Archives for the 'pasta, pizza, noodles' Category
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.
Pasta carbonara
Thanks for all the get well wishes. This head-cold continues to kick my butt and make life miserable. It’s times like this that I truly appreciate simple food like pasta carbonara. Authentic carbonara should be made with guanciale, a pork cheek that is rubbed with salt and pepper and cured for three weeks. But since I don’t have guanciale, nor do I have pancetta, I made do with 1/4 lb. of delicious bacon…not authentic, but tasty nonetheless. An egg, some grated parmesan, freshly ground black pepper, a pound of pasta, and a splash of pasta water round out the ingredients.
Put your pasta water on to boil, make sure you salt it really, really, well…I bet I use 2 -3 tablespoons. Dice the bacon and put it in a skillet over medium low heat. Once the bacon is done remove it from the pan. Grate about a cup of parmesan and set it aside. Once your pasta of choice is done, drain it, but make sure you reserve a cup of the pasta water. I usually make this with linguine, but this time I used penne, another of my favorite pasta shapes.
Dump the drained pasta into a large bowl, toss in the bacon and cheese, crack an egg over it all and add a substantial slosh of pasta water. Stir/toss it all together, grind black pepper over it all and mix it up again. That’s it. Bowl it up and head back to the couch to eat this lovely, velvety delight while watching The Daily Show on tivo…well at least that’s what I did.
BTW…if you think that perhaps I made a mistake and left the cream out, you’re wrong. Carbonara doesn’t have cream in it. Also, I think that carbonara has a bad reputation for being heavy and rich. Actually the opposite is true…it’s delicate and light and one egg and 4 ounces of bacon served to 4 people is hardly gluttonous. So don’t shun carbonara….embrace it!
Head over to Accidental Hedonist and check out my chocolate, caramel, toffee tart. I couldn’t have made it without the assistance of my sous chef, Dexter.
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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