Chicken and Rock Shrimp with Winter Melon (冬瓜蝦仁雞, Dung1 Gwaa1 Haa1 Jan4 Gai1)

Rock shrimp has a very hard shell (“hard as a rock”, hence the name) and tastes like lobster. My local Asian market had a special price on rock shrimp, so I couldn’t resist buying some. You need about one lb. (500 g.) of whole rock shrimp to produce about ½ lb. (250 g.) of shrimp meat. Shrimp meat can be substituted for rock shrimp. Mixing seafood and meat is a classic combination in Chinese dishes. In this case, I used chicken together with the rock shrimp together with winter melon.

Enjoy!

Hot and Sour Wood Ear Chicken (辣酸雲耳雞, Laat6 Syun1 Wan4 Ji5 Gai1)

Black vinegar provides the sour and red chili peppers provide the heat to this dish. This flavor combination gives the dish its taste signature. Chicken and wood ear fungus is also another classic ingredient combination. Wood ear fungus is available fresh at your local Asian market and provides a slight crunchiness to this dish. If you can’t get fresh, wood ear fungus is also available dried, in which case all you have to do is rehydrate the fungus. Just be careful how much dried fungus you use, since rehydrating dried fungus expands greatly in volume.

Enjoy!

Tomatillo Salsa

Tomatillo salsa is variation of the Salsa recipe that I published earlier. Tomatillos add, what I would describe as, a slight lemon flavor to the salsa. Tomatillos are also crunchy, so there’s also a texture contrast to the rest of the ingredients in the salsa. I made this salsa for my family’s 2014 Christmas dinner. Everyone got to snack on tortilla chips and tomatillo salsa before dinner.

Enjoy!

Fish Maw and Crab Soup (蟹肉魚肚羹, Haai5 Juk6 Jyu4 Tou5 Gang1)

Fish maw is the bladder of the fish that controls buoyancy. Fish maw is one of those weird and wonderful special banquet ingredients (at least in my experience) that is served at auspicious events such as weddings and at Lunar New Year. I made this soup with fresh crab meat for my family’s 2014 Christmas dinner. Fish maw can be purchased at your local Asian market or herb specialty store. If you’re lucky enough to have an Asian herb store near you, it’s worth going in to see all the dried herbs and creatures that are sold at these stores. The herb stores also have the most variety of fish maw to buy and with the prices to match!

There are two types of fish maw: dried and fried. For this soup dish, the fried version is used. If you purchase the dried version, like I did, there’s an extra step to deep fry the fish maw yourself. I actually shallow fried the fish maw, ladling hot oil over the fish maw (be careful when using this method). You can save a step and time by buying the fried version. The best description of fried fish maw is that it look like chicharrón, which is fried pork skin. The fried fish maw has to soak in cold water for at least an hour to soften it to a spongy texture and then cut into bite sized pieces. After soaking, fish maw has no inherent flavor (so it won’t smell fishy at all) and acquires the flavors of the ingredients it is cooked with. So the use of a good stock and ingredients is important to the flavor of this soup.

I was fortunate enough to prepare this dish while Dungeness crabs are in season, so I was able to get freshly cooked crab from my local grocery store. I used the meat from two cooked Dungeness crabs and that produced about 1 lb. (500 g.) of meat. If you’re not fortunate enough to have freshly cooked crabs available, canned or frozen crab can be used. Crab is not the only meat that can be used, and you can use abalone or sea cucumber as substitutes.

The soup stock was made using the Bone Soup (湯, Tong¹) recipe. You can used a prepared soup stock, but the taste of the soup is heavily dependent upon the quality of the ingredients used. So if you’re going to all the trouble and expense to make this soup, you should make your own soup stock. The last Chinese character in the recipe’s name, 羹 (gang¹), signifies that this is a thick soup. A thick soup means that a corn starch solution is added to thicken the soup. The amount of thickener added to the soup depends upon personal preference, but the soup should be thicker than a normal soup and not thicker than a very thick gravy.

Enjoy!

