Spinach Cavatelli Noodles with Pork and Dried Daikon

中文菜谱: 菠菜猫耳朵面

There is about 1/3 bunch spinach left in the refrigerator.  It is not enough to do any stir frying, so I make some spinch cavatelli noodles out of it.

As a matter of fact, in Chinese there is another cute interesting name for noodles in this shape: cat’s ears.  Those pointed tips do look like cat’s ears.   

Ingredients:

1/3 bunch spinach
2 1/2 to 3 1/2 cup bread flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon oil
1/2 cup water
boiling water and a pinch of salt (for blanching spinach)

Directions：

Fill a large bowl with water and ice.

Bring a large pot of water to boil.  Add a pinch of salt and spinach.  Get the spinach out as soon as the color turns dark green, and shock it with iced water.

Drain the spinach.  Place it to vitamix (from amazon) container; add water and blender until smooth; the smoother the better.  

Add flour, salt, spinach mixture and oil to a KitchenAid mixing bowl (from amazon).

Turn on stand mixer, and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic. 

Place dough on a board dusted with flour; shape it into a ball; covered and let it rest for 20 to 30 minutes. 

With a rolling pin, roll out the dough to about 1/4 inch in height. Cut it into thumb nail sized squares. 

Divide them and dust with flour again.

On a gnocchi paddle (from amazon), push down those tiny dough squares and push forward at the same time. You will get those little cute cat ears with marks. 

Dust with flour so that they won’t stick together. 

Every time I make them, that sensational scene from Godfather comes to my mind.   Vincent Mancini and Mary Corleone were making gnocchi.  

It is really nice to cook and enjoy a lovely dinner with your loved one, isn’t it? 

Ok, let’s get back to our cat ears.

Ingredients:

1 piece pork shoulder, (3 to 5 oz) , thinly sliced
a handful of dried chili pepper, cut into halves
1/2 cup dried daikon (available in Asian grocery store), diced
1 teaspoon Sichuan pepper
2 to 3 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice cooking wine
2 gloves of garlic, peeled and thinly sliced or minced
2 to 3 chicken stock or water
freshly ground black pepper
1/4  teaspoon sugar
salt to taste
2 to 3 tablespoon oil for cooking
water (for boiling noodles)

Directions:

Bring a large pot of water to boil.  Add a pinch of salt and spinach noodles.  Cook until they float, about 2 to 3 minutes. Drain them well.

Heat a wok over medium high heat; add oil, garlic and Sichuan pepper corns.  When garlic turns color, add pork, salt, black pepper and rice cooking wine.  Stir fry over high heat until the pork is golden brown.  Add spinach noodles, salt, soy sauce, sugar to taste.  Stir in chicken stock, and cook together for another 1 or 2 minutes. 

Serve immediately. 

Freeze any extra raw noodles and store them in a sealed Ziploc bag. 

Just love the color and taste.

Pork Dumplings with Garlic Chives

中文：猪肉韭菜煎饺

Dumplings are so widely popular in China that it becomes comfort food for many Chinese people.  Before the time food processor and stand mixer were introduced our daily lives, making dumplings was a time consuming chore.  My family made them only a couple times a year to celebrate important holidays.  The whole family gathered in the kitchen, kneading, chopping, mixing and wrapping the dumplings all together.  Ahhh, good old times.

Any other time of year, we can always buy dumplings from street food vendors or neighborhood dinners.   You can eat them as breakfast, lunch or dinner.  If you are served with dumplings when visiting a Chinese family, congratulations, you are highly welcomed in their home. 

With the help from meat grinder, stand mixer and pasta roller set, making fresh dumplings from scratch becomes easy and fun.   This time, I make traditional pork dumplings with garlic chives and then pan fry them.

For dumpling filling:

2/3 cup freshly ground pork
2 eggs
a handful fresh garlic chives
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/3 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon oyster sauce
1/4  teaspoon ground white pepper
1/2  to 1 teaspoon rice cooking wine
a few drops sesame oil
salt to taste
2 to 3 tablespoon oil

For dumpling wraps:

1 cup bread flour
1/4 cup water
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon oil

For pan frying dumplings:
3 to 4 tablespoon oil
1/2  to 3/4cup water
shopped green onion (optional)
white sesame (optional)

Directions:

Combine flour, water, salt and oil in a medium bowl.  Knead until a smooth dough ball forms.  It takes about 5 to 6 minutes.  Cover the dough with plastic wrap.  Let it rest for a couple hours.  If you are in a hurry, make sure the dough rest for at least 30 minutes. 

