08.24.08
Posted in Cantonese cuisine, chinese, cooking, culture, food, non-casein, non-dairy at 2:27 pm by Hanne Blank
To celebrate my Belovedary’s recent birthday, as well as our 12th anniversary, and additionally to roll in the belated birthday celebration of a good friend of ours, I decided to make a Chinese-style feast for the four of us. Four is, to be honest, too small a number for a real banquet, as far as Chinese cookery goes. Chinese banquets usually run into the double digits in terms of numbers of courses, and are intended for large groups of friends or family.
Nonetheless, one can still have an awfully nice feast by following the general principles of Chinese banqueting, which is basically that one pulls out all the stops and acquires large quantities of meat, seafood, and poultry — sometimes very exotic things, or in very exotic preparations, depending on how impressive the banquet is to be. Meat is a traditional food for feasts and celebrations all over the world, and always has been, and it is surely the case in China. In fact, the focus of Chinese banqueting is so much directed toward the meat-fish-poultry end of the spectrum that in many cases, rice is not served at banquets despite its centrality to Chinese eating and culture, unless possibly at the end of the meal as a near-formality.
The message encoded in the absence of rice from the table is quite alien to a culture like ours where we are both very affluent and very fond of large slabs of meat as a central part of our eating (and don’t kid yourself that these aren’t related things), and unlikely to be perceived by Westerners who rarely eat rice anyway and for whom it does not occupy the same mental space as it does for most Asians and certainly for the Chinese. In China, you don’t ask a visitor if they are hungry, or if they have had lunch or dinner already, you ask “hee ca fan mai?” (Cantonese; the Mandarin is ni chi fan le ma?), which means, quite literally “have you eaten rice yet?” The same sentiment is a common greeting in other places too, notably Thailand. Like the word “bread” in the phrase “give us this day our daily bread,” rice is not just a food, rice is food.
When rice is absent from the table at a Chinese meal, it means that you are, at least temporarily, so prosperous and that you don’t have to think about the stuff — rice — that the common people use to fill their bellies. You can and in fact you are encouraged to do something that under normal circumstances has been almost unthinkable, both culturally and economically, for everyone but the highest of elites. You can eat your fill of meat.
(Yes, there are Buddhist banquets that are 100% vegetarian. Most are in fact vegan. And other Buddhist banquets that are vegetarian except for four or five types of seafood that are considered permissible. But even they are remarkably concerned with, and centered around, meat… albeit in the form of mock meats made from seitan, tofu, and various kinds of mushrooms and fungus. The symbolism of meat and prosperity, and meat and largesse, is insistent.)
It should thus come as no surprise that our four-person feast was a fiesta of animal protein.
Clockwise from upper middle: ginger-scallion oil for dipping, boiled dumplings with pork filling, white cut chicken, ginger-soy dipping sauce, roasted chili oil (in center), ginger-scallion explosion shrimp.
The least glamorous looking of these dishes is actually one of my favorites, white cut chicken. It is a Cantonese favorite, and the method of preparing it is one that makes many Western cooks look very worried indeed, although I have made it dozens of times without mishap. It is essentially a boiled whole chicken (you cut it into chopstickable pieces, with or without the bones still in as you prefer, to serve it), cooked with ginger and green onion. But what makes it special is that it is boiled only very briefly, so that it remains juicy and sweet and firm, rather than getting the stringy, cooked-to-death texture that is so common to boiled poultry otherwise.
I take mine off the bone, removing the meat in the largest pieces possible and then cutting them into chopstickable chunks, because I dislike the inevitable bone fragments that chopping through the bones (more traditional) generates. It is served with ginger-scallion oil and usually with soy sauce as well, for diners to dip the meat into as they like. It is a subtle and very pleasing dish, very treasured, and one of those traditionally served at ancestor worship rituals like Ching Ming and the Feast of the Hungry Ghosts.
