It's supposed to be an appetizer, but I've been eating double or triple the portions as a full-on meal.
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When I first started cooking with quinoa in 2008, I was living in Beijing and needed a change from the noodles and rice that I was eating every day. Quinoa had just started to be widely covered in magazines and food blogs, but wasn't virtually impossible to find in Beijing.
I finally found organic quinoa at a supermarket for expats from a company called Green Dot Dot based in Hong Kong. Quinoa's appearance and fluffy texture reminded me of couscous, but the ease of cooking made it as convenient as rice. Having read that it was a good source for lysine, magnesium, and iron, I decided to make a prepare it for lunch one day, with some black beans, shallots, toasted cumin, and cherry tomatoes. The combination somehow stuck, and with minor tweaks, I began making it regularly for lunch.
Flash forward to 2013 in New York, and I'm still making this exact quinoa dish as a g0-to easy lunch. There's an interesting textural mix of slightly crunchy quinoa, soft black beans, and juicy cherry tomatoes, punctuated by the alluring scent of lightly cooked shallots with cumin. It's gently spiced but flavorful, light but filling, exactly what I need in the middle of the day with an afternoon of work still ahead.
The recipe works for red quinoa as well as regular quinoa. And now I can just pick up my quinoa at Trader Joe's a short subway ride away, instead of searching all over Beijing.
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Whenever I need a quick appetizer or side to go with an Asian main course, I turn to cucumbers.
Read MoreHome pickling can be incredibly fun and rewarding, but these days I've been way too busy to set aside time for the canning process. So when a craving hits, I've been making what I call instant pickles. They're great for a quick dinner appetizer, pot luck barbecue treat, or mid-afternoon computer break snack.
I first made these 2 years ago with fresh bird's eye chilis, but found that mincing up the chilis can be time consuming (and painful, if you wear contacts...the oil from the chilis doesn't seem to leave my hands, even after copious hand-washings and soaking in yogurt.)
Over time I discovered these pickles are just as good with Asian chili sauce, such as sambal oelek, and much, much faster. The hands-on process takes no more than 10 minutes, and you can either serve them right away or wait to allow the cucumbers to soak up more flavor.
If you're a fan of pickles straight from the jar, you'll love this recipe. If you're a fan of kimchi or other banchan, you'll also love this.
Read MorePork salad! If these two words make you perk up at your desk, please read on.
[But before I begin, an apology first to anyone who has used the "Contact Me" form in the past couple of months. It had been broken for a while before a vigilant reader got a hold of me through Facebook and I realized this error. (And I've always wondered, when using contact forms myself on other websites over the years, if messages just disappeared into a black hole because of coding errors.) So I got rid of the form, but still want to hear from you guys! From now on, just email me at appetiteforchina (at) gmail (dot) com with any questions or comments.]
Now on to the salad. I first learned how to make larb mu (also spelled laap mu, larb moo, laap moo, etc.) from my friend Sandra, who taught cooking classes with me at the Hutong in Beijing. When we met, she already had already built an impressive globetrotting life, having lived and worked (mostly for NGOs) in Haiti, Vietnam, Taiwan, and mainland China, with Afghanistan soon to follow. In her spare time she made a habit of sniffing out the best local restaurants and street food wherever she was, and developed a ravenous curiosity for ingredients and techniques. Lucky for me, she had also spent a good amount of time traveling in Thailand and Laos, where this salad comes from (it originated in Laos and spread to Northern Thailand). After Sandra taught her Thai cooking class at the Hutong and made 4 pounds' worth of larb mu, I couldn't stop talking about the salad for weeks.
Over the years it's become an standby for whenever I crave Northern Thai food and want it fast.
Read MoreThe first pomelo I bought this season was the size of a bowling ball. The other person in my house does not eat pomelo, and it took me 2 weeks to finish.
Winter is pomelo season, and sure enough, these big fat babies are everywhere. It's the grapefruit for people who don't like grapefruit. The taste is less tart, and the big meaty segments make it healthy for day-long snackage. Pomelo is also loaded with vitamin C, making it excellent for warding off seasonal cold and flu.
This pomelo I bought yesterday was the smallest in the bin. Still, it took me about half an hour to fully dissect.
Read MoreI am a huge fan of cooking with whole spices. Ground cinnamon can never substitute cinnamon sticks in a braise. Ground Sichuan pepper doesn't have the same punch as whole or crushed peppercorn. And I'm prone to ignoring a recipe's call for ground cumin, when whole cumin has been the friend that never disappoints.
The fragrance of freshly toasted whole cumin can make me delirious with hunger. I know that whatever's touched with cumin will be smoky, substantial, and evocative of a far-off land blessed with pungent spices. If the food on this site seems cumin-heavy, that's because I use heaping spoonfuls and, when working off other recipes, double or triple the amounts. Is there a support group for this kind of spice addiction?
This eggplant and black bean salad is a great backdrop for another cumin invasion. The spice adds a nutty dimension to the eggplant, and highlights the saltiness of the black beans. (Salted black beans, also called fermented black beans, is usually found in the preserved goods section of a Chinese market. Rinse before use.) Try this appetizer not only with Chinese main courses but also Middle Eastern dishes.
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