Momofuku

There's this one stall in the Empire food fair, that sells mainly chicken this, chicken that on rice etc. But on their counter, there's 3 gladware containers of XO sauce. XO sauce to the uninitiated, contains no extra old brandy whatsoever. It does contain, dried scallop, stinky dried shrimp, chili, pork products, copious amounts of garlic, ginger, and oil. It is the condiment to rule all other condiments. It is a meal unto itself when paired with a bowl of white rice. It is calling out to me from the fridge, when I am caught unawares with a naked scrambled egg. Having boughten a smallish container once last year, hoovering it down in a scant 2 weeks, I still think about it.

David Chang published his version of XO sauce in his  Momofuku cookbook. It was the only thing that caught my eye, (besides the poached eggs) so I returned it. So sorry, to all you diehard fans out there. I really do want to go to one of his restaurants next year, but the cookbook, meh.

Jennifer Yu of Use Real Butter blog illustrated XO here:


Chinese XO Sauce
[print recipe]
from Momofuku by David Chang

2 oz (1/2 cup) dried scallops
2 oz (3/4 cup) dried shrimp
1/2 cup garlic cloves, peeled
1/2 cup fresh ginger, peeled and sliced
1 cup country ham, chopped (or use Chinese sausage)
1/2 cup grapeseed oil or other neutral oil
1 tbsp crushed dried red chile

Place the scallops and shrimp in a medium bowl and cover with at least 1/2-inch of water. Cover the bowl and let sit overnight. Put the garlic and ginger in a food processor and pulse until finely chopped. Empty the contents into a bowl. Drain the scallops and shrimp. Place the scallops and shrimp in the food processor and pulse until finely chopped. Add the scallop and shrimp to the garlic and ginger. Finally, mince the ham or sausage in the food processor. Keep the ham or sausage separate from the rest of the ingredients. In a 12-inch sauté pan, heat the oil over medium-high heat for a minute or so. Add the ham and stir occasionally, for about 3-4 minutes until the meat begins to crisp. Add the chile. Cook (stirring) for another 2-3 minutes. Reduce the heat to a very low flame and add the remaining ingredients to the pan. Let the sauce cook over low heat for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally to make sure nothing is stuck to the pan. The sauce should dry out and turn a deep golden color. Remove from heat. Store in a covered jar in the refrigerator (should last for months). Makes 2 cups.

I used Chinese sausages (lap cheong), skipped the dried shrimp, and used less ginger and more garlic.  Pumped up the chili by 3 times and added extra glugs of canola oil. If I wasn't too busy sneaking tastes of this sauce, I'd post the pictures one day. 

David Chang also makes poached eggs in the shell, also known as onsen eggs. If I had known about these eggs on my trip to Japan 5 years ago, guess who would've been skinny dipping with a basket of eggs! They are often served on top of ramen in Japan. Funny, I've only had hard boiled or softly boiled eggs here on ramen in Canada. But, here's the long and short of it:

Put a trivet in a pot so the eggs don't touch the bottom. Add eggs. Add water to cover the eggs by an inch. Turn stove on to lowest possible setting. Walk away. 45 minutes later, presto! 

It's quite a thrill to break open, what seems to be a raw egg, and get softly poached perfection. Lovely with a sprinkling of furikake and dollop of....XO sauce. 

Baconpalooza

Our small group had another eat-a-thon last Wednesday. This time, the theme was bacon. Everytime there's food involved, everyone shows up...See the connection? Food=people will come. There's a strong link there. Anyways, there was bacon wrapped water chestnuts, bacon wrapped potatoe, bacon wrapped dogs, chipotle yam and bacon soup, sweet and also sweet and hot bacon jerky, bacon in meatloaf, maple walnut ice cream w bacon, and lastly, just bacon. Someone wanted some Lipitor to offset the gluttony, but I searched through my pockets and came up emtpy.

