As for a good utilitarian demiglace you can use a thousand ways?  Well, turns out that’s actually not much more than a premeditated act of condensation and all you need is broth, heat, and time.

The backbone of the classical French demiglace is ferociously concentrated broth or stock, which is what the term demiglace has come to mean in general kitchen use.  Traditionally this is made with about a bajillion pounds of beef or veal bones (or a mixture), which are first roasted to brown them and concentrate their flavors, then made into a nice rich stock.  The stock is filtered through a sieve to remove little particles.   To this stock, oftentimes, tomato paste is added.  Then it gets cooked down, with occasional skimming to remove the protein scum that will form on top, until it’s the consistency of maple syrup or possibly even honey (though I find you can rarely get the honey texture without thickening it somehow, e.g. with a roux).

Anyhow.  Point is, anyone can make a demiglace.  You do have to start with a really good stock or broth, preferably not salted since you’re going to be concentrating it.  Do be wary if you’re starting with ham stock, or the water from cooking a boiled ham, as it can get mighty salty.

It doesn’t have to be beef/veal, incidentally.  It can be any old kind of broth or stock, including vegetable broth.  I sometimes make an excellent vegan demiglace starting with a broth made of the soaking water from soaking dried mushrooms, sauteed fresh mushrooms, caramelized onions, a ton of garlic, and a metric ton of parsley and celery, in case you vegans are interested.

Start by chilling and then skimming the fat from your broth.  Then put it back on the heat.  If you are working with beef, veal, lamb, mushroom, or some combination of these, adding tomato paste is fine if you like it.  If you are working with chicken or pork of some sort, don’t.  (I’ve never made a fish or shellfish demiglace, but see no reason it couldn’t be attempted.)

Simmer the broth uncovered for as long as it takes to reduce it to a maple syrup consistency.  Skim the scum from the surface every couple of hours and discard it.  You don’t want to boil it too hard — a gentle simmer is best.  You can, in fact, do this in a slowcooker/crockpot on a high setting with the lid off, if you like.

Depending on the quantity of liquid you started out with this may take quite a while.  Plan it for a day when you plan to be hanging around the house anyway.

When it’s a nice maple-syrup consistency, you can decide to either simmer it down further to see if you can get it to a honey-like texture, or you can call it a day and ladle it into sterile containers and seal it and let it cool and then stow it either in the fridge or the freezer.

Use your demiglace for lots of things.  They’re nice for dressing vegetables, either cooked or in salads.  I love a spoon or two of beef or mushroom demiglace with a little olive oil and some sherry vinegar for a spinach salad, for instance.  You can use them to make sauces — the French repertoire has dozens of sauces that depend on demiglace.  You can use demiglace to flavor cooked grains, either dissolving it in the cooking water or tossing the grains with some demiglace after cooking.  It’s awesome stirred in at the end of making a risotto.  And of course you can reconstitute it into a broth or stock if you need to, or use it to enhance the flavor of an unintentionally anemic soup.

You can even thicken it with a roux, add a hit of sherry or Madiera, and have something tolerably close to the original old school mother sauce demiglace itself.

                          

The first secret of having lots of houseguests is: stock up on household linens.  You will require more bath towels, hand towels, washcloths, tablecloths, table napkins, and kitchen towels than you ever dreamed possible.

The second secret of having lots of houseguests is: learn an array of simple but flavorful unfussy foods that appeal to a wide range of palates and do not have any particularly challenging ingredients in terms of the most common allergens.

One of the dishes I whip out frequently for guests is blanched chilled vegetables of some sort or other with a Chinese-inspired, and rich yet mild, slightly sweet nut sauce.  It plays well to children as well as adults.  Typically I use almond butter as the base for the sauce, but any nut butter will work as long as it is unsweetened and of high quality.  If allergies to tree nuts are at issue, you can use tahini.  To make somewhere between two and three cups of sauce, I combine in a bowl

• about a cup of nut butter
• several cloves crushed raw fresh garlic (mince, then crush to a paste with a little salt using the side of a knife, or in a mortar)
• about a quarter cup of hoisin sauce
• a couple tablespoons of Asian sesame oil
• a tablespoon or so of regular soy sauce
• and then whisk in a cup or more of boiling water

until you get the consistency you like.  At times I will also add a jolt or two of citrus juice, either lemon or orange.

