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Why is it so hard to find a good cast iron wok..... in China?  All the woks here are more expensive and crappier than the one I had in the states.
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Sep 11, 2012 05:31
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GrAviTy84 posted:I don't really care for cast iron woks. They're too stable, part of wok cookery is how thin they are and the ability to quickly manage the temperature in the wok. Also they're heavy as hell so it's hard to toss and flip. I think carbon steel woks are superior. The problem is more that they all have nonstick crap on them and crappy plastic handles everywhere. The really good ones are either hidden somewhere or well over what would be 100 USD. I cannot find cheaperish ones in any of my local appliance stores, supermarkets or smaller local shops. That said I'm going to be taking cooking lessons from a fairly accomplished Sichuan chef here in Chengdu in exchange for English lessons, so I'll share some recipes once I get them. Maybe some before that as I've been in this place for 3 years and have picked up a fair amount of stuff already. totalnewbie posted:Is there any other kind of steel? I'd obviously switch off and use my right hand too to even poo poo out. That's like weightlifting 101!
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Sep 11, 2012 09:30
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Grand Fromage posted:This is from Korea but I've found it virtually impossible to find anything non-teflon coated. Koreans believe that the Maillard reaction = immediate cancer and tefloning everything is one of the ways searing/crusts are avoided. I dunno if that's a Korean thing or from Chinese medicine. China and Korea do match up a lot on this kind of stuff. I lived with a Chinese dude for a few months who freaked out at me for sleeping with a fan on saying I'd die, blahdy blahdy blah. Also, I already thought about asking my chef bud, but he's in Tibet somewhere on vacation till sometime after the 20th and I wanted to get it nice and seasoned before he came back. I don't have an ayi to ask (I don't really get what that means in this context? Do some foreigners literally have a Chinese woman follow them around helping them over here?), but my two Chinese roommates are not any help at all. I spent a while talking to ladies in the bigger appliance stores and they do have good woks, but they're all far over 600RMB (90+USD), which might be worth it in the end. Ironically they're all imported from Japan. But enough of this nonsense, let's cook. Shizi tou （红烧）狮子头 Introduction Shizi Tou means "Lion Head", so you're gonna need to find one fresh lion head. After you get that toss that poo poo out because that's not what this is at all. Where did you even get a lion's head holy poo poo. Shizi tou is actually a kind of Chinese meatball. There are two main varieties of Shizi tou, Hongshao （红烧） and Yangzhou（扬州）. The difference is just what seasonings and stuff you use in the soup and the meatballs themselves. I'm going to show you the hongshao (aka soy sauce city) variety. Beyond that, there are two further styles of shizi tou. One is to make one or two gigantic softball sized meatballs, the other is to make several smaller-but-still-bigger-than-your-average-American-meatball meatballs. Unless you have a very large restaurant-grade wok, you'll probably be going the smaller route. Ingredients This is to feed about four people.
 All ingredients sans meat and sauces, ignore the broccoli How to cook it: Your first step is to deal with the lotus root.  Clean it and peel it. A normal peeler you'd use for carrots or potatoes will work fine. If you're not used to working with lotus root, a good one will be very firm with no weird soft spots are very black marks. Should be brown all over. Once you've peeled it, dice it finely.  still a ways to go! It will take a bit. Once that's done, take your eggs (one large egg or two smaller eggs) and mix them in a small bowl with some potato/corn/whatever starch, then mix it up with your finely chopped or ground meat. Once that's all together, add the diced lotus root and mix it all together again.  Then add some MSG, salt and soy sauce to taste. I added maybe 2 or 3 tablespoons of soy sauce? I never measure that stuff  Once your meat concoction is well mixed up, form it into some balls (丸子).  Mine were probably 1.5x the size of a golf ball. If you have a really big wok and want to make the more traditional shizi tou, I'd make 1 ball per 250g of meat. They're prepared in pretty much the same way. Now get your wok out, put a good amount of oil in it and get it nice and hot. You can add some garlic to the oil if you so desire. We're going to flash-shallow fry these suckers.  make fun of my bad wok! Only fry them for 2-3 minutes. Your goal is basically to brown the outside and make sure the ball shape is maintained during the next cooking phase, we're not cooking them all the way through at this point. Once all your shizi tous are browned, dredge them out of the pot and get rid of the oil. DO NOT CLEAN THE WOK, WE ARE MAKING SOUP... SORT OF. You want to get rid of the excess oil and that's it. Once you do that you can either add soup stock or plain water. Most Chinese people I know just use water and it tastes fine, but I'm a bigger fan of using a nice soup stock. Again, this is your choice. You want enough fluid in the wok so that the meatballs are all just about submerged.  This is when you add your green onions, ginger, garlic, a good amount of soy sauce and really whatever spices tickle your fancy to the pot. Turn up the heat (uncovered) and let it reach a boil. Once it's boiling let it simmer on pretty low heat for some time. The time is the biggest variance I've seen among my Chinese friends who have made this dish. If you're using stock 30 minutes might be fine, taste wise, but make sure the balls are cooked through. Normally 45 minutes to an hour is how long you let it cook. You want to do this uncovered for some Chinese tradition/culinary principle I don't understand. After you're done waiting and smelling how good this stuff is, dredge out the meatballs again and add in your cleaned and cut greens. Crank the heat up just a little bit and let the greens cook for a minute or two until they're wilted. Serve by putting 2-3 meatballs in a small bowl with some greens, and then ladling some of the soup into the bowl. This dish is supposed to be meatballs with some soup, not soup with meatballs.  Yum! That's about it. I really like these. It's very easy to make a bajillion and save them for later days. I had some extra lotus root, so I just made a quick lotus root and broccoli stir fry as a side dish.  Lotus root is a really versatile thing you should be using if you aren't. It can be used in just about everything and cooked about any way. It's easy to prepare and hard to mess up, so go nuts! Ailumao fucked around with this message at 14:07 on Sep 12, 2012 |
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Sep 12, 2012 13:57
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Many people posted:Lotus root Lotus root is more about texture than flavor. It really doesn't taste like much of anything. It's very clean, crisp and crunchy... a little starchy. It'll take on the flavor of whatever you cook it with. It's usually either added into stir fries or soups, seasoned and BBQ'd or used in a few regional dishes. It's in season right now, and I'd think you'd be able to find it at most Asian supermarkets. It was in the ones I frequented in Ohio last year even out of season. If you can't find it, another Chinese tuber called "Shan Yao" can be used, and is actually used in the Yangzhou version of the recipe. It's pretty similar in texture and stuff, but has a more starchy taste. Water chestnuts might be another possibility as their textures are very similar, though those might be just as hard to find. You want something crisp and a little starchy. Really though, these are meatballs so you can go crazy adding what you want. I have no idea how to use dried lotus root, never used it... sorry!
