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Chinese Hot and Sour Soup

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May 23, 2018

It is amazing how the culinary landscape of America has changed since I started cooking.  That was brought home to me in a very real way when I was getting ready to cook a multi-course Asian meal for Lunar New Year a few months ago.

In the early 1970s supermarkets carried only the barest minimum of “ethnic” ingredients.  I was attending the University of Pennsylvania and lived in West Philadelphia at the time.

For most Asian ingredients I would go to Philadelphia’s Chinatown.

For Japanese ingredients, I would go to a small Japanese-owned market in West Philly, a few blocks from the western edge of the main University campus.  I don’t remember a specific source for Indian or South Asian ingredients but I was able to cobble together what I needed from an array of stores.

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There were also a few Asian stores in the Ninth Street Market.  Ninth Street is/was often referred to as the “Italian Market,” a name that was not in favor with locals at the time.  There was one store run by a Korean couple on Ninth Street where I could source an array of Asian ingredients.  It’s also where I went when I once needed a large quantity of fresh ginger root to make West Indian Ginger Beer.  After a few shopping trips where I bought enough ginger to supply a Chinese Restaurant for a week, one of the owners asked me, every time I went to the store, if I needed ginger!

When I got serious about cooking, starting junior year in college, I made weekly trips to Ninth Street and to the Pathmark Supermarket in suburban Broomall, PA.  Shopping in West Philly was an experience.  Except for the University, West Philadelphia, at the time, was an impoverished area.

I learned quickly how supermarkets adjust what they stock to the clientele.  Many items that I could easily find in a suburban supermarket were not readily available in West Philadelphia.  What was stocked was often of lesser quality, too.  Meat is a good example.  Some cuts were simply not available in the inner city and the quality of what was available was often inferior.

On the other hand, I could easily find some items in West Philly that were hard to come by in suburban markets in the 1970s.  Smoked ham hocks, pig tails, and turkey necks are good examples.

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A background flavor note in many West Indian dishes is smoked meat; and I cooked a lot of West Indian food in college.  Most often I would use ham hocks, but some recipes specify other cuts.  I remember a peanut soup that I made that called for smoked pig tail.  Sourcing it was a breeze in West Philly.

Mainstream supermarkets now carry a much larger variety of “ethnic” ingredients, including fresh produce, than was the case in the 1970s.  I can even find smoked ham hocks and turkey necks in supermarkets in Santa Fe, though smoked pig tails are still hard to come by.  But if a whole pig’s head is needed, say, for example, to make head cheese, it is readily available in Hispanic markets.

While the array of food stuffs has improved dramatically since I started cooking.  Some things have deteriorated.

I had an incredible butcher on Ninth Street.  I’ve never been able to replace the personal service, quality, and variety of what I could get there.  I was just 19 when I started going to Ninth Street regularly.  When I needed goat for Jamaican Curried Goat, the butcher not only had the goat but cubed it to my specifications while I watched.

Down the block was a shop that sold poultry.  I once needed a Guinea Hen for dinner.  I selected the one I wanted from the pen.  She was taken in the back, and came back cleaned and wrapped in butcher paper.

Shopping for this year’s Lunar New Year Dinner was an education.  While I could get many basic ingredients in the supermarket, unlike the situation in the 1970s, I was unable to shop in a major city.  This put me at a distinct disadvantage for more esoteric ingredients.  Nonetheless, one can now make a respectable Chinese meal from ingredients available in the supermarket.  This is an amazing change from 45 years ago!

