CSA week 17 - Sweet and sour chicken gizzards and shrimp

I found the time to throw together a quick stir fry tonight mainly because I somehow managed to spend way over my budget on a simple dinner out last night.

Now for those of you going "ugh. Sweet and sour gizzards," I'd like to point out that not only is deep-frying the quintessential gizzard preparation, it is a traditional meat for sweet and sour dishes. And anyway, it's no more or less icky than any other chicken meat. It's just a different sort of muscle.

While the stir fry was quick, it was actually little complicated. Sweet and sour dishes are generally made in three parts.

1. Deep fried protein.
In this case the gizzards and shrimp. I tossed both in a Tablespoon of cornstarch, two Tablespoons of soy sauce and a bit of salt. If I had more time I would have preferred a more substantial batter, but this was fine. There was a particularly nice effect on the shrimp as the batter got caught in the legs and shell and crisped up.

2. Stir fried vegetables.
I used the leftover heart of the mei qing choy (which was still in great shape after all this time. I'll have to remember to keep a head around in the future), a tomato from a couple weeks ago (just on the verge of going off), the bottom of the stalk of a spring onion from this week, a pepper of some sort that I had around and some canned sliced water chestnuts. I didn't bother to clean out the wok after emptying out the deep frying oil so the stir fry ended up a bit gritty, but it was tasty grit so I don't really mind. When the vegetables were nearly done, I threw the protein in to get them warmed back up and everything mixed up.

3. Simmered sauce.
The sauce was 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup white vinegar, 3/8 cup water heated in the microwave to dissolve the sugar along with a handful of pineapple chunks from the freezer. I boiled that for about a minute and then added a mixture of 1/2 Tablespoon cornstarch, 1/2 Tablespoon soy sauce, a few shots of hot sauce and a 1/4 cup water. Once it came back to a boil it thickened up and everything was done (except for the rice I forgot to make).

Easy and mighty tasty, but man did I make a mess of the kitchen.

CSA week 15 - yakisoba, sort of

I was due another clear out the refrigerator dish and I was craving noodles so I decided to go with yakisoba or some facsimile. There were a range of noodle dishes up and down the east Asian coast I could have done and since I wasn't paying close attention to the mix of vegetables the major differences were in the type of noodle and the sauce.

An interesting thing about yakisoba, I learned as I was researching the dish, is that apparently it is very difficult to do well outside of Japan. All but the least ambitious recipes I saw were preceded by a lament over the fact. Maybe it's just people complaining that they can't reproduce what their favorite childhood corner dive made, but I'm willing to take them at their word that I've never actually had a decent example. Given what I've had at Japanese restaurants I actually wouldn't be at all surprised.

The first problem is finding the flat egg noodle required. As I wasn't planning a trip out to the Asian grocery I didn't even try. I used the instant yakisoba noodles I had in the freezer. Upon inspection they replaced the egg with yellow die #5; that was a bit of a disappointment.

The second problem was the sauce. It's amazing how many recipes there are on the web that do a basic Chinese noodle sauce and think that's good enough. The better recipes called for Japanese ingredients that I at best don't have handy and often didn't even recognize. The key seemed to be trying to approximate the meaty and fruity flavor of the traditional ingredients. I grokked the variety of recipes and came up with this:
1/2 Tablespoon oyster sauce
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
1 Tablespoon mirin
1 Tablespoon rice wine
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon chili oil

A lot of the sauces were sweeter, but that didn't make a lot of sense to me. Keep in mind that this is not meant to be a balanced sauce. It plays as an earthy base for the slivers of pickled ginger and nori that I belatedly discovered I was out of.

Beyond the sauce, some recipes called for steaming the vegetables, but I just did a stir fry as it was easier. I started with the mei qing choy stems, broccoli and the leftover roasted chicken. After a couple minutes I added the mei qing choy leaves, mizuna tops, garlic chives, scallions and ham. After those were nicely wilted I added the noodles, omelet slices and the sauce. Let that cook until the sauce was reduced a little and served.

