Stir Fried Beef with Chinese Okra (勝瓜炒牛肉, Sing3 Gwaa1 Caau2 Ngau4 Juk6)

 

This recipe was updated on 18 July 2015. Some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed.

Chinese okra is an odd looking vegetable and is nothing like normal okra; it’s much larger and doesn’t have the thickening ability of okra (i.e. no sticky goop). It also has hard skin and inedible spines that must be removed before eating. When my brother-in-law first cooked this vegetable, he unfortunately didn’t know this (and I guess my sister forgot to tell him) and they ended up picking out hard skin and spine pieces from the finished dish. So don’t forget to remove the outer skin and spines when using this vegetable. You can combine Chinese okra with any ingredients, in this case its beef and red peppers (from my garden) in a simple brown bean sauce.

 

Enjoy!

Tomato Beef Chow Mein (番茄牛肉炒麵, Faan1 Ke4 Ngau4 Juk6 Caau2 Min6)

This recipe was updated on 02 Sep 2015. Some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed.

Tomato beef chow mein is a classic Chinese-American dish that you can get at any Chinese restaurant. The dish is a mixture of beef, noodles, tomatoes, and other vegetables in a sweet and sour sauce (not that thick red gloppy stuff). Depending upon on your preference, the dish can be sourer than sweet or sweeter than sour. Curry powder can also be added and the amount again depends upon personal preference (this dish has some). You can think of this dish as the noodle version of the Spicy Tomato Beef Curry (咖哩粉番茄牛肉, Gaa³ Lei¹ Fan² Faan¹ Ke⁴ Ngau⁴ Juk⁶) recipe.

Tomatoes and beef are important components of this dish. I only make this dish when I have tomatoes available from my garden, and I use beef flank or flap meat sliced against the grain and marinated. Other than that, you can throw in any ingredient your heart desires. In this instance, I used bean sprouts, fried tofu puffs, baby bok choy, and from my garden: red bell pepper and green Thai chilies.

Enjoy!

Spicy Jellyfish with Bell Peppers and Eggs (Ceng1 Ziu1 Caau2 Daan6 Hoi2 Zit3,青椒炒蛋海蜇)

I had dinner with my sister not too long ago and we went to one of the local Chinese restaurants in the area and ordered Jellyfish in XO Sauce. The dish was very good and it’s a dish that I had never eaten before. Jellyfish (hoi² zit³, 海蜇) is normally not the main ingredient in a cooked dish, so this was rather unusual. Jellyfish is usually prepared as an appetizer or as part of a cold dish, such as the Cucumber and Jelly Fish Salad recipe that I posted earlier.

I was looking for a dish to make with the package of salted jellyfish that I had and while this recipe is not that dish, it was inspired by that meal. If you search for jellyfish recipes on the internet, you’ll find that many include chicken. Since I wanted to have jellyfish as the main ingredient, I figured that eggs would be a good addition while keeping the dish centered on jellyfish. You want to use the salted jellyfish rather than the instant variety because you want large pieces of jellyfish in the dish rather than the strips you get with the instant.

XO sauce is a combination of many ingredients, including, but not limited to dried shrimp, dried scallops, hot peppers, garlic, and shallots. I decided to make my own sauce (not XO) by including the previously mentioned ingredients, minus the dried scallops. I also used red bell peppers and green Thai chilies from my garden.

Enjoy!

Spicy Pork and Long Beans with Vermicelli (豆角粉絲炒豬肉, Dau6 Gok3 Fan2 Si1 Caau2 Zyu1 Juk6)

 

This recipe was update on 25 Aug 2015. Some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed, and metric measurements added.

I made this dish because I wanted to use up some remaining long beans and I wanted a dish with mung bean vermicelli. Long beans are a favorite vegetable of mine and differ from regular green beans in the most obvious way; they are really long in length. If you can’t find long beans at your favorite market, you can easily substitute regular green beans.