If you require a gluten-free version of this, use a GF tamari instead of soy sauce, and instead of commercial hoisin sauce, make your own small-quantity fresh hoisin sauce as follows: combine in a bowl

• 4T tamari
• 2 large dried prunes or apricots, soaked 20 minutes in hot water, then pureed
• 1 T honey or molasses
• 2-3 t cider vinegar, depending on how tart you like it and also whether you used prunes (not tart) or apricots (tart)
• 1-2 cloves crushed fresh raw garlic
• 2 t Asian sesame oil
• optional: hot chili sesame oil (to taste), finely ground black pepper (to taste)

Of course you can make your own hoisin sauce just because you want to, too.  I confess I usually just use the Lee Kum Kee kind that comes in the nice convenient squeezy bottle.  But it’s nice to know how to make it from scratch if you want to.

You can serve the nut sauce with veggies, but also tossed with noodles — this is the genus from which “sesame noodles” arise — or as a dipping sauce for other things.  I like it with grilled pork particularly.  It also plays nicely with lamb.

And speaking of lamb, if you are a meat-eater, you will want to know how to roast a leg of lamb as one of those tried and true, easy things you can pull out when you have guests.  I roasted a very large whole leg this weekend for dinner for 8, and we consumed virtually all of it, leaving just enough meat on the bones for me to make a good lamb stock out of later on.

People talk about roast leg of lamb as if it were some serious technical production.  It’s not.  It’s a lot like roasting a chicken, which, as you may recall if you’ve been reading for a while, is really very easy.  A leg of lamb is a somewhat bigger thing than a chicken, of course.  And it is shaped so that inevitably the thin bit will be well-done and the thick bit will not be.  This is okay, a medium-rare lamb is every bit as beautiful a thing as a well-done, and in fact some people think more so.

Here are my tips for roasting leg of lamb:

First, keep your leg of lamb on the bone. Bones help provide flavor and retain moisture.  Do not give in to the temptation of supposedly easier carving and have your butcher bone it out for you.  Be a grownup, buy it with the bone(s) still in it.

Second, remember that lamb, because it is young, does not generally need a long cooking time to be tender and flavorful.  It also doesn’t really need to be marinated, unless you want to do it for whatever flavor it may add.

Third, remember that cooking meat has two phases, the active cooking and then the resting, which actually finishes the cooking process as well as redistributing the juices throughout the meat.  Allow enough time to do both.

Fourth, do bear in mind that you’ll need a roasting pan that will fit the joint you want to roast.  And, for that matter, an oven big enough to hold it, with the oven racks arranged so everything will fit.

Fifth, if you don’t have a meat thermometer, go get one now.  Not later, now.  You cannot tell when the interior of a big joint of meat is done to the proper temperature by looking at it.  You need a thermometer with a long pointy probe so go get one, decent ones can be had for about $10.

All that said, you prep your leg by bringing it to room temperature and washing it.  I bring meats to room temperature by placing the meat, still wrapped, in a chest cooler (like you’d use for camping) closing it, and leaving it there for a little while.  This lets the temperature rise gradually without any real effect from drafts or external heat sources like sunny windows or busy ovens.  A chest cooler is also a good place to thaw large cuts that might not fit conveniently in the refrigerator, for similar reasons.

Wash down your room-temperature leg of lamb, rubbing it thoroughly with a couple of handfuls of coarse salt to remove any surface ook.  If there are bits you want to trim, do it now.  Pat it dry or let it drip-dry a little.

Preheat the oven to 425F and put the leg in your roasting pan.  Give it a nice rubdown with something delicious.  I typically rub down a lamb leg for roasting with a paste made of roughly 4 parts garlic to 4 parts olive oil to 2 parts coarse salt and 1 part rosemary.  You can omit the rosemary if you like but never the garlic.  You can also substitute other herbs you enjoy for the rosemary — Mongolians traditionally spice lamb with cumin and chiles, for instance.

Pop the leg into the oven and cook at 425 F for about 20 minutes, then drop the temperature to 350 F, and roast for another hour or more, depending on the size of the lamb.  What you’re aiming for is an internal temperature of 145F in the thickest part of the leg (be sure the probe isn’t touching the bone), which is the bottom end of the “medium rare” range for lamb.