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 Chinese Hot and Sour Soup
Make a rich chicken stock for this soup without any extraneous flavoring ingredients, though adding a few slices of ginger, to be strained out afterward, are welcome. If you have a ham bone or a piece of smoked ham, by all means add it. Though Westerners rarely seem to make stock from pork bones, you can add some when making the stock for a traditional Chinese touch.
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Course Soups and Stews
Cuisine Chinese
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Servings
people
Ingredients
Course Soups and Stews
Cuisine Chinese
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Servings
people
Ingredients
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Instructions
  1. Cover the mushrooms with hot water.
  2. Allow to soak for approximately 15 minutes, until soft.
  3. Meanwhile, bring the stock to a boil.
  4. When the mushrooms are softened, squeeze out excess water and remove the tough stem. Slice the mushroom caps into strips ¼ inch wide.
  5. Combine the vinegar, soy sauce, sugar and hot sauce.
  6. Add the vinegar mixture to the boiling stock. Boil 1 minute.
  7. Add salt to taste.
  8. Combine cornstarch and water. Mix thoroughly.
  9. Add cornstarch mixture to the boiling soup.
  10. After boiling 1 minute, add scallions, bean curd and mushrooms.
  11. Reduce heat and simmer 1-2 minutes.
  12. Add sesame oil.
  13. Gently beat the eggs with salt to taste.
  14. Slowly pour in the beaten eggs into the simmering soup while stirring gently.
  15. Serve immediately.
Recipe Notes

Copyright © 2018 by VillaSentieri.com. All rights reserved.

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Recipes

Stir-Fried Chicken with Cashews and Snow Peas

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May 9, 2018

This is the year of the Dog.

It may be old news, but Lunar New Year was Friday, February 16, 2018.  We celebrated with close friends and a dinner menu with an extensive array of Asian dishes.  There are many traditional dishes for Lunar New Year depending on the country.  I chose to do a pan-Asian menu rather than focus on strictly traditional recipes from a single country.

Kifune Shrine, Kyoto, Japan (Photo by Avishek Kumar)

We were in Palm Springs for Lunar New Year.  The plan was to escape winter weather in Santa Fe which, as it turned out, was not very wintery after all, unlike what the East Coast experienced.

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Sourcing Asian ingredients has become a real issue for me now that I don’t live in a major city.  The only Asian grocery store in Santa Fe, Talin Market, closed a few months ago though the original location is still open in Albuquerque.

Palm Springs only has two Asian markets that I can find.  Both are Filipino-owned and, although they stock an array of Asian goods, they really focus on Filipino foods.

Honen-in Temple, Kyoto, Japan (Photo by Avishek Kumar)

Amazon came to the rescue.  While I’d rather stand in the aisles of an Asian market reading and comparing packages of honest-to-goodness product, Amazon was a lifesaver.

There were eight of us for the Lunar New Year dinner.

The kitchen in our Palm Springs house is small, approximately 9 feet by 11 feet.  Turning out a multi-course meal requires a lot of planning and organization.   I divided the main part of the meal into four courses.  Each course included a complementary array of foods and different cooking methods.

We started with hors d’oeuvres and cocktails.  We ended with a simple, non-traditional dessert of gelato and fortune cookies, which I purchased.  I assumed nobody was going to be too into dessert after all the other food.

Fushimi Inari Shrine, Kyoto, Japan (Photo by Avishek Kumar)

Here’s the menu:

Hors d ’Oeuvres
Vegetable Dumplings with Soy-Vinegar Dipping Sauce
Steamed Edamame with Coarse Salt

First Course
Stir-Fried Chicken with Cashews and Snow Peas
Eggplant Hunan Style
Cambodian Fish with Bean Thread

Second Course
Korean Bulgogi
Indonesian Sweet Corn Patties
Szechuan Garlic Noodles

Third Course
Hot and Sour Soup

Fourth Course
Chinese Roast Pork
Japanese Carrot Salad
Mapo Tofu
Caramelized Tomatoes with Ginger and Vinegar

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I recently published my recipe for Chinese Roast Pork.  Hot and Sour Soup is coming up in a couple of weeks.  Today, however, we’re focusing on a Cantonese classic, Stir-Fried Chicken with Nuts and Vegetables, specifically cashews and snow peas.

This is a recipe that I started making during junior year in college.  It got tweaked a lot over that year.  By then I was comfortable with the end product and didn’t really do much with it… until this year.

