A Food Blur

The last couple of weeks have been a total blur. Crazy business last week and playing catch up this week. Working on a new restaurant project. Dealing with upcoming fall winery catering. Working through the details for a bunch of big parties over the next few weeks. It's all enough to drive a person crazy. Pardon me if I don't remember when or if we ate any of the following dishes over the past couple of weeks. Call me surprised that I had any energy at all to cook. It all ran out last night. With a belly full of cheeseburger, I passed out at 8pm and didn't budge until 6am. Be thankful for business, I have to keep reminding myself, and also that not only on "Game of Thrones" is winter coming.

Real Pho, No Garnish

I vaguely recall that I made pho on a Monday when I had all afternoon to make the broth in which to quickly cook some fresh rice noodles. The broth was classical with beef bones, charred ginger, charred onion, and a hint of spice, right up until the end when I put a handful of fresh kaffir lime leaves in the broth to give it a haunting quality. This broth was so outstanding that it did not need any garnishes to get in the way.

Strozzapreti with Fresh Tomatoes, Butter, and Garlic

This was a quick Sunday night supper. I sweated some slivered garlic in butter and tossed in a bunch of peeled and seeded tomatoes for the world's quickest pasta. The days for fresh tomatoes are winding down quickly. Gorge now.

Fried Rice

Another quick meal, a clean out the refrigerator meal. Scrounging in the fridge yielded lop cheung, green onions, a rough-looking carrot, cilantro stems, and red and orange peppers. I make my fried rice Thai style with white pepper and fish sauce. A little prep aside, this is an effortless meal and a great way to use up all those odds and ends in the fridge.



Cheeseburger!

And the coma-inducing cheeseburger. Slow night last night and I got home early enough for dinner. Ann wanted Five Guys. Ed doesn't like their burgers. We compromised. Ann picked up some burger, cheese, buns, and chips at the grocery on the way home. I got there a few minutes later and prepped all the toppings. A couple of glasses of wine later, outside to the grill, where I grilled what is quite possibly the last burger of the year, for it is getting too dark too early from here on out.

This burger photo pleases me. This is a cheeseburger in its natural habitat, hot, on a plate, cheese sliding off the side, lopsided, lid all smashed because the package got manhandled on the way home, getting ready to get slammed. Have you ever seen professionally shot burgers, with the carefully pinned on lettuce, the cheese that was hit with the blowtorch, perfectly lit so there's not a shadow anywhere, condiments artfully put on with a squeeze bottle and a Q-tip? Those burgers are like women with the big fake boobs: they don't look real because they aren't. This, friends, you know is a real burger. And it was awesome, I assure you.

Hot and Sour Chicken Soup

Hot and Sour Chicken Soup

It was about 25 years ago in San Francisco's Chinatown that I discovered that hot and sour soup could really be a thing of beauty. I was splitting my time between Virginia and a residential hotel in Sunnyvale, down the 101 from San Francisco and I was spending most of my free time between Napa/Sonoma and Chinatown, learning both wine and Chinese food. This was back in the day before most of the good Chinese food had fled the city.

I was already a disciple of Henry Chung, at whose Kearny Street hole in the wall I was a frequent visitor before the scary 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake shuttered it for good. The storefront was tiny: five or six tables and a counter, my haunt, where I could watch the ladies making the dishes. What amazing smoked ham and scallion cakes came out of that kitchen! Thanks to the Chung family's help and that of many other generous souls in Chinatown, I was just learning how amazing real Chinese food could be and I was cooking a lot of it back at home in Virginia, learning the ingredients, the techniques, and the metaphors. And already I knew enough to know that I didn't like hot and sour soup, that insipid gloppy crap that every Americanized Chinese restaurant served.

Once I got invited to a fancy fixed menu dinner at one of the big touristy Chinese restaurants in Chinatown, a place that hole-in-the-wall-spelunker-me would never have entered. One of the early courses in our banquet was a cup of hot and sour soup that blew me away with its rich broth, carefully curated spice, and fresh vegetables. A light went on that evening!

