My son said, “I don’t like cabbage.” I said, “It’s not cabbage, it’s slaw.”
I like traditional cole slaw but can only eat so much of it. I don’t like cooked cabbage. I’ve been getting cabbage from my CSA so I’ve been experimenting. When I decided to make chicken with the honey-soy glaze I found a while back I decided to make a chinese cabbage salad.
We all loved it, my son had 2 helpings and I had the leftovers the next day for lunch and it was even better!
5T Usukuchi soy sauce
3T Seasoned rice vinegar
1 garlic clove, grated
1 inch ginger, grated
2T sesame oil
1/4 c canola oil
2c cabbage, shredded
1 sweet onion, thinly sliced
Toss everything together in a bowl or bag and let it sit for at least an hour. Strain off the liquid and eat!
I thought this recipe from Cooking.com’s newsletter looked tasty, kid-friendly and easy. Well, this was a miss. The broth had too much sugar in it. I made the rookie mistake of not tasting the broth before cooking the chicken in it (or even before ladling it into the bowls). I ate it but it wasn’t great. I added soy sauce to it but it was still cloyingly sweet.
As a side project, inspired by Brooke’s misstep in the Top Chef finale when she served chicken wings, I thought they looked really good. I never, ever cook the chicken wings. I think there’s too little meat to warrant attention. But for the rice bowl I only needed the breast meat, I froze the legs for later and I will make stock from the back. That left these little wings. I was only cooking for my son and I last night so I cut off the wing tips, cut each wing into two pieces and had 4 little bits to cook up for the two of us.
I went to Epicurious to figure out how I wanted to do these and found this great and easy marinade for a honey-soy glaze. Too bad I only had 2 wings to work with! These were sooooo much better than the rice bowl and we only got two little pieces each!
I will start saving my wings and make this one again. Finally, something that makes them worth keeping!
For once I pretty much followed the recipe. This one was from Food & Wine magazine’s recipe of the day newsletter: Crispy Tofu with Noodles. We ate ramen three times over the long weekend. I was a bit porked out. I had veggie tacos for lunch and wanted more vegetarian fare for dinner so it was good timing for this recipe!
I also happened to have a couple of packages of fresh udon in the fridge. I’m not a big fan of udon soup, I like skinnier noodles in broth. This was a great way to use up those noodles.
I used shiitakes and king trumpets for the mushrooms. I followed the recipe for the whole dish but at the end I tossed in pea shoots off the heat so they just wilted from the heat of the dish. I also drizzled chili oil and a little soy sauce on right before serving.
This was a great dish. My 8 year old gobbled up the tofu, I’ll make that for him as a snack. It felt healthy without being bland.
I picked up Andrea Nguyen’s Asian Dumplings cookbook pretty much on a whim a few months ago. We made way too many dumplings and stuffed ourselves (and our neighbors) silly. Not long after that I saw that she was teaching a dumpling class at Love Apple Farm and had to sign up!
This has been an interesting month for us. My husband got in a motorcycle accident at the end of September (not his fault, driver turned in front of him) and, although he will be fine, crushed his foot badly and has been bedridden for 4 weeks (with at least 2 to go) as it heals. I have been the 24-7 nurse for all the time he’s been home from the hospital…3 weeks now. I lucked out that my mother-in-law came to help out the weekend that this class was scheduled so I got to go do something fun and rejuvenate myself for a few hours. Nothing makes you feel better than mushing together ground pork with wonderful sauces by hand and then getting to gorge on dumplings!
Soooo, we all split into groups around 4 tables and started chopping, mixing, rolling and filling! There were pork, veggie and shrimp dumplings, momos, baked buns and sauces to be made!
It was a lot of work and a lot of fun. We spent the first 3 hours prepping the ingredients and the last hour rolling and filling the dumplings that we then moved into the steamer, the pan for frying or the oven for baking. The results were, across the board, fantastic. From potstickers to honey buns, we ate them all and I even snuck a bao home for hubby to cheer him up a little.
Before we knew it the four hours had passed and we were all sated and sweaty. It was work to crank out what in the end was hundreds of dumplings and buns and with the steamers going, it was like a sauna in there!
I bought another book of Andrea’s, stole my honey bun for my honey, and headed home to return to nursing duty. I haven’t gotten to make anything from the dumplings cookbook since the kitchen remodel. Now that I’m actually back in a functioning kitchen (pictures and article about that to come soon!) I can get back to the more complicated dishes like ramen and dumplings!
We drove up to San Francisco and met our friends at the Dumpling King for lunch. They’ve been going there for years, we’d never been. Oddly, we’d never been out for dumplings in San Francisco. Only in Sydney. Yes, we travel 7000 miles for Din Tai Fung. This was so much more convenient! ;-)
The dumplings arrive!
Needless to say, we ordered A LOT of food. I think the main mistakes were when our friends would add “Actually, make it two of those.” and we did. Steamers arrived….more steamers arrived…plates arrived…more plates arrived. We were already cramped having convinced the waiter that we were fine at a table for 4 even though there were 6 of us (2 kids). We were too hungry to wait for another table to open up!
Then more dumplings arrive….
And the food kept coming. We only ordered dumplings or variations of dumplings although they had many more options on the menu. There are no dumplings in Santa Cruz aside from the one time we made them a few months ago (pre kitchen remodel hell). We were going to eat every kind of dumpling they offered. And we did…except we couldn’t finish!
I am completely destroyed
There were just a few leftovers…well, a whole meal really that our friends took home since we were staying in the city for the night. I ate more than I thought I could swallow. I had a few chips for dinner that night, I was still so full!