Method for White Cut Chicken:
Take a small to medium-sized whole chicken, very fresh and of very good quality, plucked, drawn, cleaned, and well washed in plenty of cold water, and put it in a large pot. Fill the pot with cold water until the chicken is submerged to the depth of about 2 inches. Add a large bunch of green onions, cleaned and pared, and a three-inch chunk of peeled fresh gingerroot cut into thick coins. Place the pot over a brisk flame and bring to a full rolling boil. Let boil for about 5 minutes, then remove the pot from the heat, cover, and let cool until the chicken is cool enough to handle.
Note: this takes some time, usually several hours, but it depends on how warm or cool the room is. However, this is part of the cooking process! Residual heat helps ensure that your chicken is completely cooked. Don’t try to rush the cooling artificially, in other words. Just let it happen.
When the chicken is cool enough to handle, lift it out of the broth (this cooking liquid makes a wonderful base stock for many soups, as well as for congee, so don’t throw it away!) in a large wire scoop, or using two large slotted spoons. Put it in a shallow pan to let the liquid drain off. When it is no longer dripping wet, either cut it into manageable-sized pieces bones and all using a cleaver (remove the wings and legs, chop them crosswise into chunks, then cut along either side of the spine and flatten the torso, then cut it up), or else remove the meat from the bones in large pieces, then cut the large pieces into chopstick-ready ones. Generally, if you cut the bird up bones and all, you should leave the skin on. This is not possible when you are removing the meat from the bones.
Serve at room temperature or chilled.
A note about the above method: some cookbooks will tell you to place the chicken into a pot of already-boiling water, return it to a boil, and proceed from there. Sometimes they will not only do this but will also tell you to remove the chicken from the pot before it has cooled down as much as it should. I have tried this method and have never ended up with satisfactory results. All too often, plunging a raw bird into boiling water merely means that the outer margins of the bird get cooked instantaneously and come up to heat quickly, and the boiling water thus returns to a boil rapidly, but the water does not get hot enough for long enough to thoroughly cook the bird. It is very discouraging to start to cut up the chicken for serving only to find that it is still raw at the thickest bit of thigh or breast, and recooking, while possible, tends to dry out the meat. Putting the chicken into cold water and bringing it up to a boil ensures that the whole contents of the pot, including every cubic centimeter of that chicken, will come up to boiling temperature together. Likewise, having it stand in the hot water until the water and the chicken are cool enough to handle is part of the cooking process. This is not a dish to attempt if you don’t plan to be knocking around the house most of the day. The actual time you spend doing hands-on cooking is minimal, but the cooking time, strictly speaking, is extensive.
You serve white cut chicken with plain soy sauce, but also with what I think of as “mad scientist” or “magic” oil made with lots of ginger and green onion to complement the perfume of green onion and ginger from the cooking liquid.
Method for Ginger-Scallion Oil:
Combine 1/3 cup minced fresh raw ginger and 1/2 cup thinly sliced fresh raw green onions or scallions in a largish heatproof nonreactive bowl (ceramic or stainless steel are usually best). Heat 1 cup peanut, canola, corn, or other neutral-flavored oil (not olive oil) until it is just at the smoke point. Pour the
hot oil over the ginger and green onion: it will foam up and seethe and billows of fragrant steam will erupt from the bowl like the stereotypical mad scientist’s lab flasks or witch’s cauldron. Give it a gentle stir with a chopstick or a spoon and let it stand until it cools to room temperature, after which it should be covered. Leftovers should be refrigerated.
Leftover ginger-scallion oil can be used in a variety of ways, not least to flavor congee, plain rice, eggs, or tofu.
Tomorrow, if I get a chance, I will post again and write out my recipe for these:
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08.20.08
Posted in blogs, cats, desserts, food, squeeeee! at 3:06 pm by Hanne Blank
Autumn (the best season, and make no mistake) is on its way.
I have proof.
Or rather, I had proof. But, because I am basically a LOLcat at heart, I eated it. Nom!
The first Mellocreme Pumpkin of the season has been et. Bring on the Autumn!
Fez is ready. She is practicing her hibernation skills with the dog’s squeaky stuffed hedgehog.
Y’all know about the Schadenfreude carnival that is the Cake Wrecks blog, right? No? Well, now you do.