Yesterday was a wan, bleak day. Schools closing right after lunch signaled the coming rain, sleet, and ice and scared off all our lunch and dinner customers, so I decided to take the night off and cook dinner at home. The weather had me thinking soup. I proposed chicken soup to Ann and somehow we arrived at hot and sour chicken soup.

A quick stop at the market yielded some chicken legs, straw mushrooms, pressed tofu, lop cheung, slivered bamboo shoots, and a couple kinds of pickled vegetables. There are two kinds of preserved vegetables at the market of which I am especially fond right now, the one that is mainly stem mustard in chile oil labeled "Tasty Vegetable Good with Meal," and a sweet-and-spicy turnip pickle that is not labeled at all in English.

Ordinarily, I would make a rich pork stock for my soup, but given that this was a spur of the moment dinner, I went with chicken and added sliced pork lop cheung for the pork component. I poached the chicken in water with a splash of soy sauce, ginger, whole garlic, a couple of star anise pods, and a half a cinnamon stick, just enough spice for a background hint and nothing more. Once the chicken was tender, I fished it out and strained the seasonings out of the stock.

Into the stock went dried daylily buds, tree ear and straw mushrooms, tofu, both preserved vegetables, slivered bamboo shoots, and the lop cheung. I'm not a big fan of straw mushrooms, but Annie is and so I added them for her. Next, I picked the chicken and added the meat to the soup and let the whole simmer for about 15 minutes to rehydrate the dried vegetables. At this point, I then started to season, working the balance of sweet (rock sugar), salty (soy sauce), sour (Chinkiang black vinegar), and spicy (ground white pepper).

The very moment I was happy with the seasoning, I swirled in the tiniest amount of cornstarch just to amp the body slightly (something I wouldn't have done with a super-rich pork stock) and served the soup with a scattering of green onions over the top.

This was the soup I was meant to make on this dreary day. Not only was it warm and comforting, but it brought back some great food memories from my days in California, of a time when each new dish was a revelation, a discovery. Those days are mainly long behind me now, but the memories are vibrant still.

Lo Mein

Lo Mein: Wheat Noodles and Vegetables

Our dinner from last evening: very quick and easy. Boiled lo mein noodles tossed with a stir fry of lop cheung, green onions, orange bell peppers, snow peas, ginger, garlic, cilantro, and a really fun little package of sweet and spicy pickled radishes that I picked up at the store. The package wasn't labeled in English at all (and actually isn't legal for sale as it has no ingredients list or nutrition information listed, not that I care).

Phở Gà (Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup)

Tough weekend. I couldn't eat all day Sunday for a minor medical procedure on Monday and after getting out of that, I needed something really comforting to eat. Enter phở gà.

Phở Gà (Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup)

When I make pho, it is typically the more common beef version, but when I am not 100%, chicken suits me (and most of us) better. It was Ann's idea that I make chicken noodle soup: good call!

Here are my tips for making phở gà:

1. Poach the chicken until it is done, remove it from the broth, pick the meat from the bones, and return the bones to the stock to keep enriching it. This way, you achieve both goals: rich broth and tender chicken. Leaving the chicken meat in too long just renders it tough.

2. Char the onion and ginger on the flame for a few minutes before adding to the stock. It adds great depth of flavor.

3. Sweetness is optional. I almost never add sugar to chicken pho. But I often add just a touch of Chinese sausage (lop cheung) to the broth at the last minute. It imparts a certain sweetness. This is certainly non-traditional, but it's my bowl of soup, damn it, and I will cook it the way I want.

4. Have a light hand with the seasonings. To a half gallon of stock, I added four star anise and half a stick of cinnamon for just 20 minutes so that the flavor was there, but really in the background. You want the delicate chicken flavor to come through.

5. Knock yourself out on garnishes. I love pickled mustards stems from China, so I garnish my soup with them, but not with so many that I mask the delicate chicken broth.

6. I don't add either hoisin or sriracha to my bowl with chicken as I would with beef. Again, I want the chicken to be front and center.

A Relaxing Weekend

This past weekend was about feeling good about getting some work done in the yard and then rewarding ourselves by relaxing. Sunday we made a trip to Delaplane Cellars after a morning in the yard. And Monday, after a morning in the yard and a short trip in to work, we ate and sipped wine during the afternoon. I needed a slow leisurely weekend to start to feel good about the yard and to just slow down and enjoy. It was a great weekend!