I used this recipe from About.com. Used skim milk as I had not homo milk, and halved the maple syrup, using white sugar for the balance. And added a half teaspoonful of Xanthan gum. And a tablespoon of butter for good measure, since I didn't have homo milk. Plus the bacon bits on top.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup pure maple syrup, dark or Grade B if possible
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 6 large egg yolks
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cups coarsely chopped pecans or walnuts

Preparation:

Bring the heavy cream to a simmer in a heavy-bottom saucepan over medium heat. Whisk together maple syrup, cornstarch, and egg yolks. Pour about 1/3 of the hot cream into the syrup mixture, then pour the syrup mixture into the remaining cream in the saucepan. Heat over medium low heat, stirring constantly, until hot and thickened slightly. Do not let boil. Strain into a large mixing bowl.

Cool the mixture; whisk in milk and vanilla. Chill thoroughly then freeze in your ice cream machine. Add pecans near the end of freezing time.

It was the bee's knees! I think the kicker was that little bit of butter. I brought home the scant tablespoons and everyone had a little taste, since I only made one batch. Love experimenting first time recipes under pressure for dinner parties! Ho ho ho. 

 The bacon jerky was of special interest to me.
Ken, the resident meatatarian, invented it.
He painted simple syrup on both sides of raw bacon, and baked it over a rack under low heat. The fat dripped off, and the bacon stayed perfectly flat, and dehydrated holding in all it's salty flavour. I think I will try it with maple syrup.

Macaron Madness

Hi all,

It's been a while. I've been cooking up a storm, but alas too busy to sit down and take pictures and write it all down. Let's see, what has my stomach been up to?

Off the top of my head, a family bike ride to the docks in Steveston where we happened upon fresh lemon sole, shrimp and decapitated salmon. The fishermen stand around expectantly, looking forelornly at the 'sole' boat where the mob has gathered. It's fresh lemon sole, scooped out of the hold with a plastic laundry basket into a plastic bag, still flipping and slithering around.  The spectacle is interesting to watch, so being the looky loos we are, we spring for 3 fish. The thing about transporting live fish in a plastic bag on the back of your bike on a warmish spring day....brings to mind, animal activists waiting to spray you with blood. So husband smacks the fish on the side of the bike rack to bring them out of their misery, while second child screams and plugs her ears. Dinner comes with drama. Would you be a meatarian if your meat didn't come saran wrapped on styrofoam, cut into unidentifiable cubes?

Lightly breaded and fried in butter, sole was definitely more palatable than poaching method.  I tried to poach one fish, but there's some chemical substance in the skin that doesn't taste good. The maillard reaction rids of that taste. I'm geeking out, throwing $5 words around since I got page through a copy of The Modernist Cuisine . It was only $450US for the set of 5 in the States. Fascinating looking at the cut aways of pots cooking food, half barbecues and food reactions. Pretty upscale science to put some nutrition into your stomach! I'm just jealous, cos I'll never spend $400 for a sous vide, or for the books for that matter.

Another adventure, or shall I say misadventure...Since I was on staycation last week, I woke up most mornings to try my hand at macaron making. A few years ago, I went on a mission to find the best macaron I could get my hands on in this city. Back then, macarons were still hard to find, and the ones I could were not made well. Everyone has jumped on the bandwagon since, even Costco sold a box of 20 for 5$ in their freezer. My mission was futile, and I the best ones I ever had came from Paulette in Beverly Hills, and from Laduree transported by my sister-in-law's suitcase from Paris. There is a new girl in town, Soirette on Robson street that I have yet to try. Only when I saw my friend's blog 'Cake on the Brain' recently, using egg whites from a carton, did I give it another go. Macaron making can be a real labor of love, which takes up too much time aging those egg whites days in advance and very technique driven.

After 5 batches, only 1 met my so called standards. No bumps, relatively round, high enough feet, no hollow shells, and they tasted good. My batch of matcha buttercream has run out, and so has my foray into macarons for now. It required using a food processor, sieve, blender, digital scale, piping bag...and that's just the French meringue method. The Italian meringue involves boiling simple syrup with a candy thermometer. My next baking will involve a wooden spoon and one bowl. Lol.

