whatcha china do to me?

Make some food. Pffft. (Yes. I agree. My puns are exceptionally poor, lately.)

China was really difficult for this project—so. Much. Food. Lots of regional cuisine, because China is pretty big, and doesn’t really have a history of being super connected. I mean.

Look. I don’t even know what to say about China. So here’s the Yangtze River, as discovered by Louis CK in the “Louie” Season 3 finale, which in itself is a thing of beauty:

thanks, blastmagazine.com!

China is really big, really old, really complicated. I can’t possible choose an angle: there’s so much to say about China. It’s so very, very different from the parts of the world I live and have been. I guess I’ll just say: maybe watch this documentary on Ai Weiwei.

Blech. BUT. That’s the thing: such an ancient, complicated and important place is bound to have a ton of interesting food. And food is so important to the culture. Rice. Noodles. Pork, which apparently makes up ¾ of the countries entire meat consumption. THAT’S A LOT OF PIG.

Let us be clear, here, by the way: what you get at your local Chinese restaurant is not what people eat in China. I really hope you knew that already, but it’s worth saying again that American Chinese food is not Chinese food. That’s ok! I love my local Singapore Mei Fun and egg rolls, too. But it’s not the same.

So we tried to go kind of traditional, a dish you would really find in Beijing, or Szechuan. Hot & Sour soup is where we landed, and it was a delicious landing, indeed! This isn’t some lazy packet mix, either, friends—take the time to do it right, coaxing the flavor out, the heat, the sour… and it’s a magical thing.

the stuff

½ lb ground pork
3 tsp soy sauce
handful of small, dried mushrooms (see what you can find…)
1 ½ tbsp cornstarch
8 oz. can sliced bamboo shoots, cut lengthwise into slivers
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp white vinegar (you’re supposed to use rice vinegar, but at the time we didn’t have any so we went with white—I think rice vinegar would be awesome, too)
1 ½ tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp peanut oil
4 cups chicken broth (best if you make it yourself!!!)
4 oz firm tofu, rinsed & drained, cut into long slices (our were pretty crude)
1 large egg
2 tsp sesame oil
1 ½ tsp white pepper
scallions, sliced or chopped to your liking for garnishability
fresh cilantro

 the moves

1. Coat the pork with about 2 tbsp of the soy sauce—you can also use strips of pork, we just happened to use ground pork, by the by.
2. Soak the dried mushrooms in hot water, for about 20-30 minutes. Turn ‘em around from time to time, make sure they’re all covered and soakalicious.
3. Remove the mushrooms from the water—don’t toss the water, though! Squeeze out moisture from the caps, remove any hard pieces of stem. Depending on what kind of mushrooms you end up with, you might want to throw out the stems altogether if they’re the gnarly type. Thinly slice the mushrooms.
4. Take ¼ cup of the soaking liquid, mix with the cornstarch.
5. In a small pan, cover the bamboo shoots with cold water (an inch or two), bring to a boil, then drain (this is to banish some of the bitterness!).
6. In another bowl, stir together the vinegars, rest of the soy sauce, sugar, and salt.
7. NOW IT’S TIME TO WOK. Do you have one? If not, make do with something else, yeesh. So: heat the wok over a high flame, because that’s how woks work. Pour the peanut oil in and swirl around to coat the whole wok.
8. Throw in the pork and stir fry, this will not take long—a minute at most!
9. Add mushrooms and bamboo shoots, fry fry for a minute.
10. Add the broth, bring to a boil, then add the tofu.
11. When it’s back to a boil, add your delicious vinegar mix, then the cornstarch mixture (maybe give that a quick stir in case it got clumpy sitting around). Once it’s boiling again, bring the heat down to keep a simmer.
12. Beat the eggs in a bowl with a few drops of the sesame oil. Stir the soup slowly in one direction and drizzle the egg in, and watch it cook into little threads! So pretty!
13. Add white pepper, and the rest of the sesame oil. AND WHAM.
14. Toss some into bowls, throw some scallions and cilantro on top, and POW. THIS SOUP WAS SO GOOD I CAN’T EVEN EXPLAIN.

don’t mind the glare–it was delicious, I swear!

