Fusion Salad (4) - Cucumber

This is a pleasant summer dish.

Ingredient (for 2 people):

4 Persian cucumbers or any kind that is crunchy and juicy

1 tbsp Chinese style mustard paste

1 tbsp sesame paste

1 tbsp vinegar

1 tbsp soy sauce

0.5 tbsp maple syrup (or sugar) 

2-4 cloves of garlic 

Salt

Directions:

1.      Thoroughly clean the cucumbers.

2.     Cut cucumber into small pieces of your preferred shapes (The easiest way is to rest one side of your knife on the cucumber and pound the other side with your fist to crush the cucumber, and then cross cut into 1/4” chucks as shown).

3.     Make garlic paste (I often use mortar and pestle).

4.     Mix mustard paste, sesame paste, vinegar, soy sauce, maple syrup, and garlic paste together.

5.     Spread a pinch of salt on the cucumber, mix well, and let it rest for 5 minutes.

6.     Drain the water from cucumber, and mix the cucumber with dressing.

7.     Taste before serving, and add vinegar or sugar if necessary to meet your taste.

Notes:

Thanksgiving Stuffing

If you are looking for a stuffing recipe for your Thanksgiving dinner, consider this one. It is a celebration of harvest and gathering with flavors, textures and colors.

You need to select good sausage, one with some fat and good flavors in it. If you are missing one or two ingredients, it will still work. The amount of each ingredient is not critical.

Ingredients (for 4 people):

1 cup of sausage (remove casing, split into quarters and dice)

Group 1:

1 head of shallot (finely dice)

1 stem of green onion (finely cross cut)

1.25 cup of celery (dice into roughly 3/8” cubes)

0.75 cup of carrots (dice into roughly 3/8” cubes)

0.5 cup of white mushroom (dice into roughly 3/8” cubes)

0.5 cup of corn kernel (defrosted)

Group 2:

1 cup of Chinese flat bread (发面饼; you can use flatbed bread, naan; cut into 3/4” diamond)

4 cups of cooked rice

0.25 cup of dried cranberry (soaked in sparkling wine for at least 1 hour)

0.25 cup of pine nut (raw)

0.25 cup of pecan (raw, break into small pieces, similar size to pine nut)

0.25 cup of chestnut (cooked, diced)

Misc:

Olive oil

Salt

Chicken stock

You need to make this stuffing to go with your main protein. If it is turkey cooked according to a traditional recipe, it is likely that you use rosemary, sage, thyme and parsley. You can save small amount of each for this dish. I typically use

1 teaspoon of sage (2-3 leaves finely chopped)

1 teaspoon of thyme (leaves pulled off stems)

It you want to go in oriental direction, use small amount of chives or cilantro. Even if you do not use any more spices, this will still be a good stuffing.

Directions:

1)      Cook 2 cups of white rice in a rice cooker in advance (we need 4 cups of cooked rice)

2)      Prepare other ingredients as instructed or as you please

3)      Set oven to bake at 300F for 20 minutes, and heat up oven

4)      Heat up a large fry pan on medium low heat

5)      Add 2 tbsp of olive oil

6)      Drop the sausage and saute until the fat begins to render

7)      Drop green onion, shallot, mushroom, celery, carrots, and corn kernel (Group 1); add 1 teaspoon of salt

8)      Turn up heat to medium or medium high

9)      Cook for about 7-10 minutes (until celery and carrots begin to lose raw texture); add chicken stock if necessary.

10)   Add cooked rice (4 cups), flat bread, cranberry (stain off the sparkling wine), pine nut, pecan, chestnut (Group 2)

11)   Add 0.5 cup of chicken stock (if you like your stuffing dry, add less; if you like it soft, add a little more)

12)   Mix well and taste to check if you need to add salt

13)   Transfer to a casserole dish

14)   (optional) Add sage and thyme on top

15)   Seal the casserole dish with foil

16)   Bake in oven for 20 minutes

17)   Rest for 5 minutes after taken out of oven

Notes:

You can bake this dish when your turkey is out of oven and resting, so that the serving time is synchronized.

Fusion Salad (3) - Lotus Roots

Fall is here. It is a good time to taste some lotus roots.

I took this dish to several potluck feasts in the past 10 years, and people like it.

Ingredient (for 2-4 people):

3 segments of lotus roots (about 1.25 lb after cleaned up)

1 stem of green onion

2 slices of ginger

3 tbsp rice vinegar

3 tbsp sugar

3 tbsp fermented glutinous rice

0.5 tbsp sesame oil

0.5 tbsp olive oil

0.5 teaspoon salt

Directions:

1.      Skin the segments, and clean the two ends

2.     Cross cut into 1/8” thick slices (you need a good knife here)

3.     Bring a pot of water to boil, and cook the lotus roots for 4-6 minutes (cook off the raw taste and keep the sweetness; please taste to be sure)

4.     Move the lotus roots to a container with cold water to stop cooking

5.     Use a strainer to separate lotus roots, and drop the vegetable into a clean bowl

6.     Finely dice ginger and green onion

7.     Mix ginger and green onion with the rest of the seasonings to make sauce

8.    Mix the sauce and lotus roots

9.    Rest in refrigerator for 15 minutes

10.   Taste before serving, and add salt, vinegar or sugar if necessary to meet your taste.

Notes:

You can prepare this dish the day before.

