it really gave it some extra oomph (see the dollop of red sauce on top of the stew?).

Estofado de Pollo

¼ cup vegetable oil
1 small or 1/2 medium/large red onion, diced
5 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 medium tomato
1 ½ pounds boneless, skinless chicken (we used breasts, but thighs would be juicier)
½ cup frozen carrots, corn and peas
4-5 potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks
salt and pepper
3-4 whole bay leaves

Peel the tomato and dice it. Chop the chicken into ¾ inch cubes. Set aside.

In large heavy-bottomed pot, heat the oil over low-medium heat (I know ¼ cup of oil sounds like a lot, but the goal is to evenly coat the bottom of the pot). Add the onions and garlic, and fry, stirring often, until onion is translucent (and revel in the delicious smells wafting through your kitchen). Add the tomato and cook, stirring often, until tomato begins to disintegrate. Season liberally with salt and pepper (Lali added about 3 or 4 large pinches of salt).

Add the chicken, and stir until the outsides of the cubes are cooked. Add the frozen vegetables, potatoes, and bay leaves. Stir around to coat everything with sauce.

Add just enough water to cover approximately half of the ingredients. Cover and simmer until potatoes are tender, stirring often, about 20 minutes.

Adjust seasonings and serve over steamed white rice. Serves 4.

Recipe Notes: The beauty of this stew is that you can do anything with it, as long as you have the basic sauce. Do it with beef, or add different vegetables. The sky’s the limit!

Peruvian Aji (hot red chili sauce)

½ small red onion or ¼ large one
4 fresh red chili peppers
Juice of ½ lemon (or a whole lemon if your lemon, like mine, was a little dry)
2 tablespoons vegetable or olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Dice the onion. If the onions are very oniony (as in, they’re making you cry as you dice them), rinse them in cold water. Remove the tops and tips of bottoms from the chili peppers. If you can’t take the heat, open them and remove some of the seeds.

Whiz all the ingredients together in a food processor or blender until puréed and smooth.

Recipe Notes: The sauce is a bit thick for a blender to handle very well (the blades just fling everything to the sides and then can’t blend them anymore). If your blender comes with a small container attachment (something that looks like the “Magic Bullet” instead of the large blender jug) it will work better. Alternatively, you could try adding a bit of water, or doubling the ingredients.

You will probably need to poke a spoon in there to stir up the chunks. Remember to remove the spoon before you turn the blender on!!!

By the way, can someone tell me why that first picture of the egg has a little bubble in the middle of the yolk?  Is that normal?  Did I boil it wrong?  I do live in China.  Maybe it’s a fake egg?

We love pico de gallo.  It’s so festive, like little bits of colorful confetti, and so yummy.  Pico de gallo is a great summer food when the tomatoes are in season, and lucky for us, here in October, tomatoes are still ripe and [...]]]>

We love pico de gallo.  It’s so festive, like little bits of colorful confetti, and so yummy.  Pico de gallo is a great summer food when the tomatoes are in season, and lucky for us, here in October, tomatoes are still ripe and delicious in Xiamen, where today I was sweating in my long pants and black t-shirt in the blazing sun.  Especially on the bus where about 100 people were crammed into a bus that should fit about 40, and the little Chinese man in front of us in a straw cowboy hat kept giving us inquisitive glances when he noticed us speaking in English.

I love how when Chris and I go out, I’m the one who gets the stares. Not the 6’3” tall white guy, but the normal sized Chinese girl sitting next to him.  In a land of 1.3 billion Chinese people, how am I the anomaly???

It’s simple of course.  I’m with the white guy, and I’m speaking English.  Most people in our neighborhood just don’t have a frame of reference for someone strange like me.

Anyway, back to the fresh tomato salsa.  It’s delicious.  And we’re hanging on to summer for as long as we can.  And you should make it asap – it’s the easiest thing in the world, and soon tomatoes will be mealy, pale shadows of their former selves, so go grab the last ripe ones while you can.

NOTE: If you can find a good mango (and with our crazy food distribution networks around the globe now, you can find mangoes almost all through the year), try chopping one up and throwing it into this salsa. Trust me. Your taste buds will swoon.

Pico de Gallo (Fresh Tomato Salsa)

This is seriously so easy, and feel free to adjust the proportions of different ingredients to taste.  Chris doesn’t love cilantro (I know, what a weirdo), so I added a little less.

