CSA week 14 - Lion's Head

I said I was in search of something a little different to do with the bok choy and I'm pleased to say that "a little different" is a pretty good description of this dish. "A little silly" would be a good description too considering it's giant meatballs in a bed of shredded cabbage. The story goes that it's called lion's head because the fringe of cabbage resembles a lion's mane; Judging from the Google Image search results, most folks try for something a bit more dignified. Not me, though.

First things first, though. The meatballs:
1/2 pound ground pork
2 ounces (by weight, 1 ounce by volume) water chestnuts, chopped
1 green onion, minced
1 1/2 teaspoons ginger, minced
1 Tablespoon dried shrimp, soaked 30 minutes and minced [I don't like little hard bits of ginger and shrimp in my meatballs, so I ran them, along with the green onion, through my spice grinder.]
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 1/2 Tablespoons soy sauce
1 1/2 Tablespoons rice wine
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
1/2 beaten egg
2 teaspoons cornstarch

1. Mix gently but well and form into two or more meatballs depending on the serving size you're aiming at.

2. Heat 2 inches of peanut (or other high-smoke-point oil) in a wok until shimmery. Add meatballs and fry 3 minutes, turning halfway through, until the outside is well browned. Set meatballs aside to drain. Let oil cool and drain off all but 1 Tablespoon.

Now the cabbage. Napa cabbage or bok choy, whichever you've got seems fine judging by the recipes. Select two large leaves for each meatball. My bok choy didn't have enough large leaves so I used some small ones too which caused a little problem later on. Separate the thick stems from the leaves, break the stems into serving-sized pieces and shred the leaves. I sliced the leaves thickly; next time I'd go thinner, I think.

And for the sauce:
1 clove garlic, minced
1 quarter-sized slice ginger, minced
3/4 cup chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
pinch white pepper

3. Reheat the wok. When it's quite hot add the garlic and ginger and stir fry a few seconds.

4. Quickly dump the bok choy stems into the wok and adjust them until they form a single layer. Place the meatballs on top so they're well elevated. Pour in the chicken broth (and some water to compensate if a lot evaporates immediately). Bring to a boil, turn down heat and simmer uncovered five minutes.

5. Toss bok choy leaves with sugar, salt and pepper. Layer leaves in the wok to cover the meatballs, cover the wok and cook gently for 15 minutes more. Optionally, remove the meatballs and cabbage from the wok when they're done and cook down the sauce a bit.

Serve each meatball with a couple pieces of cabbage stem surrounded by a wreath of cabbage leaves and topped with a couple spoonfuls of the sauce. Some recipes suggest mixing the leaves with bean-thread noodles (2 ounces for the halved recipe I made). It seemed like a good idea so I included them.



The texture of the meatballs is a little off, pretty clearly from the cornstarch. Just leave that out and and think it would be fine. Actually, now that I consider it, I think the cornstarch got misplaced into the meatball ingredients from the sauce ingredients in the recipe I cribbed that aspect from. The sauce could have done with some texture.

The flavor of the meatball is good, though; the seasonings are subtle and nicely enhace the porkiness. And it's a good match with the flavor of the bok choy.

The bok choy leaves still have a bit of flavor and bite to them as do the larger of the stems. The thinner ones got mushy, though. The rice noodles are a nice addition; They add some textural interest and hold on to the sauce which is important since it wasn't thickened.

So, overall, not bad, but not the classic dish it's cracked up to be. That's probably my fault. I should try a restaurant version to see what I should have been aiming at.

That reminds me, I finally had restaurant mofongo recently. I wasn't all that far off from my disappointing homemade version which turned out to just be too heavy on the raw garlic. There really is nothing much to it. I don't understand the enthusiasm some folks have for it.

CSA week one - Restaurant-style bok choy with shrimp

This is the first re-working of a dish I made a while back that I want to improve upon. We'll see how it goes.

This is a modification of the dish your vegetarian friend orders in the better sort of Chinese restaurant--the surprisingly yummy lightly-dressed big dish of wilted greens. You probably shouldn't tell her that the sauce contains oysters.

The first time I made it, I added beef and tofu which made it too heavy and detracted from both the quality of the fresh vegetables the light simplicity of the original. I still wanted to add a little protein to it to make sure I don't end up going out for a hamburger later, but I wanted to keep it light. My solution was to add a few shrimp, but chop them up so they're part of the sauce and the bok choy is still the center of the dish. I also added a little cilantro to brighten up the finish. Not really necessary given the very brief cooking the bok choy gets, but I do like the herbal note.

Ingredients:
1 bunch young bok choy - I should have weighed them. A scant pound I think. [This would work fine with a variety of semi-tender greens so don't feel limited to bok choy.]