I didn’t really change the recipe, though.  I changed the pan!

Shrine in Gion District, Kyoto, Japan (Photo by Avishek Kumar)

You’ve probably figured out that I’m prone to excess where kitchen equipment comes in.  I have four woks:  two carbon steel ones that date back to college and two that are a decade or so younger, one aluminum and one carbon steel.  Both of these are larger than the ones from my college days.

I always cook my stir-fries in a wok but this particular dish is always a problem due to the “velvet” coating on the chicken.  The coating always sticks to the wok.  I suspect I could eliminate that problem by using enough oil to deep fry the chicken but that wasn’t supposed to be the way to cook it.  So, I always just accepted the “sticking-chicken” problem.

Until now.

I used a large, non-stick skillet.

It worked like a charm!!!

I don’t think I’ll give up my woks any time soon but for this particular dish, non-stick is definitely the way to go.

Afterthought:  This recipe calls for MSG, though, of course, you can leave it out if you wish.  If you’re at all interested in the hype about the health effects of MSG, I suggest you read this article.

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 Stir-Fried Chicken with Cashews and Snow Peas
Walnuts and either broccoli or green beans can be used instead of cashews and snow peas. The chicken can be marinated several hours in advance and refrigerated, tightly covered. If you wish, you can reduce or eliminate the MSG.
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Course Mains, Poultry
Cuisine Chinese
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Servings
people as part of a Chinese meal
Ingredients
Velvet Chicken
Sauce
Assembly
Course Mains, Poultry
Cuisine Chinese
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Servings
people as part of a Chinese meal
Ingredients
Velvet Chicken
Sauce
Assembly
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Rating: 0
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Instructions
Velvet Chicken
  1. Cut the chicken into ½ inch cubes.
  2. Put the chicken in a non-reactive dish.
  3. Sprinkle the chicken with salt, pepper, five spice powder and MSG. Mix well then let stand 20 minutes.
  4. Sprinkle the chicken with cornstarch and 4 teaspoons of oil. Mix well and let stand 20 minutes.
  6. Fold the egg white into the chicken. Let stand 30 minutes. If not using immediately, the chicken can be refrigerated, covered, for several hours at this point.
Sauce
  1. Combine all sauce ingredients, stir well and reserve.
Assembly
  1. Deep fry the nuts until golden. Once they start to color, they will cook rapidly. Careful attention is required to avoid burning them.
  2. When golden, remove the nuts from the oil and spread them on a paper towel to drain.
  3. Cut the tips off the snow peas.
  4. Using a large non-stick skillet, stir-fry the snow peas in 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil over high heat for about 30 seconds, until bright green. (You can use some of the oil used to fry the nuts if you wish.)
  5. Transfer the cooked snow peas to a plate to cool.
  6. In the same non-stick skillet, stir-fry the garlic and ginger over high heat, until fragrant, approximately 30 seconds, adding a few tablespoons more oil if needed.
  7. Add the chicken and stir-fry over high heat until just cooked through, approximately 2-3 minutes.
  8. Stir the sauce mixture to combine and add it to the chicken.
  9. Bring to a boil and cook until thickened, stirring constantly, approximately 1 minute.
  10. Stir in the cooked cashews and snow peas.
  11. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the sesame oil.
  12. Serve immediately with steamed rice.
Recipe Notes

Copyright © 2018 by VillaSentieri.com. All rights reserved.

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Recipes

Chinese Roast Pork

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April 25, 2018

Throughout junior year in college I predominantly ate Chinese, West Indian, and Sri Lankan food.  To be sure, I made Italian and a smattering of other cuisines but that year was really an intensive study in three cuisines.

My roommate, Ray Hugh, was from Guyana.  His grandparents emigrated from China to Guyana around 1870.  My grandparents emigrated from Italy (on my mother’s side) and Slovakia (on my father’s side) to the United States a few decades later.