Bone Soup (湯, Tong1)

 

Soup stock is always made from bones, so the name of this dish is just my way of naming a most basic dish with a cute name. My sister and I were joking about growing up with a freezer half filled with bones to make soup stock. While there’s some truth to that, I don’t remember my parents ever having to buy bones in the market to make soup. As dishes were prepared, rather than being discarded, the bones were saved in the freezer. So unless you specifically want to make a particular soup (e.g. pork soup), you just use the collection of bones from the freezer to make soup.

I have the same habit of saving my bones in the freezer and then using them to make soup. So this recipe doesn’t produce the clear broth that is characteristic of a single species stock (e.g. using just chicken bones to make a clear stock), but is a rich collection of proteins leached from a variety of bones that are boiled together with some ginger and garlic. Now I know that doesn’t sound very appetizing, but it’s an apt description of making soup stock.

When making the soup stock, scum and oil from the bones will float to the top of the liquid. You can be obsessive and remove scum and oil as it rises while the pot comes to a boil, but I’ve found that you can wait until the soup stock boils in a covered pot and then remove the scum and oil. As a result of removing the scum and oil, the level of the liquid will go down in the pot. I just add some boiling water to restore the level of the liquid in the pot, so make sure that you have some boiled water available in a water kettle. As the soup stock cooks, the level of the liquid might also go down, so this method can also be used to restore the level of liquid in the pot. Not a lot of boiling water in total gets added, so taste of the soup stock is not affected.

I don’t add any salt when making the soup stock. Salt can be added, if necessary, when cooking the ultimate dish in which the bone soup will serve as the stock. Some salt comes from the preserved mustard stalk, actually half a stalk, which I use to make the bone soup. The addition of the preserved mustard is my way of introducing a slight sweetness to the stock and no one will ever know that the ingredient was ever used. I guess it’s my secret for making tasty soup (well, not anymore). I used to use a whole stalk when making soup stock (there are two stalks per package), but the center of the stalk never got cooked through. Cutting a stalk lengthwise and using half a stalk, the mustard green gets cooked thoroughly and the taste of the soup stock is the same.

Enjoy!

Sourdough Cranberry Linguica Oyster Stuffing

 

For the first recipe of 2015, I am posting a recipe that I’ve been making every year for my family’s Christmas dinners and has now has become a standard dish. Like the Chinese Sticky Rice (糯米飯, No⁶ Mai⁵ Faan⁶) recipe, the dish’s preparation starts a few days before cooking and some ingredients are stir fried before assembling the dish to add flavor.

I’ve been making this variant of the original Sourdough-Cranberry Stuffing Recipe at Epicurious.com for many family Christmas dinners. The most notable additions are linguica and dried oysters. Given the aversion of one of my family members to celery, that ingredient is left out of this recipe, but definitely should be included if you make this dish (use the same quantity as the carrots and onions – 1 cup/125 ml.). I was always intrigued by the use of cranberries in this dressing, which is probably why I keep making it year after year.

I’ve been fortunate to be able to get my linguica from the Goulart Sausage Company. They are a small family owned business and I’ve been buying from them for many years (they make other products besides linguica). You know that their products have to be good when you see hardwood, used to smoke their products, stacked at the front of the business and smelling their smoker at work. I keep telling them that I need to visit them more often! Hopefully you can find such a gem of a meat producer, but if you can’t, store bought linguica or Italian sausage are good substitutes in this dish.

Oysters in stuffing is nothing new, but the oysters used are usually fresh. In this case, I’ve added dried oysters, an Asian ingredient, to a traditional American dressing. The dried oysters are of course rehydrated and are much smaller than their fresh counterparts. The oysters are a fairly recent addition to this recipe. I’ve made this stuffing without oysters for many years, so feel free to omit them since I think you’ll still like the results.

The thing about stuffing that I like are that the quantities of ingredients can vary and the resulting dish still tastes good. The recipe is very forgiving if you use too much of one ingredient or not enough of another. Some years I’ve used more linguica because I bought more than I thought I needed. Sometimes the onion I used is just a little too big, so I use it all. I’ve used other root vegetables, like turnips and parsnips, and in the end the dish was still tasty. So what I’m saying, is that you should feel free to experiment with the ingredients and quantities, and after all, you’re only experimenting on your family. 8-)

Enjoy!