Kitchen Happenings: Chinese Ingredients

We're going to go away from restaurant reviews today, and take a peek into the happenings in my own kitchen. I think that I'm starting to feel a little guilty about my lack of ethnicity. Let me explain. In class, I've learned about how people identify themselves with their ethnicity to different degrees. Some are really gung-ho about it. I guess that I barely acknowledge that I'm Chinese (or Taiwanese - see? I don't even care about the distinction). A little while back, my friend Sarah noted that if she were to describe me, "Chinese wouldn't be in the top 5 things." And I couldn't agree more.

But darned if I'm not craving Chinese food more and more. At least neo-Middle American/Chinese-college-food. Because that's what I can pull off here in Champaign-Urbana.

My kitchen goes through phases. I have something that I like in a restaurant, or I read a neat article in NYT, or I see a neat show on the Food Network. And then I'm inspired to figure out how this cooking deal works. I've gone through classical French phases, Southwestern phases, braising phases, seafood phases, fried food phases, among many others. Recently, I've been on an Iron Chef kick. And I'm becoming more intrigued with Chinese food. Iron Chef Chen is a badass. And I want to be like him when I grow up. I've got some Szechuan heritage, so this should be in my genes.

I'm looking at how I can make dishes that aren't "name" dishes like MaPo Tofu, General Tso's Chicken (even if it's American), or Peking Roast Duck. Those have some reference point, that I'm not particularly wanting to recreate.  I want to figure how I can take readily available ingredients and turn it into 1-star quality food on the fly. How am I doing it? I'm looking back at my youth.
I didn't get along so great with Chinese food back in the day. My mom made a few stellar dishes and a lot of good ones. Problem is, my young (and at the time, sensitive) palate disagreed with some of the ingredients. I never liked tofu (and I'm still not fond of it, really), fermented black beans, and other things, so lots of the condiments just never made it for me. Well, people grow up and so do tastes.

I'm now on a quest to re-discover the fundamentals of Chinese food. I want to know what's beyond Oyster Sauce or Sweet and Sour sauce. I'll give some updates as I venture more into the kitchen. Today's update? Playing around with ingredients.

I went into Am-Ko (the local Asian grocery) to get a bag of rice and some other odds and ends. That was when inspiration hit. I walked out of there with (among other things) spicy chili bean sauce, fermented bean curd, and ja jiang (jiang means "sauce", ja means fried) which is a sauce that's sort of sweet and pungent, made from bamboo, beans, and other things, fried up in a not-too spicy chili oil.

Spicy bean sauce is a very stock ingredient in Chinese cooking. And I've never owned a bottle of it. I had always made do with other ways of spicing up the food. I had always been missing something. Spicy bean sauce adds kick and depth to the flavor. There's a rich, almost earthy heat that comes through when you use it.

Another ingredient is the femented bean curd. It looks very intimidating. Essentially, it's 8 cubes of fermented tofu that's sitting in a salty, somewhat spicy brine. And it's incredible tasting. It doesn't add any real heat to food, but it gives a salty, and earthy taste to dishes that you just can't get with soy sauce. All the things that I had been missing out on.

One thing that you find in Asian food is this interplay of sweet, salty, spicy, sour, bitter, and everything else, all in one dish. How it all comes together is with some flavors that inherently span multiple boundaries. In western cooking, we tend to like things compartmentalized. We like different layers of the same theme. Asian cooking seems to throw that out the window, and encourage a holism.

So what did I do with this new found power? 2 things. The first was creating a dish that I called "fire dumplings." Essentially, I made a batch of pot stickers (sauteeing uncooked dumplings for a bit, before adding just a bit of water and covering to let everything steam and cook), and then instead of just making a dipping sauce, I decided on making a sauce and then coating the dumplings with the sauce in the pan, so you get a little carmelization going, and a little reduction of the sauce to concentrate the flavor.

What was the sauce? Well, you'll have to forgive me. I never measure, unless someone is watching. It was a little bit of my three newly found ingredients, some sambal (an American-made, Indo-inspired, garlic-chili sauce), a little soy, some ketchup, a little sugar, and some lemon juice. Just a couple of teaspoons over the dumplings, a few tosses in the pan, and bam! A prime-time appetizer. One of these days, I'll get the inspiration to actually make my own appetizers, but until then, I'll just stick with my favorite frozen ones.

The other dish was a late-night comfort food craving. Noodles in spicy broth. I had made this chicken stock I knew that I was going to be cooking with it, so I was fine with boiling the heck out of the bones, and then just filtering out whatever big bits were floating around. This was a pretty standard broth - flavored with bullion, sage, rosemary, and pepper. Nothing remotely Asian about it. But it's there for flavor. And meat flavor is international.