A small amount of ginger enhance the taste but not over-powering.

You have to buy a bottle of fermented glutinous rice and only use a small portion of it. But it really helps with the taste.

Fusion Salad (2) - Bitter Melon

I call them fusion salad, because they use ingredients, seasonings, and cooking methods from different cuisines.

It is summer again here in Texas. How about getting out of comfort zone and trying some bitter melon? How about being a little wild and eating it raw?

Many people do not like the bitter taste from this fine vegetable. I do not either, but I find counter-balances to make a dish that people like. You might as well.

Ingredient (for 2-4 people):

2 bitter melon (pick the fresh ones, and find the crisp kind locally)

1 stem of green onion

4 stems of cilantro

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

3 tbsp fruit vinegar

1.5 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp soy sauce

0.5 tbsp sesame oil

1 tbsp Olive oil

Finely ground pepper (2-4 turns)

Salt

Directions:

1.     Wash the vegetables thoroughly

2.     Cross cut the bitter melon into 2” sections

2.     Peel off the green layer to use for this dish

3.     Julienne the peels

(some people split the melon length-wise and scrap off the white layer. If you do it that way, cross cut the melon into slices. Here, I want to be clear off the white layer while not bruising the good part.)

4.     Finely chop the green onion and cilantro

5.     Mix the rest of the ingredients to make sauce (leave out the salt for later)

6.     Mix the sauce with vegetables

7.     Rest the vegetables in refrigerator for about 10-15 minutes, and flip the vegetable a couple of times

8.     Before serving, taste the salad, and add a small amount of salt/soy sauce, or sugar if necessary to meet your taste.

Notes:

If you are a purist, you can replace balsamic vinegar, fruit vinegar, pepper, and olive oil with Zhenjiang vinegar, rice vinegar and chili pepper oil. You will need to check on the ratio of sugar and vinegar for your taste.

If you have a lemon at hand, you can deduct one tbsp of fruit vinegar, and add one tbsp of lemon juice and some lemon zest to the sauce.

If your palate tells you that the bitter taste almost belongs there, you get the seasoning spot-on.

A Set of Appliances for Cooking Chinese Food

Start

A few years ago, I decided to find a set of kitchen appliances for making traditional Chinese food from flour with less labor. A friend of mine had a KitchenAid 6qt mixer. He used it for bread, steamed bread, and dumping dough. So this is my starting point. I take a different approach from a lot of people. Instead of settling on one piece of equipment and waiting for a sale, I make a list of things I want the appliances to do for me, i.e., investment objectives:

1)     Making dumping wraps (not just dough, but finished wrap, i.e.,饺子皮)

2)     Making noodles （面条）

3)     Making dough for steamed bread （馒头）or pan-fried pies （烙饼）

4)     Mixing stuffing

I break this list down to repeating operations:

1)     Mixing ingredients

2)     Kneading dough (for different uses)

3)     Making pasta sheet from dough

4)     Cutting dumping wraps from pasta sheet

5)     Making pasta/noodle

From this list of operations, I started putting together a system of equipment to perform the operations.

Solution

Among all the operations, 4) is the easiest. Dumping wraps can be made from rolled pasta sheets using a circular cookie/biscuit cutter. I know I can also make my own cutters.

The hardest is operation 2). Kneading the dough is the most demanding operation to a unit. To my surprise, the KitchenAid mixers are not really made for this. They are primarily designed for pastry making, i.e., cakes and cookies. Serious bread makers use Bosch mixers, Verona mixer, or Hobart mixers. People reported some issues around using KitchenAid 5qt and 6qt mixers for kneading their dough. I thought about building my system around Bosch mixer. But Bosch mixer does not offer an attachment for making pasta sheet, which is necessary to make dumping wraps in my case. There are two ways to make pasta, extrusion and rolled. The pasta made from extrusion is twice as dense as rolled, and takes longer to cook and does not take the sauce as well. But certain pasta, like macaroni, can only be made using extrusion method. Bosch only offers the extrusion method on their mixer, while KitchenAid has attachments to do pasta both ways.

I take another look at KitchenAid products. KitchenAid offers a 7qt stand mixer with a DC motor. It is a quiet and powerful unit built to run continuously for a long time. This mixer is a new design from ground up, targeting chefs and pastry makers. It was first offered as NSF certified commercial version around 2009. Williams Sonoma carries their exclusive version with cosmetic differences.

