Posts Tagged ‘Chinese cooking’

17 Jun

Using What You Have X: Double Layers of Vegetables

Posted by wooddogs3 in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

I’ve been yapping on for ten posts now about using what you have, and it occurs to me that today’s post shouldn’t be a recipe per se, but a series of comments about how I’m incorporating more of what I have into what I eat. So today is practical stuff about making sure you use the veggies and eggs that you grew or bought at the farmer’s market.
I have gorgeous broccoli in the garden right now:

One of the best ways to make sure that broccoli or any other fresh vegetable gets used is to prep it immediately. Cut off the florets, steam for five minutes, cool, and store in the refrigerator in a plastic bag, ready to be added to a dish on short notice. If you plan to use the broccoli stem, peel it, cut the crispy inner pith into matchsticks or other convenient shapes, toss with a bit of lemon juice, and refrigerate for up to 2-3 days. If you don’t prepare the stem ahead of time, you are unlikely actually to use it. I have a pet goat to take care of such utilization emergencies, or you can compost it, so either prep it right away or just dispose of it in an ecologically sound fashion without getting all guilt-ridden. Life is too short to worry about whether you utilized every last fragment  of your vegetable.

Right now I have a lot of eggs handy and use them wherever a protein source is called for. Often I cook the yolks and a few whites into a sort of pancake and then cut it in strips to be added to stirfries, but in this case I didn’t want to bother and just scrambled two eggs and two yolks with some soy sauce and scallions in the wok and put them in a bowl to be added back to the stirfry later. This is much like the way that eggs are added to fried rice, and you can see in the photo above that it is not pretty and uniform but tastes fine.
Next let’s consider the Permaculture Pasta that I wrote about before. If you have some in the freezer, clearly, an Italian or Asian noodle dish can come together almost instantly. But if you don’t, fresh pasta is still a possibility. Today I timed myself from beginning to end making a batch exactly as described in that post but a little bigger, and I had pasta ready to cook in less than an hour. Admittedly, I have my set-up worked out and know all my moves, which saves some time. But my point is that it did not take that long to make enough leafy noodles for four, which for two people means that you have a good meal and another meal to serve a few days later. Also, there’s no need to fool around with tree leaves if you prefer not to. Any mild flavored green leaf is good here, and chard is a wonderful ingredient for making green noodles. Just remove midribs, steam it for five minutes and proceed. If you are wondering what to do with those leafy greens that you bought at the farmers market, this is a good use for them. I often use Lambsquarters to make green pasta.
I won’t say that much about stirfrying because I think most people know how to do it already and I have written about it recently. I will just say that keeping the heat high helps keep the sauce clean in flavor. Don’t lose your nerve and retreat to a simmer. Have everything ready, and then stop for nothing and the cooking part is all over in a few minutes. Your mis en place is more important here than maybe anywhere else in cooking.

This particular stirfry uses lavish amounts of garlic, ginger, and oyster sauce along with a little chile paste as the seasonings, and the only vegetables used are a large amount of steamed broccoli florettes and a small amount of chopped scallion. The “juice” is half a cup of broth with a teaspoon of cornstarch, two teaspoons of sugar or equivalent sweetener, and a tablespoon of rice vinegar. Soy sauce is added as needed during cooking. The eggs were pre-scrambled and ready to add at the end.

A pot of salted water is brought to a boil and the noodles boiled just until barely done, less than a minute in the case of this delicate green fresh dough. Drain the noodles quickly, return to the pot, sprinkle lavishly with soy sauce and at least 2 tablespoons of Asian sesame oil, and toss around a little to keep the noodles from sticking to each other. Set aside, covered. Now quickly, heat your wok  over highest heat, put in some cooking oil of your choice, sauté the chopped garlic and ginger for several seconds until the pieces start to look opaque and the fragrance comes up, add the scallions, chile paste, and oyster sauce, throw in the steamed broccoli florettes, and stirfry for a few minutes until done to your taste. Stir the “juice” quickly because the cornstarch settles to the bottom. Toss in the scrambled eggs and the “juice“ and boil hard for another half a minute until it thickens. Divide the noodles into four bowls, or into two bowls and a container for the refrigerator, put the broccoli mixture on top, drizzle with a little more soy sauce and sesame oil, and relish your double layers of vegetables, triple layers if you count the greens that the hens ate.
For that second meal of noodles later in the week, you can cook a completely different dish to go on top or, if you are lazy or pressed for time or not too hungry, the noodles are delicious just reheated, divided into serving bowls, and drizzled generously with additional sesame oil and soy sauce and some crushed roasted peanuts on top. A generous grating of white pepper is good with this. If you want to drizzle in some chile oil, be my guest. A good grade of roasted sesame oil is essential to a good flavor, and I like the Japanese Kadoya brand best.

22 May

Using What You Have V: More About Garlic Scapes

Posted by wooddogs3 in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , .

I’ve posted before about garlic scapes, and it occurred to me this spring that I had a little more to say. I see garlic scapes being sold at markets that are large spirals with several loops, and while these are pretty to look at and play with, I personally don’t think of them as edible. Good scapes are young, just a foot or so longer than the garlic plant below,  and form 3/4 of a circle or less, as you see above. Snap them off rather than cutting; they should snap like a bean when bent double. Then, snap off the upper blossom sheath, which is quite tough. The stem under it is tough too. The point where an actual snap happens might be 4-5” below the blossom swelling, meaning that of a foot-long scape, you might end up with 7” of good edible portion.

Next, decide how you’re going to cook it and how long the sections should be. I decided to illustrate the most difficult case to deal with: sections a bit over an inch long for a stir-fry. The reason this is difficult is that if you wanted to chop 1/4” sections the toughness of the outer skin would be irrelevant, but for these longer sections, tough skin has to be dealt with or unpleasant threads will stick between your teeth. Fortunately the solution is pretty quick and very easy. Snap the scapes into sections about 1.25” long, and wherever skin makes itself known, peel it off.

When you see “scape bark” like this, peel it off the sections on each side of the break.  If a long tough piece peels off, I use my thumbnail to start peeling the rest of the outer skin on that scape. It sounds tedious but doesn’t really take that long and produces a much nicer finished result.

In less than 15 minutes you have the situation shown above, where some scapes are completely peeled and the ones with more tender skin are still completely green. They’re ready for the wok now. Or cook them any other way you choose, but I find the fierce heat of the wok especially useful at tenderizing any remaining tough skin.

Rather than give a recipe for fried rice, I decided to link to the excellent and infinitely variable Pork Fried Rice recipe on The Woks of Life. This is a terrific blog that I’d like my readers to know about. I will only add that I often make meatless versions and that I think 2-3 teaspoons of oyster sauce is an essential addition to the “sauce” that’s added to the rice as it cooks. The garlic scapes got a couple of minutes in the hot wok by themselves with just oil and soy sauce, then another minute with some finely sliced tender greens from yesterday’s weed post, before the final combining took place, and a good drizzle of Asian sesame oil was added just before serving.

I’ve been on a carbfest since the shutdown, but here I tried a half-and-half mixture of leftover rice and leftover cauliflower rice. That wasn’t ideal, in my opinion, and I’ll probably go back to real rice.

 

12 May

Living in Interesting Times: Using What You Have II

Posted by wooddogs3 in cooking, home food production, kitchen staples, Uncategorized, urban farm animals, urban homesteading. Tagged: , , , , .


This weekend I was corresponding with a friend about marinated tofu, and it caused me to think about the importance  (especially now) of using what I produce. On a half-acre suburban lot, I won’t be growing my own staples or raising large meat animals. Nor is growing grain rice or soybeans feasible. But I do have chickens, and in season they lay like crazy and the eggs start to pile up. I started to wonder if I could make a proteinaceous food somewhat akin to tofu out of eggs or egg yolks.
My concentration is on yolks because they are the most nutritious and delicious part of the egg. So if you have any belief that yolks aren’t good for you, this post won’t be for you. But to me, a wasted yolk is truly unfortunate.

My first attempt was to beat up 20 egg yolks with a little salt and bake them in an oiled loaf pan at 225 degrees until set. After cooling, I sliced pieces off the resulting yolk cake and used them like tofu in a stir-fry, seen at the top of this post. The result was a little bland and chewy, in my opinion, but my husband liked it okay. He is very polite. The problem is that yolk cake is very dense and seasonings don’t penetrate it well. If the yolk mixture was preseasoned in some way I might like it better, but I decided to experiment with other cooking methods.

Currently, I’m using an omelette  method. I beat up 10 yolks and one whole egg with a pinch of salt and heat up my 12” nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. When the skillet is hot I put in a glug of avocado oil, stir it around, and pour in the yolk mixture. I turn the heat to medium, let it cook until partially set, and flip it over with a spatula. Cook on the other side for a minute or two until just set in the middle and turn it out onto a plate to cool. When cool, I cut it into strips about 2”long and a quarter inch wide. They can be stored in a ziplock in the refrigerator for a few days. They are a good size to add to a stir-fry in the same way that you would use meat, or to add to a fried noodle dish like this one. I especially like them with thin noodles, and if I plan to cook them with broader noodles I cut the yolk strips to match the width of the noodles. Put them in a soy marinade the same way you would treat meat, and add at the same stage of cooking that you would add pork strips but cook them for a shorter time. They absorb flavors better that the yolk cake described above.

Any leftover yolk strips that are still good and unspoiled make great dog treats.