The first reason to aim for the bottom of the “medium rare” range with lamb is this: the bits right at the bone will, indeed, be slightly lower in temperature still, so there will still be some truly rare meat on the bone for those who like it, while the majority of the meat will be medium-rare, which is widely considered the optimal doneness for lamb. (I like mine a little more well done, but I am a Philistine.)

The other reason is that the temperature of the interior of a piece of meat continues to rise a little bit after you take it away from the direct heat.  So if you take the lamb out of the oven at 145 F, the interior of that leg will actually coast a few degrees higher during resting as thermodynamics do their thing, which means that you will have cooked it to the middle of the “medium rare” range after all is said and done.

Rest the lamb for 15-20 minutes, then carve and serve and eat and be happy.  Leftovers are a delight and can be served in a billion ways (also convenient when you have houseguests) and of course the bones and odd scraps can be tossed into the stockpot and turned into delicious lamb stock for any variety of soup you care to create.

As an aside: because not everyone knows just how easy it really is to cook a leg of lamb, your houseguests will probably be impressed and honored that you are going to all that trouble for them.  Win-win!

                          

This is a simple process, but a little fiddly.  Because you are dealing with fruits that produce quite a bit of their own pectin, you don’t add any: the marmalade has only three ingredients, fruit, water, and sugar.  I typically make preserves like these only with organic fruits, because when fruits are sprayed it tends to stay in the peels/rinds, and marmalade is all about those.  Let your conscience be your guide.

I make citrus marmalades by volume — some confiture is done by weight, you don’t want to mix them up, because if you are measuring some ingredients by volume and weighing the others it may be enough to banjax your results.

Meyer lemon marmalade is a 1:1:1 marmalade by volume.  6 cups lemon, 6 cups water, 6 cups sugar.

To prepare the lemons, take well-scrubbed Meyer lemons.  Halve them from pole to pole, then slice each half into quarters, also from pole to pole.  Slice out the inner core of membrane and set it aside in a bowl.  Also remove and reserve all the seeds, and if there are any places where the membrane between sections is right at the edge of a wedge of fruit, peel that away and reserve it as well.  Slice the fruit wedges very thinly, including the peels.  You will do this until you have 6 cups of seeded, somewhat de-membraned, finely sliced lemon.

Place the sliced lemons into a large, heavy, non-reactive pot.  Pour in 6 cups cold water.

Put all the reserved membrane, seeds, and such into a scrap of cheesecloth, twist it into a pouch, and tie it shut with some kitchen twine.  Leave a long end on the twine so you can tie it to the handle of the pot you have your lemons and water in.  Toss the bundle into the pot — this is your pectin bag, because all the things inside it produce lots of lovely pectin that will make your marmalade gel.

Bring the pot to a boil, then simmer until the lemon is tender when you taste a piece.  Remove the pectin bag and set it aside to cool.

While the pectin bag is cooling, you can do the following:

• Put a few (4-5) saucers or sauce dishes or small plates in your freezer to get cold.
• Sterilize your canning jars, and prepare the lids and bands.
• Get your hot water bath canner full and warmed up so you can bring it to a boil quickly when needed.
• Get out your candy thermometer.

When the pectin bag is cool enough to handle, knead and squeeze it out over the pot, so that you squeeze out as much of the thick, gloopy, lubricious pectiny goodness as possible.  (Discard the pectin bag after you’ve gotten what you came for.)  Stir the pectin into the fruit and water and bring the fruit back to a low boil.

Add the sugar and stir until it is dissolved.  Bring the mixture to a boil and cook it at a steady boil, stirring occasionally and scraping down the sides of the pot when needed, until it reaches about 218F (about 103C).  Test by getting one of your cold plates from the freezer and placing about 1/4 teaspoon — just a small blop — of the boiling preserves on the plate.  Give it a few seconds and tilt the plate.  If it’s still runny, it isn’t ready yet.

Most of the time, marmalade will be ready between 220F (104.4 C) and 223F (106.1 C).  I have, once or twice, had it be ready at a slightly lower temperature, which is why I tell you to start testing at 218F.

Test again on a clean cold plate with each successively higher degree in temperature.  The marmalade is ready when you test it and it mounds up, a little like an egg yolk, is not runny when you tilt the plate, and when you poke the surface of the blob and you get a little wrinkling in the surface.  That means the pectin is gelling properly.