Relaxing Lunch on the Deck at Delaplane Cellars

Sunday morning started sunny and pleasant but the humidity was up and by 10:30 or so, it seemed like the clouds were building for afternoon thunderstorms. But the nice morning let me get a lot of needed work accomplished in the yard. The younger wisteria are growing like crazy now and need weekly work to train them to our pergola. And since we are gardening on a budget, I was able to transplant a volunteer maple tree and a volunteer crape myrtle from one of the front beds to our property line out back. It felt good to finally get something accomplished in the yard rather than merely trying to recover from the damage from last winter.

In the afternoon, even as the clouds piled up in the sky, we made the quick drive to Delaplane Cellars where we tasted through the current line up and then retired to the deck with a bottle of 2012 Left Bank Bordeaux blend. Left Bank is the blend from the winery's own grapes and though the fruit is very young, it makes for a delicious and easy drinking red.

We saw Jim mowing grass between rows as we lunched and ultimately he and then Betsy joined us out on the patio where we chatted for a couple hours before we had to head home in the late afternoon.The wind got up a couple of times forcing us to furl the umbrellas and we got a few stray raindrops, but it didn't ever amount to enough to force us in. Back home in Winchester on the other side of the Blue Ridge, we saw that it had rained in our absence. Good luck for us!

Monday Lunch: Chipotle Black Bean and Mango Tacos

I worked hard all last week to keep my Monday workload to a minimum and that let me work a couple more hours in the yard before heading in to work to finish up my Monday chores. On the way home, I stopped at the market and grabbed some things for lunch and dinner. Lunch, out on the patio under the umbrella, was these black bean and mango tacos that took all of five minutes to put together from canned black beans, a mango, a bunch of cilantro, a bunch of green onions, and a can of chipotle salsa.

Shrimp, Lop Cheung, and Vegetable Lettuce Wraps

Dinner was another outdoor affair, this time, lettuce wraps with a dipping sauce. For the dipping sauce, I used the white parts of the green onions and the stems of the cilantro from lunch, along with garlic, sambal oelek, lime juice, fish sauce, and agave nectar just to take the edge off the lime.

I threw together a quick stir fry of lop cheung, tiny shrimp, sugar snaps, lime leaves (discarded before we ate), garlic, white pepper and fish sauce. This I mixed with the raw ingredients: pineapple, roasted peanuts, fresh tomato, orange sweet pepper, and lots of Thai basil. As you can see in the photo, the wraps are mostly vegetables with a tiny bit of shrimp and sausage for flavor.

What a Great Day!

Ginger Chicken Soup with Lop Cheung and Gai Lan

Yesterday was supposed to be a beautiful day (being April 7) but it was not. It was a chilly 50 degrees and raining all day. My joints were aching. That beautiful Thai Beef Salad I was going to make for dinner? Yeah. No.

Who says the weather doesn't influence how we eat? Yesterday was a soup day if I have ever seen a soup day. And so it didn't take very long for us to abandon the beef salad in favor of a big bowl of soup.

Ginger Chicken Soup with Lop Cheung and Gai Lan

A big family pack of piernas de pollo (all the meat is labeled in Spanish at my preferred market), a pound of ginger, a bunch of gai lan (Chinese broccoli), a pound of udon, a small pack of lop cheung, a bunch of green onions, a bunch of cilantro, and a little bit of pickled mustard stems followed me home from the market.

The soup couldn't be any simpler to make. Into the bottom of the pot went about 8 crushed garlic cloves, half a bunch of cilantro (whole), the tops of a bunch of green onions, and about six ounces of slabbed ginger. On top went the chicken and all was covered with cold water, brought to a simmer, skimmed from time to time, and left to poach for 3 or 4 hours: we weren't keeping track of time.

At dinner time, I sliced half a lop cheung per person and the bunch of Chinese broccoli. And then dipped the solids out of the soup pot and brought the remaining stock to a rolling boil. The chicken was cooling a bit while I was seasoning the broth with fish sauce, soy sauce, and salt. Into the pot went the sausage, the broccoli stems, and the udon.

