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ShadowCatboy
Jan 22, 2006

by FactsAreUseless
The trick to a good mapo tofu is getting the right brand of chili sauce and tofu, really.

I made some more braised pork belly recently (actually been making it drat frequently) and I think I perfected my personal secret recipe. I'll post pics later.

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ShadowCatboy
Jan 22, 2006

by FactsAreUseless
I just hosted my first real dinner party for friends this Saturday! I decided to go full-on Chinese with Eight Savory Courses (for good luck!) and a Five-Flavor Dessert Plate (another lucky number). Important thing to know about me is that I was raised by a mom whose ancestors were from the Jiangsu Province of China (aka Jiangsu-Ren) and Jiangsu peeps have a real sweet tooth. They love to put a heaping spoonful of sugar in everything, including the savory courses. At the same time however, my mom loves to cook Szechuan cuisine so I'll be taking us on a bit of a pan-China tour. :)

And as my mom always said, "For us Jiangsu-Ren, a dinner feels incomplete without a dessert." I was chatting with another Chinese friend about this and he joked that "well, even the main courses in Jiangsu dishes always felt like dessert to me."


Eight Savory Courses:

Dinner was served with jasmine & green tea-perfumed rice (not counting this as a course) and an excellent gewurztraminer with a great distinctive lychee aroma.






1) Mapo Tofu. A traditional Szechuan dish typified by its "ma la" flavor profile: Numbing (from the szechuan peppercorns) and spicy-hot. Normally this dish would be swimming in chili oil, but I decided to go not add any more fat to it than necessary since I wanted this to be a stew to pour over the tea-scented rice. Silken tofu means it's got a tender mouthfeel next to the richness of the minced meat, and the milky soy quality of the tofu also helps to quench the heat of the sauce a little.




2) Red Cooked Short Ribs. Braised for 72 hours in my immersion circulator at 144*F in a rich dark sauce spiced with chili peppers, star anise, ginger, and szechuan peppercorns and aged orange peel. I originally wanted the meat to be more pink and medium but upon reheating it got cooked through a little past that. The glaze has a good hunk of cane sugar in it so it's nice and sweet.




3) Scallion Oil Chicken. For this popular Cantonese dish I deboned some chicken legs & thighs, seasoned them with salt and white pepper, rolled them into roulades, and poached them in my immersion circulator for 12 hours at 150*F. After chilling them overnight I slice them into medallions and arrange them into a blossom of delicious chicken meat. These days it's customary to serve the dish cold, and just before putting it on the table I top the chicken medallions with scallions and ginger sauteed in a generous amount of vegetable oil. Silky, moist, unctuous, and cooling.




4) Hong Shao Rou. Red-cooked braised pork cheeks. These were also cooked for 72 hours in my immersion circulator, in a rich dark sauce. Pork cheeks are a wonderful cut of meat that get delightfully soft and silky when you cook them down for that long. The sauce made from the bag juices also became exceptionally gelatinous and laquered each individual piece of fatty cheek meat. I also backseasoned the sauce with more spices, and arranged them as part of the presentation. Quite proud of the plating here.




5) Thai basil & pepper braised eggplant. I took a donkey's dick of a Chinese eggplant and sauteed it in a dark vinegar sauce and it shriveled down terribly to this pathetic little amount that barely fills a small bowl (this also hearkens to a phobia unique to Japan and some parts of China). Despite this, it was remarkably tasty and one of my friends said this was one of his favorite dishes of the night, even when stacked up against the other meatier courses. Got a nice deep thrumming base of umami to it.




6) Xiao Long Bao. AKA Little Basket Dumplings, AKA Shanghai Soup Dumplings. Handmade dumplings with soup on the INSIDE of the wrapper along with a small nugget of meat. I made these with the help and teaching of my Tibetan uncle, a master dumpling maker. Went with two flavors: Original Shanghai style (white), and spicy Szechuan filling with a broth made from like 8 different spices. What you're seeing here is when they're freshly made, before steaming. To eat these you nip the skirt of the dumpling, slurp out the mouthful of soup, and then dip the dumpling into a vinegar-ginger sauce and eat the sucker. Delish.