1 red onion
4 ripe tomatoes
½ cup chopped cilantro, lightly packed
2 jalapeño peppers
juice of 1 lime
salt

Chop onion and tomatoes and jalapeños into small dice (leave the seeds if you like it spicy – that’s where the heat is).  Mix everything together, including cilantro and lime juice.  Salt to taste.

Important!  Do not rub your eyes while you are chopping jalapeños! Not unless you want to find out the hard way (like Chris did), how nasty that can be.

By the way, if you live in China like me, those ubiquitous skinny green chilies will work just as well if you can’t find jalapeño peppers, though we actually did find them at a supermarket called RT-Mart.

And don’t forget to toss in a diced mango if you’ve got one!

Chris and I regularly eat out at Sichuan restaurants – it is one of China’s best cuisines and the bold flavours especially appeal to a Western palate (as long as you don’t mind spiciness).  One of our favourite dishes is ma po doufu, [...]]]>

Chris and I regularly eat out at Sichuan restaurants – it is one of China’s best cuisines and the bold flavours especially appeal to a Western palate (as long as you don’t mind spiciness).  One of our favourite dishes is ma po doufu, Ma Po Tofu, a spicy tofu dish with a bit of ground pork, lots of chilies, and the signature Sichuan spice – Sichuan peppercorns.

Sichuan peppercorns are not only spicy, but they also have that characteristic Sichuanese tongue-numbing property known as ma la, or “numbing-spice”.  It adds both heat and savory-ness to a dish, as well as a tingling sensation typical of Sichuan dishes.  You can replace Sichuan peppercorns and still get a great-tasting tofu dish, but you won’t have Ma Po Tofu.  The “ma” in the name of this dish is a pun referring both to the ma la taste, as well as the pockmarked old woman (ma po) who first invented the humble Ma Po Tofu, to satisfy travelers who passed by her little cottage.

Chris and I have this dish on average about once every two weeks, and it is a bargain at most restaurants, costing between 5 and 10 yuan (between $0.70 to $1.40 USD).  So why would I want to recreate this dish at home?  Why, to see that I can, of course.

I did a lot of recipe research on the Internet looking for an authentic recipe.  Based on the ingredient lists, most recipes had been altered to suit Western palates and styles of cooking.  But I wanted the real thing – I wanted to taste in my kitchen the same taste I taste in the Sichuan restaurant down the street.  I finally settled on a recipe from Rasa Malaysia – the author learned this recipe from a friend whose mother had studied at the Sichuan Culinary School in Chengdu.  I simplified the ingredient list a bit, because I distrust Chinese chili powder (sometimes it is colored with a red dye that is a banned carcinogen in most countries), and I don’t recall there being fermented black beans in the Ma Po Tofu we are accustomed to having.

And the result?  Astonishing.  I amazed myself.  I thought it would be close, but not this close.  I may never order Ma Po Tofu again.  With a dish of stir-fried greens and steamed rice, this was our very satisfying dinner.

Ma Po Tofu
Adapted from Rasa Malaysia

Most or all of these ingredients are available from your local Asian grocery store.

1 block tofu (not silken)
4 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tbsp vegetable oil (do not use olive oil as it does not have a high enough smoke point)
2 tbsp chili oil
3 tbsp chili bean paste
1 tbsp Sichuan peppercorns (I used whole peppercorns, but if you have powdered Sichuan pepper, that will work too)
½ pound ground pork
1 tsp dried chili flakes or chopped dried red chilies
1 tbsp soy sauce
½ cup water

(To tone down the spiciness, omit the dried chili flakes and halve the Sichuan pepper.)

Drain the tofu and cut it into cubes.  Set aside.

Over high heat, heat the vegetable oil and chili oil.  When hot, add the garlic, chili bean paste, and dried chili flakes.  Make sure your stove hood fan is on, as the spices get very aromatic.  Add the ground pork and stir-fry until cooked.

Add the soy sauce and water, and then carefully add the cubed tofu.  Let it simmer for a few minutes as the tofu steams, then gently stir the tofu into the sauce.  Add the Sichuan pepper, and stir-fry for about 2 minutes until the sauce thickens.  Serve immediately (you can garnish it with a sprinkling of scallions if you like).

Note:  Chris calls Sichuan peppercorns “mind-numbing balls”, and they really are – your first time at least!  If you aren’t used to Sichuan pepper, you probably want to avoid eating any whole peppercorns as they are pretty intense.  We have found that the best way to do this is to use your chopsticks to pick up each cube of tofu from the dish instead of spooning it all into your bowl.  Of course, if using powdered Sichuan pepper, this isn’t a problem.