Hot Bean Sauce Fuzzy Melon Chicken (辣豆辦節瓜雞, Laat6 Dau6 Faan6 Zit3 Gwaa1 Gai1)

This recipe is slightly spicy through the use of hot bean sauce, whose amount can be adjusted to suit your taste. Regular bean sauce can be used if spiciness is not desired in the dish. Outside of marinating the chicken and cutting up the vegetables, there’s really no other preparation work since button mushrooms, available fresh at your local market, are used.

 

Enjoy!

Chili Garlic Sauce String Bean Fish (蒜蓉辣椒青豆角魚, Syun3 Jung4 Laat6 Ziu1 Ceng1 Dau6 Gok3 Jyu4)

Firm white flesh fish fillet pieces can be stir fried, but you have to be gentle so as not to break up the pieces. You don’t want to cut the fish fillet into pieces smaller than 2-inches (5 cm.), which would seem to be too big, but smaller pieces would likely break up when stir fried. For some reason, the picture has uncut string beans, but to make them easier to eat, the string beans really should be cut into pieces, and the recipe reflects this.

 

Enjoy!

Hot Bean Sauce Snow Pea Lamb (辣豆辦醬荷蘭豆羊肉, Laat6 Dau6 Faan6 Ho4 Laan4 Dau6 Joeng4 Juk6)

Lamb and hot bean sauce are a really great combination in my opinion. The spiciness is tempered to a small degree by the addition of some black vinegar, so the sauce looks blacker than a sauce just made with hot bean paste. The idea is not to make a sour (as in hot and sour) dish, but to add a slight acidic flavor to accompany the spiciness.

 

Enjoy!

Japanese Curry Chicken Wing Stew (咖哩鷄翼, Gaa3 Lei1 Gai1 Jik6)

Japanese curry goes well with chicken wings. The chicken wings are marinated before being browned in the Dutch oven. I always marinate my chicken (out of habit and being able to use the chicken in other stir-fry dishes), but you can simplify this recipe and not marinate the chicken at all. Chicken wings cook very fast, so only 15 minutes is needed to cook them with the carrots after being browned. As usual a prepared Japanese curry sauce mix is used and added at the end to finish the dish.

Enjoy!

Italian Sausage and Rock Shrimp Pasta

Rock shrimp has a very hard shell (“hard as a rock”, hence the name) and tastes like lobster. A previous recipe used rock shrimp, Chicken and Rock Shrimp with Winter Melon (冬瓜蝦仁雞, Dung¹ Gwaa¹ Haa¹ Jan⁴ Gai¹), and for this recipe, thin spaghetti was used together with hot Italian sausage to create a pasta dish. 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!

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!