Ants climbing a tree

Ants climbing a tree is one of those Chinese dishes for which I have any number of recipes but have never gotten around to making. I finally decided to give it a whirl, using the recipe in Fuchsia Dunlop's Land of Plenty. I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to make, so a week or so later, I made a variation of it which I liked even better.

The method is simple, one of those methods that can easily be adapted to other ingredients once you've mastered it. Essentially, this dish is a noodle dish: rice noodles garnished with some ground meat and some sauce. That's it. It's the epitome of Asian noodle dishes where the meat is a seasoning, not the main ingredient.

Dunlop's version uses thin bean thread noodles (often labelled as "vermicelli") and ground pork. Soak the noodles in hot water for about 15 minutes while you season a quarter pound of ground pork with some salt and a teaspoon of Shao Xing rice wine. The meat marinates briefly as the noodles soften. Dunlop calls for a quarter pound of the noodles but I just used a prepackaged bundle of them; you can often buy bean thread noodles in bags containing several of these coiled bundles. As a result, my ants (ground meat) were probably undersupplied in the tree (noodle) department, but it seemed to work anyhow.

Drain your noodles and stir-fry the ground meat until it is browned in some peanut oil and a teaspoon of Chinese light soy sauce. Add 1 1/2 tablespoons of hot bean paste and continue to stir-fry until the aroma of the bean paste is evident. Then add 1 2/3 cups of chicken stock and the noodles to the meat and sauce. Add half a teaspoon of Chinese dark soy sauce, season to taste with Chinese light soy sauce and salt, and bring to a boil.

Chicken stock digression: I used homemade Chinese chicken stock for this dish and it added a lot to the end result. I follow Bruce Cost's recipe from Asian Ingredients, which is extremely simple. I like to add a lot of ginger to my chicken stock and I was happy to find that the ginger flavor came through in the completed stir-fry, not overwhelmingly but as a warm undertone. I should also note that I used 2 cups of stock (I freeze my stock in 1 cup amounts, so it was more convenient that way) but since the liquid is cooked down at the end, it doesn't matter.

Once the ingredients are boiling, let simmer until the liquid has been absorbed by the other ingredients. Garnish with scallions and serve. The result is a spicy, intensely-flavored bunch of noodles with bits of ground meat scattered throughout.

When I returned to this recipe for the second time, I decided to change it up a bit. I followed the essential method given above, but I used wider rice noodles rather than bean thread noodles, and I substituted hoisin sauce (Koon Chun Sauce Factory brand) for the hot bean paste. I found that I liked this version even better; the combination of the hoisin sauce and the homemade chicken stock led to a very savory but not overly hot sauce, and the rice noodles sopped up the sauce and became extremely savory themselves.

In the end, it took me too long to get around to making ants climbing a tree, but now it is sure to become one of my go-to recipe models.

Cooking disaster: fresh lo mein noodles

It's a long story, a long and incoherent story. You really don't need to know all of it. Suffice it to say, last night I tried cooking a dish with fresh lo mein noodles. The dish, coincidentally enough, was pork lo mein.

My main problem, probably, was that I've never cooked with fresh pasta before (though I love pasta and cook it often). Having obtained a likely-looking package of noodles labeled lo mein from the refrigerator case of the Asian supermarket, I proceeded to treat them as I would any package of dried noodles: toss into boiling water and move on with the rest of the dish.

What went into the boiling water was a chunk of relatively firm, brownish, thin noodles. What came out was something akin to an omelette gone horribly wrong; eggy, sticky, with threads of (I guess egg) that brought mozzarella cheese to mind. Not good. Very not good. Not in flavor, so much, but in consistency.

I tried to delude myself that if I had spritzed the noodles with cold water while they were sitting in the colander, all would be well. As I worked on the leftovers today at lunch, I became more skeptical about that. The pork was good (if still a little tough, but that's another post). The shiitake mushrooms and scallions were good (though maybe I'd been a little too enthusiastic on the amount of the scallions). But the gluey disaster that had been the noodles kept giving. Not inedible, just very sticky and not what one would expect from any stripe of pasta or noodles.

Clearly, working with fresh pasta (should I attempt to do it again) will be a work in progress.

Back in the kitchen

One of the reasons I started this blog was to keep notes on my various culinary efforts. Despite the recent hiatus in posting here, I haven't stopped cooking, but I've also grown to realize that I miss being able to refer to those notes. So here I am again.

