Meal : Tomato Brussels, Turnip Greens Salad, Pork and Leek, Double Pepper Chicken

This weekend, we got some hakurei turnip greens at the local farmer's market and some leeks and hot pepper at the co-op grocery. The challenge was to make 4 dishes before the rice finished and clear out some leftovers.

Massaged Hakurei Turnip Greens Salad

Cut off the turnips, peeled them, and popped them into a small pot of a little boiling water. Covered it and set the heat to low. Put another small pot of oil on another burner. Washed the tender turnip greens and shook them dry. Placed them in a bowl and salted them to draw out water. Squeezed some water out, then cut them into little pieces and returned them to bowl. Added Zhenjiang vinegar. Then, slowly poured hot oil around the greens. They sizzled. Mixed them up. Done.

Brussels and Tomato

Already had a bowl of heirloom grape tomatoes cooked in oil (flavor already concentrated). Cut Brussels sprouts in half, then tossed them into hot pan of oil to sear and stir fry. A few minutes later, added the cooked tomatoes and stirred. Covered the lid and let it cook until Brussels were ready. 

Meanwhile, cut the chicken and pork into slices for the next dishes. Salted them and set aside for stir fries.

Pork And Leek

Washed a leek (white parts only), sliced it small, and set aside. Tossed the pork slices into hot pan of oil to sear it sear then stir fried. Took pork out about 2/3 way ready. Tossed leeks into pan and stir fried it in the pan drippings. When somewhat soft, returned the pork to the pan. Made a little space in the center to add soy sauces and rice wine to caramelize a little. Stirred everything together. Done.

Rinsed but didn't wash the pan. Wiped it dry with paper towel and returned it to the heat with oil for next dish.

Double pepper chicken

Grabbed the Salted Chopped Jalapeños from earlier. Minced garlic, sliced some ginger, chopped lots of scallions. Sliced the Devils Tongue pepper very thin. Tossed everything into the hot pan and stir fried until fragrant. Added chicken slices and stir fried. Everything is in a sparse monolayer. No boiling allowed. Toward end, added dark soy sauce. All is done.

Also, took out those turnips. They were nice and soft but still firm at this point. Sweet, too.

Thoughts

The salad was crisp, refreshing, and flavorful. My father in law uses young turnip greens from his garden, so this approximates it. We've tried using old turnip greens from the supermarket but it was wasn't crisp or refreshing, but actually very bitter - better for being boiled off with bacon. I might try this with radish greens in the future though.

The tomato Brussels was basically Brussels in a homemade tomato sauce. There was no need to add any salt because the tomatoes already had it. Brussels don't taste great when overlooked or even recooked. They also inherently have a slight sulfury taste. But the tomatoes give you a little bit of leeway in cooking time, complement the strong taste with some sour, and reduce the funk of the Brussels. Probably because of the acid content.

The meat stir fries were simple and made   the usual ways. 

Devils Tongue pepper turned out to not be as spicy as I thought it would be. Maybe it was the piece I picked. The flavor also reminded me of something more Southwestern. Next time, I'll probably use long hot green pepper again. Also, I'll use a larger scoop of the chopped Jalapeños.

Biang Biang Noodles

Biang Biang noodles (油泼扯面) are hand stretched flat noodles dressed in a savory and spicy sauce. It's a very distinctive country dish from Shaanxi, certainly a famous food from Xi'an.

Method

Make a simple and soft noodle dough with wheat flour and water. Roll out some one inch wide strips that are less than a foot long. Coat them with oil. Stretch them by hand, waving them up and down so that the middle bangs the surface. When thin and long enough, drop into a pot of boiling water. It should be ready in a minute or so after the water reboils.

Remove the noodles onto a plate and top with seasonings such as finely minced raw garlic, scallions, chili flakes, and cilantro. Mix in some soy sauce and black vinegar. Pour over some very hot oil and mix again.

Notes

A wide and thin hand pulled noodle works best as the vehicle for carrying these bold flavors. The noodles are shiny and smooth to the tongue from oil. The dressing can vary immensely, but the ingredients I suggested are very standard. You can also add a few spoonfuls of Sichuan red oil for a good kick.

Pouring hot oil over a plate of mostly raw items mixed with a little soy sauce- vinegar will result in a nice sizzle and create some nice new flavors quickly while keeping everything fresh. There's no possibility of over cooking and it's quite hassle-free. My father in-law also uses this technique for making some awesome massaged turnip green salads.

The noodle dough strips are coated with oil to help them say moist and nonstick while stretching. Without the oil, you would have to dust them with flour with every bang to prevent sticking, which would effect the chewiness of the thin noodles. If you like this, by all means go for it.

