Posts in Blog
Spicy Pickled Cucumbers

Home 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.

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BlogDiana KuanAppetizers, Chinese, Recipes, Salads, Vegetarian Comments
Fu Run in Flushing

Cumin-crusted lamb makes me weak in the knees. I developed an obsession for it years ago when living in Beijing. From lunchtime through late night hours, it was easy to find street vendors selling cumin-crusted lamb kebabs, which they would cook up right in front of you on a charcoal grill. I also made a point of eating out often at Xinjiang restaurants (run by the minority Uighurs), where you could satisfy your lamb cravings with even bigger lamb kebabs on 18-inch metal skewers.

So when I saw Robyn's post on Fu Run last month and her photos of the restaurant's famous "Muslim lamb chops", the restaurant seemed like a good excuse to not cook for one lunch out of the week, and instead head out to Flushing. Fortunately, Kian from Red Cook was also eager to try it, so we made an afternoon of it.

Last summer one of my go-to cheap light meals was the liang pi noodles ("cold skin noodles") at Xian Famous Foods, spicy noodle bliss for $4 a plate. This spicy bean noodle salad was about 10 times better, which is saying a lot. These chewy glass noodles made with mung bean and tossed with peanuts, cabbage, cilantro, cucumbers, and an amazing chili sauce were so light and refreshing that we both wanted to lick the plate. Yes, spicy food that as actually cooling and refreshing is a rare feat, but this salad definitely fit those qualities.

 

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BlogDiana KuanNew York, Queens, Restaurants Comments
Chicken Tikka Masala

On nights when I'm not recipe-testing for the cookbook, I crave at least one of the following: a) sushi, b) pizza, or c) Indian food. Good versions of first two are easy to find in my Brooklyn neighborhood, but the third is, sadly, lacking. I don't live anywhere close to Jackson Heights, Murray Hill, or East 6th St., so cravings have to be satisfied by just rolling up my sleeve.

(When I was in Beijing, which was lacking in not only good Indian food but stores to find non-Chinese spices, I periodically whipped up Chinese-Indian food like Gobi Manchurian and chicken lollipops.)

Chicken tikka masala might be many people's introduction to Indian food, even though it's more or less an Indian-British fusion dish. Some claim that it was invented in 1960's Britain, when chefs began adding gravy to chicken dishes to satisfy the British palate, while others argue that it originated much earlier in India during British colonialism.  It's such a part of British culture that 5 years ago British foreign secretary Robin Cook declared it "a true British national dish. The Scots claimed that it originated in Glasgow, much to the outrage of chefs in India. But whatever its original, there's little dispute that the yogurt-marinated chicken bathed in creamy tomato sauce is delicious and crave-worthy.

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BlogDiana KuanChicken, Indian, Recipes Comments
Edamame Fried Rice

Remember my last post, when I talked about fried eggs with oyster sauce over rice, the best umami-laden breakfast that takes almost no time to make? Well, I forgot to mention an even quicker one - a fried egg topped with furikake. Or for that matter, plain rice topped with furikake.

Furikake, if you're not familiar with it, is an amazing Japanese seasoning that's made up of dried seaweed flakes, sesame seeds, sugar, and salt. Sometimes there's also bonito flakes, chili flakes, dried salmon, miso powder, or egg powder, depending on the brand and its varieties. It's like having all the flavors of the sea (and then some) in one convenient little glass jar.

So it goes without saying that furikake is also great over fried rice. Yesterday, to take a break from all the recipes I've been fine-tuning for my cookbook, I made a variation of my standard fried rice with edamame instead of green peas. Doing so made me wonder why I don't always make fried rice with edamame. Don't get me wrong. Regular ol' peas are great, but edamame somehow felt more substantial, and I didn't feel the need to add anything else for flavoring except scallions, eggs, and salt and pepper.

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BlogDiana KuanChinese, Japanese, Recipes, Rice, Vegetarian Comments
Soy Sauce Eggs

I have a somewhat unhealthy addiction to eggs. In the past year, I was sometimes eating two or three eggs a day, just because they're so darn versatile and easy to prepare. (My doctor hasn't said anything about this habit...yet.) Breakfast? Scrambled eggs with salt and pepper. Lunch? Omelet with mushrooms and onions. As for dinner...well, you know how everyone has that secret, fool-proof, but embarrassingly unattractive dish they make when eating alone? Mine is a fried egg, still runny in the middle, slathered with oyster sauce, and plopped into a bowl of reheated rice.