Meanwhile, I pulled a bit of chicken and put it into the serving bowls along with the sliced broccoli leaves, pickled mustard stems, and cilantro leaves.

Once the udon were done, I used tongs to take noodles straight from the pot into each bowl and then ladled the boiling broth over the top.

And it just couldn't be any simpler or more flavorful!

Veggies

Veggies with Roast Pork and Lop Cheung

Sometimes I get a real hankering for a big plate of stir-fried vegetables, whatever's on hand. I love vegetables of all kinds and always have. As a kid, I had two rather finicky siblings who didn't like a good number of veg between them, and so I often got double helpings of those things that they wouldn't eat. Score!

Today, we went to the store in anticipation of the snow storm tomorrow and in anticipation of having red-cooked chicken tomorrow night to score some chicken and some rock sugar for the braise. While we were there, we grabbed a can of baby corn, some gai lan (Chinese broccoli), a few hon-shimeji (Beech mushrooms), and a few snow peas to augment what we already had in the refrigerator.

From the refrigerator, I grabbed a lop cheung, a small piece of roasted pork (from the last post), nappa cabbage, cilantro, pickled mustard stems, garlic, and ginger. I had hoped to put in a bit of pressed tofu, but our leftover bit was infected with a yeast and so I decided not to take a chance.

Fifteen minutes of prep et voilà!

High heat is the key to a great stir-fried dish. If you don't have a professional wok and wok burner (I don't and most fire codes prohibit them in residential kitchens and in many restaurant kitchens as well), you need to get a pan really hot and work in batches so that you don't overload your pan. You are looking for the elusive wok hei (breath of the wok) that comes from scorching heat. If you overload your pan, your vegetables steam and don't stir fry at all. A splash of stock or water added once the vegetables begin to brown will flash steam them to a perfect crunchy cooked texture.

My little stir fry here took four batches. I started with the items that wouldn't overcook while waiting for the other batches to get done (corn, lop cheung, pork, Chinese broccoli stems, pickled mustard stems) and ended with the most tender vegetables that would overcook most easily (snow peas, Chinese broccoli blooms, and green onions).

Vegetables to warm a heart!

Roast Pork Soup

What to eat that is filling, warm, comforting, low-carb, and low fat? How about some terrifically delicious soup with roasted pork?

Roast Pork Soup: As Beautiful as it is Delicious!

There are several tricks that we chefs use to make first-rate soups. We start by jamming as much flavor into the soup stock as possible. And then we cook each of the garnishes separately so that they are at the peak of goodness. And everything is assembled at the last second before going to the table to preserve freshness of and prevent muddling of flavors. This soup is an exercise in just that.

Garnishes for the Soup

This soup has both raw and cooked garnishes, which you see in the photo above, staged for cooking. The cooked garnishes are the pork in the foreground and the green plate in the background. The raw garnishes are the cilantro, snow peas, and pickled mustard stems on the right of the photo.

Just before serving dinner, I quickly sautéed the nappa cabbage, shiitakes, carrots, pressed and spiced tofu, lop cheung sausage, and Chinese chives with finely minced ginger and garlic. After just a minute in the pan, I divided these among our deep soup bowls. Over this, I scattered the snow peas and the mustard stems. On top, I placed three small slices each of roast pork and then over all, I ladled on boiling soup stock, garnished with fresh cilantro, and rang the dinner bell.

Stock, the Key to any Great Soup

While I was prepping vegetables, I put together a stock, starting with a base of chicken stock. Into the stock I put several slabs of ginger, six lightly crushed cloves of garlic, a bunch of cilantro stems from last week, the bulb ends of a bunch of green onions from last week, the stems from the shiitake mushrooms, and the pièce de résistance, four or five fresh double kaffir lime leaves. I hadn't planned on adding lime leaves, but when I saw fresh ones in the market, I couldn't resist. Who can resist their unique and haunting citrus flavor? The stock simmered away while we watched a movie.

