Chinese Sichuan Eggplant in Garlic-Ginger Sauce

This wonderful dish is a cavas for your own touch of seasonings including as much hot chilies, garlic, or ginger that suits you.

The eggplant is the longer Chinese version, cut into equal length pieces, then sliced into bricks of evenwidth dimension or bite sized, so the eggplant steams evenly.

The eggplant is initially steamed in a two tiered steamer basket* to slightly tender, then dried with paper towels, retain for frying is a scant amount of peanut oil. Too much oil will turn the whole mess into something with up an unpleasant mouth feel.

* Alternatively, you can steam anyway in a method that suits your available equipment.

Garlic sauce ingredients 

Creating a good sauce is really easy and you only need these ingredients:

• dark soy sauce to add a beautiful dark brown colour to the dish and a hint of caramel taste.
• Sugar to  balance out the salty ingredients for a more rounded sauce.
• Cornstarch as a thicker to sauce
• Just mix everything together and pour it over the eggplant at the end of cooking
• Black vinegar to taste
• Shaoxing wine to taste
• Fish sauce to taste
• Optionally, a bit of oyster sauce 

Fry the dried eggplant to well coloured in a scant amount of oil, which can be hastened by dusting the eggplant with a bit of cornstarch or rice starch.Retain for later. Prepare Aromatics, minced ginger, garlic.  stir fry until fragrant. Add sauces, add back, toss the eggplant.

Garnish with diced scallions.

Fried Rice wt Lap Xuong, eggs, vegetables

This is fried rice for breakfast.

1 cup steamed jasmine white day old, refrigerated rice

Peanut oil as required 

Lap Xuong sausage,  sliced thinly

2 scallion sliced thinly and dividing the green from white sections 

2 shallots chopped

2 medium cloves chopped or minced garlic 

2 eggs, fried, chopped

1 tbls. Shoxing wine 

1 teaspoon of rose water

1/2 teaspoon sugar

2 teaspoons of soy sauce 

You can added additional ingredients if wanted. ( pimentos, red peppers)

 Cook sausage a dry wok over low heat, allowing the sausage to slowly give up some of its fat while cooking. When done retain for later.

Add a little oil, and stir fry, garlic and shallots, thewhites of scallion, any added vegetables.

When done, retain.

Add enough oil to fry eggs. When done, break up eggs with wok spoon. Add back rice to facilitate breaking sup eggs. Stir fry while adding the rest of the ingredients including the green scallion and sugar, wine, soy, rose water. Correct the seasonings.

TOM KHA GAI (IN 30 MINUTES!) From Woks of Life and others

Tom Kha Gai is a delicious Thai coconut chicken soup that’s emblematic of Thai cuisine’s harmonious balance of salty, sweet, sour, spicy, and bitter flavors. 

This Tom Kha Gai recipe tastes just like what you might find at a particularly good Thai restaurant, and despite its complex taste, you can make it in about 30 minutes.

I have taken liberties with the exact ingredients, pardon.

1 pound Boneless skinless chicken thighs

1 quart Homemade unsalted Chicken broth 

1 Can of Coconut cream or milk (preferably cream)

3 lemongrass stalks, bruised with back of a cleaver

1/2 or more thump ginger 

4-6 kaffir lime leaves

Thai chilies, sliced to 1/8”, qty as desired *

1/2 pound of cremini mushroom, cut into thirds of the mushroom

2-4 Splashes of fish sauce

Turbinado sugar or light brown sugar

Cilantro or Thai basil, as garnish 

Fresh lime juice

Remove the upper woody parts of the lemongrass stalks, and crushed the bulbous end with the bake of a rather heavy cleaver or chef’s knife to help release oils.

Cut chicken thighs into flats about 3/16 thick. Bring chicken stock to a boil, and add the chicken and simmer for 15 minutes until tender.

Add coconut cream

Add the herbs and chilies.

Add the mushrooms.

Add about half of the fish sauce and sugar and simmer for 5 minutes.

Turn off the heat, and add most of the lime juice, holding back a little in reserve.  Taste and add more of the reserved fish sauce and lime juice to taste.