So what went into the broth? Some more of my new found ingredients, some soy, and some sa cha sauce - another spicy sauce, this time seafood based, in chili oil. Some chinese noodles cooked up, and into the broth it goes. Some veggies and chunks of braised beef would have made this a meal, but I was just looking for some quick food. The noodles soaked up the spicy liquid, and I got to slurp them up - almost like street food in Shanghai. Only I got to make it.

At some point, we'll dig up some ingredients to make some more variations on "traditional" Chinese food. I'll be sure to let you know how it goes. And don't let me forget to make a note of this awesome polenta dish that I made (not Chinese, but entirely awesome).

-foodgeek

Restaurant Review: BoBo Mandarin - Drop It Like It's Hot (Pot)

This will differ slightly from other restaurant reviews. This is more of a review of an experience - the restaurant could be any Chinese restaurant that offers the service.

Some things often get Lost in Translation, and food is no different. Today's topic? Hot Pot. Or, Chinese Fondue. By buddy Darren and I have this weekly ritual where every Wednesday night we catch up on life and gorge ourselves on food. In fact, many of my reviews are based on my adventures with Darren. And tonight was another night where we ate enough for 4, and loved every second of it. Tonight, we were going to have Hot Pot at BoBo Mandarin over on 4th St. in Campustown.

Hot Pot or Fire Pot would be the literal translation of the dish that is somewhat common throughout Taiwan and China. The beauty of this dish is that it's really good for all seasons. In the hot summer months, you'll see people in China eating hot pot at midnight, when it's still warm and muggy out. The spicy food helps you sweat and cool off. In the cold winter months, it's quintessential comfort food. Hot, spicy, rich broth, used to cook your favorite meats and vegetables, that warms you inside and out.

Basically, it's an electric burner (or a portable gas burner) with a big, wide pot on top. You fill up the pot with this spicy broth, bring it up to a boil, and then you eat. You eat it all family style, everyone cooking their own food. So what do you eat? Anything you want. First thing into the broth was vegetables. These would slowly cook and release some flavor. Spinach, napa, carrots, Chinese turnips, whatever you had on hand. Today we just chose spinach.

As this cooked down, you'd each make your sauce bowl. You'd add whatever sort of spicy seasonings that you had. Start with some soy. Add some Bull's Head Barbecue sauce (Asian barbecue sauce that's very different from what you'd expect), some spicy bean curd, maybe some garlic or chili oil, and crack an egg in there to give it all a little texture. They also brought out some pickled mustard plant, a peanut sauce, and some MSG for us, if we wanted to use it, but we didn't.

Once the pot comes back to a low boil, you can start cooking meats. Today, we had beef, squid, beef meatballs, and shrimp. It was pretty awesome. The shrimp were whole shrimp with the heads still on. They were a little hard to peel (white shrimp usually are), but the flesh had a sweet taste to it that worked well with the spicy dipping sauce. The beef was just thinly shaved (I believe) round steak. Basically, you just dip it into the boiling broth for a second, and it's cooked to a perfect medium. The squid is probably the most interesting. Now, if you slice open a squid, and cut it into pieces, you'll find that it curls up when you cook. Now, if you were to score the meat with cross hatches, you'll see this really neat pattern emerge as the flesh is cooking. It's almost artistic.. And it creates more surface area to cook faster and pick up more flavor. The only downer was the meatballs. Now these Asian meatballs are intended to be a almost chewy and bouncy, but the ones that we got were ridiculous. It's not the cook's fault - they just buy them frozen. But I was used to ones that had a different texture, so that was sort of a miss today.

After you cook the meat and eat the vegetables, you can finish off the meal by cooking some rice vermicelli. The noodles cook quickly and soak up all of the flavor of of the broth, which has been further enhanced with the cooking of the meats and vegetables. You then add the noodles and some of the broth to your dipping sauce, which becomes like a spicy noodle soup. Add on a poached egg, and you've got yourself an indulgent way to cap off a fun meal.

Of course, this is not for those in a hurry. This is meant to be a place and time to converse, to catch up, and to slowly enjoy a meal. After all the food's been eaten, you'll still have a pot of broth, which you can sip on leisurely as you chat into the night. While the food is very simple, it's the ritual and the experience that makes hot pot so wonderful. It's something where the meaning may be lost on someone not looking for it. This isn't fast food. This is something worth taking a few extra minutes to experience, so that you don't lose anything in the translation.

The damage? After tax and our usual 20% tip, it came to just over $36. And we ate enough for 4. This is a relatively inexpensive way to really have a good time with a bunch of friends in a very interactive meal. The thought of being with friends, sitting in the street on a warm and muggy night, lingering into the early hours, sipping on that spicy broth just makes me grin.

-foodgeek