The instant this happens, turn off the heat under the marmalade and ladle it into your prepared jars.  Leave about 1/2 inch head space.  Lid and band your jars and process in a boiling water bath 10 minutes.  After removing the jars from the processing bath, let cool completely and check the seals on the jars before storing in a cool, dark place.

A batch that starts with 6 cups of lemons will make a generous two quarts of marmalade.

                          

Instead, I will talk to you about taste.  Onion marmalade is sweet but savory, smooth but acidic.  It is gorgeous on bread, with noodles, with potatoes, with meats, with cheeses, and even all by itself.  It is oniony, but sweetly so, suavely so, delightfully so.  You can smear it on a round of pizza dough, bake it, and have an instant foccacia fit for a king.  Or anoint a panful of chicken parts with it before you put them in to roast.  You can smear it on a sandwich, or dollop it on your bratwurst, or anything else that strikes your fancy.  It will swiftly become a household staple.  It deserves to.

Onion marmalade does take a little time to make.  All marmalade does.  But you don’t mind, I know.  Besides, you have other things to do around the house, and you can set a timer so you’ll remember to come in and stir it and check on it every 10-15 minutes or so, if you need to.

What you need are lots of onions, some dry red wine, some cider vinegar or balsamic vinegar, some bacon fat or olive oil or what you’ve got in that department, and some sugar.  Brown, white, again, what you got.  The last batch I made I chucked in a slab of panela that needed using up and it came out fine.

Oh, and you know that you don’t cook with wine you wouldn’t drink, right?  It doesn’t have to be Fancy Wine, just drinkable wine.  Vin very ordinaire’s perfect.  I usually buy $7-10 bottles of Spanish and Italian reds for this sort of project.  Maybe as much as a $12 bottle.  Definitely not more.

For each 4-5 pounds of onions (yes, you read that right) you’ll want about a half a bottle of wine, a cup of vinegar or thereabouts (a little less than a cup if you use the cider vinegar), and about two cups of sugar.  For the fat/oil, you need enough to get everything started.  Oh, and some salt.  How much?  I don’t know, how salty do you like things?  Use a natural, uniodized salt.    The additives in a more processed salt can sometimes affect the flavor, in my experience.

The procedure is simplicity itself.

Peel and slice your onions.  Thin slices are best, although they needn’t be transparent or anything.  I highly recommend the use of a food processor if you have one, for this part of the process.

Next, you heat up enough fat/oil to generously cover the bottom of a large heavy-bottomed pan for which you have some sort of lid available.  Once the fat is hot, pour in the onions and give them a good toss in the hot fat.  Sprinkle with a little (not a lot) of salt, and bung the lid on the pot.  Let them do their thing over a medium-high heat for about 10 minutes, to get the onions sweating.  Once they’ve started to give up their water, remove the lid and continue cooking, raising the heat if you like, and stirring periodically so nothing scorches.

Cook the onions until they begin to color.  When they’re beginning to get a little golden, add the wine, vinegar, and sugar, and stir until the sugar is dissolved.

Adjust the heat — you want the marmalade at a lively simmer but not a full-bore boil — and let it cook down.  This will take some time.  Don’t try to rush things by raising the heat to the Synchronized Flamethrower Inferno setting or anything, you’ll only scorch the bottom of the pot and that’s a mess you don’t need.  Just let it cook.  Stir it every 10-15 minutes, scraping down the sides and the bottom of the pot with your wooden spoon so that no sticky bits get a chance to scorch, which can quickly turn into an actual burn, which will ruin the batch.  Don’t worry, it’s not terribly prone to this, it’s just that it’s not worth taking chances.  (Scrubbing scorched onions and sugar off the bottom of a pot is frankly un-fun.  And easily avoided.  So please, avoid it.)

When the liquid has mostly cooked off, and you have something the texture of a very thick stew, you want to do two things.  First, you want to taste the marmalade (schmear some on a small plate and let it cool THOROUGHLY before you taste it, the stuff is like onion napalm at this stage) and correct the salt if you need to.  Second, you want to keep an even closer eye on things than before.  The thicker it gets, the less you want to leave the kitchen.  Toward the end, you don’t even want to leave the stove (don’t worry, though, this stage is only about 5-10 minutes of your day).