Pancetta Enoki Rolls

Since Vancouver (B.C. not Portland) is a city of many faces, it's hard to bump into the Pacific Northwest influence in some way. Since I actually live in Richmond (a municipality directly south across the river from Vancouver, our influence is Asian. Richmond is considered a "Pearl of the Orient" . Ever see a ball in a stone dragonlike creature's mouth the Kirin? The river delta of Richmond is that pearl in the mouth sides by the Fraser River.  The pearl is a symbol of good fortune. Therefore, as soon as you cross any bridge from north, south, or east to Richmond, it's  a good opportunity to brush up on your chinese. :-)

Which brings me to my next post. I salivated over  a picture in Anthony Sedlak's cookbook of his grandmother's pork roulade. Anthony Sedlak is a local boy made good in the world of cooking, now a major Foodnetwork star. His roll entailed of pounded pork tenderloin anointed with Dijon, rolled around pickles, bound with bacon and served with a sour cream sauce. Since favorite son and favorite daughter don't enjoy pickles yet, I replaced them with enoki mushrooms in my version. I actually didn't end up using the shimeji mushrooms, as I ran out of meat. That was just as well, cos the shimeji have a bit of a bitter kick to them.  Thinly sliced shabushabu pork butt replaced the tenderloin, and pancetta replaced the bacon. Finely chopped capers and homemade creme fraiche served as sauce.

Here's the key to homemade creme fraiche. Put a dollop of sourcream into a litre of whipping cream. I left mine in a very warm spot near a forced air duct out all day, then put it in the fridge over night. The next day, success! Most concoctions asked for buttermilk, and less whipping cream, but my experiment worked. It's been about a week now, and still hasn't separated. I put it on everything! It's hard to come by creme fraiche where I live. The closest thing (which doesn't have the tang) is Devonshire clotted cream, at $7 CAD is too dear for my taste.

L-R: Enoki, capers, Shimeji mushrooms, kecap manis soy sauce, creme fraiche, pancetta and thinly sliced pork butt. 

Since there was a dearth of baker's twine in the house, I scrounged around for any foodsafe string, which happened to be a grass holding bamboo leaves left over from joong. (Another post).

9 Sauces

I am on a cooking spree again. The other day, I made shrimp on lemongrass. Orginally, the recipe was shrimp on sugar cane, but a previous wrestling with a 5 foot length of sugarcane left me with blood on my hands. Really, how does one splinter a small trunk using a Chinese cleaver?
Inspired by the grand photos in this book, I hankered for a shrimpy skewer in the comfort of my own home. They turned out well, although the flesh seemed rather spongy, not unlike a crab claw one eats in the 2nd course of a 10 course Chinese dinner. (Note to self, hand chop shrimp, rather than blend, chunky is okay). The piece de resistance, was the nuoc cham dipping sauce. Umami dribbles of garlic, hotsauce, fish sauce, h2o, rice vinegar, and lime juice.

A conversation about how chicken Mcnuggets were made, inspired me to make my own nuggets. Do you know how it's made?  Whole bits of chicken, skin, bones and all, are blended into a greyish tubelike paste, which is sieved to remove the solid bits. Ammonia is added to sanitized the whole affair, pink food color to similate food appeal. Gross! So I breaded my own chicken breasts with parmesan, panko and furikake (seaweedy sprinkles) before broiling them in the oven. The fun part was the unnamed sauces....

White miso
Caramel
Anchovy paste
BBQ
Japanese mayo
Dijon/Hot mustard
Tonkatsu
Mango dipping sauce
Homemade nuoc cham (not shown)

Pure delight, double dipping up and down the line, for a mere taste for some and a full dunk for others. In the end, my favorite was the fishy saltiness of the anchovy paste followed by mayo. I had more sauces, but was limited by the number of small plates we owned. One child asked, where the most obvious sauce, ketchup was. We don't eat ketchup anymore. Due to a moment of health induced delirium, we decided to stock salsa in the house instead. Let's see how long that lasts....