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Sep 13, 2012 00:13
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Grand Fromage posted:Any looseleaf, I mean. 99% of Korean green tea is bagged and has burned brown rice husks in it so it tastes like poo poo. I almost never see looseleaf for sale and when I do it's pricy. The best tea I ever had was some I think I'll end up making a lot of recipe posts for this thread. Neither of my roommates can cook very well, apparently, and are now stocking the fridge with things for me to make them. And yeah, like I said soup stock is definitely nicer, but most times I've seen it made here has been with plain water.
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Sep 13, 2012 06:13
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Ok, I found out today that through the wonders of Chinese academia I don't have class till mid-October. That means a lot more cooking for you guys. I'm going to introduce you to another ingredient that's commonplace over here in China (And very popular in Korea), but I'd never really seen in the west before. Nian Gao 年糕 This name leads to confusion as there are two completely different things called Nian gao in Chinese cuisine. It literally means "New Years Cake". One type is the sweet, actually sort of cake-like confection from the south. It's big in Hong Kong, Guangdong and other Cantonese areas. I'm not talking about that at all. I'm talking about what is normally referred to as Shanghai-style nian gao outside of China, and is what everyone in China itself (outside of Guangdong province) refers to as simply nian gao. It's also made from rice, but had no sugar or other spices added to it.  Pretty standard Shanghai nian gao It's a pretty versatile thing, and is used in a lot of Shanghai, Zhejiang and southern Jiangsu cuisine. It's pretty simple stuff. Every Asian grocer I've ever been to in the west has stocked it. I'm going to show you how to make a really simple dish, Fried nian gao 炒年糕  Fried nian gao is essentially fried rice, but with nian gao instead. It's very different from fried rice in it's texture and flavor though. You use fresh nian gao which tends to really absorb a lot more of the flavor than rice does in fried rice, and it's a fun chewy (think mochi) consistency that I happen to like. This is a really common dish in southeastern China. Ingredients
As far as amounts, you should probably have close to even amounts napa cabbage and nian gao and about half as much meat, but these ratios are really just up to you. How to cook it: You first step is to prepare the nian gao if you have to. This means defrosting it /soaking it/slicing it/etc. If you have fresh nian gao, place it in water after you've sliced it into discs. With that done, brown whatever meat you're using. In my pictures I'm using some ground beef because my roommates were freaking out about how it was going to go bad, but strips of pork or beef or chicken work a lot better. Just fry it up with garlic and onions and whatever other spices you want. Once it's cooked, remove it and any excess oil and grease from the wok. Add in some oil. Once the oil is good and hot add in some dried chilies and garlic.  Let that go for a while, but be attentive. You really don't want to burn the chilies because that smells awful and will ruin what you have going so far.  Once your garlic is golden brown and covered in a fine chili pepper flavored oil, it's time to add the nian gao.  My roommates bought the pre-sliced kind, but I prefer the long fresh cylinders you slice yourself, myself. When you add in the nian gao you need to keep the stuff moving. Nian gao is notorious for being sticky and sticking to even a well seasoned wok, so be attentive. As a result I have no pictures of this step! The trick to this step is to keep adding small bits of water. You want to wait just a second after you add in the nian gao to do this, though. Initially the nian gao will suck up the delicious garlic chili spicy oil. Once that's mostly gone (not long, maybe 20-30 seconds) pour a small bit of water. Maybe 1/4th of a cup. Keep stirring the nian gao around, and once the water is absorbed or boiled off add a bit more. Keep at this 3-4 times until the nian gao are softened a bit. Now is when you should add in your other like the napa cabbage and peppers. You can add salt, MSG, soy sauce, vinegar or what have you at this point if you'd like. I like salt, MSG and a bit of soy sauce, myself.  Keep that going until the veggies are pretty well done, then add in the meat again.  ground meat tasted fine, but strips are way better, use those! Stir that around for a bit and get it good and mixed up. You can add any final touches of spices or sauces at this point, if you'd like. I should note that when you're done, the nian gao might have a few crispy parts, but should for the most part be un-burnt and basically white. When some start to have crispy golden brown edges forming, you're done. With this dish you can really add or subtract anything you want. Spinach and egg was a common combination I used in the States. I also think mushrooms go really well with this. Feel free to not use chilies and use something else instead at the beginning, add ginger into the mix... etc... go wild! Nian gao can also be used in soups as a replacement for pasta. It has it's own unique texture and absorbs flavor a lot more than pasta does, so it's a good thing to try if you haven't before! Ailumao fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Sep 13, 2012 |
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Sep 13, 2012 13:56
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Nian gao comes in a few varieties. Shanghai nian gao is usually either in long, inch-wide cylinders you need to slice up into small pieces or comes as pre-sliced discs. There is also a variety that comes as a lot of small 1-1.5inch long cylinders that do NOT have to be sliced up, this is Korean style and will work fine. It will either come fresh (found in the refrigerator, usually vacuum packed in the states), dried or frozen. Dried nian gao will have to sit overnight in a pot of water, frozen nian gao should be defrosted in a tub of water for at least a couple of hours before cooking. For our purposes, fresh nian gao can be sliced and used immediately, but if you slice it yourself it's best to put it in water while you do the rest of your prep to keep it from sticking together.
