I made an easier version of ginger milk tea that involves no frothing in the blender.
Read MoreSpring weather has been slow to arrive this month. Yet I've been craving spring veggies like crazy. In the coming weeks, asparagus will start popping up in the farmers markets, so I thought I would post a stir-fry to get you in the mood for warmer temps ahead.
As I've mentioned before, lately I've been testing out sauces from Soy Vay, with whom I started a partnership in January. This month I decided to try out their recipe for a garlic beef and asparagus stir-fry using their Hoisin Garlic. Here are some discoveries from the Appetite for China test kitchen:
- Doubling as a marinade, this is one workhorse of a sauce. I altered the original recipe a bit, marinating the beef in about 2 tablespoons of Hoisin Garlic to allow the flavors to seep into the meat before cooking. The result was incredibly tender beef; the sauce takes the place of my usual meat marinade of soy sauce, rice wine, and cornstarch.
- It's a little less concentrated than other hoisin sauces I've used, which makes it easier to stir in the pan. This is especially helpful for this recipe, because the flank steak cooks so quickly, and you don't want to overcook the beef before the sauce gets evenly mixed.
- The flavor is slightly sweeter, which balances out the savoriness from the soybeans. No need to add an extra bit of sugar to your sauce, which I often do.
Spring is finally here! If you live in the NY area and would like to join in a fun hands-on class in Chinese or Asian cooking, here are some upcoming events for the spring.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013– Dumplings and Wontonsat West Elm Market, DUMBO
- Love dumplings and eager to make them at home? Join us in this 2-hour dumpling extravaganza, now at West Elm Market in DUMBO! We’ll learn the basics of wrapping both Chinese dumplings and wontons. Even if you've never cooked Chinese food, you can easily learn how to make scores of dumplings with these simple techniques. After hands-on practice in wrapping, we will move on to the cooking process. You'll learn a sure-fire method for pan-frying dumplings to crispy perfection. And you'll also learn how to prepare the wontons as a deliciously spicy Sichuan appetizer, and get tips on other ways to prepare them at home. And vegetarians are welcome! Both meat and vegetarian fillings will be available to work with. Sign up here!
Thursday, April 25, 2013– Seasonal Asian Cooking at Haven’s Kitchen
- Discover how to use the best in-season produce to create an array of Asian dishes that will make your mouth water. We'll apply techniques such as stir-frying, steaming, and dumpling-making to create a colorful and sumptuous, Asian spring feast. Sign up here!
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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On a recent rainy and wintry Tuesday, I joined a group of New York-area bloggers for a lunch at The Sunburnt Calf on the Upper West Side. The event was sponsored by Tourism Australia. Was there a better time to join in on an event focused on the sun-drenched continent and its food and wine? Of course, it's summer in Australia right now and I'm sure we all fantasized a great deal about eating lunch outdoors in 80-degree weather. Tourism Australia did put on quite a lunch to transport us, even just a little.
What I really wanted to learn more about was the various international and regional influences that made up Australian food. It's a country that is fiercely proud of its indigenous cuisine yet also celebrates international influences, including those of Britain, continental Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Asia is the closest, so I was especially interested in how Asian food and wine would be paired. (Chef Michael Moore mentioned during lunch that he loved experimenting with flavors such as lemongrass and galangal.)
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As a food writer and cooking teacher, I have to buy groceries 3 or 4 times a week. As a New Yorker, I often have to schlep those groceries home 3 or 4 times a week on the subway. Even with sturdy tote bags, hauling fresh produce, sauces, bottles of wine and olive oil, and anything else is an extreme pain, especially during rush hour.
Then about 2 years ago, I finally took the plunge and signed up for FreshDirect, after hearing good things from friends who use it religiously. I've been using it every week since. And one of the major reasons, other than saving me backaches, is that it seems designed to suit the schedules and tastes of busy city dwellers.
First, let's talk about schedules. I love the fact that I can get grocery delivery any time from 6:30am to 11:30pm. Grocery stores aren't open so early and so late. Even if I don't normally get up that early or want to accept deliveries that late, it's nice to know that those times are available, in case of emergency. (As someone who also caters small parties from time to time, there really are instances when you really do need ingredients delivered at odd hours!) I also live on the third floor of a walk-up building, and it's pretty wonderful to have those big boxes delivered right to my door.
Read MoreI love it when recipe ideas spring out of casual conversation. Last weekend, when meeting up with my friends Melissa and Jon, they mentioned they had been making the Kung Pao Chicken from my cookbook on a regular basis. And even using the sauce for stir-frying other things, like brussels sprouts.
Kung Pao Brussels Sprouts? What a genius idea. Why hadn't I thought of that before? Every time I have a craving for brussels sprouts, which is often, my MO is to just roast them in the oven with a bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper. I never thought to give them the Sichuan treatment. But it seemed perfect: the crispiness of roasted brussels sprouts would go so well with the tangy-savory sauce, the chilis, and crunchy peanuts.
I started off by roasting the brussels sprouts in the oven for about 20 minutes. Then I stir-fried the dried red chilis, scallions, ginger, and garlic like I would for kung pao chicken. The sauce had to be adjusted just a bit, to account for not needing to marinate the main ingredient. The brussels sprouts got tossed into the pan at the very end, for only about 1 minute or less, just long enough to coat them with sauce and the peanuts. The result is perfectly cooked brussels sprouts with beautifully golden and crispy outsides, accented with an addictive kung pao sauce.
Read MoreLove egg drop soup? For the second video in the new Appetite for China Cooking Videos series, I decided to update this post with a fun visual guide on making egg drop soup with tomatoes. Let me know what you think!