1 Tablespoon peanut oil
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 dried chili pepper, whole
1 handful cilantro, chopped

1 Tablespoon oyster sauce
1 Tablespoon water
1/2 teaspoon sugar
2 dashes white pepper
1 handful shrimp - around a quarter of the weight of bok choy, peeled and cleaned

0. Remove the wilted or yellow leaves from the bok choy, separate the remaining leaves. Clean them and remove the nasty bottoms if necessary. If you're using baby bok choy, just slice each head in half.

1. Heat a medium pot of water to a boil. Add the bok choy and blanch for 30 seconds. Remove, drain well, salt lightly and keep warm on a rack in the oven (or on a plate over the pot of hot water if you didn't pour it out) so they stay warm.

2. Heat peanut oil, garlic and chili pepper in a small pan over medium high heat. Keep an eye on it once it starts to sizzle and remove from heat once the garlic has just started browning. Add the cilantro while the pan is still sizzling.

2.5 Lay out the bok choy on a serving plate.

3. Mix the oyster sauce, water, sugar and white pepper in a small bowl. Chop, grind or process the shrimp not quite into a paste. Heat a teaspoon of oil in a small pot over medium heat. When hot, add the shrimp and still until it becomes opaque. Add the oyster sauce mixture and cook briefly until it thickens slightly. Pour or spoon over the bok choy.

4. Pour the garlic oil over the bok choy too.

Serve with other Chinese dishes and/or a big bowl of white rice.


The flavors of toasty garlic, umami oyster sauce and sweet shrimp would do fine blending together, and if you take a bite without any bok choy, they're great by themselves over the rice. But if you have a forkful that's mostly the bok choy, the flavors revolve around it, each complementing or enhancing the vegetable's flavor without quite cohering into a separate whole. The shrimp is also a great addition texturally, adding a meatiness to the crunchy shrimp and chewy bok choy leaves and still a bit crisp stems. The hot pepper and cilantro? Completely lost; you may as well leave them out. Maybe some fresh scallion sprinkled on top--not wilted in the oil--would work, though. Not really necessary, though; this is just dandy as is.

CSA week 17 - orange-miso glazed scallops and bok choy

I'm not generally fond of fruit in savory dishes, but orange juice is a borderline case. I'm not saying I'm a fan, but I'm willing to consider it as an ingredient. Tonight I wanted to use at least one of the oranges as part of dinner. And also the bok choy which narrowed things down a bit.

I found a few different possibilities, but the one that appealed was this recipe I found at a vegan website, veggiemealplans.com:

1/3 cup orange juice [from one CSA orange if you juice it right]
4 teaspoons mirin
2 teaspoons rice vinegar (unseasoned)
1 tablespoon shiro miso
1 garlic clove, finely minced
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced (vary amount to suit your preferences)
1/2 teaspoon fresh grated ginger
2 scallions, chopped [I was all out so I used red onion, chopped fine]

I don't think I've ever had orange with miso, but it sounded like it might work. They used it to glaze tofu, but I'm all out and I thought those flavors would work well with scallops too.

So, I mixed up the glaze and set it aside, brined some scallops, blanched the bok choy for a couple minutes (for the stems, just one for the leaves), and made some rice.

I was about to add the scallops to the pan when I had the brainwave to see if I could make a sesame crust so I dipped them in a bowl of sesame seeds first. Not great results; some of the seeds stuck, some didn't, but they all prevented the scallops from getting a good sear.


Once the scallops looked mostly done I added the bok choy and the sauce and turned up the heat to cook it down to a glaze. You may see the flaw in that plan. Once I noticed that I was over-cooking the scallops and boy choy I fished them out and let the sauce cook down for a couple minutes before putting them back, tossing them in the not-as-sticky-as-one-might-hope glaze and pouring everything out into bowl for serving.


Overcooking aside, the flavor combination is pretty good. The sauce is sweet but not cloying and complex with savory, spicy and tart notes too. The real question is would it be better with lemon instead of orange? And I'm going to say no. The orange brings a roundness to the citrus notes that pairs with the miso to tie the sauce together. Or maybe I'm talking crap there; I'm really not sure. If I'm not, then its worth trying with Myer lemons too as those may work as well without making you think "Is there orange in here?" the way this does.

CSA week nine - Chinese greens and beef with oyster sauce

I had every intention of making this recipe straight, but I figured one young bok choy doesn't make a meal. So I maybe I could add a little meat to make it a main dish and as long as I was adding that I may as well add a few other things. You know how it goes.

I did keep the method which is an interesting way to compose a Chinese dish that could as easily been a stir fry. Let's see if it's worth the extra trouble...

