Asian-Style Carnitas

This Asian spiced inspired slow cooker recipe has its origins from the Mexican Pulled Pork (Carnitas) recipe, which was adapted from the Mexican Pulled Pork recipe at America’s Test Kitchen. Their original premise was to develop a recipe that did involve lard or deep frying to produce the carnitas’ crispy outside. Their solution, after oven-braising the pork in a Dutch oven (this recipe uses the slow cooker instead), was to use the broiler after coating the pork with a reduction of the remaining liquid and fat. The method works great and I’ve modified their technique to use the barbeque grill instead of the broiler to get a smokier flavor incorporated into the pork. The resulting carnitas are soft on the inside and a crispy brown on the outside, with that distinctive smoked flavor from the grill. The condiments are also Asian inspired with spicy Sriracha sauce adding a distinctive spicy hot kick to the dish.

Enjoy!

Dungeness Crab Hong Kong Noodles (北美大肉蟹雲吞麵, Bak1 Mei5 Daai6 Juk6 Haai5 Wan4 Tan1 Min6)

This recipe was updated on 30 Aug 2016. The Cantonese for Dungeness crab was added to the title, and some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed.

Dungeness crab is now in season, which is a treat in my part of the world. My local Asian market had cooked crab leg clusters on sale and I couldn’t resist buying them. Usually only whole cooked and uncooked crabs are available, but in this case the only work I had to do was to remove the meat from the crab leg shells. I searched for a recipe using the crab meat and adapted the recipe from the Dungeness Crab with Cellophane Noodles recipe at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch website. This is a quick cooking dish and using Hong Kong noodles, in place of cellophane noodles, which works well with the crab.

Enjoy!

Mom’s Chinese Chicken Salad (手絲鷄沙律, Sau2 Si1 Gai1 Saa1 Leot6)

This recipe was updated on 15 Aug 2015. Some equipment was added and hyperlinks fixed.

My Mom would make her Chinese chicken salad for family gatherings, and since I have a very large family, there is no such thing as making just a little Chinese chicken salad. She would roast two chickens and hand shred the meat. Hand-shredding (手絲, sau² si¹) the chickens was an important step, since the Chinese believe that hand-shredding adds flavor to the dish (just be sure your hands are washed and clean!). All the other ingredients also require time to cut, chop, and crush in order to get to the finished dish. Note that making this recipe is a two day process.

I just recently asked my Mom for the recipe (which is found later in the post). The first time I made the dish, it didn’t turn out right. I used chicken parts and increased the amount of dressing. All wrong; since you need the gelatin from a whole chicken to flavor the dish, and just a small amount of dressing is required since the salad is almost “dry” when compared to the “wet” dressing used in most salads.

My second try was more successful. This version of the recipe is slightly different from my Mom’s original, with minor changes to the salad and dressing ingredients and quantities, and the taste was close to my Mom’s too. However, the quantity of salad hasn’t changed, so there’s still no such thing as just a little Chinese chicken salad.

Enjoy!

Soy Sauce Chicken (豉油鷄, Si6 Jau4 Gai1)

This recipe was updated on 16 Aug 2015. Some hyperlinks were fixed.

Poaching chicken is an easy and fast way to cook a chicken. While the Poached Chicken (白斬雞, Baak⁶ Zaam² Gai¹) with Ginger-Scallion Oil (薑蔥油, Goeng¹ Cung¹ Jau⁴) recipe uses water to poach the chicken, a soy sauce based solution is used to make this version of poached chicken. Usually dark soy sauce is used to give the chicken its color, but I tried using thick soy sauce (which has molasses) instead and I like the results better. The Poached Chicken (白斬雞, Baak⁶ Zaam² Gai¹) with Ginger-Scallion Oil (薑蔥油, Goeng¹ Cung¹ Jau⁴) recipe has instructions on how to cut and present the chicken. Just be sure you have a good sharp Chinese cleaver and a wood cutting board, and with a little practice, you’ll be able to cut chickens as if you worked in a Chinese delicatessen.

Enjoy!

Chicken with Dried Shrimp (蝦米鷄, Haa1 Mai5 Gai1)

This recipe was updated on 21 Apr 2015. Some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed.

Aside from the dried shrimp, this is a pretty standard chicken stir fry dish. Mushrooms are a common ingredient to include in this dish, but substituting dried shrimp gives the dish a different taste. Like mushrooms, dried shrimp tastes good with chicken and produces a different texture in the dish. Dried shrimp can be purchased at your local Asian market, usually in the refrigerator section.

Enjoy!

Chum Salmon and Snow Peas with Wood Ear Fungus (木耳荷蘭豆鮭魚, Muk6 Ji5 Ho4 Laan4 Dau6 Gwai1 Jyu4)

This recipe was updated on 25 May 2015. Some instructions were changed.

Here’s a quick cooking salmon dish with minimal preparation time. Chum salmon was available at my local Asian market, but you can substitute regular salmon if you can’t find the chum. The seasoning is very simple, in fact my usual cornstarch thickener isn’t used in the sauce so that the salmon is the dominant taste. The crunch in this dish comes from the snow peas and, to a smaller degree, the wood ear fungus.

Enjoy!

Basil Mussel Sausage Aglio e Olio

The basis of this dish is extra virgin olive oil and garlic. Whenever I’ve made this dish in the past, I would thinly slice garlic cloves to get the desired quantity (which is more than most recipes call for since I like garlic). At my local Korean market, minced garlic (mixed with a small amount of water) is available in containers up to 5 lbs. (2.3 kg), which is a lot of minced garlic! So I bought a 1 lb. (454 g.) container and used a small portion of that garlic for this recipe together with frozen mussel meat. Most recipes use fresh mussels in the shell to make this dish and the broth from cooking the mussels become part of the sauce. So to emulate that process, I thawed the mussels in white wine and then used the mussel infused wine in the sauce.

You can save some time by cooking the pasta while the other ingredients are prepared. I never do this since prep time always seems to exceed pasta cooking time for me, but for those of you that are speedier, you can use parallel processing to make this dish. Finally I used a wok to make this dish (which certainly isn’t a traditional Italian method!), but you can certainly use a pan.

Enjoy!