What you are looking for, ultimately, is a state of affairs where, if you drag your spoon down the middle of the bottom of the pot, it’ll leave a clear trail behind it for a second or two before the thick marmalade fills it in.  That’s how you know that your marmalade is adequately cooked, and will not be runny when it is cooled.

When it gets to that stage, you’re done.  Turn the heat off, let it cool a bit, pour into clean glass or plastic containers, cover, and refrigerate.

Oh, and, it’s worth mentioning, at this time of year, that a container of onion marmalade, perhaps with a bit of good cheese or some oatcakes or both, makes a dynamite hostess gift.

                          

In my own defense, I was away for about five weeks, first on an arts residency, then doing Family Things in another city.  There was some Interesting Cookery — I took over chefly duties twice for the assembled folks at the arts residency, in fact — but much of my cooking during my time away was just for myself and was of the uneventful cooking-for-one variety that chases some tofu and some veggies around a wok for a few minutes and calls it supper.

My residency took me to Madison, Wisconsin, where I was spoiled as a spoiled thing by the Dane County farmers’ market — Saturday mornings down on the Capitol square.  Thanks to Wisconsin’s really rather magical community of Hmong and Laotian farmers, I enjoyed the unparalleled delight of being able to shop for my choy sum and gai lan and lemon grass and other veggies that I normally only find at Asian markets at home, while at the farmers’ market.  Leeks were particularly succulent and wonderful this year, and the cauliflowers were beautiful, tight-headed and clean-tasting.

Also while in Madison I visited the National Mustard Museum, to which all right-thinking people who visit the area will surely go.  Upstairs there is an extensively stocked mustard shop with a tasting bar.  (They also do mail order, although sadly no mail-order tasting bar.)  I heartily recommend that you try, if you do not already know them, the following:

Moutard de Meaux Pommerey — classic, nutty, French coarse mustard that is good with nearly everything but especially sausages.

Edmund Fallot Moutard au Cassis du Dijon — beautifully balanced fruit mustard with intense blackcurrant flavor, wonderful with poultry.  Would be nice with many sharp cheeses, too.

Dulcet Cuisine Moroccan Mustard — a mashup of classic north African spices with mustard and sweetness, outrageous and delicious, try it with a good eating apple for an unexpected treat, or make a leftover roast lamb sandwich with it.

Another gem of the Madison food scene is the delightfully and fortuitously named Gail Ambrosius, chocolatier.  She has a shop down near the delightful Barrymore Theatre.  There were 23 varieties of choccies in the case on the day I went, and she sells a 24-piece box, so I only had to repeat one.  I highly recommend this approach, since her flavors are inventive and constantly changing with the seasons, and you’re going to have a hard time deciding anyhow, so why fight the inevitable?  You should also acquire plenty of what she calls her Pecan Smokies, because addictive isn’t the half of it.  These are so good that not only did none of them make it home to be shared with my Belovedary, but I didn’t even try… and I didn’t even tell him about them.  Until now. (Sorry, honey.)

Anyhow, I am now home from all my globetrotting, doing the kinds of things you do when you’re home from a bout of travel.  You know, baking bread, starting a batch of sauerkraut, planning Thanksgiving cooking, doing the laundry, recipe development, trying to play catch-up with a million things.

Relict partly of my time away, I am also working on a six-month short fiction project online, which you can find right over here and about which you can read a very little explanatory text here, too, if you like.  It is updated three times (or thereabouts) weekly; I’m starting my fourth week.  Although it is text only, much of it thus far is Not Safe For Work, if you have the kind of job that cares about such things.

I have more to rattle on about, but no more time in which to do it.  Until next time, then, which I promise will be sooner than this time was.

                          

This, consequently, is what the interior of my fridge looks like right now.

My household has been eating, this past week, mostly courtesy of what’s been found in the freezer and the garden.  Right now in the fridge there are two packages of seasoned tofu, two bottles of beer, some garlic scape pesto, half a dozen eggs, a chicken carcass waiting to be turned into soup (that’s the plastic box), a quarter of a container of soymilk, Vitamin D liquid, some olives, some miso, some garlic, and the Magic Forest of Pickled Peppers And Other Condiments.  Oh, and pint of cream because I keep meaning to make caramels for someone and it keeps not happening.  There are some breadcumbs in there too, and almond meal, popcorn, and, in the plastic baggie you can see just poking out of the door, some salt cod.  The rest of the door shelves contain condiments of all sorts, from pomegranate molasses to four kinds of mustard.  And the cat’s insulin.