Ray Hugh in 1975 from the first page of my 1975 scrapbook

I learned a lot about Chinese food, especially Hakka Chinese, from Ray.  We also went to Chinese restaurants regularly so my palate got accustomed to the different regional cuisines of China.  We spent six weeks the summer after junior year staying with his mother outside of London.  I learned a lot about Chinese (and West Indian) food from her.

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As for West Indian, my primary influences were, again, Ray Hugh, Valrie Tracey, and Gloria Lannaman.  Though located on the South American mainland, Guyana was administered (then called British Guiana) as part of the British West Indies and it definitely has a West Indian cultural heritage.

Valrie and Gloria were from Jamaica.  I posted my version of a recipe for Valrie’s Easter Bun a few weeks ago.  If I get in the right frame of mind, I’ll post my interpretations of her recipes for curry goat and for home-salted mackerel cooked in coconut milk.  Admittedly, these may be a stretch for most of my readers but they fulfill the blog’s goal of highlighting traditional recipes from around the world.

From Gloria, I got a wonderful pot roast recipe with allspice (called pimento in Jamaica) and a shockingly pink rum punch recipe.  I still use her technique for sautéing baked ham with caramelized onions and Scotch Bonnet peppers for a quick supper or served on crackers with cocktails.   These will all appear in due course.

Valrie Tracey in 1975, also from the first page of my 1975 scrapbook

As I’ve described several times, Nanacy and Reggie Rajapakse were my primary instructors in the art of Sri Lankan cooking…along with a couple of cookbooks by Charmaine Solomon, who Nanacy and Reggie knew.

For much of the summer that Ray and I spent with his mother near London, we explored the city almost every day.  We’d have breakfast, walk to the train station in New Malden, and take the train to London.  We’d be home for dinner, usually.  Lunch was frequently at a restaurant in Chinatown—you know, the Cantonese ones with roast pork, roast ducks, and other roasted animal parts hanging in the window.  That was where I honed my taste for Cantonese roast pork—minus the bright red food coloring.

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In these restaurants, lunch was a bowl of rice and some sort of roasted meat, hacked to bite-size bits with a very heavy cleaver.  There was nary a vegetable in sight.  When I mentioned to Ray, once, that a vegetable would be nice, he walked over to the chef, who was putting together everyone’s lunch right inside the front window of the store, with rows of glistening roasted meat on hooks hanging in front of him.  The chef pulled a few greens from somewhere, dipped them in a bubbling cauldron of broth momentarily, and put them in my bowl along with the rice and roast pork.  He was very gracious about it but I realized that vegetables were not the point of a restaurant like this.  From then on I was happy to eat rice and roasted meat for lunch, choosing to balance out my diet at the other two meals of the day.

The third and final picture on the first page of one of my 1975 scrap book is this picture of me

Friday, July 4, 1975 was one of the days we did not go into London from Ray’s mother’s house.  Instead, we stayed home and made hamburgers and hot dogs (well, that being England and then being then, they were bangers, really) and a few of the usual trimmings.  Ray and I along with his mother and two sisters, and his younger sister’s boyfriend, Clive, sat outside in the charming little backyard (what the Brits call a “garden”) eating.  Clive asked what we were celebrating.  I told him we were celebrating the independence of the United States from Britain.  That didn’t go over really well but he was a good sport about it.

From that summer of eating Cantonese Roast Pork in London’s Chinatown, I got home wanting to be able to make it.  Ray and I roomed together senior year as well.  That’s when I perfected my recipe for roast pork.  It involves marinating strips of pork overnight then hanging them from hooks in the oven and roasting them.  It sounds fussy, but it’s really quite easy.

Stainless steel “s” hooks are the best for hanging the pork in the oven

This Cantonese-style roast pork is totally different from Ray’s Five Spice Roast Pork, which I like equally well.