Now I have a system, KitchenAid 7qt stand mixer with Pasta attachments. The mixer itself can do operations 1) with beater, and 2) with dough hook. The mixer with pasta sheet roller covers operation 3). From pasta sheet (6 inch wide), I can cut out round dumping wrap using cookie/biscuit cutters. That is operation 4). The pasta cutters give me different pasta (noodle), taking care of operation 5).

List of Appliances

KitchenAid RKSM7990WH 7qt stand mixer

Second mixing bowl KSMC7QBOWL (optional, one for dough and the other for stuffing)

KitchenAid Pasta Roller & Cutter Set (KPRA)

Cookie/biscuit Cutter (around 3.25” diameter, made mine from an almond can)

Experience

At first, I feel that the mixer is big for home kitchen. But I get over the feeling when I see the mixer performs. I tried all operations on the list. The system performed very well for me on everything I put it through. I can knead dough from 2 cups to 16 cups (0.5 lb to 4.5 lb) of flour. When I do steamed bread, the large capacity gives the space for the dough to rise in the bowl. I can put the bowl back on the mixer for the second round of kneading. The mixer is quiet. The attachments are well made, but require some fine tune. Overall, I am pleased with every piece I selected in the system.

Cooking Chinese food from flour is easier, and the results are better. Is it worth the investment? To me, the answer is definitely “Yes”. I wish I have done it years ago.

Fusion Salad (1) – Romaine Lettuce

I call them fusion salad, because they use ingredients, seasonings, and cooking methods from different cuisines.

This is a simple recipe with surprises. 

Ingredient (for 1-2 people):

1 head of Romaine lettuce

1 head of shallot

3 tbsp Mizkan Sesame Flavored Dressing

2 tbsp Roasted sunflower seeds

2 tbsp Olive oil

Directions:

Now you see that the list of ingredients is surprisingly simple, some of you may want to skip this.

1.     Cross cut the lettuce into 1 inch wide ribbons.

2.     Finely dice shallot

3.     Heat up a fry pan/wok with medium high heat

4.     Add 1-2 tbsp of olive oil, and drop the diced shallot 

5.     Sauté the shallot to slightly brown (20-40 seconds)

6.     Add lettuce and flip a few times (10-15 seconds)

7.     Add 3 tbsp salad dressing and flip a few times until the vegetable is well mixed with the dressing (20-40 seconds)

8.     Move the vegetable into a salad bowl

9.     Spread 2 tbsp of roasted sunflower seeds on top

If you are still with me, you get to the next surprise. The salad tastes pretty good.

Notes:

We are not trying to cook the vegetable, but rather to use the heat to infuse the flavor, so do not let the lettuce to stay in the pan for longer than 40 seconds. The salad dressing does not have high salt content, and generous amount will give you stronger flavor. If you like roasted sunflower seeds, you are warned that too much of it can be over-powering the flavor.  

Breakfast Eggs

Following this recipe, you will have tender and tasty eggs as part of your breakfast to start your day.

Ingredients:

Eggs (fresh ones are better)

Pepper (in grinder)

Sherry vinegar (in sprayer)

Light soy sauce

Directions:

If you have a preferred way to poach your eggs, do it your way and go to seasoning part (step 6).

1.     Heat up a pot of water to about 180°F. The pot should have a flat bottom and is large enough for 2 or more small saucers. 

2.     Break an egg on a straining ladle to strain off the watery stuff.

3.     Transfer the egg from the ladle to a small saucer.

4.     Lower the saucer into the pot slowly (with plate clip/lifter, or whatever works for you. Here I use a wire strainer and gravity). The egg should be completely submerged.  

5.     Cook for 4 minutes while maintaining temperature around 180F.

6.     Finely grind tiny amount of pepper on the egg (less than a quarter turn on my pepper grinder).

7.     Spray 1 squeeze of Sherry vinegar mist to cover the egg (if you do not have a sprayer, skip this. Do not drip vinegar on egg).

8.     Add light soy sauce over the egg to your taste (about half a tea spoon).

9.     Serve the egg in the saucer.

Notes:

If you taste the pepper or vinegar, you put on too much. Depending on your preferred doneness, cook the egg anywhere between 3.5 to 5 minutes.

Cooktop Enclosure

I made this glass enclosure around 2000 when I moved in my first house. This is on a downdraft electric cooktop. It can also work with an updraft by taking off the top piece of glass. The dimensions have to be customized for each application.

The main function of the enclosure is to block the splatters when cooking stir-fry dishes. It also establishes a low-pressure zone, and make the draft more effective. To cook Chinese food in a typical American residential kitchen, we need to do two things, draft (removing the greasy and smoky air out of your kitchen), and confine the mess (blocking the splatters).

Visually, it does not block sight lines. The appearance is recognized by visitors.

It is easy to clean with a scrapper, and then applying grease cleaner.

Over the years, some neighbors and friends have fitted one for their homes, followed by their neighbors and friends, and so on. If you see a similar one in Sugar Land, TX and Katy, TX area, it is likely traced back to this one.