The cupboard is also starting to look a little less like its usual self.  There’s a big hole where several bags of dried beans used to be, the muesli stocks are pretty much gone, there’s no more peanut butter.  Even the tea cupboard has some wide open spaces in it, a state of affairs so rare as to be shocking.

It’s kind of an interesting challenge to feed yourself and your household when the fridge mostly holds condiments and not many things with which one could reasonably use same.  It strikes me that this task might be easier and less stressful if I just went out and did the hunting and gathering.  I guess I’ll have to carve out some time and do that.

                          

You need about a pound of chiles of your desired degree of hottitude.  Wash them, remove the stems, and chop them coarsely.  I often bung them in the food processor and whir them until they are mostly coarsely chopped with a few bigger and a few smaller bits.  It saves a lot of time.

Put your chopped chiles in a large bowl. Add about 2 Tablespoons kosher salt for a pound of chiles, and combine thoroughly.  Feel free to knead the salt and the chiles together if you like.  Pack salt and chiles into a clean glass jar or jars and put lids on them loosely.

Leave the chiles out on the counter at room temperature for about 2-4 days depending on how warm your kitchen is.  Less if it’s warmer, more if it’s cooler.  They’ll give off some liquid and you’ll see some little bubbles starting to form in the liquid.  Stir things around some with a chopstick, put the lid(s) back on (still loosely) and put your jar(s) in the fridge.  Every day or two, stir things around some more with a chopstick.  In about a week to ten days your chiles will be sufficiently transformed that you can start using them.

They will continue to improve over the space of a couple of months.  If you use them at a steady clip you’ll figure out eventually how much you have to make in your initial batch so that you will not run out until after they’ve had a chance to reach their peak.  What their peak is, of course, is subjective.

If things get fuzzy, remove the fuzzy bits and carry on.  If things start getting blue or grey, though, or it smells like a horrible dead thing that has died horribly, throw it away and start over.

And if you are even more adventurous than this, you can use Andrea Nguyen’s amazing recipe for homemade fermented Sriracha sauce.

                          

I did get to cook yesterday, though, as a celebration of both my finally finishing a complete draft of the whole book (cue vuvuzelas!) and a dear friend’s birthday (cue birthday cake!).  I made a Mexican feast: carnitas, frijoles, pico de gallo, veggies from the garden, sliced avocado, and bought a kilo of fine, fine tortillas from Tortilleria Sinaloa across town in Fell’s Point.  (I never want to live in a town without a good tortilleria again.)

So tonight I’m having leftovers.  Chopped chard and purslane from the garden topped with a bunch of carnitas and several large spoonfuls of pico de gallo.  In the little dish, some Korean-style pickled daikon.  And in the big quart Mason jar, a big ol’ vat of iced tea with plenty of lemon juice.  Just think of the pickled daikon as Korean curtido.  Muy rico no matter what.

                          

What do you eat when you’re pressed for time or not feeling much like cooking?  The day after I’ve done a service for the pop-up restaurant I am usually both, and meals can be a bit of an afterthought.

One of the nice things about the pop-up restaurant situation, though, is that the leftovers usually come home with me.  They need to be used up to avoid waste, of course, but that’s the boring reason to use up leftovers.  Much more interesting is the part where, even though I’ve spent a couple of days with the particular foodstuff(s) in question already, I get to enjoy some pretty darn good food.  When the food was good to begin with, leftovers are hardly a trial.

In this case, a half-empty tub of the filling that was used in pork wonton came home with me yesterday, and since it had been opened and partly used, I wanted to make sure to use it up promptly.  I also wanted to make sure it was really well cooked, just to be on the safe side.  I tipped it into a blazing-hot wok and let it  render out a little of its own fat and juices, added a small slug of double black soy sauce, then fried it to a nice golden brown, letting a few patches get some crust on them to intensify the flavor.

While the pork was cooking I cleaned a few big handfuls of tender spring arugula (that’s rocket to you speakers of British English) that I’d picked up at the Saturday farmer’s market from my go-to greens vendor, Gardener’s Gourmet.  I filled a big bowl, the kind I use for bibimbap and other one-bowl feasts, with the greens and then scooped a wok ladle-ful of the sizzling meat over it, doused it with a tablespoon or two of ginger-infused Chiankiang vinegar and a dollop of chili-garlic paste.

