I eat food
I've gotten pretty comfortable in my ability to cook a pretty wide range of American cuisine, so I've been pushing myself to try to grok Chinese. This is kind of hard because other than take out, which is really just crappy Cantonese, I don't know Chinese food too well. I've been reading "The Encyclopedia of Chinese Cooking", which is to Chinese food what the Joy of Cooking is to American food. It's awesome. MSG is an ingredient in most of the dishes. Chapter 1 is "the twenty cooking methods found in Chinese cooking not found in the West". The guy that wrote it is clearly a huge xenophobe.
Anyway, I've been working on stir fries, trying to really figure out what makes them work. Today I made my first 'synthesis' dish: Pork with Round Vegetables of Increasing Diameter and Noodles.
Type your cut contents here.
Ingredients:
--1 lb pork shoulder or loin, cut into small slices
--1 cup of snow peas
--1 cup of baby corn
--1 cup of zucchini, cut into disks
--1/2 package of wide rice noodles
--2 T cooking oil of choice
Marinade:
--1 part soy sauce
--1 part rice wine vinegar
--Garlic powder
Sauce
--4 T housin sauce
--1 T soy sauce
--1 T rice wine vinegar
--1 T of cornstarch dissolved in 2 T H2O
Directions:
--Marinade pork in a plastic bag for 3 to 24 hours, then remove from marinade
--Boil, drain, and oil the noodles. Set aside.
--Mix housin, soy, and rice wine together in a small bowl.
--Put oil in wok, get it as hot as possible.
--As soon as oil starts to smoke, add pork, stir.
--When pork is 3/4 of the way cooked, add snow peas (vegetable in least diameter), stir.
--Wait 30 seconds, add baby corn (vegetable of next least diameter), stir.
--Wait 30 seconds, add zucchini.
--Wait 30 seconds, push all ingredients up the sides of the wok, and add sauce mixture. Pour in cornstarch solution.
--As sauce thickens, toss everything in the wok to coat, cook about 30 seconds
--Transfer ingredients to a bowl, leave as much sauce as possible
--Add noodles to wok, stir for 1 minute to cover and fry
--Remove from heat. To serve, lay down a bed of noodles, add veg/meat on top. Garnish with sesame seed or chopped scallion.
If you do this right, the vegetables should all be correctly cooked. It just so happens that for these 3, cooking time is inversely proportional to cooking time required of them.
I really like the mouth feel of this dish. Porks unique pop, the peas and corn firm bite, the zucchini's soft bite, and the slightly gummy noodles all play against each other in a nice way.
You could probably add some ginger to the oil, by GK doesn't like ginger, so I avoid it. If you cook the zuchini without over cooking it, it should have a nice meaty flavor without developing a waxy note. Too much cooking and you'll get the waxy part.
I had to fudge this a little bit. Baby corn wasn't on the list, so I used regular corn. The fiber count seems pretty low for all the snow peas and baby corn, but these numbers are from the Government(tm), so I'm sure they are beyond question...
For the rest of the day? We made pasta sauce, lasagna, and a bunch of meatballs. Super Bowl's tomorrow, you know.
Anyway, I've been working on stir fries, trying to really figure out what makes them work. Today I made my first 'synthesis' dish: Pork with Round Vegetables of Increasing Diameter and Noodles.
Type your cut contents here.
Ingredients:
--1 lb pork shoulder or loin, cut into small slices
--1 cup of snow peas
--1 cup of baby corn
--1 cup of zucchini, cut into disks
--1/2 package of wide rice noodles
--2 T cooking oil of choice
Marinade:
--1 part soy sauce
--1 part rice wine vinegar
--Garlic powder
Sauce
--4 T housin sauce
--1 T soy sauce
--1 T rice wine vinegar
--1 T of cornstarch dissolved in 2 T H2O
Directions:
--Marinade pork in a plastic bag for 3 to 24 hours, then remove from marinade
--Boil, drain, and oil the noodles. Set aside.
--Mix housin, soy, and rice wine together in a small bowl.
--Put oil in wok, get it as hot as possible.
--As soon as oil starts to smoke, add pork, stir.
--When pork is 3/4 of the way cooked, add snow peas (vegetable in least diameter), stir.
--Wait 30 seconds, add baby corn (vegetable of next least diameter), stir.
--Wait 30 seconds, add zucchini.
--Wait 30 seconds, push all ingredients up the sides of the wok, and add sauce mixture. Pour in cornstarch solution.
--As sauce thickens, toss everything in the wok to coat, cook about 30 seconds
--Transfer ingredients to a bowl, leave as much sauce as possible
--Add noodles to wok, stir for 1 minute to cover and fry
--Remove from heat. To serve, lay down a bed of noodles, add veg/meat on top. Garnish with sesame seed or chopped scallion.
If you do this right, the vegetables should all be correctly cooked. It just so happens that for these 3, cooking time is inversely proportional to cooking time required of them.
I really like the mouth feel of this dish. Porks unique pop, the peas and corn firm bite, the zucchini's soft bite, and the slightly gummy noodles all play against each other in a nice way.
You could probably add some ginger to the oil, by GK doesn't like ginger, so I avoid it. If you cook the zuchini without over cooking it, it should have a nice meaty flavor without developing a waxy note. Too much cooking and you'll get the waxy part.
I had to fudge this a little bit. Baby corn wasn't on the list, so I used regular corn. The fiber count seems pretty low for all the snow peas and baby corn, but these numbers are from the Government(tm), so I'm sure they are beyond question...
For the rest of the day? We made pasta sauce, lasagna, and a bunch of meatballs. Super Bowl's tomorrow, you know.