Hoisin-Agave Roasted Pork Loin

Early on in the afternoon, I rubbed a piece of very lean pork loin with hoisin sauce, agave nectar, and black pepper and let it sit on the counter to warm slightly before cooking. I roasted it at very high temperature for about 25 minutes to an internal temperature of 135F (knowing it would carry through to 145 or slightly higher while cooling).

All these steps and separate cooking or not of garnishes, really, is arguably a lot of fuss for a bowl of soup. But I'm a chef and this is what we do. And the results? You can't argue with them.

A Salad Riff on Shrimp Bánh Mì

Last night for dinner, I had shrimp bánh mì on the brain, but I just wanted everything in the sandwich without the bread, without any mayo, so I came up with a quick salad.

Salad with Fish Sauce-Garlic Shrimp and Lop Cheung

The salad itself is torn butter lettuce, cilantro, and Thai basil from our garden all tossed with a dressing of caramelized sugar, rice vinegar, lime juice, sambal oelek, and fish sauce. This is topped with raw vegetables: julienne of carrot, julienne of sweet peppers, thinly sliced red onion, Mexican Midget and Sun Gold cherry tomatoes, cucumber, and green onions. And then this is topped with a quick sauté of fish sauce-garlic shrimp and lop cheung and the whole is sprinkled with deep-fried shallots. Lime wedges finish the salad.

Mise-en-Place

Ten minutes of prep work after we got home let us have a glass of wine and relax for ninety minutes before three minutes of assembly.

Shrimp in the Marinade

For the two of us, I put six ounces of shrimp in a bowl with lots of chopped garlic, a splash of sambal oelek, and a healthy dose of fish sauce. These guys hung out in the refrigerator until they were ready to go in the pan. I lifted the shrimp and garlic out of the marinade and then put them into a hot pan. Once the shrimp were cooked on one side and flipped, I added the three ounces of sliced lop cheung, and poured the marinade over. Total cooking time, three minutes, if that.

The best part of the whole dinner was cuddling in a chair with Ann and both of us eating the salad right out of the salad bowl while watching a movie! Great dinner!

Note to self: Ann said she wants peanuts in the salad for crunch next time. Can do.

Sesame Udon with Chile Oil, Shrimp, and Lop Cheung

Here's a dead simple and utterly delicious meal from the weekend. Ann spied a dish in a cooking magazine, a dish called something like Sesame Noodles with Chile Oil and Scallions, and she asked me to make that dish, adding lop cheung and shrimp.

Sesame Udon with Chile Oil, Shrimp, and Lop Cheung

I have just turned Ann on to lop cheung in the last few years and she loves it. What's not to love about a bit of porky sweetness in a dish, though? And I know that she likes big thick udon in preference to thinner noodles (and so do I) so I made the dish with Japanese udon rather than thinner Chinese mien.

Ten Ingredients, Ten Minutes!

What I love about this dish, besides the awesome flavor, is that it has 10 ingredients and takes no more than 10 minutes to put on the table. You see the ingredients above. The garnishes are slivered garlic, sliced green onions, peeled shrimp, and sliced lop cheung. The sauce ingredients from left to right: roasted sesame oil, rice vinegar, agave (use any kind of sweetener you like), and tamari (again, use your favorite soy sauce).

The star of the show for me and the tenth ingredient is the chile oil, below, made by pouring some oil into a pan and adding a few tablespoons of chile flakes and heating to just the boil, then turning it off and letting the oil flavor while prepping the rest of the dinner.

Chile Oil

For the dressing for a pound (500g) of noodles, start with 3 tablespoons rice vinegar, 2 tablespoons soy sauce, 1 tablespoon sweetener, 1 tablespoon chile oil, and 1 tablespoon sesame oil.

The assembly of this dish couldn't be simpler: mix the dressing in a big bowl; cook the garlic, shrimp, and lop cheung; refresh the udon in boiling water; mix all the ingredients in the bowl with the dressing and the green onions. Toss and let it stand for a minute. Adjust seasonings to your taste. I wanted more soy and chile oil; Ann wanted more sweetener in hers. We each adjusted our own bowls.

Awesome, easy, ten ingredients and ten minutes!

New Year's Brunch

Damn the dogs! Just damn the dogs!

@#^$&! the bleeping dogs!