Add a pinch salt to eggs, make scrambled eggs over medium heat.  

Rinse the garlic chives thoroughly, pat dry and then chop them up.

Mix ground pork, soy sauce, ground white pepper, sugar, rice cooking wine, oyster sauce and sesame oil together.  Whisk with a pair chopsticks until all ingredients are well mixed. Add scrambled eggs and chopped chives, mix together. 

Add salt to taste. 

Feed the dough through pasta roller attachment to stand mixer at setting no. 1.  Repeat the folding and rolling on this setting for 5 to 6 times or until it reaches desired smoothness.  

Now roll the dough thinner at a narrower setting at 5。

With a round shape cookie cutter, cut dumpling wraps.

Roll and fold the left over again to make more dumpling wraps.  The more times you roll it, the more elastic it gets.  I change the thickness setting to 6. 

Put a couple tablespoons pork filling to the center of dumpling wrap, lift from one end and then folding on both sides. 

I make 28 dumplings.  That is about 3 to 4 servings.

Heat a big flat nonstick pan over medium high heat.  Add oil, and then place dumplings one next to each other in the pan.  Fry or 1 minute, add water and cover.  Cook until water is almost gone, add green onion and white sesame, cover again and reduce to low heat.  

Cook until the dumpling bottoms are golden brown.  It is kind of tricky to get perfect crust on the bottom.  Too much heat, they burn; undercooked, they look pale instead of golden brown. 

So, my advice is to watch it closely at the end of cooking.

Time to enjoy！ O(∩_∩)O~

I like to pair pan fried dumplings with garlic chili sauce, which of course is home made too. I posted the recipe  before too:

http://www.yankitchen.com/blog/2k1o27b6fzy82wn0sphsah9oqd3hbo  (An English version recipe is coming soon.)

Take a bite。

Love it

2014 holiday party

 中文菜谱：2014 节日PARTY

I don’t usually host big holiday party because a great party is kind of labor intensive and exhausting involving all the planning, shopping, chopping, baking and cooking.  But this year, I decided to make a change and host one. 

And I did.  It turned out great.  It was so satisfying to see people enjoy my food. We ate a lot, drank a lot of wine, and gossiped about what is new going on in our lives.  

It was just great. 

Macaroons

I made four flavors: original, chocolate, green tea and rose.  The filling was chocolate ganache.  

I have posted the recipe before：

http://www.yankitchen.com/english-blog/2014/11/15/macaroons

Recipe in Chinese:

http://www.yankitchen.com/blog/2014/11/7/2

Date Rolls and Almond Crispy Thin Cookies

Almond crispy thin cookies recipe has been posted before too.  Sorry there isn’t an English version for this recipe, but it is coming soon.

 http://www.yankitchen.com/blog/2014/11/2/2-2

Date Rolls:

Dough ingredients：

1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
4 to 5cold butter
2/3 egg
1/3 egg, beaten to make egg wash
white sesame

Date filling ingredients：

30 dates, pits removed
3 to 4 tablespoon honey

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 F/ 204°C。

Combine flour, butter, salt, sugar and egg in food processor; process until smooth dough is form and it takes about twenty to thirty seconds. 

Remove the dough from processor, cover it up and let it rest for 5 minutes.

In the meantime, combine dates and honey in the food processor.  Process until the date is and honey are well combined to be date paste.

Take out the paste and divide into three.  Roll them into three rolls, half inch in diameter.

Divide the dough into three too.  With a rolling pin, flatten each dough piece out into a thin flap. Place date paste on one end, and roll it up like sushi, dough seam side down.

Brush the rolls with egg wash, sprinkle with sesame, and then cut into bite size. 

Transfer rolls dough to a cookie pan.  Bake them for 14 to 16 minutes or until the tops are golden brown.

Mini rice cakes with coconut and red beans

Mini rice cake rolls with red beans

The two snacks above are adapted from my rice cakes recipe.  The English version is coming soon. http://www.yankitchen.com/blog/3qqttb1m37mtc9rm61phamsjim34rs

Almond chiffon cake with chocolate glaze

This one is adapted from the black sesame chiffon cake I posted before.  The English version is coming soon too.

http://www.yankitchen.com/blog/2014/10/18/2-5

The entrees are BBQ ribs, teriyaki chicken, Asian style BBQ beef, and red braised pork hocks.

