Chinese New Year Dinner - Tapas Style

I covered the dumplings I made in the previous post, but I didn't highlight any of the other food we ate for New Year's dinner. When I told my sister that we would be having a bunch of dishes but small portions of each, I said we would be having dinner, tapas style. She replied that it meant we would have a lot of random crap for dinner. I said it was fusion cuisine.

Fusion cuisine or not, the food turned out to be really good. My favorite was the bok choy. I was craving green vegetables after being stuck at school all week; weekends are my time to go home and eat my leafy green veggies. The bok choy was boiled and then simply dressed with some oyster sauce and sesame oil - so good and easy. If I had more vegetables, I would make them in this style.

My second favorite dish was the fried rice. It had lap cheong, or Chinese sausage, in it, and I love fried rice with Chinese sausage. Chinese sausage just adds such flavor to fried rice, or any dish for that matter. If you can eat pork, and you can stomach an ingredient list that reads like a liposuction checklist (pork back fat, pork fat....), then I would get a package of Chinese sausage from an Asian grocery store posthaste. It's really easy to cook, and so versatile. But perhaps that's a different post.

The fish came out better than I thought it would. I tried my best to follow this recipe, but I was lacking a lot of things. The two ingredients I was most irritated about not having were the green onions and the shaoxing rice wine. Last semester, I grew green onions on my windowsill so I could always have them, but after I forgot to change the water a couple of times, some funky stuff grew alongside the green onions and I ended up throwing them away. I was going to buy some green onions at a pre-storm shopping trip, but for whatever reason, I decided against it, leaving me green onion-less for New Year's dinner. I've also been meaning to take some rice wine from my house so I don't have to buy an entire bottle to keep at school, but I also didn't do that before being trapped in my apartment. I know dry sherry is the traditionally recommended shaoxing substitute, but I don't have dry sherry. Google told me that a dry white wine or sake could be substituted, and I fortunately have some sake that no one wants to drink.

I actually enjoyed steaming process. I used my MacGyver skills in the kitchen to rig up a steam setup (actually, I just remembered a tip from David Chang's Momofuku book about elevating dishes out of water).

 
The plate with the fish went on the foil donut, and a lid went over the plate. I say "the lid went over the plate" and not "the lid went on the wok" because the wok doesn't have a lid. We took a big pot lid and put it over the plate, trying not to touch the fish. The fish was steamed until done, the ginger was discarded and new ginger added, hot oil was poured over the ginger and fish, and a soy sauce/sake/brown sugar sauce was cooked and poured over the oily fish. Except, the hot oil poured over the fish wasn't hot enough to crisp anything or heat the ginger, so I ended up pouring the soy mixture over the fish, deciding I was unhappy with the dish, pouring all the liquids back together in the wok to heat up, and trying again. It came out tasting okay. Not restaurant-quality, but it wasn't bad.

The instant udon was nothing special. I really love instant udon, so it was awesome for me, but it wasn't anything I would bring out for special occasions. I just followed package directions and cooked it.

All-in-all, we had a lot of food to eat, an excellent way to celebrate the Year of the Rabbit!

And, of course, we had oranges and tangerines for dessert. I cut the oranges into their own serving bowl at my sister's request.

As a digression, I would just like to say that I could not have cooked this dinner without all the stuff I've accumulated in my kitchen. Lack of rice wine aside, I had enough sauces, spices, and other consumable goods to actually make dinner good. If you are ever about to be trapped in a snowstorm, I would say, in all seriousness, buy a lot of shit. Cooking is a lot easier to improvise if you have a lot of materials to work with. Especially sesame oil and Chinese sausage. That stuff makes anything taste and smell delicious.   

Pink Bunny eating orange fruits and drinking orange drink.

Chinese New Year Dinner - Dumplings

With all the snow that hit the Midwest, I've had more time and reasons to cook. Instead of visiting the school cafeteria, Taco Bell, or just going home for meals, I've actually had to fend for myself and cook. This was exciting, until I realized Chinese New Year was on Thursday. And I had virtually no access to a regular grocery store, let alone the Asian grocery store. (I have friends who trekked through the snow to the nearest store to buy food, but I'm not that hardy. I've inherited a lot of Campbell's soup from a roommate; if I ever finish all of it and still can't drive to the store, I will probably die in my apartment.) I had to whip up a Chinese New Year's dinner with only things in my kitchen.