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 Chinese Roast Pork
This roast pork is not as red as the roast pork often seen in Chinese restaurants as it does not use artificial coloring. Thick-cut boneless pork chops work well. It is best for the meat to have a layer of fat to provide some moisture while roasting. The thin fat cap should not be removed. The difference in taste between Chinese rice wine, sake, and pale dry sherry is not really noticeable in this dish given the other very flavorful ingredients. Good quality Chinese rice wine can be difficult to find. I prefer a reasonably-priced, good-quality domestic Sake, such as Sho Chiku Bai. Do not use the unfiltered (nigori) sake, however.
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Course Mains, Meats
Cuisine Chinese
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour
Passive Time 24 hours
Servings
people
Ingredients
Course Mains, Meats
Cuisine Chinese
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour
Passive Time 24 hours
Servings
people
Ingredients
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Rating: 0
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Rate this recipe!
Instructions
  1. Cut pork into 1½ x 1½ x 4 inch strips.
  2. Mince the garlic.
  3. Grate the ginger.
  4. Crush the star anise in a mortar.
  6. Combine the ginger, garlic, hoi sin sauce, crushed star anise, sake, soy sauce and honey. Mix well.
  8. Add the pork strips and toss to coat.
  9. Marinate the pork at least 2 hours, but preferably overnight turning once or twice.
  10. To roast, put one oven rack in the top position and another in the bottom position. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
  11. Hang each strip of pork from an "S" shaped hook on the top rack. Put a roasting pan below the pork, filled with water, to catch the drippings.
  12. Roast at 350°F for 30 minutes. Increase the temperature to 450°F and cook for another 20-25 minutes.
  13. Remove the pork strips from the oven. Slice them crosswise, approximately 1/3 inch thick. Pile the pork on a platter to serve.
Recipe Notes

Sho Chiku Bai sake is reasonably priced and good to drink as well as to cook with.

Hoisin sauce is available in Asian markets and many well-stocked supermarkets.

Copyright © 2018 by VillaSentieri.com. All rights reserved.

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Recipes

Chinese Five-Spice Roast Pork

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November 22, 2017

My food horizons expanded slowly during freshman and sophomore years in college. I was exposed to Chinese food through Dennis and Martha Law, a graduate student couple from Hong Kong who were the resident advisors in my college house during freshman year. I got exposed to Indian food thanks to the proximity to my dorm of the now long-gone Maharaja Indian Restaurant.

As sophomore year came to a close things were about to get kicked up a notch, to steal a phrase from Emeril Lagasse.

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In spring of sophomore year I applied to live in the International Residence Project, another of the University of Pennsylvania’s college houses, during my junior year.

I was accepted into the program and invited to a “meet and greet” with the other students later that semester. The resident advisors were Ambrose and Najma Davis and Reginald (Reggie) and Nanacy Rajapakse. Ambrose was from Jamaica, Najma from Bangladesh and Reggie and Nanacy (whose name was often Anglicized to Nancy) from Sri Lanka.

At the “meet and greet” I was introduced to Ray Hugh, who was to be my roommate. Ray, of Hakka Chinese ancestry, hailed from Guyana. We started hanging out together for the remainder of the semester and then, since we were both staying in Philadelphia for the summer, decided to find a summer sublet together.

Ray and his father, Dr. Hugh, in Georgetown, Guyana, 1974

As I had done the previous summer, we sublet an apartment in Graduate Towers (as discussed in my post on Homemade Applesauce).

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Then we started cooking! Guyanese food. Chinese food. Italian food. Indian food. The list went on.

The number of cuisines we cooked exploded beginning in junior year when we moved into the International Residence Project. We got recipes from other residents in the Project who came from all around the world. I (very tentatively) started my cookbook collection which now numbers close to 5000 volumes.

Ray (front center) with from right to left, his mother, sister Fay, sister Shelly, and Shelly’s boyfriend Clive in the suburbs of London, 1975

Some dishes we made became regulars (like this roast pork). Others we made once for the sheer challenge.