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Time not only to introduce you to a new dish, but a new style! Boiled water meat  , or Sichuan Spicy Pork - 水煮肉片 (Note: The beef variety is more common, but my buddy that came over to eat this is Hindu and doesn't eat cow... so I went with pork! Replace pork with beef if you want, honestly I think it's better with beef.) Shui zhu （水煮), literally "Boiling water" is a very common style of preparing food in Sichuan, and like most Sichuan food it's about excess. It's about as authentic Sichuan as you can get. You can get Shui Zhu Pork, beef, fish, etc... all over Sichuan and Chongqing. Despite looking like a soup, it's not eaten as such. The "soup" is laden with so much hua jiao and dried peppers it'd be really hard to eat, so the vegetables and meat and picked out with chopsticks and eaten on their own. Ingredients
How to make it: For the meat, slice them in very thin slices. I like to marinate them for a while while I chop everything else and get everything started. For this I used a bit of salt, soy sauce and liao jiu (cooking wine?) and put it in the fridge. Dice the garlic, slice the ginger, and cut up the green onions. Note: Separate the white and green part of the green onions. Once that's all set, it's time to break out the wok. DO NOT add oil, and put the flame on. Get it so it's hot enough so that water will instantly boil if it hits the pan and lay out some of the dried chilies and then dump a bunch of hua jiao in there. How much is up to how spicy/ma la you like it.  Be attentive and flip the chilies. Once you get a nice smell coming off the peppers and before you burn the things (Flame shouldn't be THAT high, so it should take a while to actually burn them) take them out of the pan and smash the everloving crap out of them. You want the seeds everywhere, hua jiao in pieces and peppers in slices by the end of it.  Now you can reheat the wok and add a good amount oil. Once that's nice and hot, add in a nice helping of dou ban. Again, how much you add is really up to you, but in my experience more is better with this dish. Immediately after the dou ban is in, add the peppers you just crushed, garlic, ginger and the white part of the green onions. mix it around and let it cook for a while until the smell is making you drool too much.  Now add in your soup stock or water. Unlike the Shizi Tou, water is what I usually use for this. You have so much flavor in that stuff you just fried it's usually enough, but good soup stock never made anything taste worse. Try to eye how much meat and veggies you have, you want enough liquid so they're all just barely submerged. Add salt, MSG, the greens of the green onions and wait for it to boil.  Once it's boiling add your preferably UNCUT (My assistant today was overzealous and chopped them up, which is fine really but makes a later step a bit more troublesome) napa cabbage or other green to the concoction. Let it go for a while until the cabbage is cooked. Napa cabbage takes a surprisingly long time!  Now remove the cabbage and JUST the cabbage. This is why you didn't want to cut it. It's much easier to get 5-6 big leaves out than 40 some odd slices. If you want to slice it up, feel free to now. Once you're done with that, put it in the bowl you plan to serve the shui zhu rou pian in.  Hopefully your wok still is full of boiling, lava hot goodness, so now it's time to add the bean sprouts, mushrooms and meat. Try to put the meat in one by one so that they don't end up in one giant mass. Crank the heat up again, stir, and this boil for a while until the meat is cooked. It should not take very long at all if you cut them thin enough.  My assistant put the cabbage back in the pot, which again is fine I guess but don't do it! Don't let it go for too long though, overcooking the meat is not good! Once it's done, you want to either pour, or ladle if your serving bowl is too small, the whole thing on top of the cabbage. Usually it's topped with fresh cilantro, green onions and more toasted hua jiao and dried chilies. Enjoy! Ailumao fucked around with this message at 08:09 on Sep 17, 2012 |
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Sep 17, 2012 07:47
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Bollock Monkey posted:Thanks for this! I was wondering what to get my partner for our anniversary and this is perfect. The reviews make it sound amazing. If someone better than me can think of one, please help this person out! I really have no idea what could take it's place. But I had a hard time finding this when I lived in the US and started my adventures in Chinese cooking too... It might be tricky to find because really saying "Dou ban" sort of like saying "sauce". There are a million different varieties and brands and most do NOT say 豆瓣(Dou ban) or fermented beans or anything like that on the label, but any Asian market will absolutely have almost an entire aisle of the stuff it's used to much in Asian cooking, and when I lived in Ohio even Giant Eagle and Kroger had a bit in their Asian aisle. A few common brands here in China are:  This is one the ladies here in Sichuan always try to push on me. I haven't tried any of this brands varieties, but most seem to be filled with peppers.  Lao gan ma is easily the most popular brand of the stuff in China. While it's technically labeled as Dou chi (Bean paste), it has plenty of whole beans in it and is pretty much another kind of dou ban. This stuff is stupidly popular among Chinese diaspora in North America and having a jar of it in your fridge will give you instant cred. There are a zillion kinds of it, and all have their own unique flavor and spiciness and stuff. 金针菇 literally means "Gold needle mushroom", and it wouldn't surprise me if Enoki meant something similar in Japanese. The nice thing is you can make Shui Zhu whatever as hot or not hot as you want. You completely control how much hua jiao/chilies/etc you put in. When I lived in Hangzhou it still tasted nice but was not really spicy, whereas here in Chengdu I feel like I am going to spew lava after a few bites. Ailumao fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Sep 19, 2012 |
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Sep 19, 2012 04:47