We had a few leftovers
When I arrived I tweeted that we were waiting at Dumpling King and I got a message from @chezpim asking me to get her dumplings from Kingdom of Dumpling a few blocks away. I’m thinking our next dumpling pilgrimage will be to the Kingdom and not just to the King. I very much enjoyed the meal but it wasn’t Din Tai Fung. Maybe Kingdom of Dumpling is and I don’t have to yearn for dumplings between trips to Sydney.
If you’ve never rolled your own sushi, WHY NOT!? So what if it’s ugly. So what if it falls apart. It’s fun and so much cheaper.
One of my son’s favorite books when he was a baby was First Book of Sushi. Every time he orders ikura, one of the lines goes through my head, “Ikura squishy salmon roe like dabby dots of jelly. Salty on my lips and yummy in my belly”
I could probably quote the whole book to be honest, we read it multiple times a day.
We were in Bookshop Santa Cruz on Sunday … after coming back downtown to pick up our car we’d left overnight after St. Patrick’s Day celebrations … and I can’t not browse the cookbook section. My husband came up behind me and handed me Asian Dumplings by Andrea Nguyen and all I said was, “Of course!” I decided that cookbook would bring us dinner that night. Slightly bad planning on my part since we should have started the dough about 2 hours earlier and the marinade the night before. But we did it anyway.
My husband was in charge of dough…Dough and I aren’t very good friends. Especially if the dough involves yeast…or rolling…especially both. So I got started on the Char Siu Pork and the pork filling for the dumplings.
I highly recommend getting this cookbook if you have any desire to make anything dumpling-like. I don’t follow recipes often anymore but I needed to in this case and for having never made dumplings before, Andrea made this really easy!
They weren’t the prettiest and the dough was a little thicker than it should have been. Next time I’ll roll it one more pasta-roller setting down. I went down to a 5 on my KitchenAid roller but I think I’d go to 6 next time.
The pork buns turned out AMAZING!!!! I, regrettably, ate 3…then finished half of my son’s he didn’t eat. I could not move, I was so stuffed. The pork filling was so delicious though, I couldn’t stop. Anytime I stay in San Francisco, I wander over to the Ferry Building to get a pork bun (ok two pork buns) for breakfast at Out the Door. I crave them. Now I can make them!
I think I’ll need to practice these very often…you know, to get them perfect, not because I’m a dumpling addict. I’m not. I can quit any time. I don’t think about Din Tai Fung in Sydney daily. I swear. I won’t sleep with this cookbook under my pillow either. Really.
I was torn between two dishes for dinner. I wanted soba noodle soup but I had all these wonderful CSA veggies to use. So I decided to try introducing two recipes to one another. Turns out they should definitely be friends! I have some of the greens-beef mixture left over today which I’m going to have over rice for lunch. I didn’t, however, take a picture of any of this…it smelled so good I just devoured it!
When I make it again, I’ll try to remember to take one and add it here.
Before you start anything else, get your water going for soba noodles and your dashi simmering.
Saute spring onions, ginger, chilis, garlic, soy sauce and fish sauce until onions start to soften. Add bok choy and cilantro. Add water if soy or fish sauce is getting too sticky in the pan. When everything is desired consistency, add beef and cook until just under your preferred doneness (you will be putting hot broth on this so it will cook a little more).
Remove greens and meat from pan, leaving liquid to reduce.
Put soba noodles in a bowl, add a heaping pile of beef-green concoction, spoon some of the reduction on top to add even more flavor, top with chopped green onions and pour dashi over all that.
Quick Notes
Try not to drool in the bowl–especially if you’re serving others.
One night I opened the fridge to find a wilted (but not rotten) 1/2 bunch of cilantro, some ginger and not much else. I had a rib-eye in the freezer. I always have garlic, shallots, onions in the drawer and chiles from my dad’s garden in the freezer. I threw what I had in the food processor and made this dish that turned out FREAKING amazing. Unfortunately, I didn’t write down what I did.
That’s why I have this site, if I didn’t post my recipes, I could never reproduce anything I cook! So, I tried to remember what I did. And I elaborated on it with the extra items in my fridge (greens and mushrooms). It, once again, was so delish. And I took notes. Having totally improvised this though, I left it open to interpretation with the recipe title.
Recipe: Asian Beef with Stuff
Ingredients
Marinade/Sauce:
2T soy sauce
2T fish sauce
3T canola oil
Handful of cilantro (stems and all)
2t peppercorns
3 cloves garlic
1T brown sugar
2 inches ginger (peeled and roughly chopped)
2-3 small chiles
~1lb of your favorite cut of beef (I usually use rib eye)
Big pile of saute greens
1 c. chopped shiitakes
2 shallots thinly sliced
Instructions
Put all the marinade ingredients in a food processor or blender. Zap until it’s a soupy paste. Pour that over your steak(s). Let that sit for as long as you have. In the fridge if you have a long time. If I have an hour or less, I let it sit on the counter, covered.
Once you’re ready to cook, shake some of the marinade off the steak(s) and cook them on the stovetop until it’s the desired doneness. I like mine still mooing. Remove the steak and let it rest on a cutting board.
Add shiitakes and greens to the pan with a little water, if needed, to loosen the crusty steak-bits. Cook for a couple of minutes then pour in the remaining marinade. Toss once in a while until mushrooms and greens are cooked.
Remove mushrooms and greens from the pan, squeezing them with tongs or slotted spoon to remove as much of the liquid/sauce as you can. Set aside.
Add sliced shallots to pan and reduce the remaining sauce.
When it’s the sauce syrupy and, well, saucy, thinly slice your steak and toss it back into the sauce.
To serve, put a mound of rice, a scoop of greens/mushrooms and top with the beef.
Quick Notes
I can’t decide if the shiitakes worked or not. Try it both ways and let me know!
