Asian

Asian Calamari Salad

It takes a lot to get me to eat a salad in the winter. Soup? Sign me up. Salad? Maybe another day….

Of course, if you load a salad up with lots of delicious, hearty toppings it’s hard to pass up – even when there’s three feet of snow on the ground.

Vietnamese Summer Rolls with Sausage

Summer rolls are the perfect light meal in this stifling heat. They’re similar to Chinese egg rolls/spring rolls, but are eaten raw instead of fried. They’re stuffed with thin noodles, fresh herbs, raw vegetables, and, optionally, a (cooked) protein like shrimp or sausage.

In my attempt to recreate the restaurant version, I made my own sausage. A google search resulted in tons of recipes, so I mixed and matched to get something that seemed right. The sausages themselves were really easy to make and tasted phenomenal. My version was a little more mild than what I had originally hoped for, but I’ll definitely make them again.

Miso-Roasted Salmon Salads

I’ve been really into miso lately. Until about a month ago, I had never had it in anything other than miso soup, which I’ve always found to be kind of plain and boring. Miso paste, on the other hand, is a different beast altogether. It’s flavor is difficult to describe, but if you’re familiar with the term “umami” this is it. It’s very rich and complex, a little salty, and almost nutty. It might sound silly, but the flavor feels very full and round in your mouth. If you haven’t tried it, you really should! It’s a great way to elevate a few simple ingredients and transform them into a spectacular dish.

Clementine-Soy Chicken Thighs

Happy (Chinese) New Year!

For some reason, we always celebrated Chinese New Year when I was a kid. I don’t know why, but I always looked forward to it. It was so fun, and we didn’t eat Chinese nearly as often back then as we do now. Mom would take out the electric wok and cook dinner right on the table – usually a chicken stir fry. The next night, we’d wrap the leftovers in tortillas and eat them as fajitas. Yum.

I made this clementine-soy glazed chicken a few weeks ago and thought it would be the perfect Chinese New Year post. But then I started researching and apparently I had it all wrong. The holiday has all sorts of food traditions, like eating noodles to bring long life and dumplings to bring wealth. And apparently serving a chicken or duck whole represents health, but serving it cut – like these thighs – is the opposite. Oops.

Oh well. This dish is delicious any time of the year, and you should definitely make it (if you’re superstitious or prefer to celebrate the New Year more traditionally, just wait until tomorrow.)

Ground Chicken and Eggplant Lettuce Wraps

This recipe for ground chicken and eggplant lettuce wraps was inspired by the menu at P.F. Changs. They have a similar chicken and eggplant dish that’s one of the best things I’ve ever ordered at a Chinese restaurant. My recipe is pretty different from theirs, but it captures my favorite components of the original — especially the contrast of sweet, spicy, and salty flavors and the way the tender eggplant practically melts in your mouth. Adjust the amount of chili paste to suit your desired level of spiciness, or leave it out and allow each diner to add it directly to their own portion to accommodate a variety of tastes.

Vietnamese Braised Beef over Rice Noodle Salad

Sometimes I find myself in an eating rut. For someone who loves to cook, I eat out or order in far too often. Even I’m surprised at how often I end up skipping the kitchen in favor of letting someone else prepare my meal for me. What can I say? I’m lazy. And by the time I get home from work I’m exhausted. While the idea of actually cooking doesn’t usually bother me, the thought of cleaning up afterwards is more than I can take.

So we get pizza.

Boring. And, to be honest, not all that tasty.

There’s no excuse. I have an entire category on here devoted to Quick Weeknight Meals. There are hundreds of great restaurants within in fifteen minute drive from my house. And, if I really wanted, I could make my own pizza in the amount of time it takes to get one delivered. That would taste better. And that wouldn’t require a ton of time spent on cleanup.

So. I recently made a resolution that if I was going to be lazy and not cook for myself, I at least deserved to eat something good. Not pizza. Not fast food. Not a salad with twelve million calories from a chain restaurant.

Which lead me to discover a great Vietnamese restaurant that I had never been to before, despite the fact that it’s practically walking distance from my house. (It probably is walking distance, but there we go with that whole lazy thing again.)

And that restaurant has lead me to discover that Vietnamese food consists of more than just pho. Like their mussel appetizer, where mussels are served on the half shell drizzled with a sweet and spicy coconut curry. Or Bun Thit Nuong, grilled pork served over vermicelli, which has quickly become my favorite thing to order.

When I received a gorgeous enamel coated, cast iron dutch oven the other day (keep reading to find out how you can get one too!), I immediately decided that I wanted to make something loosely inspired by that dish. It was too hot outside to eat soup or stew, so a richly flavored braised beef served over a cool noodle salad seemed like it would hit the spot. Which it did. Despite the seemingly simple ingredients, this dish was bursting with flavor. As it bubbled and sputtered away in the oven, the most incredible aroma filled the house – mysteriously, it reminded me of cinnamon!

Easy Steamed Buns, Two Ways (and Some Cookies!)

Do you ever see something or hear of something and immediately know that you’ll love it? That’s how I felt about the delicious looking Chinese steamed buns, or bao, that keep turning up everywhere I look lately. Everywhere, that is, except on menus here in Albany. It seemed as though if I wanted to taste these for myself, I would ether have to travel to NYC or make them myself. Making them seemed like it would be complicated, so I tucked the idea away in my every-expanding file of recipes to try on the weekend. But then I read this post from Carolyn Jung, who had a little truck up her sleeve to make steamed buns on a weeknight a very real possibility.

The trick? Don’t bother making your own dough. Instead, turn to a tube of refrigerated biscuits. Easy Peasy. When classic Pillsbury biscuits are steamed instead of baked, the texture undergoes a complete transformation. Instead of turning out buttery and flakey, they become pillowy-soft and slightly chewy. I don’t know how authentic the flavor or texture is, but it’s exactly how I imagined it would be. And every bit as delicious.

I was having trouble deciding what I wanted to fill my bins with, so I ended up doing two version: one fatty, porky version based on Momofuku’s popular buns, and another light version stuffed with tofu that I baked with my favorite generic “Asian” marinade. Bother versions were amazing, but I actually liked the tofu version the most! It was light and fresh in flavor and the combination of textures — the doughy bun, crispy-creamy tofu and crunchy vegetables — was so much more interesting than that of the chewy pork belly.

I’ve posted tofu very similar to this one before, but I’ve recently started to fry the whole block very quickly before baking it. This gives the outside of the tofu a crispy coating that tastes really good and also makes the texture of the tofu a lot more appealing.

Continue reading Easy Steamed Buns, Two Ways –>

Udon with Ponzu and Brown Butter Sauce

These udon noodles with ponzu and brown butter sauce are one of my favorite recent creations. It’s amazingly simple and takes almost no effort to throw together. There are certain words that I really don’t like to use to describe food; they’re overused and cliche. But sometimes, there’s just no other appropriate way to describe something. So I’m going to break one of my own unwritten rules and come out and say it – unctuous. That’s the only way that I can describe these fat, slippery noodles that are lightly coated in a buttery, citrusy sauce. The ponzu and brown butter sauce is incredibly rich and fills your mouth with a rounded flavor. Red peppers and green onions add color to the dish as well as pierce through the richness of the sauce to make the dish seem light on the palate. The noodles themselves are so rich that you don’t need much steak in this dish, but it does deserve a special mention. A quick marinade of sesame oil, ponzu, and ginger imparts tons of flavor. A quick kiss by a hot pan will cook the steak perfectly, making it so tender that you barely need to chew it. [….]

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