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Mongolians and Tibetans, among other minorities in the Han sphere of influence, have been eating dairy like horse and yak respectively for a very long time (Mongolians even drink an alcohol based off fermented horse milk, which is disgusting imo!), so Han Chinese have definitely run across dairy here and there for at least the last millennium or so. But it's not really used in anything in what we'd consider "Chinese" cuisine, to my knowledge In more recent times, yoghurt and milk are very popular with the young crowd. When I was a teacher my students would usually be drinking milk in the morning. Cheese is seen as hip and cool, and many of my young professional friends buy disgusting Australian processed cheese, dubbed "Coon Cheese", then make me eat it. I've seen cheese covered jiaozi on menus in a lot of restaurants too. And let's not forget that Pizza Hut is the coolest, hippest chain in modern China. Anyway, to whoever asked, make the Shizi Tou with lamb and let us know how it goes! I don't see why it wouldn't be great! I'll post more recipes once I get my kitchen back tomorrow. Does anyone want to know something in particular? More spicy Sichuan stuff? e: gently caress phone posting Ailumao fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Sep 29, 2012 |
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Sep 29, 2012 02:49
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Arglebargle III posted:I live in China but I learned to cook Chinese food in America on American stoves. I'm used to the heat being way too low and as a result everything I cook here I keep the burner on the lower half of the dial. Even when I'm cooking fairly fast I don't even turn it up to halfway. Stir stir stir stir. Never stop. It was written in the OP, but when you do any sort of stir fry like that you gotta have everything cut up and ready to go before you do any cooking. If you have to stop for more than a second, poo poo WILL burn. Also (Fellow Chengdu goon here), no idea where exactly ON the 3rd ring road you are, but Auchan, Metro and stuff are all around PARTS of the 3rd ring road and aren't as good as a nice wet market but are still better than Carrefour and that sort of junk. Auchan sells awesome chicken breasts for like 4.5kuai/jin. Amazing!
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Oct 1, 2012 03:53
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Hey let's cook. Let's cook something any American has eaten a way too sweet variant of at some point in their lives. EXPLODING PALACE Note: I made this because a friend who does not eat animal stuff came over. Replace the tofu with either chicken or pork if you desire. I actually really like the tofu variant though, tofu tends to absorb a lot more of the sauce and flavor than the meat does. Also it's cheaper! What you need:
If you can't find the Asparagus lettuce, celtuce or whatever the hell it's called feel free to substitute it with whatever. Celery is what the North American version usually has, but something not quite as rigid and fibrous would be better. Any sort of thing in the bamboo family (The name in Chinese is literally "Green bamboo") would be best. I've also had versions with peppers and mushrooms in it, so don't be afraid to experiment. How to make it: Chop everything up. Carrots and asparagus lettuce into small chunks and tofu about the same. Mince the garlic and ginger, and chop up the dried chilies a bit. Mix the rice wine, soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, salt, MSG (if you want it), sesame oil and a little corn or potato starch in a bowl. You can play around with amounts as you want, but you want an even amount soy sauce and vinegar with about half that amount of wine and sesame oil. North American versions of this dish are downright sweet and add a lot of sugar. I'm not a fan, but if you are, go wild!  Once that's done, if you want you can heat up just a little oil over relatively low heat and give the peanuts a little fry. I'd say this step isn't absolutely necessary, but I like the toasty flavor it adds. Once the peanuts are out, add in a decent amount of oil and get it pretty hot. Shallow fry the tofu for a bit.  Once it gets all nice and golden brown, take it out.  There shouldn't be a huge amount of oil left, and there will probably be some random tofu pieces around, so it's probably best if you just rinse and wipe out your wok real fast. That done, get some more oil heated up over medium heat. Once it's hot, add in the Sichuan peppercorns, garlic, ginger, scallions and carrots. You can add salt and MSG if you want.  When the carrots start to change in color (might take a bit, since we aren't using CRAZY high heat yet) add in the dried chilies and let that go for a minute or so. Then, crank up the heat and add in the asparagus lettuce. Once that starts to soften up, add in the tofu and peanuts.  Mix that all up really quick and add in your sauce.  Keep stirring that around a bit until the sauce has been absorbed a bit by the tofu (There should be some sauce left on the bottom of the wok, but not tons), and serve. If you make this with meat, brown it where you'd fry the tofu and follow everything else as is. Use as much or as little spicy pepper as you want, though this is not usually a super spicy dish. Note about 莴笋, Celtuce/Asparagus Lettuce/Green bamboo. I love this stuff. It can be used pretty universally in any stir fry, and is a huge part of food in western China. Here in Chengdu I can get any number of really simple meat or vegetable stir fries that incorporate it, and really legit kung pao whatever should use it as well. To prepare it, just clean the outside and use a knife to slice off the very hard outer skin. A vegetable peeler will usually not be adequate for this. Once that's done, you can either cut it into thin, long slices or small chunks. It's good in everything, has a really nice clean and fresh taste, and according to Chinese people is really healthy!
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Oct 1, 2012 14:54
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I've seen both, and searching 宫爆鸡丁 on Baidu will get you plenty of hits. Including the Baike page which actually has a section about how it was originally named after the guy with a clever pun on his name （保/宝） but in recent times people have all forgotten him and use 爆... But even if we don't remember him, we should remember his desire to create a great dish!
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Oct 5, 2012 02:10
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Grand Fromage posted:What's the shelf life on flower peppers? I used some tonight and didn't get much of a numb off them, not sure if they're old or I just didn't use enough. I used maybe a teaspoon in gravity's yuxiang rousi recipe. Picked out the black seeds, toasted a bit in the pan and then crushed up with a spoon and mixed into the sauce. Pretty long, I'd think, like most dried stuff. I go through a pack in about a month myself so I've never had them that long. Try just throwing them in when you throw your garlic and stuff in and keep them in for the whole cook, that's usually how it's done in Sichuan where 麻辣 is life. You shouldn't need too many to get a good flavor.