Fortunately, there was one fish filet in my freezer - I could still have the traditional fish dish, even if there was only one piece. I had some leftover rice, so I could make some fried rice. My mother insisted on giving my a bag of vegetables before I left for school at the beginning of the week because she was worried that the impending snow storm was going to cut off all of my food lines. While that was a bit of overkill (the school cafeteria remained open), I had some fresh bok choy for a Chinese dinner. My mother also gave me some instant udon noodles. While not ideal for a Chinese New Year noodle dish, I figured it was ethnically closer than the spaghetti noodles I had - noodle dish solved. Later, I remembered I had a box of instant teriyaki-flavored noodles in my cabinet, but that can be dinner for another night. Teriyaki chicken served over a bed of teriyaki noodles, anyone?!

The final coup de grace involved making dumplings from scratch. I had no ground pork or Napa cabbage, the usual fillings I eat in my dumplings. Instead, I had a chicken breast and the bok choy. I didn't have any dumpling wrappers, but, fortunately, wrappers made from scratch only require flour and water. I relied heavily on this recipe from my favorite food blog to make the dough. I halved the recipe, only to make another half batch to finish wrapping the filling. I wasn't able to roll the dumping dough as thin as I needed it to be, so I ended up with less than 56 wrappers. I partially blame by poor gluten-handling skills, but I also apportion blame on the fact that I don't have a rolling pin at my apartment and had to use this:

My Nalgene bottle

 and

Another water bottle.

I definitely think the wrappers could have been thinner, especially after they were boiled. Some of the thicker-walled dumplings had a starchy, sticky kind of mouthfeel after they were boiled.

Even though the rolling part was kind of suspect, we ended up with filled dumplings.

Note the wonton interloper on the tray. And how only one of them is pleated correctly.

The filling for the dumplings came out surprisingly well, especially for something that was thrown together from only on-hand things.

Keeping everything small for easy filling.

Snowed-In Chinese New Year Dumplings
Served 3, with other food, plus leftovers. So maybe 4-ish?

• 1 chicken breast, diced into small pieces
• Bok choy stems, diced (I used enough to equal the volume of the chicken breast.)
• Ginger root, diced (I ended up with about a teaspoon or so of ginger. Most of the ginger was going to the fish)
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• Dumpling wrappers, as needed

Combine everything except the wrappers. Mix until all the liquids are evenly dispersed. You'll know when this is.
I used a small spoon to dump the filling onto the wrappers, which ended up being around 1.5 teaspoons of filling per dumpling. But use your best judgment; if you managed to roll your wrappers thinner and larger, use more. Or maybe you like a high wrapper to filling ratio; use less. Keep filling until the chicken mixture is gone.
Depending on the kind of wrapper you used, the closure method will differ. In my experience, store-bought wrappers need a little liquid to help them seal, but for the homemade wrappers I had, I just pinched them shut without additional liquid. Try pinching the wrappers shut. If they don't stay shut, use a little water or cornstarch slurry to seal them.
Once the dumplings are sealed, boil or steam them to cook. I boiled these by dumping them in a pot of boiling water. Once they float to the top, I let them cook for a minute or two more, and then I take them out. I also fried some of them after they had boiled.

Boiled only.

Fried afterward in a wok with some oil.

We served these with soy sauce and sesame oil - yum!

Tortilla Pie

I've given up the alliterative titles.  After reading an article in which alliteration was thrown around like commas in a fifth grader's summer vacation essay - contributing absolutely nothing to the body of work - I decided I would eschew the alliteration.  Or, at least, cut back significantly.  Besides, I couldn't think of anything that would work with "Tortilla Pie".

I found this recipe while browsing through the Everyday Food book at the bookstore.  It seemed easy enough, and the picture was so pretty!  When my dad bought tortillas for some random reason, it was a sign that I should make this pie.