7) Shanghai-Style Pickled Cucumbers. Lightly brined so they still retain a good crunch, they're seasoned with garlic, rice vinegar, soy sauce, and (of course) a good spoonful of sugar. A nice palate cleanser.


8) (Not pictured) Creamed Corn Egg Drop Soup. A thick yet light soup meant to close the meal. Unlike the West, the Chinese prefer to END a meal with a bowl of soup since it leaves the guests with a nice, warm comforting feeling. Chinese soups are also much less salty since they're not meant to be eaten with bread, and you also don't wanna leave a cloying sensation when you're ending the meal.


:siren: ***INTERMISSION*** :siren:



If you guys don't have a bottle of this poo poo, you gotta pick it up. Saint Elizabeth's Allspice Liqueur. After the meal I served this as a digestif, and boy does it warm you up inside. Sweet, soft, and with a wonderful spicy aroma it really helps comfort and cleanse the palate.

And now, back to the show.


Five Flavor Dessert Platter:



Normally Chinese desserts are grossly disappointing, so I wanted to use some more western techniques to jazz things up a bit. These were served with an orange moscato. After we finished this plate we retired to the sofa for some Death to Smoochy and Chrysanthemum Tea sweetened with crystallized honey.

1) Asian-style flan. The main star of the dish, I wanted this (and the wine) to be a playful variant of the Chinese American tradition of having orange slices for dessert (funny enough that Chinese friend of mine is from the Mainland and he's never heard of the orange slice thing and thought it was weird). I modified a Japanese flan/egg custard pudding recipe (puri) and flavored it with orange zest, orange blossom water, osmanthus, and vanilla. Sweetened very very lightly with Turkish honey, it's got notes of bitterness that helps play wonderfully against the sweet syrup. Also after some experimentation I got just the right ratios of ingredients such that the texture was perfect and it was supple as a courtesan's inner thigh.

2) Burnt sugar syrup infused with cinnamon and cloves. Lightly spicy, it synergizes with the orange aroma and faint bitterness in the flan.

3) Sugar-Infused Wolfberries. Wolfberries in Chinese herbalism are supposed to be very cleansing, and they also add a certain raisiney sweetness to the dish. Got a faintly meaty texture and a nice chewy bite to contrast against the silken softness of the flan.

4) Lychees. These came from a can, I'll admit.

5) Hawthorn berry sorbet. Homemade with dried hawthorn berries, the sorbet was thick in texture and had a wonderfuly zingy tartness that also wedded well with the syrup.


Background Music:

I didn't want to do Chinese classical music even though it can be very pretty, because that would've just been way too much. Instead I went with the French electroswing group, Caravan Palace. With the volume down low it was very nice and stimulating without being too energetic.

Give it a listen.

ShadowCatboy
Jan 22, 2006

by FactsAreUseless

mindphlux posted:

does anyone know about making ho fun (those flat chewy rice noodles in char kway teow / tons of poo poo)?

my gal and I tried tonight and couldn't get it right. we steamed a rice batter, but it just tasted... like uncooked flour mostly. one batch we made was almost cakey. if we did it thin enough, it was close - but not a success. tried a few different recipies / ratios.

Is there a reason you guys aren't using store bought noodles?

ShadowCatboy
Jan 22, 2006

by FactsAreUseless

mindphlux posted:

is there a reason you don't eat in a restaurant every time you want food?

I'm just trying to learn new technique and become a better cook! if I just did the easy thing every time I wanted to cook food, I would have 1/100th the breadth of cooking experience/knowledge I do today. and my tiny fraction of knowledge and competency is pretty much 0% compared to what there is to learn from people and cultures worldwide.

Nothing wrong with that, I'm just not sure the end product is necessarily worth the trouble. I mean I get the appeal of fresh italian pasta but I dunno if homemade fresh chow fun noodles would be all that different from store-bought. To me it seems to contribute as much additional quality as hand-milling your own flour.

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