Garlic Garlic Bread

If you like garlic, then this is the garlic bread for you. It’s really very simple; you crush cloves of garlic with olive oil on bread with garlic baked into it (like you get at Costco). Toast the bread, and it’s ready to eat. Have the bread with Soy Sauce Chicken and Peach Pasta salad (recipe can be found here), Seafood Pasta Salad (recipe can be found here), or Greek Yogurt Soy Sauce Chicken Pasta Salad (recipe can be found here).

Enjoy!

Grilled Soy Sauce Chicken (燒烤豉油雞, Siu1 Haau1 Si6 Jau4 Gai1)

This recipe was updated on 16 Aug 2015. Some instructions and equipment were changed.

I used a basic soy sauce marinade for a grilled whole chicken. I cut the chicken in half before grilling and removed the backbone (which I grilled with the rest of the chicken) to decrease the cooking time over a whole chicken. You don’t have to use a whole chicken as the technique used in this recipe will work equally as well with chicken parts (drumsticks, thighs, breast…). Adding a smoking wood to the grill, such as oak, hickory, mesquite, pecan, further enhances the flavor. Both direct and indirect cooking on the grill is used for this recipe. I used the cool side of a covered grill for indirect heat to cook the chicken for 15 minutes, and then move the chicken, skin side down, to the hot side of a covered grill to crisp the skin for 3-5 minutes before flipping the chicken over and repeating the process. Depending upon your grill, your previous experience, and the amount of grill heat remaining, the direct heat cooking time may have to be increased or decreased.

You can look at the Poached Chicken (白斬雞, Baak⁶ Zaam² Gai¹) with Ginger-Scallion Oil (薑蔥油, Goeng¹ Cung¹ Jau⁴) recipe for instructions on cutting and arranging a chicken on a platter. You can adapt the cutting method to account for the chicken already being halved without a backbone.

Enjoy!

Grilled Cumin Lamb Shoulder Steak (燒烤孜然羊肩肉, Siu1 Haau1 Zi1 Jin4 Joeng4 Gin1 Juk6)

 

This recipe was updated on 17 Dec 2014. Some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed, and metric measurements added.

The same marinade that was used for the Grilled Cumin Turkey Wings (孜然火雞翼, Zi¹ Jin⁴ Fo² Gai¹ Jik⁶) recipe also goes very well with lamb, in this case lamb shoulder steaks. You need to grill the lamb shoulder steaks using direct heat to cook them. The marinade uses cumin, star anise, and Sichuan peppercorn to give the lamb its spicy flavor.

Enjoy!

Grilled Cumin Turkey Wings (燒烤孜然火雞翼, Siu1 Haau1 Zi1 Jin4 Fo2 Gai1 Jik6)

This recipe was updated on 01 Nov 2015. The Chinese name, and some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed.

Turkey wings were on sale and I decided to get them instead of chicken for a change. Since turkey wings are larger than their chicken counterparts, the turkey wings parts are separated before grilling. You can choose to not grill the wing tips (and keep them for stock), or you can grill and eat them as I usually do. The marinade uses cumin, star anise, and Sichuan peppercorn to give the wings its spicy flavor.

Enjoy!

Chicken and Marinated Bean Curd with Fuzzy Melon (腐乳五香豆腐節瓜雞, Fu6 Jyu5 Ng5 Hoeng1 Dau6 Fu6 Zit3 Gwaa1 Gai1)

 

This recipe was updated on 29 Sep 2015. Some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed, and metric measurements added.

This is an easy dish to prepare and fermented bean curd is the basis of the sauce. Each bean curd looks like a little soft rectangular pillow and is packed together in a bottle. I happen to use 7 of the fermented bean curds, but you’ll have to judge how much to use depending upon your taste. The sauce is light in color, so soy sauce is not used (but is used to marinate the chicken) since this would darken it. Marinated bean curd (or five spice bean curd) is the other ingredient used in this dish. Marinated bean curd is not fermented, but spiced and its texture is firm, so it doesn’t break up when stir fried. If you can’t find marinated bean curd at your local Asian market, use a firm pressed tofu as a substitute.

Enjoy!

Grilled Bourbon Chicken Wings (燒烤波本鷄翼, Siu1 Haau1 Bo1 Bun2 Gai1 Jik6)

 

This recipe was updated on 17 Aug 2015. Some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed, and the Chinese name added.

Somehow, bourbon and chicken seem to go together. Adding your favorite bourbon (e.g. Jack Daniels, Jim Beam…) to chicken wing marinade before grilling gives the wings a unique and tasty flavor. Adding a smoking wood to the grill, such as hickory, mesquite, pecan, or whatever your favorite wood is, further enhances the flavor. You can choose to remove the wing tips before marinating, but I leave them on since I don’t mind eating them. I first smoked the wings covered over indirect heat before grilling over direct heat to get the grill marks. This is a simple recipe to make and I hope you will try it.

Enjoy!

Pepperoni, Mushroom, and Olive Pizza

Making your own fresh pizza and not eating frozen is one of the joys of life. To create the dough, I use Cheri’s Favorite Pizza Dough Recipe. You can read the background story here, but her secret is to add semolina flour to the dough.  I use the dough setting on my bread machine to create the dough rather than a food processor and I use all the dough to create one 14-inch pizza (rather than 2 medium pizzas as called for in the original recipe) since I like my crusts thicker than thin. The recipe says that you can make the dough in 5 minutes, but using my bread machine takes at least 45-60 minutes.

I use a Cuisinart 14-inch non-stick pizza pan to hold the pizza. Even though I have a convection oven, I use the oven mode (no convection) set at the highest temperature (in my case 555⁰F) and with the rack set at the lowest point so that the pizza is as close to the lower heating element as possible to get a crispy crust for 10-15 minutes. I found that if I use the convection setting, the toppings burn before the crust gets done. Depending upon your oven characteristics, your results might differ.

You can, of course, add any toppings that your heart desires. This pizza happens to use pepperoni, mushrooms, and Kalamata olives. For sauce I use a bottled tomato sauce from Trader Joe’s that I like – Trader Giotto’s Puttanesca Sauce – which contains anchovy and anchovy paste, among other ingredients. The cheese is a pre-packaged six cheese Italian blend (of course, your favorite cheeses can be used). Finally, I added the basil on top of the pizza at the last moment, since I forgot to place some down on the pizza after the sauce. This resulted in some rather sad looking dehydrated basil on top of the pizza (next time I won’t forget).

Enjoy!