 The original tortilla pie, as crafted by the experts of MSLO and not by me.

 The pie I made.  While still delicious, it lacked a little something.  Maybe it was the ill-trimmed tortillas, maybe it was not putting the bean filling or enough cheese on top, but mine was not quite so pretty. 

The original recipe calls for trimming of tortillas to fit a 9-inch springform pan (i.e. to not look hideous), but I decided to mostly do away with that.  The only springform pan in the house is square and reasonably large.  I only trimmed some of the sides (poorly, I might add) so the tortillas would lie flat, throwing the scraps between the layers.  One of the comments said this pie could be made in a deep 10inch pie pan to avoid the trimming of the tortillas.  In any case, I don't see why smaller tortillas couldn't be used.  Just pick a tortilla size to fit the pan.  There's also a similar recipe on the site for a tortilla pie with meat, but I decided to stick with the vegetarian one.

I did make a few changes to the recipe based on the comments:  I doubled the amount of cumin added to the pie because 1) I love cumin, and 2) a few readers reported the pie as being somewhat bland.  I also kept in half of the seeds and ribs of the jalapeno chile to keep the pie mildly spicy.  I'm sensitive to spicy things, so this was actually kind of spicy for me, but whatever.  Keep more of the seeds and ribs for more heat, fewer for less.  Also, be careful when handling the jalapeno.  Wear a glove when taking out the insides, or wash your hands really, really well after handling and before touching an eye or other body parts that have mucous membranes attached to nerves.

All the delicious pie ingredients.

If you use beer, which I would recommend for the flavor, use a vintage can of Natural Lite.  This can was supposed to be consumed by April 6, 2007.  My old roommate actually preferred vintage Natty Lite to the original.

Chopped ingredients.  If you have a cheese grater, I would recommend using that over cutting with a knife.  It's the same volume of cheese in the end, but grated cheese is easier to spread evenly over the tortillas.

Beer, beans, and onions.  That's all one needs for good Tex Mex food.

Once the beer evaporates, add in corn and green onions.

So there was supposed to be bean filling on top of the tortillas with the cheese.  Whoops.  I'm also pretty sure that was not 1 cup of cheese on there, anyway.

Tortilla Pie
(from the Everyday Food book or the Martha Stewart website)
Supposedly serves 6, but ended up serving 3 for me.  Maybe I'm just a fatty.

• 4 10-inch flour tortillas (Again, just pick a size to fit the pan.  Or use corn tortillas.  It's all good.)
• 1 tablespoon canola oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 jalapeno, minced  (I kept the ribs and seeds of half of the jalapeno for a moderate heat.)
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• Salt and pepper
• 2 15oz cans of black beans, drained and rinsed
• 12oz of beer (I used a can Natural Light that had been sitting in the back of the fridge for years) or 1 1/2 cups of water
• 1 10oz package of frozen corn, still frozen
• 4 scallions, thinly sliced, plus more for garnish
• 2 1/2 cups, or 8 oz, of shredded cheddar cheese (I believe I used a block of cheddar jack)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.  If need be, trim the tortillas to fit the deep dish pie pan or springform pan.
Heat the canola oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Add the chopped onion, garlic, jalapeno, and cumin.  Salt and pepper to taste.  Cook over the medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the onion is soft, 5 to 7 minutes.
Add the black beans and the beer (or water) to the skillet.  Increase the heat until the mixture boils, and then reduce the heat back to medium and let simmer.  Keep simmering until the beer is almost completely evaporated, 8 to 10 minutes.  Stir in the corn and scallions, and remove from heat.  Season with more salt and pepper.
To assemble the pie, put a (trimmed) tortilla down.  Add 1/4 of the bean mixture and 1/2 cup of the cheese.  Top with another tortilla, another 1/4 of the beans and 1/2 cup of cheese.  Top with the third tortilla, another 1/4 of the beans, and another 1/2 cup of the cheese.  Place the last tortilla on top of the tower, along with the last 1/4 of the beans, and remaining 1 cup of cheese.  Put in the oven and bake until the cheese is melted and the filling is hot, 20 to 25 minutes.  If you use a toaster oven like me, it doesn't take that long, so watch it.  Unmold the pie and sprinkle some finely chopped scallions on top for garnish.  Cut into wedges, as befitting a pie, and serve. 