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Oct 10, 2012 02:39
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To be fair, if you ask for the same thing in different parts of China you will sometines get a completely different dish. Lo mein and chow mein differing by region is very authentically Chinese! Tang cu li ji (sweet and sour pork) and mapo tofu vary by insane degrees depending on where you are. Outside of having pork and tofu respectively, you'd think they were different dishes. For instance, in Hangzhou tang cu li ji owns and in Sichuan it is terrible mess. The opposite goes for mapo tofu.
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Oct 15, 2012 06:51
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femcastra posted:taro Two taro recipes. One is not the easiest but is one of my favorite things in all of Asian cuisine, one is pretty easy and my roommate made it tonight it was awesome! 1- 芋儿鸡 Taro chicken (?!)  Picture not mine! This is the easy one. It's a Sichuan dish so SPICY. If you can't get the Sichuan peppercorns in Japan, whatever, it'll be fine without it I think. Ingredients
How to cook it Get your wok hot, add some oil, then throw in the chicken, garlic, ginger, Sichuan peppercorns and dried chilies. Cook that until you get a good scent off the peppers and garlic, then add in a bit of salt, some dou ban and a little soy sauce, not a whole lot. Stir fry that for maybe a minute, but no longer. That done, add in a good amount of soup stock or water. You want a lot of liquid since this is, like Shui Zhu Niu Rou, a dish that resembles a soup but really isn't. Your taro and chicken will be completely submerged. Drop the heat, cover it and let it get to a boil. Let it simmer for some time (20-30 minutes) and add in chopped up (usually halved or quartered depending on how big the individual root is) taro. You can also add in more salt, MSG, soy sauce or vinegar to taste at this point. The soup should be a real nice red color by now. Let that simmer for another 15-20 minutes (until the taro is soft-ish) and it's done. Easy! And delicious! 2. 拔丝芋头 Basi yutou Sugary silk taro  This one is more of a dessert almost than a main dish. It's also awesome. Ingredients: Taro Sugar Sesame seeds Oil or lard (This is a healthy dish, if you couldn't guess!) Clean and cut up your taro, then get a ton of oil going and deep fry the pieces. When they're golden brown, they're done. Take em out. Next get a wok out and put a tiny (like one tablespoon, maybe less) of oil in the pan. Heat it up and add a good amount of sugar. Most recipes I checked real quick for actual amounts of things (I am a bad cooking person and never measure anything) say about 200g of sugar for 500g of taro. Yes, 200grams. That is correct. You need a lot. This is the hard part of the dish. At this point you need to non-stop be stirring the sugar and it needs to be hot but not TOO HOT. I have no idea how powerful ranges are in Japan, but I'd say it needs to be low-ish on a Chinese range and medium-ish on an average American one. You want it to be hot enough to melt the sugar, but not hot enough to burn it before we're done with it. Keep stirring the sugar around until it forms little strings if you pull it at all. It's done. Very quickly add in the taro root and sesame seeds. Mix it up so everything is coated and serve immediately. It's important you serve this quickly since if you wait too long the sugar will cool and it won't be the same. Serve with a shallow bowl of room temperature or cool water. When you eat it, dip the taro in the water and it will break the sugary-strings and make it not burning lava hot. 拔丝 dishes are very common in northeastern and southeastern (Zhejiang, Fujian) provinces and you can do this same thing with sweet potatoes, bananas, apples or pears. Usually apples and pears are not deep fried, from what I've seen, but I don't think it would taste BAD if you do deep fry them. It tends to be eaten as a normal dish despite it being very, very sweet. I like it more as a fun dessert though. The banana variety is far and away my favorite.  Probably making this this weekend. Ailumao fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Oct 19, 2012 |
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Oct 19, 2012 18:38
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Probably could use that, but you're going to have to find some bean paste （豆豉） or dou ban (豆瓣) as well. That looks to be just be garlic chili sauce （no bean component), which is not a substitute for the black bean stuff you'd normally use in mapo doufu. I use that stuff when I make dumpling dipping sauce! e:  Stole that pic from an earlier recipe for mapo doufu recipe in this thread. Look for those two characters in the middle 豆瓣, that's the integral part. I think 99.9% of 豆瓣 sauces have chilies in them... I've never seen any without... so that's not quite as important. Varieties usually differ by just how spicy they are and any other extras. I'm currently using an awesome kind that has has a beefy flavor added in through pieces of jerky that are in it. Ailumao fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Oct 25, 2012 |
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Oct 25, 2012 17:13
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Grand Fromage posted:I found doubanjiang too! That is the chili bean paste. I was just saying you could add in a bit of the other stuff you bought if you want, it might add a nice kick if the flavor is good on the lajiao you bought. Just add in like a spoonful or two. Experiment! Mapo Doufu is more of a CONCEPT than a recipe. There's no real right way to make it, just ways that taste objectively better.
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Oct 26, 2012 04:05
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Ghost of Reagan Past posted:Lincoln, Nebraska. Dragonfruit is actually indigenous to Mexico and South America and was brought to Asia by Europeans, which is why I've always wondered why it's so common in SE Asia and not the US. I love it, though, and miss it when I'm in the States. When I make Mapo Doufu I like a really thick spicy and meaty sauce. I tend to add a lot of extra douban and meat, and then add a bit of potato starch at the end. I also seem to be an weirdo cause I use firmer tofu when making it instead of silken. Quick question: Is Japanese Tofu 日本豆腐 actually a Japanese dish? It's pretty ubiquitous here in China at every little restaurant you can find, and I'm making it tonight, so if it's kosher I'll post the recipe.