Photogenic? No. Delicious? Quite.

A few days ago I decided to make a few days' worth of eggs in one go, that can be reheated and eaten with rice or other sides at a later, lazier time. I then remembered what my mom used to do on weekends to prepare for a week of after-school snacks. On Sunday nights, she would just simmer hard-boiled eggs in a soy sauce broth with some sugar and ginger slices added in. I would eat one immediately out of the pot, and on subsequent days the rest would be scarfed down straight from the fridge or warmed in the microwave.

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BlogDiana KuanAppetizers, Chinese, Eggs, Gluten-Free, Gluten-Free Adaptable, Recipes, Vegetarian Comments
Vietnamese Caramelized Pork

 It's hard to believe that when I first made Vietnamese Caramelized Pork almost four years ago in China, I had the hardest time finding fish sauce. Beijing locals know what they like to cook at home, and it's not Cantonese or Southeast Asian. (Regional culinary borders are much stronger in China than they are here, so even wonton wrappers or thinner dumpling wrappers were available in only a handful of markets.) Luckily, finding fish sauce is much easier to find in my neighborhood in Park Slope, whose fish markets and Korean-run bodegas stock fish sauce now and then. (Being a short subway ride from Sunset Park helps too.)

Here's a revised version of the caramelized pork recipe I first posted on December 28, 2007. Updates include more braising liquid and a longer simmering time for more fork-tender, melty pork. I've remade this over the years with both pork shoulder and pork belly, and both are phenomenal with this caramelized sauce. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

I never thought I would have trouble finding fish sauce in China. Growing up, many of the Cantonese dishes my mother cooked contained fish sauce. In New York's and Boston's Chinatowns, Squid Sauce and other varieties of nam pla were staples in every market.

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BlogDiana KuanPork, Recipes, Vietnamese Comments
Sparkling Watermelon Lemonade

Happy 4th of July weekend! I just wanted to put up a short post before the long weekend, to have something nice and refreshing for you to look at when you stop by. Plus, it seems as though we're all looking around food blogs for ideas for picnic- or barbecue-appropriate foods and drinks (I certainly am), so here is my contribution.

Somewhere in my parents' house is a photo of me, at age 2 in southern China, gnawing on a slice of watermelon bigger than my head. That I'm able to hold up this huge watermelon slice is pretty amazing. There is syrupy juice dripping down the side of my arms and, if you look closely, on the edge of my mouth too. Sitting next to me is my 3-year-old cousin, concentrating on his own watermelon slice, but seemingly edging away, as though I would steal his at any moment.

To say that we, as toddlers, had watermelon for dessert everyday in the summer is not an exaggeration. To escape the stuffiness of houses in the summer in Guangzhou, my cousin and I would bring our slices outside to courtyard and see how far we could spit our seeds. This, of course, attracted armies of ants, which our parents were not too happy about. We tried to remedy this problem by showering them with a watering can, but in hindsight, not spitting seeds on the ground at all would have been a better idea.

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BlogDiana KuanDrinks, Recipes Comments
Hibiscus Mojito

I am sitting here writing this blog post in 100 degree (!!!) weather. The apartment I'm moving out of has no air conditioning, and all I have to prevent myself from melting is a fan and a hibiscus mojito. We hardly had a spring (at least here in New York), but summer came in full force!

A few years ago while living in China, mojitos became my de facto drink for cooling off during the muggy summers in Beijing and Shanghai. The main reason, other than the fact that mojitos are delicious, was that Bacardi rum seemed to be the only liquor that wasn't outrageously more expensive than it is in the U.S. Don't ask me why. When I traveled down south to Macau I could cool off with all the vinho verde I wanted, but up north in China, rum cocktails were the only good drinks I could have that didn't break the bank. So when I found a great gigantic tea market on the outskirts of Beijing, I bought hibiscus tea in bulk and made hibiscus mojitos every week.

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Blog, RecipesDiana KuanCocktails, Drinks, Recipes Comments
Shrimp Lo Mein

Greetings from Atlanta! I'm down south for BlogHer Food 2011 and getting ready for two days of panels, talks, and events with plenty of other food bloggers from around the country. I got in a few hours ago, wandered around downtown enjoying the sun, and even managed to find and scarf down some Cajun-Chinese food for lunch. (To be recapped in another post.)