So, mine's not as good looking as Everyday Food's.  It was still delicious.  I would make it again.

Surplus of Sweets

In direct contrast to the last post, sometimes I have too much stuff:

 My trunk full of soda.  I bought at least 5 flats of pop from Sam's Club.  I had some 12 packs too, but they aren't in the picture.

Two 5gallon containers of ice cream.  I couldn't close the freezer all the way with all these frozen goods.

 Five pints of ice cream, plus a lot of pot pies.

In my defense, only the pot pies and pints were mine or my roommate's.  The rest of the stuff was for various club functions.  If it hadn't been, I'm sure I would have a raging case of Type 2 diabetes right now.

Misleading Meal

One day I got this frozen dinner for a nighttime snack:

 Look at all those delicious pieces of bacon and all the delicious green peas.

I open the box and heat it up only to find out the pasta is really like this:

Yeah, I separated out all the components, but I didn't eat any of the bacon bits or peas.  That's how many peas and bacon bits I got total.  I think the peas numbered in the single digits to low teens.

If I sprinkled all the peas and bacon on top of my half eaten pasta, the concentration of toppings would look like the box picture.

Poo Pudding (or Dates Part II)

If I thought the braised chicken with dates looked sketchy while it was cooking, then this date pudding looked like a toothless crackwhore standing in the doorway of an opium den with a heroin needle sticking out of her arm, beckoning passersby to taste her earthly delights.

All the ingredients were normal: dates, brown sugar, butter, but somehow, through alchemy or magic or a natural defense mechanism that dates have, the batter for the pudding looked nasty.  I mean NASTY, with a capital "N" and a side of ocular herpes.  Whereas the chicken with dates looked kind of bland and watery while they were cooking, the cooked dates looked like poop.  A thick, sticky mess of feces.  Poo Pudding, Crap Cake - we were all skeptical of eating the pudding, but it was very moist and flavorful and more cake-like than pudding-from-a-pudding-cup-like.  It has very a wintery, Christmas-time taste, which is appropriate because it was in the December issue of Everyday Food.  I've been a little behind on food blogging, but that's no reason to not make this pudding as a dated (ahaha!) ending to the braised chicken with dates dish.

 WTF.  How could anything edible look like this?

Looking better now.  All the other ingredients mellowed out the poo vibe.

Toffee Pudding

(from Everyday Food magazine or Martha Stewart's website)

Serves 8 (or 16 if you eat sweets sparsely like me)

• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for baking dish
• 2 cups chopped (about 8 ounces) pitted dates
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
• 3/4 cup packed light-brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• Toffee Sauce (recipe follows)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Butter an 8x8 inch baking dish.  In a small saucepan, heat 1 cup of water with the dates.  Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and add the baking soda.  Stir the hot mess until it thickens, 1 to 2 minutes.
Whisk together the flour, baking powder, allspice, and salt in a medium bowl.  In a separate, large bowl, use an electric mixer on medium to cream the eggs and sugar until fluffy, 3 to 5 minutes.  Add eggs and vanilla and keep beating until combined.
With mixer on low, add the flour mixture to the egg-butter one, then add the date mixture.  Keep alternating the flour and date mixture additions three times, starting and ending with flour.  Up the mixer speed to medium and beat some more to combine.
Pour the batter into the pan and bake for about 45 minutes, or until a wooden skewer/toothpick/cake tester poked into the center comes out clean.  While the pudding is baking, make the Toffee Sauce.
Once the pudding is done, put the pan on a wire rack (or not) and poke holes all over with a wooden skewer/toothpick/cake tester.  In the picture below, you can tell I poked holes in a semi-grid pattern, but you can be random.  Just don't poke so many holes that the pudding is all torn up.  Pour half of the toffee sauce all over the top and let sit for 10 minutes.
Serve the cake warm with extra Toffee Sauce.