The verdict?  Excellent.  I kept a backup bowl of extra greens on the table and just kept adding arugula to the bowl until I had eaten all the meat.  The fattiness of the pork balances the bitterness and astringency of the greens perfectly, without hiding that great nutty quality that good arugula has.  The vinegar and chili-garlic paste gave it the right blend of acidity, salt, and savor that tied it all together.

Next time I make wonton filling, I’m going to make extra, so I can do this on purpose.

Very Basic Pork Wonton Filling

1 pound minced or coarsely ground pork, preferably a somewhat fatty cut
2 cloves garlic, crushed or minced
4 teaspoons dry sherry
1 teaspoon double black soy sauce  (or use regular soy sauce if you don’t have the double black)
2 teaspoons cornstarch
4 dried black mushrooms, soaked in boiling water 30 minutes, stemmed, caps roughly minced
8-10 water chestnuts, peeled and finely chopped
about 1/2 cup finely chopped scallion, white parts primarily
2 Tablespoons oyster sauce
ground white pepper (to taste) (optional)

Thoroughly combine the pork, garlic, sherry, soy sauce, and cornstarch. Let stand 10-15 minutes.  Mix in the mushrooms, water chestnut, scallion, oyster sauce, and pepper, if using.  Cover tightly and refrigerate 1 hour or longer before using.

Ginger-Infused Chinkiang Vinegar

2 cups Chinkiang vinegar
1/2 cup finely minced peeled fresh ginger root

Place vinegar and ginger root in a sterilized glass jar.  Cap the jar.  Let the vinegar stand at room temperature 24 hours, then refrigerate 1 week before using.  Store the vinegar in the refrigerator.  You can use both the vinegar itself and the ginger that is in it.
Sweet Chili-Garlic Paste

15-40 dried chiles of your choice (fewer if they’re big, more if they’re small) stemmed and seeded, inner membranes removed
boiling water
8 or more peeled cloves fresh garlic, to taste
4 or more Tablespoons Chinese yellow sugar, Mexican panela, or other unrefined sugar (jaggery, gur, piloncillo, rapadura… whatever you’ve got or can lay hands on), to taste
1 teaspoon kosher salt, or to taste
neutral oil, like peanut oil, grapeseed oil, canola oil

Soak the chiles in boiling water for 20 minutes, until fairly pliable.  Some kinds of chiles may need to soak longer.  You are looking for a consistency like that of fruit leather.  Drain the chiles and shake the excess water off of them.

Put the chiles in the bowl of a food processor along with the garlic, sugar, and salt.  Add sufficient oil to almost cover the chiles and puree at high speed until the mixture is as smooth as you can get it.  You will need to scrape down the bowl a few times.  Taste as you go and, if needed, correct the balance of flavors by adding small amounts of sugar or salt, or additional half-cloves of garlic.  Pack into a clean glass or plastic container, cover, and let sit at room temperature 6 hours or overnight, then refrigerate.

Do re-taste this after it sits a while, because the flavor of the chiles will bloom over time and thus the flavor balance can change quite a bit.  Taste it before you refrigerate it, and correct the seasonings as you like.

Note: For a mild chili paste that is very versatile, use dried guajillo chiles, which are quite large and have a nice smoky presence that I find smooth and likeable.   Serrano chiles are delicious in this, and are hotter although still not scorching.  I’ve never made it with anything hotter than serranos, but you may feel free to let your conscience be your guide.

                          

Quick Pickled Onion

Peel, trim, and halve an onion. (Red, yellow, whatever you’ve got is fine.) Slice thinly and place in a heatproof, nonreactive bowl. Pour boiling water over the onion and let stand for about 10 minutes. While it is standing, in another bowl mix 1 cup rice vinegar or apple cider vinegar, 3-4 Tablespoons sugar (to taste), and 1 1/2 teaspoons salt until the salt and sugar are dissolved. Drain water from onions. Pour vinegar mixture over onions and let stand as long as desired, but at least an hour or two. You can store the onions in the vinegar mixture. Do not discard the vinegar mixture when the onions are gone, you can use it for more onions, or you can add other vegetables to it — thinly sliced cucumber or celery or carrot, etc., if wilted briefly in a boiling-water bath, are all nice.