Another thing that's been going on lately is more non-Asian cooking. For example, a few nights ago, I wanted something quick and easy, but something more than a packaged meal. It finally dawned on me that I could toss together some "Pasta Alla Gricia" from Mark Bittman's The Minimalist Cooks Dinner. Just brown some chopped bacon in olive oil (I didn't have pancetta on hand), reserve the bacon and its juices, cook your pasta (again, capellini was what I had on hand, so that's what got used). When the pasta's done, add the bacon and juices plus grated Pecorino Romano cheese. The result is fast, tasty and gives the pleasure of cooking your own food without a lot of work.

Not that I've turned my back on cooking Asian food, by any means. I've been enjoying reading and cooking from Fuchsia Dunlop's Land of Plenty and Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook. That last dish I tried was from Land of Plenty, namely "Chicken with Chiles." I made a few changes in the recipe, most notably skipping the initial velveting step and treating it as a straight stir-fry.

Aromatics are important in this dish; it calls for dried red chiles, garlic, ginger, Sichuan pepper and scallions. Of course, I only have ground Sichuan pepper, so that burned when it hit the hot oil (whole peppercorns are preferred). None of these seasonings are meant to be eaten; they're there to flavor the oil. Again, I kept the pan too hot, so there was little oil to be had by the end of the proceedings. I had a cup of chicken broth on hand, though the recipe doesn't call for it, so to keep the pan from drying out, I made sort of a pan sauce from the chicken marinade (dark and light soy sauce, Shao Xing rice wine and salt) and the broth. In the end, the chicken meat had complicated spicy flavors, very intense but still a light meal. Serving this over a lot of white rice would be a good idea.

Twice-cooked pork

The classic dish of China's Sichuan province, according to Fuchsia Dunlop, is twice-cooked pork. Like any other widely-regarded and cooked meal, there are many different variations on the recipe. The basic plan is to parboil pork belly then stir-fry it with sauce and vegetables.

I tried Dunlop's version of this dish and have been eating leftovers from it since then. The final result was a little too oily for my taste (but when you're dealing with pork belly, maybe that's par for the course). No, wait, scratch that last parenthetical comment: braising pork belly for Japanese chashu does not lead to a greasy result. Hmm.

Boiling the pork, then stir-frying it, distills the essence of porkiness. It also leads to a rather chewy result. This is not normally a problem, but when one is trying to have a quick birding meal (and one's compatriot has already finished his sandwich), chewy is not a good thing. Duly noted.

On the other hand, the sauce was divine. Dunlop recommends 1 1/2 tablespoons of hot bean paste, 1 1/2 teaspoons of regular Sichuan bean paste (made with broad beans, aka fava beans, rather than soybeans) and 2 teaspoons of fermented black beans. I'll have more to say on the bean pastes in another post, but the result for this dish was deep and savory. I liked the sauce to the point that I would happily make it for some other application, but then it might be missing the extra dimension of rendered pork belly fat. C'est la vie.

Unrelated footnote: the leftovers made lunch while The Lurker and I were birding around Cape May County, but dinner led us to Applebee's, a chain we haven't visited in some time. We both had burgers and although the server told us that our burgers were going to be better done than not (i.e., no pink), the resulting burgers were very good (even for a medium rare fan like The Lurker). The char was terrific and the flavor equally so. My burger was a "Bruschetta Burger," and it turns out that putting some diced tomato, basil, garlic and mozzarella on a good burger makes a very nice entree. The rosemary-seasoned fries were just a plus.

Serious crunch

I've finally succumbed to the Fuschia Dunlop movement. After hearing uniform praise for her books, and upon the occasion of the publication of her latest (Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, which treats Hunanese cooking), I finally bought both RCC and her first book, Land of Plenty (that takes on Sichuanese cooking).

(I apologize for the length of that last sentence. The offender will be dealt with.)

Always one to start at the beginning and work through to the end, I began reading Land of Plenty. As I read, I recognized one of the field marks of a new favorite cookbook: I found myself thinking, "That sounds good," or "That wouldn't be hard to make," as I paged through the recipes. The first one that got the nod was "Pork Slices with Black Cloud Ear Fungus." This is a stir-fry combining marinated pork, cloud ears, celery and chiles.

The marinade worried me, because the version that uses cornstarch calls for six teaspoons of cornstarch along with two tablespoons of water and a teaspoon of Shao Xing rice wine. (There's also a half teaspoon of salt involved.) This meant that the marinade was more viscous than liquid, but I dutifully lathered it over the pork slices as instructed. I didn't have Sichuan pickled chiles on hand, so I substituted some of the serrano chile pepper puree from Suzie Hot Sauce. I also substituted homemade turkey stock for the suggested chicken stock.