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08.18.08
Posted in Uncategorized, cooking, culture, food, food allergies, non-casein, non-dairy, politics, salad dressings, salads, vegan, writing at 2:00 pm by Hanne Blank
Upon discovering my dairy allergy, one of the categories of things that immediately vanished from my food options was the category of the creamy dip or dressing. Mayonnaise, of course, was still an option, as were creamy-textured dips and dressings that had a mayonnaise base, since mayonnaise is an egg emulsion and not made with dairy products. But since it is frequently impossible to tell visually whether a dressing or dip that one is served at a restaurant or party is exclusively mayonnaise-based or whether it is dairy-based or as is often the case, made of some combination of dairy and mayonnaise, I quickly learned to just avoid anything that looked creamy.
This wasn’t a huge problem. I’d never been devoted to creamy dressings and dips. Then again I certainly had been known to enjoy roquefort or ranch salad dressings now and then, and once or twice a year would get a horrifyingly intense jones for the Lipton onion soup sour-cream-and-onion chip dip and would eat a whole pint of it over the course of a couple of days. It didn’t seem like so much to give up. Still, not having the creamy-dip/dressing option got annoying after a while, particularly after I started to realize just how many vinaigrette-style prepared salad dressings also contained ingredients I couldn’t eat, most commonly in the form of small amounts of cheese.
Oh, I know from vinaigrettes and egg-based dressings, don’t get me wrong. I’ve been making my own salad dressings on a fairly regular basis for years. I can coddle an egg or two for a Caesar salad with the best of them (I just leave out the parmesan, and add extra anchovies). But… well… sometimes you want something with a nice creamy mouthfeel. And you don’t necessarily feel like being bothered to coddle eggs to get it.
Enter Hollyhock Dressing. The recipe was given to me by my wonderful friend and darned good cook, Liza, who warned me, not a bit hyperbolically as it turns out, that the stuff is addictive. It really is. Hollyhock dressing is fantastic stuff. It’s garlicky. It’s savory. It’s vegan. It keeps well. It’s easy to make, providing you’ve got a blender. And it’s creamy.
Seriously, this stuff is so good that I rarely make less than a double batch at a time. Often, I make a triple batch.
The ingredients are simple and few.
For a single batch, you will require:
- 1/3 cup water
- 1/3 cup tamari (you can use soy sauce but the flavor isn’t as good)
- 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar (you can use red wine vinegar or cider vinegar or whatever vinegar you like, but the flavor will be accordingly different, and balsamic is so yummy I rarely mess with anything else)
- 1 cup olive oil
- approximately 1 bulb worth of peeled raw garlic cloves (I usually just use 15 cloves because I peel large quantities of garlic ahead of time)
- 1 cup nutritional yeast
The method, likewise, is a complete and utter cakewalk:
Whiz the liquid ingredients together in your blender with the garlic until the mixture is as smooth as you can get it. Add the nutritional yeast in thirds, whizzing it together in the blender each time, and scraping down the walls of the blender jar after each blending. At the end, blend the mixture for an additional minute or so, just to make sure everything is completely combined and completely smooth.
Note: if you make a double or triple batch, make each batch separately in the blender, to avoid overloading your blender jar. Pour them out into a large bowl and stir them together as you finish blending the batches, to ensure a uniform consistency and taste.
Store, refrigerated and covered, for 3-4 hours before serving, or preferably overnight. Let come back up to room temperature before you serve it, as the olive oil will thicken quite a bit when it’s cold.
One of the best things about Hollyhock Dressing is how versatile it is. It’s great on salad, of course, and brilliant as a dip for crudites. But it’s also a wonderful dip for hard-boiled eggs, and anything you might be prone to dip into aioli or anchoiade you can certainly dip into this, a list which very much includes good crusty bread. Additionally, Hollyhock Dressing has an amazing affinity for potatoes. Pour it over your baked potatoes, or, if you want your mouth to think it died and went to heaven, use it instead of butter/margarine/milk/faux-milk in your mashed potatoes.
Try it. You can thank me later. Or better yet, thank Liza, who gave me the recipe and thus brought great joy into my culinary life… and made it commonplace for my Belovedary, not normally much given to salad-eating, to request a big plate of salad with his supper.