Oh, so you may have noticed the new layout. After 3 1/2 years of blogging on Drupal, I finally made the long-overdue switch to Wordpress. I have a feeling this is going to be change my life. Or at least, be a major headache reducer. As flexible as Drupal can be, and as much as tech-savvy folks rave about it, it was not the easiest CMS to work with if all you want to do is blog and not tweak a lot of code. And I sort of really dislike code. I've been working with Wordpress for only a few days and it already feels way more intuitive...kind of like when I switched from a PC to a Mac in 2005 and never, ever looked back.

(One of the best new additions to the new design is a little Print-Friendly button at the end of each post. Just click on it, and a window sans sidebars will pop up, and you can select which elements you want to keep and delete.)

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BlogDiana KuanCantonese, Chinese, Noodles, Recipes, Seafood, Shrimp Comments
Dim Sum in Sunset Park - East Harbor Seafood Palace

I've been to Sunset Park plenty of times before for grocery shopping and eating, but have somehow missed East Harbor Seafood Palace, supposedly one of the best dim sum restaurants in New York. Robyn from The Girl Who Ate Everything wrote about it over a year ago, as did The Village Voice. So on President's Day, despite the sudden "wintry mix" in a week of good weather, and the wonky holiday train schedule, my boyfriend and I decided to forgo bagels in front of the TV and instead brave the longish trek down the Sunset Park. 

Chinese restaurant names tend to exaggerate ("pagoda", "garden", "kingdom"), but the inside of East Harbor Seafood Palace was as palatial as you can find in New York. It had a large dining room with high ceilings, pleasant (re: not gaudy) decor, and most importantly, a decent amount of space between tables. (Of the 200 or so diners, there were approximately four who were not Chinese, if you like to judge authenticity by these ratios.) While waiting for our number to be called, I kept eyeing all the baskets of perfect-looking har gow that traveled from the dim sum carts to the tables. Twenty minutes had never seemed so long.

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BlogDiana KuanBrooklyn, Restaurants, Sunset Park Comments
Nyonya - Malaysian Food in Chinatown

Living far away from family this year, I didn't celebrate the first week of Chinese New Year by going out for dim sum or another festive meal. I talked to my parents in China via cell phone, made some Sichuan wontons, and called it good. I took solace in the fact that 1) I've eaten many great CNY meals in the past, and 2) I'm constantly recipe testing for my upcoming Chinese cookbook, so every day is like Chinese New Year. 

Still, it was nice to finally have a Chinese meal outside of my apartment after a long hiatus of not doing so. Last night I went with Kian (of Red Cook) and his partner Warren to the opening of our friend Magda's photo exhibit near Chinatown. Afterward we wandered over to Nyonya on Grand St., It's part of the Penang restaurant chain that's pretty popular along the East Coast. I've eaten at the Boston branch numerous times, and occasionally find myself with massive cravings for their roti canai with curry chicken dip, so I was pretty excited to try Nyonya.

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BlogDiana KuanChinatown, Manhattan, Restaurants Comments
Foodbuzz 24x24: Mid-Winter Tiki Party

 So the holiday season is over, it's snowing for the 20th time this month, and the road to spring looks long and arduous. You want to be some place warm. Like Tahiti, or Oahu. But there's that cost thing. If only there were a place in New York where you could go and pretend to be in a tropical paradise. Some place with Mai Tai's and an occasionally overactive radiator, for example.

So read the beginning of the invitation for my Brooklyn tiki party. The end of January seemed like the perfect time to throw one, in conjunction with Foodbuzz's 24x24 event, wherein 24 bloggers around the world host food-themed events of their choosing on the same night. Tiki seemed like a natural choice; Chinese food plays a pretty big role in tiki culture as we know it in the US, and donning a lei and drinking tropical punches seemed like the perfect way to spend a winter's evening.

We no longer have a Trader Vic's in New York, but the city has seen some high-profile Polynesian-themed establishments open in the past year, including Lani Kai, The Hurricane Club, and Painkiller. Years ago, before the tiki revival trend, for a fun night out I used to go to Otto's Shrunken Head on East 14th, where you can get highly potent concoctions and listen to The Ventures cover bands.  My current apartment, with its open kitchen layout, seemed like the perfect spot to recreate a tiki bar.

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BlogDiana KuanAppetizers, Chicken, Chinese, Cocktails, Drinks, Recipes Comments