I’m really NOT the biggest non-chunky soup person. Hot & sour soup is something I never order—I’ll have it if it’s there, I don’t dislike it, but man. I still dream about this soup, it was so, so so so good. The picture is (unsurprisingly… I should get an actual camera and learn how to use it one day) not very good and it looks kinda oily, but I assure you: none of that mattered a single bit. SO. GOOD.

Like, REALLY GOOD.

thanks, worthynews.com!

Cambodia has run amok

First, here is an amazing temple in Cambodia that you may have seen before:

thanks, cambodiahouse.com.au!

Ok. For this post, I’m going to shift from my usual dabble into history and current affairs as relates to food, because something happened on the way to Cambodia. And that something… is epic failure.

And it’s important to talk about your failures.

It goes like this: You’re doing some things out of your comfort zone. So that means there are things that you aren’t familiar with, have never had. And that’s ok. But sometimes… it leads to feelings of nausea and scarring.

We both enjoy coconut, we really do! Sometimes it’s too sweet, but that’s usually in a candy or dessert setting. So a fish recipe—especially one called AMOK—that involves some coconut and spice sounds awesome. But, my friends… have you ever had coconut cream?

Several recipes we researched involved using a whole ton of it. Like, 1-2 CUPS. So we thought—ok! Let’s try this coconut cream. New things! And I stand by that decision-making, in general… but every once in a while it backfires. Our first batch of this was inedible. The cloying sweetness was enough to induce gagging. After more than two bites, my stomach was so upset and disgusted by the sweet… it had to be dumped. No way would I ever eat another bite. And I was not alone: it was SO BAD.

I don’t know if somehow along the line we got our products confused and ended up with a sweeter product than the recipe intended. I don’t even think coconut cream is SUPPOSED to be super sweet. Maybe we just picked a terrible brand. I’m not sure. But I’m pretty positive when we tried again, and left out the coconut cream, the results were SO MUCH BETTER. Edible, and even tasty.

So, remember, kids:

the stuff

2 lg fish fillets, cut into hunks (pick a hearty white fish)
½ tbsp lemongrass, minced
½ tbsp ginger, minced
½ tsp turmeric
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
½ tsp salt
½ tsp sugar
1 tsp fish sauce
½ tsp shrimp paste
1 tsp red curry paste
the tiniest bit of coconut cream (maybe. I mean… if you want to.)
2 lg kaffir lime leaves, 1 sliced
1 long red chili, thinly sliced
rice! (you should know how to make some rice)

 the moves

1. Combine the lemongrass, ginger, turmeric, garlic,salt, sugar, fish sauce, shrimp and curry pastes, and 1 lime leaf in a food processor situation and process that up til it’s a nice paste. THIS IS GOING TO SMELL AWESOME.
2. Heat a frying pan large enough for the fish over medium heat. Add the paste, stir it around for a couple minutes and breath in the delicious fragrance!
3. Add the drop of coconut cream (I will probably skip this forever. I don’t think I can ever eat it again) and bring to a simmer, then remove and put in a large-ish bowl to cool.
4. Toss the fish in the mixture. Yum.
5. Start making some rice. I’m not going to tell you how to do that.
6. So here’s the trick: you want to make little fish bundles with the banana leaves (make sure they are washed!). Take a nice sized (big rectangle!) banana leaf (it should be able to fold over a whole piece of fish and create a bundle)—put half the fish stuffs in the middle of the leaf, top with some lime leaf and chili, fold up the ends to meet and secure with toothpicks.* Repeat with another banana leaf and the rest of the fish.

*Let’s be honest. I made this part up. In that, I’m sure there are many people out there who would actually know how to wrap food in a banana leaf for cooking. Clearly, we are not those people. But I got the idea—we want a bundle of yum to steam the fish in. So… do what you can, and when you get the chance, ask             someone who actually knows what they are doing!**

**As another side note, if we had a bunch of money, this is what we would spend our time doing—getting people to show us how to execute all of these techniques.  For now, we rely on traveling when we can, and near harassment of strangers from other countries for the sake of food fact finding.