I first made tomato egg drop soup in 2008 while living in Beijing during the Summer Olympics. At the time, I was in desperate need of something light and healthy for lunch to go with a salad, to counteract all the fried food I had been eating at the Olympic venues. And what could be more healthy and comforting at the same time than tomatoes and eggs in homemade chicken broth? Over the years I've tweaked the recipe bit by bit and come up with this revised version.
There are few ingredients in this soup, so it's important that the chicken stock (or vegetable stock) be homemade. (You can use either Chinese or Western homemade stock.) If you must use store-bought, try to find organic stock or broth that does not have too many preservatives in the label.
Read MoreHave you ever had Chinese-style baked stuffed mushrooms? When I was growing up, it was a popular appetizer at Chinese and tiki restaurants my family frequented. Usually filled with a sesame-accented pork filling that became caramelized in the oven, these bite-sized morsels were hard to resist.
With February designated as National Snack Food month, I decided to create a similar dish using Soy Vay® Veri Veri Teriyaki sauce, a thick flavorful sauce with plenty of sesame oil and sesame seeds. (I started my partnership with Soy Vay last month and have been experimenting with a few of their sauces.) Instead of pork, I decided to use ground chicken as a mushroom filling. For the flavoring, I just added minced ginger, scallions, and the Veri Veri Teriyaki sauce. You simply mix together the filling, fill up the mushroom caps, brush on a little olive oil, and sprinkle extra sesame seeds on top. Then the stuffed mushrooms bake in the oven for just 20 minutes.
The mushrooms make for tasty hor d’oeuvres for parties or just a side dish at dinner. You can also mix the filling and stuff the mushrooms ahead of time, and just pop them in the oven before serving. To test the seasoning of the meat mixture, just sauté a small bit of the filling in a skillet, and adjust accordingly with salt and pepper.
Read MoreHello again! It took me a little longer than expected to put up this post, due to the influx of submissions at the eleventh hour, but here it is!
At the beginning of February, I organized a Chinese New Year Virtual Potluck as a fun way to both celebrate Chinese New Year and to get readers cooking from The Chinese Takeout Cookbook. Participants would receive a copy of the cookbook to keep or give away. In addition, they would be entered in a drawing for other great prizes, including a Le Creuset French oven, set of 6 Random House cookbooks, GrubKit recipe kits, and Edgeware graters.
The turnout was even better than expected: 41 of you wonderful bloggers cooked, photographed, and shared your thoughts on 7 dishes from The Chinese Takeout Cookbook for Chinese New Year. I loved reading all your posts on shopping for Chinese ingredients, introducing your family to new year foods and traditions, making ingredient substitutions to suit your lifestyle, and even getting a little creative in reinterpreting the original recipes.
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Chinese marbled tea eggs are super easy to make at home and the aromas of tea, cinnamon, and star anise are intoxicating.
Read MoreHappy Chinese New Year!
The holiday has sort of snuck up on me, actually. I've spent the past two months in such a whirlwind of book promotion and other events, including speaking on a panel at the Roger Smith Cookbook Conference this past weekend, that February 10th was here before I knew it. Other than planning the Chinese New Year Virtual Potluck on this blog (which all you food bloggers should join!), I hadn't had a chance to plan ahead for the first few days of the New Year.
Luckily, there are still 12 days left to plan a big dim sum outing or dinner. In the mean time, I still like to cook Chinese as much as possible, though leaning toward the simpler dishes.
Like this Chinese Walnut Chicken. There are two versions of walnut chicken you might be familiar with, a stir-fry with a very light but flavorful sauce and one with a white creamy sauce made out of mayonnaise or sweetened condensed milk. This is the former, which I actually prefer, because you can actually taste the chicken and the sauce doesn't make you feel weighed down.
Read MoreHappy early Chinese New Year!
This year I'm unable to make it home to Boston, but I'm still planning on celebrating in two ways: 1) Gathering a big group of friends for dim sum here in New York, and 2) hosting a Chinese New Year Virtual Potluck here with the online food community.
I've never done a big event like this here on this blog, so it's very exciting to announce. My goal, in addition to celebrating the release of my first cookbook, is to get as many bloggers as possible to make Chinese dishes this month (even if it seems a little intimidating!) I hope to make this an event for sharing and learning from each other about how to adapt Chinese cooking to suit your own lifestyle.
I've also teamed up with wonderful sponsors including — Le Creuset, Random House, GrubKit, and Edgeware — to give something to everyone participating.
Read MoreWeekday breakfasts are a complicated matter.
I am not the sort of person who can have cereal, oatmeal, or toast every single day of the year, as great as they are for folks like me who are married to their computers. Sure, I’ll go through week-long spells of eating one of the aforementioned foods. But then I get bored and move on to the next, and the next, until the cycle repeats itself. Every once in a while (too often, actually), I’ll break down and buy a bagel. But alas, one can’t do that every single day, especially with the amount of cream cheese New York bagel shops typically slather on.
Lately, I’ve gotten back into baking. And hopefully this will solve my breakfast dilemma. My goal is to bake at least one new (healthy-ish) breakfast item a week that can last me 3 or 4 mornings. Then maybe cereal and oatmeal won’t seem so boring after all.
First up is zucchini bread, something we’ve adored in the US since the 1960s. I had been craving zucchini bread since Saturday, when my friend Amy told me she made a loaf to get her vegetable-phobic husband to eat something green. (He ended up loving it.) And I had been wanting to try out a bookmarked zucchini bread recipe from The American Century Cookbook. The author got the recipe in the 1970s from an Illinois woman she interviewed for Family Circle magazine. “This was my first encounter with zucchini bread but by no means my last,” the author wrote. “I have been offered zucchini bread recipes by cooks from all over the country but have yet to find a finer one.”
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