Archives for the 'Asian' Category
Marinated tofu - deconstructed stir-fry
Tofu is okay…if it’s not prepare well it can be nasty. But steep it in vibrantly seasoned marinade and pan fry it until the edges are crisp…then you have a tasty pile of flavor. I’m a Top Chef watcher and when goofy-hair-guy rendered some beef fat and then marinated the tofu in it, I thought it was genius…of course I probably would have gone with pork fat…whatever.
This meal is a deconstructed stir-fry. I’m a fan of this method because it allows each component’s flavor to shine brightly. Also it plates much prettier than a jumbled stir-fry, and sometimes that’s important too.
Here’s a simple guide on how to create the marinated tofu and the deconstructed stir-fry:
1. In a blender jar add 1/4 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup rice vinegar, 1 teaspoon chili oil, 1 teaspoon sesame oil, 1/2 a shallot, 3 cloves garlic, 2″ x 2″ knob of fresh ginger (cut into pieces). Let this rip on medium speed until the ginger, shallot, and garlic are emulsified. Pour 1/3 of it into a dish. Slice a firm-style block of tofu into 12 pieces and arrange the tofu on top of it, pour the remaining marinade over the tops of the tofu.
2. Prep the remaining components. In my case I sliced 2 huge white mushrooms and 2 green onions. I diced 3 cloves of garlic and another 2″ x 2″ knob of ginger.
3. Chop and wash/spin the bok choy. Preheat the oven to 150°.
4. Heat a skillet up over a medium flame and once it’s hot add two or three tablespoons of neutral oil, like canola. Once that comes up to heat carefully transfer the tofu into the hot skillet, piece by piece, being careful to watch out for the spattering oil.
5. Now this is the hard part…don’t do a thing. Don’t try to flip them, don’t try to pry them up and look at them…just let them cook for about 5 to 7 minutes and then you can look…chances are they’ll need another 5 minutes or so. Then using a spatula, gently flip each one and let the other side brown. I think my batch probably took 15 - 18 minutes total, this is the most time-consuming part of this dish. While the tofu cooked I unloaded the dishwasher and cleaned up the kitchen.
6. Once the tofu is deep, beautiful brown, remove it from the skillet. Take the skillet over to the sink and douse it with water and clean it up…it’ll clean easy while it’s hot, but once it cools down it’s a bitch.
7. Put the skillet back on the burner with high heat this time. Let it heat up for 5 minutes or so. In the meantime, put the tofu in the oven to stay warm.
8. Now that the skillet is hot add 1 tablespoon of oil and the diced garlic and ginger. Then add the mushrooms and salt them. At this point you might think you need more oil but actually add some water. The pan should be so hot that it should vaporize immediately and it acts as a tool to move the mushrooms around the pan. This should portion should take about one minute to cook.
9. Remove the mushrooms, garlic, and ginger. Add the bok choy to the pan (still on high heat). Shake or stir the pan to keep the bok choy moving and salt it. Again, you can add some water to create some non-stick action with it’s vapors. This portion should take about 1 minute.
10. Slide the bok choy to the coolest part of the skillet and add the green onions. Toss a little canola (1 teaspoon) on them if you like and salt them. Shake or stir and remove from the heat.
11. I plated this meal by making a mound of bok choy, encircled with the mushrooms, I arranged the tofu on top and garnished it with a bok choy leaf. Then I tangled the onions over the whole thing. It was awesome! The garlic and the ginger really perked up the bland mushrooms, the bok choy was delicate and sweetly tasted of spring and the onions are always addicting. Low calorie, low carb and delicious.
Monday night blues buster…udon
Another frigid evening with the forecast for more snow…today I saw dump trucks and end loaders all over town clearing out old snow to make room for new. What’s a girl to do? Hop a jet to a warmer climate…nah, that’s not my speed. I just head into the kitchen and crank out some kick-ass soup in under 10 minutes.
I made chicken stock a few weeks ago and stashed it in the freezer and today seemed like a good day for the healing hand of a good bowl of soup. While the udon cooked, I heated up the stock with some added fresh ginger and a garlic clove. The rest was easy, rehydrated woodear mushrooms, napa cabbage, and ham all cut into thin strips, and a couple of green onions sliced. I added a dash of soy sauce, sesame oil , and chili oil to the stock and it was ready. Although you can’t tell by the picture I did arrange the noodles in a nice bundle with the cabbage, woodear, and ham snuggled up next to them and then drowned it all in the best broth…ever.
Obama dumplings
Last year, around this time, I attempted to make soup dumplings…I’ve since dubbed them my “George Bush dumplings” because they were such a miserable failure. I was craving the porky/gingery delight so I figured I might as well try again. Since I’ve decided to follow recipes and I checked Barbara Tropp’s book, The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking out from the library. It’s a great book and I’m delighted I have it for four weeks…I can already bet I’ll put it on my list of books to buy. I read through the dumpling chapter and quickly saw how to make a good dumpling wrapper. It’s amazing how going with the facts can be so beneficial.
Because of the rousing success of these dumplings I’ve decided to call them the Obama dumplings…they’re already better than the last ones and even though there’s room for improvement it’s obvious that it’s a change for the better.
Shu Mai Dumplings aka Obama Dumplings
-printer-friendly version-
Dumpling Wrapper
3 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
2 large eggs
9 tablespoons water
cornstarch for dusting the dough as you roll them out
Put the flour and salt in the work bowl of a food processor. Buzz it around a couple of times and then add the eggs with the motor running. Pulse two or three times. With the motor running add the water slowly, pulsing and adding water until the dough forms a ball and moves around the bowl. Remove the dough from the bowl and divide it into 4 equal pieces. Let them rest for 10 minutes.
Press the dough segments out flat and feed them through a pasta machine, working through the numbers, dialing it thinner each pass through. I went to number 6 which is where I could see the shadow of my hand behind the dumpling sheet. Keep them covered until you’re ready to fill them.
Dumpling Filling
1 pound ground pork
2 inches of fresh ginger
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice wine
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons chinese sesame oil
black pepper
Put all of the ingredients in the bowl of food processor and pulse two or three times. Remove from the bowl and refrigerate until ready to fill the dumplings.
To fill the dumplings I used a 1 tablespoon scoop and instead of cutting the dumplings into circles I just used squares. Once filled, I drew the edges up with my fingers and cinched them with a pinch. I steamed them in a bamboo steamer over simmering water for 25 minutes. Serve them with a dipping sauce of soy sauce, sesame oil, chili oil, and rice wine vinegar.
GH and I came up with these this morning: a Hillary dumpling looks good but tastes like all the other store-bought dumplings. A Giuliani dumpling is filled with hot air. A Edwards dumpling is absolutely beautiful but falls apart in the steamer. A McCain dumpling is beefy yet has an odd texture/flavor, it’s served with a difficult vietnamese-flavored sauce. A Romney dumpling is shaped like the mormon underwear, served with a secret sauce and is really difficult to swallow. A Huckabee dumpling is lowfat but ultimately makes you nauseated and uncomfortable.
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