7. Steam the bundles over med-high for about 15 min, or until the fish is cooked through. If you have a real steamer, the good basket ones, woohoo! We have a metal thingy but we made it work. Anyway, when it’s done, serve over rice.

Also, we kept that coconut cream around for goodness knows what reason, considering there is no way either of us will voluntarily eat it again. Probably ever. He even still has trouble if something calls for “coconut milk” or “coconut water” just by association. I mean. Look: this experience obviously scarred us both. It’s not fair, because EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS but the coconut cream is a recipe for awesomeness. Fish? Curry-stuffs? What is not to enjoy? I’ll tell you what: coconut cream.

I didn’t even take pictures, I guess, the failure was so epic. Oh well. Here’s a map:

thanks, pepfarv.gov!

Think this is delicious? I’d Bhutan it!

Get it? Bhutan, like “bet on?” … moving right along…

Today we’re swinging over to an area with which I have a random personal fascination: the Himalayas. And, particularly, Bhutan: a land-locked country bordered by China and India. Sounds delicious already. It’s got mountains like whoa, and of varying heights, so the southern portion is a much more temperate climate while the north is practically polar. Grab your parka, it gets windy!

thanks, wildhimalaya.com!

You may have already been aware of this, because it is probably considered one of the most interesting—and unlike the United States—things about Bhutan, but they don’t use Gross Domestic Product to determine how well they’re doing. They use Gross National Happiness. I was first made aware of this when reading The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World. While I didn’t finish the book (I started reading it right before/on a trip to London, which was a mistake for multiple reasons, including that the trip resulted in one of those happy things called a break-up & move out, whoopsie!), I always found the idea wonderful.

What? Maybe it’s more important to be happy than to be rich?! CRAZY TALK, I TELL YOU.

But anywho… back to the happiest of things: FOOD. We’re making momo, a Himalayan dumpling. Gotta love the dumpling—little pillows of delicious, stuffed with hearty fare: minced meat, onions, and whatever yum you’re into, really. We read that they are usually steamed, so that’s the way we went. And it was pretty darn delicious! We made probably the simplest dipping sauce ever, but you don’t have to be boring like us—you can make all sorts of sauces and chutneys and dip to your heart’s content!

 

the stuff

momo:
½ lb ground meet (we used beef! Pork… or yak, if ya got it for some reason…)
½ onion, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbsp rice vinegar
2 tsp flour
2 tsp soy sauce
1 jalapeno pepper, de-seeded & minced
1 tbsp fresh minced ginger
salt & pepper to taste
1 package wonton wrappers (we’re slowly getting into making our own doughs, but while I’m getting empanadas down… this kind of dumpling is still a challenge and I’m a cheater)
a few large cabbage leafs, for steaming

aaaaand a smidge of oil if they need something to bring ‘em together.

dipping sauce:
¼ cup soy sauce
¼ cup rice wine vinegar
1 tsp chili oil

 

the moves

1. Mix the ground meat with the onion, garlic, vinegar, flour, soy sauce and jalapeno. Use your hands. Try not to get freaked out when it gets under your nails, which is pretty gross feeling BUT TOTALLY WORTH IT. If it’s not staying together as much as you would like or seems dry, add a little oil.
2. Lay out a wonton wrapper and spoon a small amount of the filling into the center-ish (you start to learn your preferred method/placement).
3. Dip a finger in the water and rub a little along the edge of the wrapper—this will help it stick closed. Fold the wrapper in two and then pinch the edges to make a tight seal.
4. Line your steamer basket with 1-2 cabbage leaves—this will keep the momo from sticking to your steamer.
5. Place dumplings on the cabbage (don’t overlap!!!!!) and steam for 30 minutes.
   

   mmmm. steamy.

6. While your dumplings are getting their sauna treatment, mixy mix your dipping sauce(s). Also probably make a cocktail, because it doesn’t take 30 minutes to combine 3 ingredients.
7. Serve hot with your sauces and cocktail, because why not?!?

I freaking love dumplings.

thanks, worldatlas.com!