Mung bean vermicelli is also called bean thread noodles. The “noodles” (made from mung beans) are very thin and brittle when dry, and become transparent and soft after soaking in hot water. The dry version can actually be fried quickly in a wok, where it will puff up and then usually serves as the crispy base for another dish (you see this in Chinese restaurant dishes). After soaking in water, the soft vermicelli is added to a dish, where it soaks up and takes on the flavor of the sauce (so you’ll need to add more water or stock to get a sauce or gravy).

The natural additions for this dish are ground pork and dried shrimp. In this case, I used dried shrimp that are very small and added it to the pork before marinating. You need to add a good amount of these very small dried shrimps to make them noticeable in the dish. The next time I make this dish, I might use the medium sized dried shrimp so that their presence is obvious.

After I made this dish and took my first bite, I immediately noticed that the texture of the dish wasn’t right. I should have added black, cloud ear, or wood ear fungus to give the dish a distinct crunch. These funguses sounds like an odd ingredient, but are themselves tasteless. Both are dark in color and come fresh or dried, and either whole or already cut into strips. Black and wood ear funguses are available at your local Asian supermarket. I’ve added that ingredient to the recipe even though I didn’t use it in this version.

Enjoy!

Slow Cooker Spiced Lamb Shanks

 

This recipe was updated on 21 July 2013. Some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed, and metric measurements added.

I usually don’t make this dish in the summer (even though it’s been a cool summer this year), as this is more of a Fall or Winter meal, but lamb shanks were on sale and they’re one of my favorite ingredients. I previously made this dish with red wine or port but decided instead to try a Chardonnay this time, and I was pleased with the results (you can just as easily use chicken stock). I also got the idea to add lemon to the dish from this recipe that was featured in the Wall Street Journal. However, what really makes this dish tasty are the spices – cumin, fennel, coriander, allspice, and pepper - which are toasted before being ground (and then adding turmeric). The spice mix would also work for pork (a future recipe).

The other piece of information came from America’s Test Kitchen. They use Minute Tapioca (made by Kraft) to thicken sauces in a slow cooker. They found that tapioca starch holds up well to the long cooking time in slow cooker, whereas other thickeners, such as corn starch, break down and don’t thicken. Minute Tapioca can be found in any grocery store, but it’s pretty expensive when you compare it to regular tapioca starch, which is available in Asian markets. They both thicken the liquid equally as well, so I use regular tapioca starch.

The Lamb Shanks can either be browned in a wok or Dutch oven, or in a barbeque (smoked with hickory and rosemary) before adding the shanks to the slow cooker. The lamb shanks can be browned the night before cooking.

Enjoy!

Stir Fried Beef with Long Beans (豆角炒牛肉, Dau6 Gok3 Caau2 Ngau4 Juk6)

 

This recipe was updated on 01 Jul 2015. Some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed, and metric measurements added.

Long Beans is a favorite vegetable of mine. It goes well with pork spareribs and for this recipe, beef. Long beans differ from regular green beans in the most obvious way; they are really long in length. If you can’t find long beans at your favorite market, you can easily substitute regular green beans.

Enjoy!

Soy Sauce Chicken and Peach Pasta Salad

There was an article in the local newspaper’s food section on barbequed peaches. That gave me the idea to include peaches in a chicken salad that I was about to make using leftovers from the Grilled Soy Sauce Chicken (Siu¹ Haau¹ Si⁶ Jau⁴ Gai¹, 燒烤豉油雞) recipe. While I didn’t barbeque the peaches, they tasted great after briefly baking (after halving and pitting) in my toaster oven.

I used a balsamic yogurt dressing and it turned out to be an OK dressing, but it lacked the tang I expected. The next time I made this dressing, I used rice vinegar, instead of balsamic, and upped the amount of lemon/lime juice, and it tasted much better. The yogurt dressing is also healthier than a mayonnaise based dressing.

The first crop of cherry tomatoes from my garden was also available, along with some very small Sungold tomatoes (some no larger than ⅛ of an inch). I also included button mushrooms and some basil to complete the pasta salad. In addition to the pasta salad, I made Garlic Garlic Bread to complete the meal.

Enjoy!