Finally, "Biang" refers to the sound the noodle dough makes when you hit it against a table. When written, it has a lot of character strokes and isn't available in Chinese character input programs. The character almost seems to weird and complex to be true. Most likely it was invented by the noodle store selling them. For this reason, I call it by its other name in Chinese, 油泼扯面, meaning oil-splashed ripped noodles.

Dry Cooked Green Beans with Sichuan Pepper

Dry Cooked Green Beans with Sichuan Pepper is a dish from my wife's family. It involves a lot of Sichuan peppercorns, soy sauce and green beans. It's a very simple and country vegetable dish, best eaten with chopsticks to pick out the intensely flavorful beans from the whole Sichuan peppercorns.

Method

Heat up a fair amount of oil in a pan and throw in a handful of whole Sichuan peppercorns. Let them heat up to release flavor. Add green beans and stir. Add several splashes of soy sauce and stir. Lower the heat to low-medium and cover with a lid. Let it cook for 8 minutes. Give it a final stir before serving.

Notes

There should be enough liquid from the sizzling oil, bean moisture and soy sauce to allow for the beans to cook without the addition of water. They will soft and moist but not mushy. Adding soy sauce to sizzling oil with caramelize it and create a different (and better) flavor than that out of the bottle. Also, because no water was added, every flavor becomes more intense. Keep that in mind when adding the soy sauce.

This dish feels like a much simpler form of the well-known Sichuan dish, Dry Fried Green Beans (干煸四季豆), which involves quickly shallow frying the beans and uses more ingredients like minced preserved vegetable and/or pork. Nevertheless, the flavor is quite intense.

This cooking method can be used for cooking other green legumes in the pod like broad beans, string beans, and yard long beans. However, the time will probably need to be adjusted depending on the variety of bean used.

Crab Rangoons

Crab Rangoons are a popular Chinese American dish of deep-fried dumplings filled with cream cheese and imitation crab meat. They have no crab and have nothing to do with the city once known as Rangoon (Yangon) in Thailand. They o great with sweet and sour sauce.

Method

Make a filling of cream cheese and minced imitation crab meat in a 2 to 1 ratio. Add a little salt and if desired, minced scallion.

Make a soft dough from wheat flour and water and and roll it thin. Cut out wonton sized squares. For each square, spoon some filling into the center and fold the wrapper over it in the shape of a triangle (or fancier if desired). 

Drop the dumplings into a deep fryer and remove when golden and crispy. Place them on a plate with paper towels to soak some oil.

To make sweet and sour sauce, heat up water, ketchup, sugar, and white vinegar in a small pot. When it's to your taste, stir in a small mixture of cornstarch in cold water to thicken it.

Notes

When eaten fresh, the fried dumplings have a crispy shell and hot gooey center. The sweet and sour sauce is great for balancing the greasiness. It also works well for making sweet and sour dishes later. Keep the crab rangoons in a monolayer when taken out the fryer to prevent them from getting soggy too soon. 

Crab Rangoons are a very Chinese American food. You'll see them as appetizers just about everywhere you see Chinese American food places, from big chains like Panda Express to small proprietorships like your neighborhood "Beijing Star Garden Imperial Palace" joint. 

Salted Chopped Jalapeños

Salted Chopped Chilis or Duo Jiao (剁椒) are a common cooking ingredient and condiment in Hunanese cuisine basically consisting of long red Hunanese chili pepper and salt allowed to ferment for a few days in a tight container. Here, I tried it with jalapeños.

Method

Chop up fresh chili peppers into small pieces and place into a storage container. Mix in a few spoonfuls of salt then cover with a few more spoonfuls of salt. Seal it tight and let it sit in a dark cool place for a few days before using. Refrigerate thereafter.

Notes

There are many different recipes for making Salted Chopped Chilis and many Hunanese households will have their own modifications like adding minced garlic and other spices. However, salt and chopped chili pepper are at the heart. The salt will extract a lot of water from the fresh peppers and they will be sitting in liquid, but they will remain very spicy hot.

Updates on how this turns out and how to use it in the future...

Sichuan Wontons

Sichuan wontons or chao shou (抄手) are pork dumplings wrapped very thinly and dressed with cilantro, soy sauce, black vinegar, sesame oil and Sichuan red oil. It's a wonderful blend of flavors and each bite is hot yet refreshing.

Method

Make pork dumplings as in the Dumplings article. Here, the filling uses pork, ginger, scallion, napa cabbage, soy sauce and Sichuan pepper.