The whites aren’t wasted when I use yolks, and neither are the shells. I put them in a microwave-safe bowl, chop them up some with a stick blender, and cook them a few minutes in the microwave to make a concoction that we call “chicken cake.” The hens gobble it up and get back some of the protein and minerals that they put into making eggs.

26 Apr

Living in Interesting Times: Using What You Have

Posted by wooddogs3 in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

A big part of public safety right now is staying on your own property whenever possible, so I’m trying to use my own supplies rather than shopping. As you see above, it’s been no hardship. In the past I’ve enjoyed a dish of noodles with roasted scallions at Chinese restaurants, and decided to make something like it (but better if possible) at home.

If you have perennial green onions you will have them forever, and they spread so efficiently that they become quite a weed in time. For this dish I pulled four very large fat green onions, cleaned them, and cut them in 2” lengths, then cut each chunk in fine lengthwise slivers, keeping the white parts and green parts in two separate piles. If you’re using commercial scallions, 8-10 of them is probably equivalent.

Eggs are a home ground food for me, since I have chickens, so egg noodles are a natural and can be used in both Italian and Asian dishes. I make the noodles at home with flour and egg yolks only, and for this dish I used the “bad cuts” that always happen when you process a large batch of noodle dough; sheets that didn’t feed well into the rollers and got distorted or torn. When done with the properly cut noodles, I stack the distorted sheets up and cut them diagonally into broad noodles about 3/4” wide, rather like pappardelle. They look messy but remain delicious. Blanched for one to two minutes in salted water and tossed with a bit of oil so that they don’t stick together, they are ready to finish in the wok. I estimate that I used half a pound, cooked. You could use any egg noodle available, cooked until done but not mushy and tossed with a bit of oil. Of course, if you have fresh Chinese-style egg noodles, use those. For quantity, estimate whatever is two generous servings to you.

Frying noodles is one of the few jobs for which I use a restaurant-quality nonstick wok. If your regular wok is very well-seasoned, you may want to use it.

The third ingredient is soy sauce, and the fourth ingredient is hot oil and its goop. Commercial hot oil is all made with inferior oil and offers little except a belt of heat. Make your own. Start with 1 and 1/2 cups of good fairly flavorless oil (I prefer avocado oil) and heat it gently in a saucepan. Add 1/2 cup fresh pungent red chile flakes, 10 “coins” of ginger chopped, half a cup of unrinsed fermented black beans, and 10 cloves of garlic chopped. Simmer the mixture for 15-20 minutes over medium-low heat. It should bubble continually but not wildly. Turn off the heat and the oil is ready to use. Always store it in the refrigerator, and the cooked flavorings that fall to the bottom are the goop. I almost always use both oil and goop in seasoning a dish. The ingredients are available by mail or on Amazon (although they are a lot more expensive that way) if you don’t happen to keep these things in your kitchen.

Once you have slivered scallions, cooked noodles, and hot oil with goop, making this dish takes less than 15 minutes. Put a quarter cup of oil in the heated wok over high heat and swirl it around well. Add the white part of the scallions and stir-fry for about two minutes, then add the slivered green parts and a good pinch of salt. How far to cook them is your call. Personally, I prefer them when some of the ends are browning a bit but they are still rather soft and sweet, as shown in the photo at the top. Use a slotted spatula to remove the scallions to a bowl, add the noodles to the scallion oil remaining in the hot wok, sprinkle generously with soy sauce, and add about a tablespoon each of hot oil and goop. Fry vigorously for several minutes, adding more soy as needed and turning rather delicately with a spatula so as not to cut up the noodles. When done to your taste (I like mine a bit browned and crisp in spots,) serve up and pile the roasted green onions on top. The diner stirs them in and adds more soy sauce if desired.

As you can imagine, this is a wonderfully improvisational dish. Use what you have. If the only pasta you have in the house is dried spaghetti, cook that and use it; you can bet that a provident Chinese grandmother would do the same if that’s what she had to work with. Stir-fried shitake mushrooms are terrific fried in with the noodles. Slivers of egg cake (upcoming post) can be fried in. Finely sliced kale or chard can be fried a few minutes in the scallion oil before the noodles are added. Other vegetables, appropriately cooked, find a wonderful home here. The roasted scallion topping is good on fried rice or on wok-fried eggs or, for that matter, regular fried or scrambled eggs or on any rather plain vegetable dish. If you don’t have green onions but do have young tender green garlic, use that instead, for a different but equally good flavor. If using green garlic I prefer fine cross sections to lengthwise slivers, to avoid any stringiness in the green leaves.  Have fun and enjoy the thrill of feeling frugal while really enjoying yourself. There is a lot of tragedy in the world right now, but no harm in lifting yourself above grim reality for an hour or two.

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