I needn't have worried, because the stir-fry cooked up just fine. The pork gets stir-fried first in a third of a cup of peanut oil, then the excess oil is poured off to leave about two or three tablespoons, the usual amount for a stir-fry. Then add chopped ginger, chopped garlic and the Sichuan pickled chiles (if you have them) and stir-fry briefly until they become aromatic. Now the sliced scallions, chopped cloud ears and sliced celery go in, also to be stir-fried briefly. The final step is the addition of the sauce which is based on a quarter of a cup of chicken stock, with a quarter of a teaspoon salt, an eighth of a teaspoon ground pepper and one and an eighth teaspoons of cornstarch (three-quarters of a teaspoon of potato flour, which Dunlop frequently uses in her recipes). Heat through and serve at once.

Cloud ears are essentially flavorless, but they have a very crunchy texture, and their black color can add a dramatic accent to a plate. When combined with the sliced celery, also a crunchy ingredient, it gives this stir-fry a very crunchy quality indeed. This contrasts with the moist morsels of pork. The savory sauce just ties the whole thing together. I was very impressed with the ease with which this dish cooked up, and I also enjoyed a new combination of ingredients for me. If this is any indication, I'm going to enjoy cooking from this cookbook quite a bit.

Char siu

Char siu is Chinese marinated and roasted pork. It's traditionally considered to be something that you buy rather than making at home, because few people in China had ovens. When I'm in the corner of the Asian supermarket that is near the lunch counter, the tempting aroma of char siu is overwhelming.

Marnie Henricksson has a recipe she calls "Chinese Roast Pork Tenderloin" in Everyday Asian. The last time I read through the cookbook, it caught my eye.

The dish starts with a marinade. The ingredients are a third of a cup each of hoisin sauce, rice wine and soy sauce; a tablespoon of ketchup; two minced garlic cloves; and two tablespoons of light brown sugar (I used palm sugar). Henricksson recommends marinating the pork for one to three hours, but I let it go overnight.

In a 400 F oven, bake the tenderloin for 20 minutes, while boiling and slightly reducing the marinade on the stovetop. Remove the meat from the oven, baste, then return it to the oven for 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the thickness of the meat. Since I was using a relatively small hunk of boneless country ribs, I let it go for 10 minutes. The key is to let it go until it has a deep red color and some toasty browned bits. Simmer the remaining sauce for three minutes and let the meat rest for five minnutes before slicing.

Since my boneless country ribs were presliced, the meat dried out more than it would had the meat been in one unsliced chunk. That was a bit disappointing. However, the sauce was a terrific smoky barbecue type sauce, the kind of thing I'd happily slather on grilled meat (assuming I lived in a place where I was allowed to grill). The sauce was rather garlicky, too; the bits of minced garlic clung to the sides of the meat and imparted their toasted flavor to the dish. Not at all bad, but a little bit goes a long way. No wonder this meat is used to pep up flavors in Chinese cooking.

Rejiggered Sichuan spaghetti

Sometimes laziness has a payoff. I've been cooking Sichuan spaghetti for a while, and pretty much sticking to the original recipe from Bruce Cost's Asian Ingredients. But the other night, when I cooked dinner later than normal, I left a few of the extras out and wound up liking it even better.

All I did was stir-fry some ground pork in peanut oil until it changed color, then added four tablespoons of Lan Chi's Soy Bean Sauce with Chili and stir-fried some more. When done, I dumped it over some Chinese egg noodles. No extra chopped ginger or scallions, no sugar added to cut the hot sauce, no sesame oil tossed with the noodles, nothing.

This minimalist presentation threw the spotlight onto the meat and the hot bean sauce, and both were up to the challenge. In particular, this meal provided an opportunity to enjoy the complexity and depth of the sauce. The earthy flavor had a sort of wininess to it; the fermented beans were oddly reminiscent of not-too-sweet chocolate. Of course, it was lip-tingling hot as well. It was a rich savory meal that prospered, rather than wilted, from cutting out some of the extra ingredients. It was even better the next day after sitting in the fridge.

Smug about stew

The other day, when I was making oxtail stew, it was a warm sunny spring day. It was the sort of day when one questions whether stew is necessary at all. After all, stew and warm weather are not known as one of the great "perfect together" combinations.

Today started sunny but cool, clouded up, and now is raw, rainy and brisk. Now I can reheat my stew leftovers and feel downright smug. Ah, spring.

Asian telephone: third call

Time for another round of my neglected game of Asian telephone. This time, the carryover ingredient from round two was sesame oil, and I went from Singapore to China. Thanks to Ken Hom's Hot Wok, I threw together a hot stir-fry he calls "Stir-Fried Garlic Pork."