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Oct 28, 2012 02:36
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With all the different names of all the vegetables I never know what anyone is talkin about!!!! Oh well cooking time: Spicy Rabbit, 辣子兔丁  Made this last night, but was not thinking of you goons so no pictures were taken, photo not mine. Though, the site it's from: https://www.meishi.cc is very good for recipes, if you are Chinese-enabled. This is ANOTHER (surprise surprise) Sichuan dish. Rabbit is a very, very popular kind of meat through Chengdu and Chongqing and also very cheap! What you need:
You might be noticing a trend here in that Sichuan food tends to be like 2 things with 8000 spices. How to make it: How you prepare/dress the rabbit is up to you. The Chinese way is just to indiscriminately chop the poo poo out of it so you end up with a bunch of pieces that are mainly bone. I am not a fan of this way so I always debone my meat, your choice really! Anyway, fry up the rabbit meat first. I've had it a few different ways, some times the meat is just stir fried, some times it's deep fried. I prefer the latter method because the rabbit gets a bit of a satisfying crunch to it if you fry it in a bit more oil. Stir fried is probably healthier, though! Remove the rabbit and if you deep fried it get rid of the excess oil, but we want to use the used oil/rabbit juices for the next step. Heat up the wok again, possibly adding more oil, add in a couple star anises... some star anise... some of that stuff, garlic, ginger and sichuan peppercorn. Once it smells nice add in your chilies and carrots. Fry it up nice and good. Once your carrots start to change color and chilies get cooked, add in just a bit of cooking wine, dark/light soy, salt and a pinch of sugar. Be conservative on your use of these, this dish is not meant to be very saucy. I added maybe a couple teaspoons of each the soy and wine. Re-add the rabbit and just plain-add the garlic shoots (or other green, if you want) and fry for a bit until the greens are cooked. If you're using dried chilies instead of fresh, add them in when you add in the rest of the spices and stuff. This one is REAL quick to make. Once you start cooking it's probably less than 5 minutes or so from beginning to end.  Fun fact(?): In Chinese, unlike English, it's really easy to say and figure out what to call different kinds of meat. You just combine animal and the word for meat （肉）: 猪肉、牛肉、鸡肉、羊肉、香肉, etc. Pig meat, cow meat, chicken meat, lamb meat and fragrant meat (the last one is commonly used in southern China to mean "dog meat" since Chinese dogs are really taking off as pets here and they probably don't want to offend!)A Chinese person could probably quash this theory of mine, but I have never heard rabbit referred to as "Rabbit meat" (兔肉) in the name of a dish. Dishes are usually named Something Something Rabbit (兔子） or describing the cut of meat, like in this one (兔丁). I THINK this is cause the word for rabbit is an exact homonym for the word for vomit (吐) and no one wants to say they are serving or eating vomit meat.  e: some typos and added some stuff Ailumao fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Nov 8, 2012 |
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Nov 8, 2012 00:46
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If I had an oven I'd make the crap out of that. What's weird is whenever I've had it (lamentably never in Guangdong itself) they've used tenderloin instead of belly. I made chashao baozi once, but I cheated and used chashao sauce which is really easy to get over here. Some day I'll make a megapost about baozi, some day.... e: I checked out that sites huiguo rou recipie since I make it a lot and like to compare. It seems fine, but I don't get why he wastes all that time boiling the meat for an hour. Every Chinese person I know, every person who I've seen make it, and every recipe I just found online has the boiling go for 10-15min max. You cut it thin, then stir fry at super high heat afterwards where it cooks up in a minute or two, so I wouldn't think actually cooking the meat through would be a concern. Has anyone used that method before? Does it make the meat extra tasty or tender or something? Ailumao fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Nov 12, 2012 |
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Nov 12, 2012 15:34
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There are a lot of different recipes for it. The most simple I've seen is how my ex used to make it: which was just flour, baking powder, salt, sugar and milk. A quick baidu search brought up recipes that used yeast, some that used baking powder, some that use baking soda, some that use self-rising flour... So I guess use whatever you feel like! Chinese cuisine! I think normal 'ol 高筋面粉 is fine.
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Nov 12, 2012 18:31
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Grand Fromage posted:I made it, using the recipe I linked plus Mach's suggestions (except the fermented bean, didn't have it or want to go looking). It came out great! Man I need an oven.
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Nov 14, 2012 20:50
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Have you ever been to the American northeast and seen anyone eat lobster? They give you bibs for a reason...
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Nov 24, 2012 07:43
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I'm guessing it's Hong Shao Rou 红烧肉 since it's sometimes cooked and served in a clay pot and is almost always translated as "braised pork". Also you can get 鱼香... anything. Eggplant is probably the most common, but I've seen 肉丝、土豆、肉片等等 as well. Shandong and Liaoning especially love the yuxiang flavor! Ailumao fucked around with this message at 08:49 on Dec 5, 2012 |
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Dec 5, 2012 08:46
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Grand Fromage posted:I finally got actual Shaoxing wine thanks to a lovely man named caberham. I've never put in the fridge. Could be my mistake, though.
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Dec 7, 2012 09:38
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Grand Fromage posted:I have been ordered to make dan dan mian. I've also been requested to make it in the soupier style, since this is apparently how it is done in Chengdu. I was thinking of just adding gravity's sauce to some duck stock and serving with a bit of thin sliced duck on top, is there any obvious dumb flaw in my plan? I am a blasphemer and do not really like noodles of any kind, so I've never made 担担面, but I will say it tends to be greasier/oilier rather than "soupier" in Chengdu. Here's a recipe for sichuan style dandan mian with a picture for every step so maybe you can figure it out even lacking Chinese knowledge. That recipe calls for straight up soup stock (骨头汤) so you have the right idea, it seems.
