Japanese Curry Pork and Squid (咖哩魷魚豬腩肉, Gaa3 Lei1 Jau4 Jyu4 Zyu1 Naam5 Juk6)

The combination of pork belly and squid in a Japanese curry sauce is surprisingly tasty. S&B brand Japanese curry mix is used and is a really easy way to make a curry sauce. The mix comes already prepared in cubes, and one-half a package or four cubes are used to make the sauce by just adding water. Since pork belly is used, the cooking time is longer than the usual Japanese curry dish. If pork belly is not available, boneless country style pork ribs can be substituted.

 

My local Asian market occasionally has cooked squid available. I use it whenever I can, but frozen or fresh squid can be used instead. The squid gets added at the end of cooking, so if it’s not already cooked, it will be when the dish is ready. The quill has to be removed from the squid, since it’s inedible, and the only tricky part to removing the quill is keeping the already cooked squid body and tentacles intact when you do this – sometimes it’s impossible.

Enjoy!

Lemongrass Chili Garlic Sauce Green Bean Chicken (檸檬葉蒜蓉辣椒青豆角雞, Ning4 Mung4 Jip6 Syun3 Jung4 Laat6 Ziu1 Ceng1 Dau6 Gok3 Gai1)

Lemongrass adds a nice taste to this chili garlic sauce based chicken dish. Lemongrass provides a mild lemon flavor and can be purchased at your local Asian market (I’ve actually seen it occasionally available at large supermarkets). Only the thinly sliced white portions of the lemongrass is used, discarding the inedible and tough green parts.

 

Enjoy!

Grilled Beijing-Style Lamb Ribs (北京燒烤羊扒, Bak1 Ging1 Siu1 Haau1 Joeng4 Paa4)

This recipe uses the chili garlic sauce spice paste developed for the Beijing-Style Chicken Wings (北京鷄翼, Bak¹ Ging¹ Gai¹ Jik⁶) recipe. The spice paste also goes well with lamb rib chops and provides the spiciness present in the original recipe. The same strategy is used to cook the lamb ribs – quickly charring over hot coals piled high into one-half of the grill. The spicing of this recipe is similar to that used in the Grilled Xinjiang-Style Chicken Wing (新疆燒烤鷄翼, San¹ Goeng¹ Siu¹ Haau¹ Gai¹ Jik⁶) recipe. However, unlike the chicken wing recipe, lamb rib chops can be easily overcooked, so the fire must be very hot and the charring time as quick as possible.

 

Enjoy!

Cabbage Lamb Dough Sliced Noodles (青椰菜羊肉刀削麵, Ceng1 Je4 Coi3 Joeng4 Juk6 Dou1 Soek3 Min6)

I published the Lamb Dough Sliced Noodles (小羊炒刀削麵, Siu² Joeng⁴ Caau² Dou¹ Soek³ Min⁶) recipe in an earlier post, but this has now become the recipe I use to make this dish. I was able to purchase a portion of a lamb leg (as opposed to a whole leg) to make this dish. While the lamb leg has some of the best potions of meat, you need to remove the skin, bone, excess fat, and sinew from the leg meat before cutting into pieces that can be stir fried.

 

The addition of cabbage is a fairly common ingredient to stir fried noodle dishes. For some reason, I never used cabbage in my noodle dishes, but now I try to use it whenever I have it available. The cabbage adds a good vegetable component and a nice crunchy texture to noodles dishes, as well as being a good visual addition. The list of ingredients is long for this recipe, and there’s some effort involved to stir fry all the ingredients, but the resulting dish is worth all the work.

 

Enjoy!

Black Bean Chili Sauce Bitter Melon Shiitake Mushroom Chicken (黑豆辣椒冬菇苦瓜雞, Hak1 Dau6 Laat6 Ziu1 Dung1 Gu1 Fu2 Gwaa1 Gai1)

 

This recipe is similar to the Black Bean Chili Sauce Chicken with Bitter Melon (黑豆辣椒苦瓜雞, Hak¹ Dau⁶ Laat⁶ Ziu¹ Fu² Gwaa¹ Gai¹) recipe that was posted previously. For this recipe, Shiitake mushrooms were used in place of fried tofu. Chicken and bitter melon with a black bean sauce (in this case a spicy black bean sauce) is a classic combination. The classic recipe can be found here: Black Bean Sauce Bitter Melon Chicken (蒜蓉豆豉苦瓜雞, Syun³ Jung⁴ Dau⁶ Si⁶ Fu² Gwaa¹ Gai¹). As usual, the bitterness of the bitter melon is controlled by adding salt for 5 minutes and washing it off the bitter melon. The degree of bitterness is a personal preference, so if you like a more bitter taste, don’t salt or reduce the time of salting, and if you like less bitterness, increase the salting time (after 10 minutes, most of the bitterness will be removed).

Enjoy!

Creamy Tomato Dungeness Crab Pasta

This recipe was adapted from the Creamy Tomato Crab Pasta recipe at jeanetteshealthyliving.com. The key technique that I learned from the recipe was mixing an egg with the Greek yogurt (yes, this recipe uses yogurt) to prevent breaking when cooked. It actually works! The yogurt provides the creaminess for this dish. The other neat aspect of the recipe was the use of a garlic breadcrumb topping, which really helps to make this dish tasty. I used cooked Dungeness crab to make this dish rather than canned crab meat, but you can use whatever’s available. As is usual for my pasta recipes, I use a wok to stir fry the pasta before adding the sauce. Making a pasta dish is no different to me than making chow mein – the techniques are the same, I’m just using a different sauce to make the noodles.

Enjoy!

Carne Adovada (Red Chile Pork Stew)

This recipe was adapted from the Carne Adovada recipe at What’s Cooking America. I used the basic chili based marinade for the pork, which uses 24 rehydrated chilies. I am fortunate to live in an area where dried chilies are readily available in bulk at local Mexican markets, but dried chilies can be obtained from your local supermarket in packages. I used dried Guajillo and California chilies, since those were available, toasted them, and added canned chipotle peppers in adobo sauce for a little heat. The chilies are used for flavor and are not hot themselves, so don’t be alarmed at the number of dried chilies used in this dish. The chipotle peppers in adobo sauce used in this dish are together hotter than all the dried chilies. The chilies and all the other spices are used to marinade the pork for 24- or up to 48-hours (the longer the better). What I like about this recipe, is that the marinade is also the sauce and that all the work is done before the dish is cooked in a slow cooker.

 

Enjoy!