I told you it was good.
(Full disclosure: This photo is of the salad I had for lunch… mixed greens (several lettuces, rocket, parsley, a couple kinds of basil) plus Corno di Toro pepper and two sliced Brandywine tomatoes. My Belovedary, poor thing, is allergic to raw tomatoes, so this is categorically Not His Salad.)
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08.14.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:32 pm by Hanne Blank
As a FYI, and in hopes of getting this news out to people who will be interested, I should note that I am currently accepting applications for research interns for the 2008-2009 academic year.
My current projects deal with two general topics, 1) the history of the concept of heterosexuality and 2) the sexual politics of domestic labor and housekeeping… in case anyone needs to know in order to consider applying for the internships.
All the information one needs in order to apply is on a handy-dandy web page right over here.
Please feel free to forward the URL and information, and thank you for your interest and your help.
– Hanne
p.s. Just so this post has a little bit of food-related content, I will note that geographically local interns stand a pretty good chance of being invited to dinner periodically…
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Posted in Uncategorized at 9:01 pm by Hanne Blank
For the past two weeks, I have been without an oven. A severe lightning storm that managed to set fire to the steeple and roof of a church a couple of blocks from me also managed to fry the digital control panel of my gas oven, leading me to wonder just what the Whirlpool people were thinking when they decided to make a gas oven that was exclusively responsive to electronic controls.
(I have fantasies of the marketing meeting: “See, Barry, it’s the best of both worlds! All the benefits of a gas oven, but with the whole-household protection of an electric that can’t be used during a power outage! I mean, it’s dangerous for people to have brownies during an electrical storm, everybody knows that. I know, I know what you’re going to say. Some people might want to be able to use their oven if the lights go out. But lightning is attracted to baked goods. Everybody knows that. Didn’t you see the news last year? That whole family in Nashua that got burned to a crisp because someone thought they were going to be so smart and bake snickerdoodles during that big rainstorm? I read it on the Internet, so it must be true. Trust me, we’re saving lives here, Barry.”)
In my state of no-bake, I have been unaccountably culinarily frustrated. It’s not that I’ve lacked things to cook, and interesting things at that. But you know how it is: you always want the one you cannot have, and so I have been yearning to make pies, and roasted beets/cauliflower/green beans, and baked eggplant for baba ghanoush, and, well, you get the picture. Even the weather was, for about a week, incredibly oven-use compliant, at least for this time of year, in that it was pleasantly breezy and in the 70s or low 80s.
Instead, for us and for the friends who ate with us during the past couple of weeks, I cooked a fairly typical round of Chinese dishes, interspersed with a bit of Western cookery for the hell of it. There was a meal of black bean pork and peppers, one of our standbys. There were lamb leg steaks and stir-fried mizuna. I steamed a whole fish, an incredibly satisfying and really very simple method of cooking fish that is always delicious and which I plan to photograph and write up the next time I do it. I made radish kimchee fried rice for myself one lunch, and for another I had vegetarian shakshouka (didn’t have any merguez). I comforted myself with breakfasts of long-cooked, slightly salty oatmeal drizzled with olive oil and, spooned over the top, a few tablespoons of ground pork sauteed with lots and lots of thinly-sliced onion. (Savory oats are the bomb). I even made spicy, oniony, garlicky blackeyed peas and rice with half of the gorgeous blackeyed peas I got fresh at the farmer’s market. And some hard-cooked eggs.
You wouldn’t think I would be able to still be cranky about my lack of oven with all that going on. But I kept thinking about everything I couldn’t make. Friends volunteered to let me use their oven, but I never quite got myself in gear to go do that. I just stared at my defunct oven and pouted, and daydreamed about the day –and I swear to you that it will come– that I finally have the space and the means and the house-I-plan-to-die-in and I acquire a huge siege engine of an Aga cooker (plus, of course, several restaurant-powered gas burners for the things one needs those for, like wok cooking), whereupon I will have not one but four, count ‘em, FOUR ovens at my beck and call.
Eric the Appliance Guy is coming to fix my oven tomorrow morning.
Truly, not a moment too soon.
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