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Dec 13, 2012 04:36
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Hey let's cook a thing: 小煎鸡 Spicy fried chicken??? This is a Sichuan dish I've been eating a lot of lately. My roommate tells me it's super-spiciness lends it to be suitable winter dish. I recently learned how to make it as well! Ingredients 材料
Makin' it Chop everything up nice and small, as per all Chinese food. When slicing up your spicy peppers, it is traditional to just slice them into small cylinders leaving the seeds and stuff all in tact, but if you really dislike spicy stuff you can get rid of it. Marinate the chicken for about 15-30minutes in a concoction of your own design. Mix together all the sauce stuff. This dish isn't too saucy, so I'd be conservative with how much you make. I'd say altogether my sauce was like 150ml or so for like 700g of chicken+???g of veggies tonight, and it turned out well. Don't skimp on the potato starch. Get wok hot, add oil, get oil hot, add chicken. Once the chicken is browned, add in the garlic, ginger, dried chilies, sichuan peppercorn, a generous spoonful of angry lady sauce and whatever non-dried spicy pepper you are using. When that gets good and fragrant, add in the chopped up lotus root and let that cook for a second before you add in the celery or green bamboo, followed by the rest of your veggies. Lotus root does NOT get soft, it stays firm and crunchy, so don't kill your dish waiting for that to happen (it won't ever happen). Once your veggies are done, add in the peanuts and stir real quick before adding in the sauce you made. You want to let the sauce get nice and thick, thinly coating the entire dish and sticking to each piece. This dish, if prepared as outlined here, is pretty drat spicy. It's one of the spiciest things I've had in Sichuan, in fact. The lotus root and peanuts go nicely with this as they tend to control the spiciness quite well. Ailumao fucked around with this message at 16:07 on Jan 13, 2013 |
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Jan 13, 2013 16:05
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Aero737 posted:Ive tried making various tomato dumplings and they always end up a soggy mess. I would love to know how to make them. I've never made them, but I found this recipe: http://www.xiachufang.com/recipe/227128/ You're supposed to cut a cross in the tomatoes, boil the them for a bit, drain them, peel them and then chop them up. I guess that gets rid of some of the sogginess. The recipe also warns against adding too much tomato juice and suggests straining the meat/veggie mixture after it's mixed to get rid of excess liquid.
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Feb 3, 2013 06:21
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It says first to soak it in water for 1-2 hours, take it out and in a different pot I guess add an "appropriate" amount of water and get it to boil under a high flame. Once it's boiling, turn down the flame. Make sure to keep stirring the whole time to stop it from sticking, keep it up till it's all sticky and together. Add sugar or brown sugar if you want and serve immediately.
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Feb 10, 2013 04:32
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Let's cook a food. 土豆盐煎 Salt-fried potatoes  I think this is another Sichuan dish cause I've never seen it anywhere else. It's uncharacteristically not spicy and does not use Sichuan peppercorn! What you need
The first thing you want to do is slice your meat really thin and get some water boiling. Once the water is boiling, throw the meat in and blanch it for a minute or two, not too long. Dredge the meat out and throw it in a bowl. Here you want to throw bit of salt on it and mix it all around. You can also add other spices if you want (Cumin works great). Rub it in and let it sit. Now slice your potatoes into very thin slices. At this point it's a good idea to do the rest of your chopping as well. Get the wok super hot, add some oil, and add the meat back in. Fry it up until its crispy and put it back into a bowl and throw some lao gan ma, soy sauce and maybe a but more salt and let it sit again. Clean out you wok and heat it back up with a very generous amount of oil. Once that gets hot, throw some of the garlic and ginger in followed by the potatoes. Now, at this point it's important you start stirring and never stop. The potatoes will stick to the wok regardless of how well seasoned it is if you let them sit for to long in one spot and lose the nice crispiness we want. After the potatoes are golden brown, toss in the green onions and peppers and let it all cook up a bit. Add in the meat, some more salt, MSG if you want it and some more lao gan ma and stir it up all nice. The potatoes should be crispy-ish, but pretty soft and floppy overall. If I could make one change to how I made this, it would be to add some more salt in while you make the potatoes. My potatoes were the right consistency when I had this, but lacked the nice potato chippy saltiness I they've had when I've had this dish before.
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Feb 11, 2013 13:53
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Honey Badger posted:I don't have a good Asian market anywhere near me; is there a decent place to buy some stuff online? I'm guessing the liquids are going to be harder to get a hold of, but even being able to find some Szechuan peppercorns would be a big deal. If you live in the US Amazon literally has everything.
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Feb 22, 2013 12:04
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Hey more food. 卤肉 Stewed Meat This is a pretty simple recipe but is very versatile in what you can do with it. Pronounced Lu3Rou4, this dish originally comes from Shandong but in the present is synonymous with Taiwan cuisine as about a zillion Shandong people Ingredients
Depending on the size of your pot and how big your cut of meat is, you may want to start by cutting the meat into more manageable chunks. That done, poke a bunch of holes in the meat with your knife or fork or whatever. Blanch the meat in rapidly boiling water for about 5 minutes, drain, rinse and cool. In your pot, put the meat, about 4-5 star anise, one or two sticks of cinnamon, a good helping of ginger, a couple bay leaves, a 1:1 mixture of soy sauce and cooking wine (About 2/3 a cup to one cup depending on how much meat you're cooking), some chopped onions and a bit of sugar if you want. Stick the cooled meat in and throw in enough water so the meat is just almost submerged, get the water boiling and then turn down the heat and let it simmer for 1-2hours. Once its tender, turn off the heat and let the meat cool before taking it out. If you're impatient you can put it in the fridge, but make sure it's still in the liquid as it cools. Once it's cool you can do one of a zillion things with it. Here are some suggestions: Eat it as a cold appetizer! In China, cold meat appetizers are very common and lurou is a pretty common one in Taiwan and Shandong. Slice it in thin slices against the grain and serve. You can also make a dipping sauce of garlic, soy sauce and vinegar (chilies too if you like spicy). Lu rou fan Probably the most commonly eaten form of Lurou in China, is Lurou Fan. The quintessential Taiwanese dish, it's scarfed down by millions every day as a cheap and nice lunch from many roadside vendors. Take your meat and dice it, get a wok hot and stir fry it with vegetables of your choosing. Add in some soy, ginger, garlic and starch to thicken up the sauce and serve over rice. Usually paired with a Lu dan (Hardboiled egg, usually hard boiled in the same kind of liquid you stew your meat in). Soup Lu rou is a great starter for soup. Throw a few bones in and some extra water, a few more onions maybe, and you'll have a decent soup stock. A common lu rou soup will have onions, some sort of pickled vegetable (xue cai 雪菜), and tomatoes.
