Viet World Kitchen

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.

Stir-Fried Clams with Spicy Bean Sauce Recipe

In the early 1990s, I received a fellowship to study at Chinese University in Hong Kong. That year of study helped me polish my language skill but more importantly, I got to eat my way through Hong Kong. My friends and I would go to the Kowloon night market and browse the stalls of overly padded bras and cheap knock-off goods before we settled on a few evening street snacks.

My all time favorite Hong Kong night market dish was clams in bean sauce. The small clams were as big as a quarter and thin shelled so there was a ton of them piled high on a plate. Hot from the wok, each order was unceremoniously plopped down on a flimsy table. My friends and I sat on stools and ate the clams with bamboo skewers, slurping all the sauce we could, scorching our tongues as we worked our way to the bottom of the plate. It cost roughly $2 an order. Seriously.

I’ve been looking for a good recipe for that dish since then. Most U.S. Chinese restaurants offer clams in black bean sauce but frankly, the pungency of fermented black beans overwhelms the delicate clams. I did not realize the error of my ways until I tried Grace Young’s stir-fried clams with spicy bean sauce recipe from Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge.

It’s not fermented black beans that I was looking for, but rather ground bean sauce. Ground bean sauce is sold in jars at Chinese market, and though it is definitely salty, it is not as forceful and earthy as fermented black beans. Ground bean sauce plays well with other ingredients, falling into the background to add savory depth.

Regular whole salted soybeans, also sold at Chinese markets, function in the same way, though they are not as nuanced as ground bean sauce. I used salted soybeans as the jar was what I had in my pantry.

The result was terrific, full of ginger, garlic, a touch of fresh chile heat. The clams stood up well to the flavors and retained their individual characteristics. I was frankly, happy as a clam. The salty, spicy, savory sauce was great on rice too, just like Grace described in the recipe introduction.

My Rice Noodles with Chinese Chives, Shrimp and Pork recipe in LA Times top 10 for 2009

Last July I wrote a piece for the Los Angeles Times Food section on Vietnamese herbs. I'd been wanting to write that story for years to offer information on the wide range of herbs, as well as their culinary uses to a broad audience of cooks. Russ Parsons, the Food section editor, allowed me to let my geek out, and the resulting article was just what I envisioned. Today I learned that one of the recipes I'd submitted for the piece was selected for the LA Times's top 10 recipes of 2009.

It's for a simple rice noodle stir fry that employs lots of Chinese chives (he in Vietnamese), which are flat like a long blade of grass and have a mild garlicky flavor. I love that recipe as I grew up on it. In fact, one summer my family made it over and over as a Vietnamese neighbor had a bumper crop and kept bring by plastic bags of the chives. One time I ate so much of the garlicky, tangy noodles that I got a stomach ache.

The rice noodles with Chinese chives, shrimp and pork recipe originally was published in my book, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen as part of the giant noodles chapter. If you've got the book, check out the recipe on page 235. If you don't have the book, use the recipe posted at the Los Angeles Times Food section, Enjoy!

Relate information:

"Fresh Herbs at the Center of Vietnamese Cuisine" (Los Angeles Times, July 15, 2009)

Corn with Chile, Scallion, and Shrimp Recipe (Bap Xao)

Last year I had a freak accident while traveling in Southeast Asia. I fell and put a hairline crack in my front teeth. Ever since then, I’ve neither been able to gnaw on ribs nor bite into corn on the cob. My dentist warned me against it, lest I aggravate the injury. We’re heading into corn season as the weather heats up these days. I unfortunately have to pass on one of my favorite summer foods – grilled corn on the cob slathered with scallion oil and garnished with a sprinkling of salt. It’s a Vietnamese treat that I remember from childhood, and just because I can’t enjoy it doesn’t mean that you can’t either. Just make some scallion oil and grill the corn (boil it first) till the corn gets some charred parts.

I love corn and I was looking for -- and needed -- a corny change. Last month while dining at Street, Susan Feniger’s restaurant in Los Angeles, I noticed a side dish called “Vietnamese corn”.  Oh, I thought, Susan was offering Angelenos a version of a Vietnamese street treat that I’d enjoyed a few years ago in the Motherland. How clever.

Noodles Every Day: Silver Pin Noodles with Chicken Recipe

A few days ago, I reviewed Corinne Trang’s new book, Noodles Every Day, and discussed how it helped me to resolve a culinary mystery regarding a type of fresh Asian rice noodle called mouse tails. From the comments and discussion that ensued, I realized that the term ‘mouse tail noodle’ is commonly used in Malaysia, as my friend Annie pointed out. The actual Chinese characters, 老鼠粉, lo shu fun in Cantonese, literally translates to old mouse/rat tail! I’m going with the more poetic name of silver pin noodles from here on in as it’s definitely a better sell.

I purchased my silver pin noodles from Lion Foods market in San Jose, California. They were located in the refrigerated section near the other fresh noodles and tofu. The package is below: