02.24.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:41 pm by Hanne Blank
I’m a fool for pickles. Always have been. Pickled anything, pretty much — green beans, carrots, onions, mushrooms, beets, radishes, peppers, peaches, cabbage, cauliflower, garlic, limes — whatever you got. As long as it’s not mango (all mango tastes roughly like gasoline to me, and not in a pleasant aftertastey way but in an oh my god I’ve just eaten something toxic help help way), I’ll probably try it and like it.
It will thus come as little surprise to anyone that one of my favorite homestyle dishes at a little strip-mall Chinese/Taiwanese restaurant we sometimes go to down near where my Belovedary has been working lately, in Rockville, MD, is pickled cabbage with pork. (The restaurant is called Chopstix, and despite the horrible name, is really very nice, particularly if you order from the “home style” menu. Also, you can get the same pickled cabbage dish with chicken if you prefer. I don’t, though it is also good, the pork is better.) It is spicy, crisp, tart, salty, savory, and generally just a big ol’ festival of umami.
So I was thrilled to find, in the back of Fuchsia Dunlop’s Revolutionary Chinese Cooking, a recipe of sorts (more a set of rough guidelines really) for Hunan-style pickled vegetables. I made up a batch about 2 weeks ago and have been happily noshing off of it ever since, culminating in two nights in a row, last night and tonight, of stir-frying it with leftover cha siu, with a little bit of garlic, some sesame oil, and some dark soy sauce, making a lovely simple homey dinner for my Belovedary and me. But of course I could not bring myself to eat up all the remaining pickled cabbage before I had made more. MUCH more.
So. Today when we were at the Asian supermarket, I bought a pickle crock. And just about the biggest Napa-type cabbage I have ever seen. Voila:
For size comparison, note that the white thing you can barely see the top of behind the crock is my large Brita filter pitcher, and the cheesecloth bundle in the foreground — which contains a variety of flavoring ingredients like scallion, ginger, dried Tien Tsin chiles, Sichuan flower pepper, star anise, fennel seed, cinnamon bark, garlic cloves, and green cardamom pods — is somewhere between the sizes of a baseball and a softball. That is a big honkin’ cabbage, in other words.
I took a photo of the inside leaves of the cabbage because it was so pretty.
Not all of it fit in my crock… as may be obvious from the photo. I had to cook up some with dinner tonight, and stash some of the rest back in the fridge, in hope that tomorrow, after the brine has made the cabbage that did make it into the crock a little softer, I’ll be able to pack the rest into the crock. Here’s what the crock looked like before I put the clay lid on top (a loose-fitting lid that lets the pickles breathe but keeps foreign objects and dust from getting in)… with some of my incredibly disorganized tea collection on the counter behind it.
Packed to the brim with cabbage, the spice bundle from the previous picture, some pickled jalapenos (called for by Dunlop’s recipe, though I imagine not 100% mandatory) and nearly 6 quarts of the appropriate brine.
And, in case you were wondering, yes, I also took a photo of the pickled cabbage and pork dish we had for dinner. Rice bowls, old tatty stained tablecloth I’ve had for 15 years, and all.
Tell you what, photographing your dinners and blogging the pictures sure does make you realize that you really do need to get off your arse and tidy the kitchen and think about buying a new tablecloth or two. Heh.
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02.21.07
Posted in Virgin book, good things, making book, publishing, squeeeee!, writing at 7:51 pm by Hanne Blank
You can get one too… they ship in just a week or so. Ask your favorite bookstore to order you a copy!
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02.19.07
Posted in Chinese cookbooks, Hunan cuisine, Revolutionary Chinese Cooking, cooking, culture, kitchen learning at 9:42 pm by Hanne Blank
Back to Fuchsia Dunlop’s Revolutionary Chinese Cooking tonight, for a fine trifecta. We decied to revisit the smoked tofu and bacon with chiles, because we had some smoked tofu that wanted using up, and to accompany it I made stir-fried peppers with black beans (p. 201) and spicy coriander salad (p. 59).
Together, the three dishes make a smashing combination. The heat and unctuousness of the bacon and tofu dish are balanced out by the crisp, clean vegetal and vinegary flavors of the coriander salad, and they are both countered by the sweetness and pungency of the peppers and black beans. Texture-wise, they also play well together, with the leafy, tender salad, the oily, meaty bacon and tofu, and the just-barely-the-other-side-of-crunchy peppers.
The coriander salad is gorgeous visually as well as being tasty, and, if you are fortunate enough to have a bunch of friends who happily eat quite hot dishes, would make a dynamite summertime contribution to a potluck or dinner party.
What makes it so hot is not just the salted chopped chiles, of which there is only a moderate amount, but also that the light dressing for the greens uses a liberal quantity of hot chili sesame oil. Less flaming tastebuds might halve the hot chili sesame oil or leave it out altogether, relying on only the salted chopped chiles.
The peppers recipe calls for both red and green bell peppers, but we had only green ones. Nonetheless, it is an appealing and delicious dish, and I suspect it will reheat nicely too.
And then of course there was the bacon and tofu, which I think I really nailed this time (last time I overcooked the bacon a bit in the wok, this time I was more sparing because I realized it really didn’t want to be treated to quite so much heat for quite as long as I had done before). The textures were outstanding and the flavor superb. I used more chiles this time, as well, as I had slightly wimped out on the number requested in the previous iteration out of conservatism occasioned by having just bought a new bag of dried Tientsin chiles and not really knowing how hot they were. Now that I know, though, we used the full complement and it was perfection itself. (So much so that my Belovedary has just scarfed one of the the last remaining bits of bacon out of the bowl… we haven’t quite gotten around to putting the leftovers away yet.)
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Posted in Uncategorized at 9:32 am by Hanne Blank
Out of curiosity, I pulled up Google’s listing of the most popular search queries that get people to this website (although not necessarily specifically to this blog itself). It’s a curious list, in some ways.
Now that I have the list, I’m also going to try an experiment to see how it affects stats and further search logs. Items from the list are in boldface, my responses are not.
1. virgin stories
I know what you’re looking for and you won’t find it here. You really really won’t. But if you want to buy a whole book about virgins, I wrote one and you can buy it if you’d like.
2. sex stories pdf
Another thing you won’t find here. On the other hand, I have written and edited a few books that contain these kinds of stories. You can buy those too.
3. stretching hymen
Yes, it can be done in some cases, depending on the qualities of the specific hymenal tissue involved (not all hymens are alike). In fact it often is done, completely inadvertently and in some cases totally nonsexually as well, without anyone knowing the difference. Rather unexciting.
4. self filling water dishes
My youngest cat believes that the bathroom sink is a self-filling water dish, and constantly pesters me to turn it on for him.
5. house smells like mildew
Time to start airing it out, drying it out, and scrubbing it out. Check for leaks, too, especially around doors, windows, and the foundation.
6. dishwashing gloves
Highly recommended: I like True Blues.
7. things women put in their vaginas
Tampons, you mean? Or were you talking about the Grand Unified Field Theory? Yeah, we keep that in there too. Just for safekeeping, you know.
8. but somehow with houses entropy seems to happen in bursts i have empathy for houses falling apart i really do for one thing
Happened to James Joyce too.
9. does women at the age of 10 develop hymen
Female human beings develop hymens before they are born. Usually between the 5th and 7th months of gestation. So the answer to the question is no, women at age 10 do not develop hymens, they already have developed them.
10. girl virgin stories
See #1 above.
11. how much fennel do you need to make a full portion
Oh, acres. Vats and barrels and hogsheads. Just stunning amounts. (A full portion of what, exactly?)
12. how much money is needed for housekeeping
How much have you got? It’s possible to spend huge sums on housekeeping, if you are the kind who spends large sums. Alternately you can do it very cheaply indeed, if you are of limited means. The more you are willing to work hard yourself, the less it costs, I have noticed.
13. enjoying housekeeping
It’s all in the mind. There is no way to make scrubbing the floor into a glamorous, sexy, thrill-a-minute occupation, but it can be gratifying and even meditative if you get into the right mindset.
14. housekeeping means
Justify housekeeping ends, or perhaps vice versa. I think.
15. housekeeping routines
Very useful. I’m for them.
16. male hymen
Il n’existe pas. It does not exist. Es existiert nicht.
17. i dislike
Lots of things. Don’t you? When I’m in a really foul mood I can entertain myself just making lists of the things I dislike.
18. free coupon housekeeper
I’m not sure what this is. The grammar is so vague. The adjective could be modifying either of the nouns, but there could also be an implied preposition or two in there, or “coupon” could be being used as an adverb modifying “housekeeper.” It is a conundrum, to be sure. Let me know if you find one, and take a picture, so I can figure this out.
19. how to get a virgin girl for marriage
Meet one, court her sweetly, treat her kindly and thoughtfully, make it clear that you really admire and respect her, and then ask her nicely if perhaps she will consider marrying you. Maybe she will. (I believe this is the usual method.)
20. air freshener advertising
Sorry, I’m all out. House and garden type magazines usually have lots of them, though. Apparently people who care about their houses and gardens are also fond of having their living spaces smell like someone huffing glue at a dimestore perfume counter. I’ve never understood it myself.
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02.17.07
Posted in Cantonese cuisine, Chinese cookbooks, cooking, kitchen learning at 8:46 pm by Hanne Blank
Happy and Prosperous New Year! It is the year of the Fire Pig, and to celebrate, we made cha siu bao, known to dim sum aficionados far and wide as steamed barbecued pork buns. It’s traditional to make meat dumplings — wor tip (or chiao tzu, or in Cantonese gau ji), what most Westerners know as potstickers — for New Years, but we figured cha siu bao would be a somewhat easier and still meaty and symbolically rich and delicious alternative.
We didn’t have a New Year party of our own, but some friends were having a Zombie Valentine’s Day party (like zombies, true love never dies, right?) and we figured they would go over well there, too, so we prepared the filling last night, and the dough this morning, and took both to the party along with our steamer, and I made and filled the buns, and my Belovedary steamed them fresh for the partygoers right then and there.
My hands, forming the dough into a round ready for filling.
I used Eileen Yin-Fei Lo’s recipe from her 1995 The Dim Sum Dumpling Book, and although I have used Barbara Tropp’s from China Moon Cookbook in the past with pretty good results as well, I think I like Lo’s better: they are more like the oldschool Cantonese versions I have eaten in a lot of Hong Kong style dim sum houses, and I prefer the texture and seasoning of their filling.
Filled bao are placed on the steamer tray, on top of squares of parchment paper to keep them from sticking to the tray.
I did vary my technique a little from the one Lo recommends in forming the buns. I did not pinch them entirely closed, but pleated them almost-shut. It’s a little riskier to shape the buns this way because there is a greater possibility that the buns will open as they steam, and it is also quite likely that the filling may bubble over and stain the outside of the bun pastry a little when you leave them vented like this, but I think that the texture of the pastry is nicer this way, so if I think I can get away with it, I usually leave my bao with a little hole on top when I put them into the steamer.
You can sort of see them in there, steaming away. Howdya like my big shiny stainless steel steamer? It has two tiers, and if I fill both I can cook 16 bao in there at one time! I wanted one big enough to steam whole fish and chickens, and as a bonus I can also cook bao or steamed dumplings for a crowd with ease.
One warning about Yin-Fei Lo’s recipe: there is a numerical discrepancy between the number of buns worth of filling the filling recipe is meant to make (5), and the number of buns worth of dough the dough recipe is supposed to make (8). I recommend simply filling the buns a little less full and making 8. It works fine. Although if you end up with extra dough, you can always just make steamed bread buns (unfilled) and eat them solo. They are quite tasty that way, and I have always found steamed breads to be wholly comforting, with their soft yet slightly chewy quality and the silkiness of the steamed gluten.
Bao! Note the hull breach on the bun at 11 o’clock. I should’ve pinched the pleats together harder. Ideally, they should all look more like the one at 6 o’clock, but I confess I am not exactly in the business of making bao with sufficient frequency to turn them out that way uniformly. (As is patently obvious.) They still taste fabulous, though, no matter the leaks.
Another thing about Yin-Fei Lo’s recipe, or any bao recipe really: make sure you’re making enough. For one thing, people can pack away astonishing quantities of steamed buns. You’d be amazed. They’re addictive. They’re also tasty cold, or reheated (steam them to warm them up and renew their texture) so you need have no fear of leftovers.
Also, the process of making bao is — even for someone like me who is accustomed to spending a fair bit of time in the kitchen — a fairly labor-intensive and time-consuming one. This is true of all dim sum dumplings. Let’s just say there’s a reason that most Chinese cooks don’t cook their own dim sum, but rather go out to eat it in the teahouses whose raison d’etre these dishes are. Because bao doughs will be steamed and a wet dough would simply turn to mush, they can be fussy and require a lot of kneading because they require you to develop a great deal of gluten with only a very small amount of liquid to help you. This is often daunting to Western cooks, particularly if you’re not used to the whole process of working dough to develop its gluten… and even if you are an experienced bread baker, these doughs are a very different animal and you can sometimes knead by hand for 20-30 minutes before you really start getting any elasticity into the dough at all. (A sturdy mixer with a dough hook is a huge help in making bao dough — I think I would refuse to make it if I did not have my big gay lavender KitchenAid to do the heavy kneading for me.) Then there is the forming the dough rounds and the filling and pleating the buns. And the filling is cooked separately, beforehand, as well.
So if you’re going to do it, make enough to make it worth your while! I made 6 batches’ worth of Lo’s recipe, for a total of 48 bao. Tomorrow I plan to cook up another 6 batches’ worth of filling since I still have more cha siu to use up, which I will freeze in 2-batch portions, so that the next time I want cha siu bao I will have that part of the work already done. (The doughs do not freeze well, though the bao themselves, once cooked, will freeze pretty well and can be easily reheated by simply removing them from the freezer and popping them into the steamer until they’re hot all the way through.)
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