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Feb 24, 2013 13:34
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Is this good with beef shin? Yeah that's what a lot of people use for it. Also depending on the size of your cuts, and really, how much meat you're using this could take a lot longer than 2 hours. Over here any cut of beef is $$$$ so I only had two tiny pieces and about 2 hours got it nice and tender. Ailumao fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Feb 28, 2013 |
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Feb 28, 2013 02:11
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toplitzin posted:So there is this great Chinese restaurant around the corner from my house with very odd hours 4pm-330am, and delicious mapo tofu and spicy green beans. Is it a sichuan or generally spicy place? 小煎鸡 is a dish from Sichuan/Hunan. It helps if you know what area the people come from. When I lived in Columbus, Ohio (Which has a zillion Chinese people and a zillion authentic restaurants for whatever reason) I asked for 地三鲜 at a place that was Sichuanese and the waitress got all snooty at me about how they aren't wimpy northeasterners and I should eat something spicy, Weirdly enough now I am in actual Sichuan and it's everywhere 
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Apr 2, 2013 03:55
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Probably. Doujiang is one of those things that doesn't really go bad in forever. If you haven't opened it yet I'd say it's definitely fine, if you have I'd probably still use it. Note that I am stupid, live in China and have food poisoning/stomach issues three days of every week anyway before following this advice.Arcturas posted:Could you do Mapo Dofu with ground chicken or turkey or something instead of the pork? I don't eat any pig products, which somewhat limits my Chinese repertoire, but that looks so delicious. Make it with whatever you want. I've made it with beef before and it was p good. Ailumao fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Apr 17, 2013 |
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Apr 17, 2013 16:55
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Arglebargle III posted:Hey that's pixian doujiang, my favorite kind! It's already a fermented food so you should probably be good. I always use laoganma's douchi instead cause laoganma is my chinese food overlord.
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Apr 19, 2013 14:32
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sanosuke21 posted:Let's talk about clay pot dishes! For all of you who live in NYC, there is a delicious restaurant in Manhattan Chinatown (I'm sure there's one in Queens too) that does clay pot dishes, and when you get them to go, THEY COME IN THE CLAY POT AND YOU GET TO KEEP IT! The place is called A Wah, here's a link: http://www.awahrestaurant.com/ 三杯鸡 is pretty good. It's a dish from JIangsu/Taiwan. http://tastedbytwo.com/2009/10/27/recipe-three-cup-chicken/ How big is the clay pot? In Hangzhou, one of their "specialty dishes" is a whole chicken slow-cooked in a clay pot and is pretty much the best thing. I'm guessing yours ain't big enough for that, though.
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Apr 22, 2013 00:25
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sanosuke21 posted:Thanks, that looks drat tasty. Mine definitely couldn't fit a whole chicken but if you have a good source for the recipe, please share, maybe I can adapt it to fit my pot. A clay pot will explode because of rapid temperature change. You can bake with them, you just have to put them in a cold oven so the pot heats up slowly with the oven itself. I couldn't find a recipe for the exact Hangzhou dish since I forget the specific name, but this is probably just about the same. There wasn't much to it.
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Apr 23, 2013 01:03
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sanosuke21 posted:Weird, that doesn't seem very Chinese but I'm sure it's real tasty! I mean the spices and junk might be different, the stuff in Hangzhou is pretty light on seasonings, but a chicken baked in a clay pot is gonna be a chicken baked in a clay pot.
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Apr 25, 2013 01:09
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Rurutia posted:Are you sure you're not thinking about the whole chicken wrapped in leaves and clay then baked until the clay hardens. Then you smash it open. I'm from Hangzhou and I don't know of another whole chicken with clay dish. The effect is quite different from just cooking a whole chicken in a clay pot... Usually Chinese recipes for chicken in clay pots are 'hot pots' or chicken soup in air clay pots (qi guo). Yeah, beggar's chicken is pretty much the Hangzhou dish, but it's a bit too involved for any sane individual to make (authentically) on their own. It is very good though. It might only exist at 外婆家, but they have a plain 'ol whole chicken baked in a plain 'ol clay pot and it's amazing. I'd never had anything like that before I was in Hangzhou so I thought it was from there. It's been maybe a year since I was back there so I forget the exact name. e: found it! It IS a bit different than I remember in these pics, I just remember it being amazingly delicious. The pot doesn't even look clay there so I guess my memory was screwing with me. http://www.dianping.com/shop/4500496/dish-%E6%A8%9F%E8%8C%B6%E9%B8%A1 I couldn't find an English recipe for this, but it looks simple enough so I might make it later and translate for anyone not fluent in heavenly characters. It does seem like a pretty obscure thing though, the baidu search for it when I was looking for pictures auto searched for coffee tables (茶几 as opposed to 茶鸡) Ailumao fucked around with this message at 09:06 on Apr 25, 2013 |
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Apr 25, 2013 06:52
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