Want heat? You've got garlic, you've got hot bean sauce, you've got scallions. Together, they ramped the dish up to the point that I had flashbacks to the last time I had steak sha zha jiang. The heat was raw and garlicky, like Chinese barbecue sauce. Whew.

First you slice up some pork and marinate it in a combination of one tablespoon Shao Xing rice wine, two teaspoons sesame oil and one teaspoon cornstarch. The recommended soaking time is 20 minutes, but I ended up letting it go overnight. Hom's original recipe has a step where the pork is stir-fried before the other ingredients and removed from the wok, but I omitted that. I just stir-fried three cloves of garlic, three chopped scallions and two teaspoons hot bean sauce in peanut oil for about 30 seconds. Then I added the pork and marinade, one tablespoon each of light soy, water and sesame oil; and one teaspoon each of Shao Xing wine and sugar. This I cooked for five or so minutes, then I poured it onto some leftover jasmine rice. Whew. Hot hot hot hot hot. But not in a bad way.

So, the potential ingredients for the next Asian telephone call are garlic, Chinese hot bean sauce, scallions, pork, Shao Xing rice wine and Chinese light soy sauce.

Chicken stock

I get the impression that every proper cook has homemade from scratch stock of various kinds. At least, many cookbooks give that impression. You're just not a real cook if you don't make your own stock.

I've had this pile of chicken bones and giblets accumulating in the freezer for quite a while, so yesterday I finally decided that it was high time to make some stock. I used Bruce Cost's recipe from Asian Ingredients. The big attraction of that recipe was that it isn't as specific as some other stock recipes. It's all very well to call for three pounds of chicken bones, but I don't have a scale, and I'm not getting one any time soon.

I tossed the bones, necks, feet, heads and thighs into my pot and covered with water. I added some ginger slices, brought to a boil, then simmered for four hours. The aroma of the simmering stock was maddening. Somehow I managed to survive without going completely nuts.

Today I used some of the stock for chicken noodle soup (with wide Chinese noodles). For some reason, I frequently get indigestion from normal (i.e., store-bought) chicken broth. This soup, however, was fine, and gave me no digestive difficulties at all. It needed some seasonings to liven it up, perhaps, but apart from that it was fine.

One thing I wonder about is the cloudy appearance of the stock. I know that Chinese banquet-style stock is clear, and I wasn't trying for that. But the cloudiness bothers me. I suspect that means there's a problem with the broth, or maybe I'm just being paranoid. Further research is definitely needed.

In other news, yesterday I noticed some green threadlike sprouts in the spinach pot. It looks like the scallions are beginning to make themselves known.

This week's master sauce

This post goes back to Tuesday night. Since it was time for the master sauce's weekly refresher and I had some chicken thighs, I decided to combine the two for a light dinner. It worked out well. The surface of the cooked thighs was a uniform brown color, but since these were skinless thighs, I don't know if that has the same significance that it does when cooking a chicken with skin on in master sauce.

Master sauce

Tonight was uneventful. I went the spaghetti route again, since I didn’t have any bright ideas for reclaiming the remains of the lumpy mashed potatoes from yesterday. I suppose I should’ve put them in the blender and reheated them. Maybe tomorrow.

Tonight I boiled the master sauce and replenished it. I kept to the original proportions, despite my brave words about reducing the mushroom soy quotient. I did use palm sugar instead of refined sugar.

While poking around in the fridge tonight, I stumbled upon some green beans. I should dig up a recipe for green beans amandine or something like that so I can use them up. I’ve got the almonds.

Sauced

After losing a couple of days due to birding, ridiculously long baseball games and a relative lack of exciting food adventures, I'm back. Yesterday I tried making Maki's essence of Japanese flavor in a bottle. After combining the ingredients, I reduced them down a little more than the recipe intended (oops), so I have an extremely concentrated form of it. Better luck next time, but in the meantime I can use what I have. The kitchen smelled really good while it was cooking, too.

While in a sauce vein, I should note that Sunday night I did the weekly boiling of the master sauce. It's starting to get a little intense in flavor, so I probably need to cook something else in it and replenish the ingredients. I just started it a couple of weeks ago. I used the "Looing Sauce" recipe in the late lamented Frugal Gourmet's The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Three Ancient Cuisines. That recipe uses both light soy and mushroom soy, which makes a very rich sauce - a little too rich, I think. As I keep the master sauce going, I'll probably tweak it by increasing the amount of light soy when I replenish it.