I'm pretty happy with how the vegetables were cooked; the broccoli stems were still al dente while the mei quing choy were more tender. The rest wilted away but still had a bit of chew to them and some individual character. And please note the quite good noodle/vegetable ratio. That's not something I usually get right. The sauce wasn't bad although it clearly was missing sharper flavors to play against. Some bean sprouts would have helped making the dish yakisobier too. I'll make a note for next time.

CSA week 14 - hot and sour soup

I have to admit up top that this didn't come out as quite the restaurant style soup I was aiming at. I can think of three possible reasons why, but I really can't be sure until I buy a bowl and do some direct comparison. My first mistake was that I used Szechuan peppercorns for the 'hot' part. This is a Szechuan recipe so that is traditional, but I can't imagine any restaurants bother with it. I should have stuck with white pepper. Second, bok (or in this case mei qing) choy isn't a usual ingredient for this soup. I think it's more of a Fukien-style soup vegetable. Third, most restaurants go too light on the sour aspect. I may have overcompensated with too much vinegar. All three of these additions add to the high notes in the flavor profile so while it seems like the soup is lacking something; it may be a lack of a lack.

So, anyway, there are two philosophies on making hot and sour soup, judging from the variety of recipes. You can either stir fry everything, add the broth, thicken it up and soups on or you can boil the broth, dump in the other ingredients in turn, cook for a few minutes, thicken and serve. If I was working with a good quality chicken stock I thick I would have gone with the first version, but since all I've got is soup from a can, I went with the latter. (As soup in a can goes, Swanson low sodium chicken broth isn't too bad.) I had accumulated a good two cups of mushroom soaking liquid in the freezer from various risottos and such so I used that along with four cups of the Swanson. All chicken broth would be fine, too. I tossed in a slice of ginger, a couple cloves of garlic and a teaspoon or so of crushed Szechuan peppercorns at the start too so they could infuse their flavors.

The rest of the ingredients begin with soaking dried cloud ear fungus (a.k.a. tree ear or wood ear) and lilly buds in boiling water. While you're slicing the soaked mushrooms into strips you've got to watch out for little knotty bits on the fungus that you'll want to cut out. And you'll need to check through the lilly buds for those still on the stem. These are both mainstays of the otherwise flexible hot and sour soup recipe, but all but the best Chinese restaurants leave the lilly buds out. (I think you can pretty fairly rate a Chinese restaurant by its hot and sour soup. The main issues are that most are neither hot nor sour, but you have to look at issues like fresh vs. canned mushrooms and the presence of lilly buds once those basic requirements are met.)

Meanwhile I defrosted a quarter pound or so of pork and sliced it into strips. In retrospect I probably should have marinated it in a bit of soy sauce, rice wine and corn starch which gives it a nice soft texture in soups and stir frys but my reference recipes didn't mention it and I forgot.

Up next are bamboo shoots and water chestnuts, mei quing choy separated into stems and leaves, tofu and scallions. The water chestnuts and scallions I chopped, the rest I sliced into strips.

Once the soup was on the boil I added the cloud ear fungus, lilly buds, pork, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts and mei quing choy stems and simmered for ten minutes.

Then I added the mei quing choy leaves, tofu and fresh mushrooms and simmered for three minutes more.

Next I added the seasonings: 1 Tablespoon rice wine, 2 Tablespoons rice wine vinegar (probably too much), 1 Tablespoon dark soy sauce, 1 teaspoon salt, and red and white pepper to taste. Once that was stirred in the next addition is 2 Tablespoons corn starch in a quarter cup of water. I brought it all back to a boil to thicken, drizzled in a beaten egg and served garnished with the scallions and a few drops of sesame oil.

As I said up top, not exactly what I was hoping for but certainly not bad. It shouldn't be hard to tweak the leftovers into a better balance.