BBQ ribs

I kind of cheated on this BBQ ribs because I used a store bought BBQ sauce.  Who cares? It turned out to be awesome!  Everyone loved it and it was the first dish to be gone.  I was lucky enough to get a small piece before it was gone.  Yum!

Ingredients:

1 slab baby back ribs (not spare ribs nor st. Louis style rib)
1 tablespoon paprika
1 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
freshly ground black pepper
salt to taste
1/2  bottle Kraft original BBQ sauce

Ingredients:

Preheat oven to 375 F/ 191°C。

Thoroughly rinse the ribs and pat dry.  Trim any excessive fat. 

Combine garlic powder, paprika, black pepper and salt to be dry rub. Sprinkle dry rub over both sides of ribs. 

Line a big baking pan with one layer of foil and another layer of parchment paper.  Place the ribs in center, wrap it up tightly.

Roast for two hours. 

After two hours, crank up oven heat to 425 F/ 218°C。

Open up the foil wrap.  Brush the top of ribs with a thick layer of BBQ sauce; send back to the oven; Roast another seven to ten minutes; take it out, brush with BBQ sauce; roast again for another seven to ten minutes, take it out, brush…… well, you get the idea.  Do it back and forth four to five times until the ribs are nicely glazed and they beautifully golden brown.    

It is very tender, juicy, and off the bones.

I serve the ribs with a marble BBQ set.  It can keep the ribs hot with two burner heating the slate from below. 

Teriyaki chicken

This recipe has been posted before too.

http://www.yankitchen.com/english-blog/teriyakichickenwithsnowpeas

Chinese version recipe:

http://www.yankitchen.com/blog/2014/11/12/2

Asian Style BBQ Beef 

It is my go to recipe whenever I crave for Asian style BBQ beef.  All my friends (mostly Asians too) love it. 

Ingredients:

4 pound chuckeye beef, thinly sliced
2 onions, thinly sliced
6 gloves garlic, mashed into garlic paste
2 tablespoon sugar
2/3 cup soy sauce
1 balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoon rice cooking wine
2 tablespoon tomato paste
2 tablespoon white sesame
oil for cooking

Directions:

In a large bowl, whisk together garlic paste, sugar, soy sauce, vinegar, rice wine, tomato paste and sesame until well combined.  Add thinly sliced beef.  Mix well.   Add onion, mix well again.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap; refrigerate overnight.

Heat a cast iron skillet over high heat.  Add oil, and then add beef just enough to cover the bottom of the pan.  Don not dump the beef into the skillet all at one time.  Flip the beef when bottom side is golden brown.   Repeat until all the beef is done.

Serve in a big bowl.  A buffet warmer with stand is perfect for serving and keeping food hot.  

I also made tons of flat bread from scratch but it is too bad that I forgot to take pictures. 

I prepared six diced vegetable toppings: tomato, cucumber, green onion, cilantro, jalapeño and onion.  But onion was forgotten in the fridge.  

Take a piece of flat bread, add meat and vegetable topping.  wa-lah! 

The last entrée is Asian pan bread with red braised pork hocks.  When the guests arrived, I was making grilled bread buns.  Too bad I didn’t have a chance to take it picture for this entrée. 

It is the same as I posted before.

http://www.yankitchen.com/english-blog/2014/11/24/asian-pan-bread-with-red-braised-pork-hock

Chinese version recipe:

http://www.yankitchen.com/blog/2014/roujiamo

 Of course I made four times meat as I made before.  Apparently four times meat was still not enough, because it was gone so fast.

I started to grill the bread buns after the guests got here.  They are best when served hot and freshly grilled.  

This is the perfect way to eat them.  Slice it open in the middle like a bagel and stuff with braised pork and any vegetable toppings you like.

I made about thirty to forty buns.  They were almost all gone. 

Don’t forget to eat vegetable! There was a large bowl of salad with balsamic vinaigrette dressing on the side.  

Happy holidays! 

Clay pot rice with Asian sausage, pork jerky and shitake mushroom

中文菜谱：腊味香菇锅仔饭

It is called clay pot rice because the traditional version is cooked in original clay pot.  I don’t have one.  Well; I used to have several, but I broke all of them.  Rice cooked in clay pot is definitely the best I have ever tasted.  However the clay pot is kind of hard to take care of.  After I switch to sturdy stone pot, everybody is happy.