Toffee Sauce (aka, the most delicious sauce ever.  You might want to make extra sauce so you can really pour it on the finished pudding)

• 1/2 cup packed light-brown sugar
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• Pinch of coarse salt
• 2 teaspoons whiskey (I used Jack Daniel's once, and Canadian Mist the other time.  I think I preferred the Jack Daniel's, but that may be 6 months of time and memory lapses talking)

In a small saucepan, combine the sugar, butter, cream, and salt.  Heat over medium-high and cook until sugar dissolves and mixture boils, stirring constantly.  Reduce to a simmer and cook, without stirring, for 2 minutes.  Remove from heat and stir in the whiskey.

The now good-looking date pudding with a glaze of toffee sauce.

The moral of the story is:  Things that look like feces may actually be delicious.  And maybe we should give that toothless crackwhore a chance.

Date (the fruit, not the romantic encounter) Dinner

Those samplers at Sam's Club know what they're doing. I once had a "Fancy Medjool Date" handed to me on a toothpick by an elderly lady wearing a hairnet, and I was delighted. The date was gooey and honey/raisin-y. My mom hated it, but I wanted to eat more.

Maybe it was serendipity, maybe it was good seasonal planning on MSLO's part, but a few weeks later I got an issue of Everyday Food magazine in which the "Have You Tried...?" section highlighted....Wheat Germ!

I jest. It was dates, everyone's least known drupe fruit!

The next time I was at Sam's Club, I bought dates so I could make two of the dishes from the magazine - a delicious chicken dish and a festive date pudding.

The braised chicken with dates was surprisingly delicious. I was weary of the yellowish, watery mass that was the braising chicken, but it was pretty tasty, especially with couscous.

 There are a lot of onions, so this dish has to be good.  There are few things more mouthwatering than the smell of sauteing onions when I'm hungry.

Dates in the background, minced ginger in the foreground.
 

Mmm.  These assorted chicken parts have been browned for flavor, but are still raw and teeming with Salmonella and E. Coli and all sorts of other bacteria inside.

Cooking the sauce with dates, cilantro, and spices.

Braised Chicken with Dates
(from Everyday Food magazine, or Martha Stewart's website)
Serves 4

• 1 whole chicken (3.5-4 lbs, quartered) OR 4 split breasts OR 4 leg quarters    (I didn't have a quartered chicken, so I used 3 leg quarters and 2 thighs.  All in all, I preferred the thighs.  They were much easier to eat.)
• Salt
• Ground pepper
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 yellow onions, chopped finely
• 1 teaspoon sweet paprika (or regular paprika.  It works just as well.)
• 2 tablespoons fresh ginger, peeled and minced
• 3/4 teaspoon ground coriander (I omitted this and it was fine.)
• 2.5 cups water
• 1 cup chopped pitted dates (about 4 ounces)
• 1/2 cup fresh cilantro leaves, chopped
• 2 lemons, halved, for serving (or not.  I didn't want to buy a lemon, so I left this out.)

Salt and pepper the chicken pieces.  Heat the olive oil in a large pot or Dutch oven (if you are so fortunate as to have one) over medium-high heat.  Cook the chicken, skin side down, until it is brown and crisp, about 6 minutes.  Flip the chicken and cook for about 6 minutes more.  Transfer the chicken to a plate.
Add onions to the pot, stirring occasionally, until the onions are soft, about 5 minutes.  Add the ginger, paprika, and coriander.  Cook for 2 minutes, stirring. 
Place chicken evenly over the onions and spices.  Add the water and bring to a boil.  Reduce to a simmer, cover, and cook until chicken is done, about 40-45 minutes.
Move the chicken to a serving dish.  Increase the heat to high and boil the cooking liquid until it is reduced by half, 12 to 15 minutes. 
Stir in dates and cilantro.  Season with salt and pepper. 
Pour sauce over chicken and serve with lemon halves and couscous. 

Chicken with sauce and couscous.  A hearty Middle Eastern-esque dinner.