Stir in chopped cilantro

Serve on its own, or with jasmine white rice too!

* Thai chilies are hot, but it’s hot on the tip of the tongue only, and goes away 15 minutes later.

Also see Tom Yum Soup for the Shrimp variety which I also like treamendously. 

Crispier Roast Potatoes cooked in Animal Fat

Fresh Red potatoes will not only require less time, but are easier to prepare. 

Three pounds fresh red potatoes cut into triangular bite sized slices.

Salt

Pepper

Manteca (Mexica pork lard) to fry

White vinegar

Water for blanching the potatoes in acidulated water.

Bring water to a roiling boil. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees (F).

Blanch the sliced potatoes for three to five minutes in water made mildly acid with vinegar. Drain in a collinder for 30 minutes. Do not pat dry. Spread on a glass dish that has been greased with lard.* 

When oven is preheated, put glass dish in oven to melt the lard. Remove pan with oven mitts. Add the potatoes, and toss to fully coat the potatoes adding a sprinkle of salt as you turn over potatoes. Cook for 1/2 hour, then turn potatoes with a metal spatula, and continue browning until a golden brown.

Remove from the oven and add pepper to desired amount. Run spatula to loosen the potatoes. 

Serve warm or the the desired heat. Garnish as desired, I use minced rosemary.

*The French used duck fat.

Shrimp Fettuccine with Mushrooms, Red Pepper, Garlic and Scallions

1 lb. Shrimp, peeled ( can use scallop as well or instead)
1 lb. Cremini Mushrooms,  sliced

Four or five scallions, chopped fine
4 cloves garlic, minced

1 fresh tomato, diced
A pinch of Red Pepper ( or more )

1 lb. Al dente fettuccine or thin spaghetti or wide noodles 

1 teaspoon of butter

4 teaspoon Extra virgin olive oil

2 or  4 splashes Dry White wine ( Pinot Grigio, Chardonnay)

2 tablespoons of cream or half and half (optional)

1 teaspoon of lemon juice 

1 teaspoon sugar with a pinch of salt

3/4 cup of Marinara sauce to add moisture to the dish, or more

In large frying pan, over medium heat melt 1 teaspoon of butter, the optional lemon juice and heat the olive oil. When melted, sauté the mushrooms, with the sugar salt on high. When the mushrooms are caramelised, set aside in a bowl. Now fry the shrimp with the garlic and red pepper, turn as they cook until done. Turn out in same bowl as before. Spoon in cooked fettuccine and heat with a splash of dry white wine. When noodle are warmed thought, add back mushrooms, scallions, and the shrimp. Add an optional bit of cream or half and half.  If dry, add  marinara sauce.

Serve hot.

Pot-au-feu (Simmered French Coutry Soup) My Way

Pot-au-feu (pronounced FUH) is a slowly simmered meat and vegetable dish that appears on most home tables in France. Pot au Feu, which literally translates to ‘pot in the fire’, started its life in working-class homes as a way to make less expensive cuts of beef more tender and palatable. 

The long slow cooking resulted in 2 dishes: a clear nourishing broth and a rich meal of beef and vegetables.

 
There are as many variations of pot au feu as there are cooks. I have eaten pot-au-feu prepared with lamb, chicken, lobster. 

 
The broth is always served first with toasted slices of baguette crowned with morsels of fatty beef marrow, and the meat and vegetables are served second. 

Three to five cuts of beef, maybe some marrow bones,  beef neck bones, oxtails, beef tendon, short ribs, and any assortment of vegetables like carrots, garlic, onion, rutabagas, potatoes, and cabbage.

What is time consuming, if you have to have some idea of cooking times, least you spend a tremendous amount of time, test for doneness.

This is my first shot, of combining these meats and vegetables .

First we’ll make a beef flavoured soup stock out of 2-5 pounds of beef neck bones  and 8 pepper corns  5 bay leafs, 2 onions, and garlic, celery, and carrots a day ahead.

 Cook the soup stock for five hours the strain. Discard bones and vegetables. Taste and correct seasoning with salt. Now cook the beef tendon until it becomes transparent, about five more hours. Retain the beef tendons.