Viet World Kitchen

Stir-Fried Pork with Black Beans and Green Beans Recipe

Having worked on this tofu book for about a year and a half, I’ve found myself eating a mostly low-meat diet. For that reason, there are often bits of meat sitting in the fridge that I have to use up. This week, there was about 12 ounces of pork shoulder steak lingering. Looking for an easy, Chinese-y way to use it up, I made this stir-fry, based on a Hunan recipe from Fuschia Dunlop’s Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook. She described “Farmhouse Stir-Fried Pork with Green Peppers” (Nong Jia Chao Rou) as a popular peasant dish but I found that the flavors were fit for a king.

I had no sweet Italian peppers, as called for in the recipe, so I substituted tender Romano beans from the farmers’ market. A Fresno chile lent color and a tiny bit of heat. Balancing texture, color, and flavor is key to stir-frying just like it is with any cooking.

The most remarkable aspect of this stir-fry was the seasoning of the pork. With just a bit of light and dark soy sauce and Shaoxing rice wine, the pork took on a wonderful velvety, deeply savory quality. Rory remarked that it was bordering being lamblike. The key was using a fat (well marbled) piece of pork shoulder. You know I love grilled pork shoulder steaks. Next time you’re at a market buy an extra one for this stir-fry.  We gobbled it up with rice.

I suppose that if you don’t want to eat pork, chicken thigh would be work as a substitute. Instead of the green beans, try Anaheim or Pasilla chiles, if you like. Lovely sweet Italian peppers should be coming into season in a few weeks. I typically get mine from Hmong farmers.

Peking Duck Meal at Home -- LA Times Article

 

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Remember my experiments with Sichuan and Peking duck earlier this year? After those initial forays, I wanted to make a whole 3-course Peking duck meal with the Mandarin pancakes, stir-fry and final soup. Editor Russ Parsons of the Los Angeles Times "Food" section let me go at it and the article was published today.

I cooked a lot of ducks to perfect the recipes, and the photos above give you the highlights. The roasted duck. Its crisp flesh in a homemade pancake (it's like a flour tortilla but better), the stir-fry with the roast duck meat, and the final soup made from ducky broth and cabbage.

Don't be daunted. It surprisingly doesn't take much to produce this wonderful Chinese meal in your home kitchen.  My husband and I ate it multiple times during recipe development. We never tired of it and didn't even develop duck tummies. Seriously.

Check out my journey toward Peking duck-dom, recipes, and techniques:

Dine-in Duck  (Los Angeles Times, July 29, 2010)

Start practicing on your family and friends. Let me know your thoughts!

Related Chinese duck recipes:

Chinese Fragrant and Crispy Duck - Version 1 (Xiang Su Quan Ya)
Chinese Fragrant and Very Crispy Duck - Version 2 (Xiang Su Quan Ya)
Homemade Peking Duck

• Step 1: How to blow up a duck
• Step 2: How to scald and give the duck a tan
• Step 3: How to roast the duck

Kohlrabi Stir-fried with Garlic and Egg Recipe (Su Hao Xao Toi)

Many thanks to those of you who contributed ideas on how to cook kohlrabi Asian style. Your thoughts fed my imagination over the weekend. I’d come home from a grueling week-long business trip out of town and was spent. Plus, I pulled my Achilles tendon on Thursday. Hobbling was the best I could do.

The nearly empty fridge had a bag of farmer’s root vegetables – carrots, watermelon radishes, and kohlrabi – half a red onion and some eggs. Recalling your comments and a conversation with my mother about kohlrabi, I whipped up this simple stir-fry to go with a bowl of rice and a watermelon radish salad.

The hardest part of it was peeling away all the tough kohlrabi skin. Trimming the root and stem ends first makes using the vegetable peeler to remove the skin easier. After an initial pass of the peeler, I did it again. Kohlrabi shines brighter once its thick exterior is gone.

Then it was simply a matter of cutting up the kohlrabi into thick julienne, about 1/4-inch wide. You can add carrot to this stir-fry too but that would rob kohlrabi of its stardom. Next time, I may throw a teaspoon or so of finely chopped dried shrimp into the skillet with the garlic and red onion.

Feeling much better after the meal, I hobbled with a much lighter step.

Serves 2 or 3

2 kohlrabi, each about the size of a large orange
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons fish sauce
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon canola oil
2 large cloves garlic, minced
1/2 small red onion, sliced vertically into thin wedges
Salt

1. Peel the kohlrabi and cut into thick julienne. Set aside.

2. Beat the eggs with the fish sauce and black pepper. Set aside.

3. Heat the canola oil in skillet over medium high heat. Add the garlic and onion and cook for about 1 minute until just softened.

4. Add the kohlrabi and cook for 3 to 5 minutes, stirring frequently, until softened. It should weep some liquid. However, feel free to splash in water and/or lower the heat if the skillet looks dry.

Give the egg one last gentle beat then pour over the kohlrabi. Stir to combine and cook for another 30 seconds, until the egg has set. Remove from the heat, season with salt and pepper. Transfer to a plate and serve with rice.

Related post:  Asian Ideas for Kohlrabi? (includes tips on selecting good ones!)

Stir-Fried Beef with Lemongrass and Chiles -- Mark Bittman.com

Remember how I went on the press trip last month? I went to New York, Nanjing, China, and then Hanoi, Vietnam, in the span of about 10 days.  In total, I flew 9 flights in 13 days. I tasted new foods, experienced Asian history, met relatives I didn't know I had, and battled jet lag!

Among the things that I took away from the trip was the stir-fry above. It's not quite Vietnamese thit bo xao xa ot but a hybrid Chinese-Vietnamese preparation that I had on Dragon Air (part of Cathay Pacific Airlines, which co-sponsored the trip).

The simple stir-fry comforted at the end of the journey, and I liked it lots. So much so that I went home and replicated it. It's hard to believe but airline food can inspire!

For the recipe, see this 7/8/10 post on MarkBittman.com:

• Decent Food at 30,000 Feet, Seriously

Related posts:

• Advice for Fighting Jet Lag and Surviving Red-Eyes
• Hanoi Food and Travel Tips: Where to go, what to eat
  
• Hanoi Food and Travel 2010 (initial impressions)

Stir-Fried Chicken with Black Bean Sauce Recipe

Most Chinese restaurant renditions of stir-fried dishes with black bean sauce are one note affairs. Then tend toward being salty and not much else. They are rarely well-balanced preparations because the fermented black beans standout too prominently. When you make such dishes at home, you are in command of the seasonings and can add nuance. You can tweak the flavors to coax out the tangy, winy qualities of the black beans.

Someone asked recently if buying black bean sauce in the jar is okay. My response was: it is NOT okay.

Prepared “black bean sauce” is like jarred or canned spaghetti sauce. All you need to make a great Chinese-style black bean sauce are fermented black beans (which are actually salted black soybeans). Similarly, all you need for a terrific spaghetti sauce is a stash of good tomatoes! Why let someone else mix up the sauce for you?

Where do you buy fermented black beans? Head to a Chinese market. The beans are sold in little plastic bags or in cylindrical paper cartons with some preserved ginger thrown in. I prefer the paper carton, though you have to buy a large amount. Once home, put the black beans in a jar and refrigerate.

Fermented black beans are also sold online, should you not live near a Chinese market. As long as you have the black beans, this dish comes together quickly.

Should you rinse fermented black beans before using them? It’s up to you. For delicate applications as in this stir-fry recipe, rinse them to remove some of the saltiness. For punchy preparations, such as those in the Sichuan repertoire, leave the salted fermented black beans in their lusty, earthy primal state.