Create a dough for the wrapper and roll it very thin with a pasta machine. Cut out squares with a knife and wrap the wontons. Boil them the usual way.

Create a basic red oil by heating up a cup or two of oil an pouring it over a lot chili flakes in a strainer. It will sizzle and the red oil should be fairly red.

When the dumplings are ready, place some into your bowl, then add chopped cilantro, soy sauce, black vinegar, and a little sesame oil. Spoon over some of the red hot oil and enjoy.

Notes

These wontons are a bit different from the more common Cantonese variety, which have a filling of pork and shrimp and served with noodles in a savory soup. There is no spiciness. Sichuan wontons, as one might expect, are served with red oil and very hot (and even painful in an addictive way).

These use of vinegar adds sourness, so this dish is also called Hot and Sour wontons (酸辣抄手). It doesn't counteract the spiciness of the chili, but it definitely makes every mouthful even more appetizing.

Twice Cooked Ribs

Another experimental take on Twice Cooked Pork (回锅肉). This time, it was meat taken off boiled ribs and spicy long green peppers. The greasy goodness is like the Twice Cooked Bacon, but far less smoky.

Method

Boil pork ribs with soy sauce, ginger, and water for 20 minutes. When the ribs cool, remove the meat from the bone and slice them into thin strips. Slice some long green peppers into equally thin strips. Mince up some garlic and scallion.

Heat up some oil in a pan and quick-fry the garlic and scallion. Then add peppers and stir. Add pork strips and stir. Add sweet bean sauce and stir. Toward the end of cooking, add light soy sauce and dark soy sauce. If desired, add a little rice wine or black vinegar.

Notes

The ribs were boiled the same way as Sweet and Sour Ribs with Zhenjiang vinegar. I actually came up with this dish after having quite a few of them.

Never burn any of aromatics, especially garlic. The harsh taste of burnt garlic isn't worth it. To prevent this from happening, keep the garlic surrounded with oil on the pan for a few seconds and stir. Start adding other items once you see the garlic turn golden and stir.

The ribs are relatively fatty, so offsetting that fattiness with aromatics and something sour like vinegar is understandably, quite popular.

Pork and Bell Pepper Stir Fry

Pork and Pepper stir fry (青椒炒肉丝) is basic stir fry dish of thinly sliced green peppers and pork. Here, I used yellow pepper because it was available.

Method

Marinate/flavor thinly sliced pork strips with salt, sugar, vinegar, and rice wine. Slices the bell pepper into small slices. Slice some scallion.

Heat up some oil and drop in the pork to sear. When the pork starts browning, add the scallions and bell pepper and stir. After the bell pepper loses its rawness in a few minutes, add the soy sauce and stir until mixed.

Notes

The cooking method is pretty much the same as that for Beef and Garlic Chive.You can quick fry the scallions first before adding the pork, instead of afterward. ThRis is probably more common.

The dish is believe to be the forerunner of  the Chinese American dish, pepper steak, which is basically the same thing but with beef and more sauce and thickener. In most of China, pork is the meat of choice, so much so that when they use the term for meat (肉) they almost always mean pork (猪肉).

Scallion Pancakes

Scallion pancakes (葱油饼) are a crunchy snack with multiple layers of crispy dough and scallions. They're great eaten by themselves or with soy sauce.

Method

Make a soft and stretchy dough from wheat flour and water. Roll it into a large thin flat sheet with a rolling pin. Spread oil on the dough and sprinkle minced scallions and salt over it. Roll the dough into a tube. Then make an overlapping spiral with the rolled dough. 

Roll this spiraled dough flat and repeat the process above once (or twice) more. 

Heat up some oil in a flat pan and pan fry the pancake on high for a few seconds, then on medium-low heat for several minutes. Flip it and pan fry for several minutes until ready.

Notes

Rolling the dough (especially after the first roll) will be very messy, but it is necessary for creating the delicious layers from the pockets of oil. When you spread the oil, there is no need to spread it to the edges. It will get there when you roll the dough into a tube. Mincing the scallions very small and sprinkling (rather than dumping a huge load) will reduce the chances of the dough breaking when you flatten the dough. 

With each successive roll, you'll notice that the dough can only roll out to a thicker and smaller sheet before the layers break and bleed into each other in a big way. This is expected. I've found that keeping the pancake slightly thicker (1/3 inch) at the end will result in a pancake with crisper layers.

My father-in-law adds a little water and covers the pan to steam the pancake after the initial sear. While it definitely works to cook it, I've found this makes the pancake chewier and less crunchy even in the middle layers.