Ingredients:

1 smallish bok choy or a couple servings of some other Chinese greens

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 hot red pepper, seeded and finely chopped
2 teaspoons cooking oil
1 drizzle sesame oil

4 ounces firm tofu, sliced into 1/4 inch thick squares
4 ounces beef, sliced into strings
2 Tablespoons dark soy sauce
2 Tablespoons rice wine
2 more teaspoons cooking oil

1 Tablespoon oyster sauce
1 Tablespoon water
1/2 teaspoon sugar
2 dashes white pepper


0. Preheat oven to 200 degrees.

1. Mix oyster sauce, water, sugar and white pepper in a small bowl. Set tofu and beef marinating in soy sauce and rice wine in two more small bowls.


2. Heat a pot of water to boiling. On another burner turn on the heat under a wok. Drop in the greens and blanch for 30 seconds or so; just long enough to take a picture or two. Drain greens, arrange on a plate and place into the oven to wait.


3. Add the 2 teaspoons cooking oil to the wok along with a tiny piece of garlic. When the garlic starts to sizzle add the rest of the garlic and the red pepper. Cook momentarily until the garlic starts to brown. Remove to a fourth small bowl. Add a little sesame oil.


4. Reheat the wok until smoking. Add another 2 teaspoons cooking oil. (As Martin Yan says: "Hot wok, cold oil: food won't stick!" Drain the tofu and add to wok. Cook until slightly crispy. Don't stir fry or this will take forever. Do shake the pan and flip them occasionally to make sure they're not sticking. Drain and add the beef and cook for a minute until beef is cooked. Add the oyster sauce mixture and mix. Retrieve the greens, pour the wok contents over top and pour the chili-garlic oil over that.



Serve with white rice, drink some rice wine and contemplate washing all those bowls.


You know how well oyster sauce goes with beef and greens so you already know that this was pretty tasty . But was it worth the extra trouble over a stir fry? Yeah, I think so. There's no way you're going to get from a stir fry this sort of light fresh flavor and slight crunch from the greens, garlic and chile. And, if you stir fry the greens you get a thin layer of oil that would keep the sauce from sticking to the leaves the lovely way it does here. If anything, I think I made a mistake over-complicating the original recipe; the beef and tofu were just a distraction from the pairing of the barely-cooked greens and the sauce. Best to leave it as a simple, but well-designed, side dish.

CSA week two - Braised Chinese lettuce with dried shrimp

This is a recipe from the Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook that I've mentioned several times before. Like most of those thousand recipes, it's pretty simple but open to elaboration. And as usual for me, my elaboration got a bit out of control. Still, things turned out fine. Or should I have left some suspense?

The recipe calls for a full pound of Chinese lettuce but my half share didn't include nearly that much. When I added my leftover bok choy I got about half a pound so the recipe was workable.

Ingredients:
4-5 dried shrimp
2 dried black mushrooms (Both my shrimp and mushrooms were pretty small so I doubled these numbers back up to the original 8-10 and 4. You can judge from the pictures of the end result whether I had too much.)
1/4 cup ham (I used some leftover country ham I had lying around)
1/2 pound Chinese lettuce and/or bok choy
1/4 cup sliced bamboo shoots
1 Tablespoon oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup mushroom soaking liquid
1/4 cup picked crab (It doesn't store well so I'm adding it to everything this week until I run out.)
1 Tablespoon soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
sesame oil

0. Separately soak shrimp and mushrooms in hot water. Reserve mushroom soaking liquid. The shrimp soaking liquid is kind of nasty. Toss that.

1. Coarsely chop lettuce. Fill a large pot with water, bring to a boil and add lettuce. Blanch lettuce for 1 to 2 minutes then drain.

2. Dump out water and reheat pot over medium high heat until it's dry. Add oil. Heat until it's shimmery. Add shrimp and ham and stir fry 2 minutes. Add lettuce, stir fry to coat with oil then sprinkle with salt. Add bamboo shoots and stir fry one minute more.

3. Add mushroom liquid. Bring to boil, turn heat down to low, cover and simmer 10 minutes.

4. Add mushrooms, soy sauce, sugar and crab. Turn the heat up a little compensate for heat lost while you were doing that, re-cover, and simmer 10 minutes more.

5. Add cornstarch (mixed into a Tablespoon of cold water). Stir and heat until the sauce thickens up a little.

6. Serve topped with a drizzle of sesame oil or chili oil might be nice too.


Surprisingly, the lettuce hasn't fallen apart after all that cooking. It's soft to the bite, certain, but not mush, and the leaves trap the sauce quite nicely. There's some textural interest from the mushrooms, ham and bamboo shoots so soft lettuce is fine. The sauce has picked up a lot of flavor mainly from the shrimp and soy sauce, but you can taste the lettuce in it too which I didn't expect. I think I overdid the salt a little since it came in from so many sources, but otherwise I'm happy with the results. Next time I'll serve it over noodles which, texturally, would be a better match than rice. As for the lettuce, I think the likes of Romaine would stand up to braising well. I'm not sure how much the different flavor would change the dish though. I'll have to try it and see.