Are you kidding? It's 9am on New Year's Day; we got pounded at the restaurant last night; and now, the dogs are racing around the bedroom, bouncing off the bed and the walls, wanting to go pee and eat? Seriously? Weren't they up late with us?

But what are you going to do? We knew the drill when we signed up for dogs. And when you disappear for a minute to go to the bathroom, they greet you like you've been away for years, all waggy and wiggly and so, so damned happy to see you! What are you going to do?

Drag your exhausted ass out of bed and take them out and feed them is what you're going to do. Dog people will get this.

So we were up bright and early, long before we wanted to be, and by late morning, even after a midnight supper the night before, we found ourselves hungry and wanting something brunchy for breakfast.

Sausage, Jalapeño, and Cheese Frittata

I decided on a clean-out-the-refrigerator frittata. Frittatas, baked egg omelettes, are perfect receptacles for whatever needs using in the refrigerator. I found eggs, a couple links of sausage (lop cheung, though I would have preferred chorizo), a jalapeno, garlic, some grated cheese, a little mangy cilantro, and that, my friends, is enough for a feast.

And while I was putting it together, I might have accidentally slipped those pesky dogs a little cheese. Dog people will get this.

Chow Mein

Monday a week ago (I'm getting behind in posting) Ann really wanted "those noodles you make." Those noodles I make are classic chow mein, fried noodles. First you fry a pound of fresh wheat noodles on both sides:

Fry Noodles on Both Sides, Tossing to Flip

and then you top them with something delicious. In this case, a stir fry of snow peas, lop cheung, pressed tofu, dried daylily buds, tree ear mushrooms, preserved vegetable (pickled mustard stems, zha cai), garlic chives, and lots of ginger and garlic.

Chow Mein: a Thing of Beauty

If you've seen a lot of chow mein on this blog, it's because we love it, it's easy to do, and there's never a problem getting Carter to eat it.

Shrimp, Snow Pea and Lop Cheung Chow Mein

Shrimp, Snow Pea, and Lop Cheung Chow Mein

What to make for dinner isn't usually hard for me to figure out, but in the last few days, I just haven't had the cravings that send me in a particular direction. Nor has Ann. And so it was that I found myself at FoodMaxx yesterday before coming home, wandering the store quite aimlessly trying to figure something out. I know the guys stocking the produce were wondering why I, who generally gets in and gets out in 10 minutes, was wandering back and forth for 45 minutes.

I knew I wanted something fresh and crunchy but fairly light. I selected some snow peas even though they are woefully out of season knowing that Ann loves them so. For myself, I would have used gai lan, Chinese broccoli. Then I spied a beautiful orange Bell pepper and a bunch of garlic chives with buds, which for some unkown reason FoodMaxx labels Q Flower.

Over in the freezer case, I needed to see if I could find some lop cheung (sweet Chinese sausage) that didn't contain pork for a dinner I am doing later in December. No such luck: all five brands contain pork. While that means that I am going to plan B for my upcoming dinner, I did get introduced to a new brand of lop cheung from California Sausage. This sausage looks really nice and different from the other brands, so I put it in my basket to try.

Then back to the produce aisle where a few shiitakes caught my eye. Then I wandered to the seafood counter where they had beautiful large white shrimp at a great price. Into the basket with them. Meanwhile a stir fry of some sort was materializing in my mind and as I wandered by the noodles, I grabbed a package of udon thinking then about chow mein. I grabbed udon because I prefer them to the Chinese-style noodles that FoodMaxx stocks.

Back home, the assembly was easy. While Ann peeled the shrimp, I prepped the vegetables, a lot of fresh ginger, a big mound of slivered garlic, and thinly sliced lop cheung. Then I mixed some soy sauce, agave nectar, crushed red pepper flakes, and Chinese Zhenjiang black vinegar (Chinkiang brand).

I fried the noodles en masse in a skillet and then flipped them to crisp both sides. The resulting pancake I slid onto a platter where it waited while I stir fried the topping and then added the sauce and reduced it.

After all the work I put into figuring out what to have for dinner, I think I got it right! It was just what the doctor ordered. And the new brand of lop cheung was fantastic, the best I've ever had!