Ray’s mom’s Crispy Duck was in the latter camp. Mrs. Hugh sent us a sheaf of recipes carefully typed out on onion skin paper. Her recipe for plain white rice, included in those pages, was my tutorial on making steamed white rice.  I followed that recipe consistently, with unfailingly perfect results, until we moved to Santa Fe where the elevation, and its effect on cooking, rendered the directions unusable.

Included in that same sheaf of recipes was Crispy Duck. We started with a whole duck, head and feet included, which we purchased on Ninth Street in Philadelphia. The duck was hung for 24 hours from a hook we screwed into the ceiling while we carefully lacquered it, repeatedly, with a mixture of soy sauce and other ingredients, before roasting.

Me (left) and Ray with Crispy Duck in the early stage, hanging from the ceiling in our dorm apartment, 1975

Compared to the duck, this pork is a breeze. Though Ray, with whom I am still in contact, now recommends marinating it for a day (refrigerated!) if possible, when we were in college the marinating occurred in an hour as the meat was coming to room temperature. I also think that he often used garlic powder rather than fresh garlic. Actually, I think garlic powder works really well to season chicken to be roasted or steaks to be broiled. As I recall, it was pretty tasty on this pork, too.

Everything in this pork is classically Chinese, except, of course, the rum! Likely a rice-based spirit would be used in China but in Guyana the Chinese used rum. Let’s face it, fusion food happens everywhere! Besides, the rum “plays” really nicely with the five spice powder and brown sugar.

Five spice powder is the main flavor and it is important that you use a good quality brand. Not all five-spice powders are created equal. If you don’t have a Chinatown near you, there’s always Amazon. That’s what I did. Despite the existence of a good Asian grocery store in Santa Fe, the five-spice powder that I bought there was not up to my standards.

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Print Recipe
 Chinese Five-Spice Roast Pork
Boneless pork shoulder steaks work well because they contain some fat to keep the meat moist. However, because shoulder steaks contain different muscle groups the texture can change from bite to bite. Well-marbled pork chops with a little fat cap around the edge would work, too. If using bone-in chops, I would use 3 pounds rather than 2 ½ pounds. Be sure to use a good quality five spice powder.
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Course Mains, Meats
Cuisine Chinese, West Indian
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Passive Time 24 hours
Servings
people
Ingredients
Course Mains, Meats
Cuisine Chinese, West Indian
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Passive Time 24 hours
Servings
people
Ingredients
Votes: 0
Rating: 0
You:
Rate this recipe!
Instructions
  1. Five spice powder
  2. Combine all ingredients except the pork. Mix well.
  3. Boneless pork shoulder steaks
  4. Add the pork and toss to coat with the marinade.
  5. Marinate the pork in the refrigerator for 24 hours if possible. Turn the pork once or twice while marinating.
  6. One hour before cooking the pork, remove it from the marinade and put it in a single layer in a heavy roasting pan.
  7. Allow the pork to come to room temperature for an hour.
  8. Meanwhile, boil the marinade quickly until it is reduced to approximately 4 tablespoons.
  9. Cool the marinade and pour it over the pork.
  10. Preheat the broiler.
  11. Put the pan with the meat approximately 8 inches below the broiler.
  12. Cook the pork, turning once or twice, until just cooked through, 15-20 minutes.
  13. Allow the pork to rest 10 minutes before carving into bite-size pieces.
Recipe Notes

Unlike the brown sugar typically available in the United States, which is a mixture of white sugar and molasses, the brown sugar available in Guyana is actually a less refined sugar, hence the brown color.  There's not enough brown sugar in this recipe to make a difference so feel free to use standard American brown sugar.  Closer to what is available in Guyana is this brown sugar packaged for the Korean market that I bought in an Asian grocery store, and this brown sugar that I purchased in Ecuador.

Brown sugar packaged for the Korean market but bought in the United States

Brown sugar purchased in Ecuador

Copyright © 2017 by VillaSentieri.com. All rights reserved.

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