My husband and I made some traditional style sausage and pork jerky last month.  After air dried and fermented for about a month, they are ready to eat.  And they taste great!  I am so proud of myself, haha …

For all those who don’t want to make Asian pork jerky and sausage from scratch, they are available in frozen section in most Asian grocery stores. 

Ingredients:

1 piece pork jerky
2 piece sausages
6 to 8 fresh shitake mushroom, thinly sliced
1 cup rice
a few drops of oil
1 to 1 1/2 teaspoon sugar
2 to 3tablespoon soy sauce
1 1/2 to 2 cup chicken broth / water
salt to taste

Directions: 

Rinse the pork jerky and sausage well, steam for about 20 minutes and then thinly slice.

Add the rice and oil into a stone pot, (a small cast pot will be good too). Whish the rice and oil together until the rice is evenly coated with oil.  Add chicken broth/ water, soak 10 minutes and then heat over medium-high heat.

After the broth boils, reduce the heat and bring to a simmer.   In 15 to 20 minutes, top the rice with one layer of sliced shitake mushroom, another layer of sliced sausage and pork jerky, cover, and cook until the rice is cook through, about another 10 minutes.

In a small bowl, whisk soy sauce and sugar together until sugar melts.  Sprinkle the soy sauce over cooked rice, mix well and serve immediately.   

The aroma from sausage, pork jerky and shitake mushroom are so comforting that it reminds me of my grandma’s kitchen.  The soy sauce goes a long way in the whole pot rice.

Mix well in the pot and then serve individually in regular bowls.

Stone pot is so thick that it stays hot for a really long time.  Isn’t it a nice feature during winter? 

Asian Pan Bread with Red Braised Pork Hock

中文版菜谱：红烧肘子肉夹馍

To be honest, it is so hard to come up with a proper English recipe name for this traditional Chinese dish.

Pork hock is one of my favorite meats to cook with.  They contain a lot of gelatin which is claimed to be good for the skin. After cooked for a couple hours, they become tender and very flavorful.  But they are not always available in my local grocery store.  Whenever they show on the shelves, I have to get to them before other Asian people do. 

I was lucky enough to score two packages of pork hocks during my last grocery trip.  Each hock weighs about one pound, the perfect size.  When the pork hocks are cooking on the stove, I use bread machine to make bread dough, and then use an electric grill to make some Asian style pan bread.

Red braised pork hock ingredients:

2 pork hocks (about one pound each)
2 to 3 tablespoon rock sugar (or regular granulated sugar)
1/4 to 1/3cup soy sauce
1large piece of ginger
1tablespoon Sichuan peppercorns
2 cardamoms
2 to 3 star anises
5 to 6 clovers
1 to 2 pieces of dried rhizoma
3 to 4 bay leaves
2 green onions
1/2  cup rice cooking wine
salt to taste
boiling water

Directions：

Wrap the star anises, Sichuan peppercorns, cardamoms，clovers，dried rhizoma and bay leaves with a coffee filter paper（cheese cloth works well too）。

Tie it up.

Bring a large pot of water to boil with pork hocks in the water together.  Cook the hocks for 10 minutes after boil, and then fish them out with a thong.

Put the pork hocks, along with spicy bag, rock sugar, rice cooking wine, soy sauce, green onions and ginger into a cast iron pot.   I use a 4 and1/4 quart Le Creuset.  Fill the pot with fresh boiling water.  The water should cover the pork hocks or a little bit above them. 

Cook on medium high heat until it boils again, cover the pot and reduce the heat to simmer for about 90 minutes or until a fork or chopstick can easily pierce the meat.

Discard the green onion.  Cook on medium high heat again.  Cook until the sauce thickens up.  Stir gently to prevent meat getting burnt. 

When the sauce thickens up enough to coat the back of a spoon, remove from heat and serve immediately.  

The remaining sauce should have consistency of dark thick syrup.  

Prepare Asian style pan bread while the pork hocks are being braised.

Ingredients：

2 cup bread flour
3/4 cup lukewarm milk
1 teaspoon yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon oil
1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions：

Dissolve the yeast with lukewarm milk.  Let it stand for 5 minutes.  Transfer the milk into bread machine container, add bread flour, sugar, oil and salt, and start Dough cycle.  

The bread machine will automatically work all ingredients into a smooth dough ball and proof it. 

When the Dough cycle is done, the dough should be double in size.  Sometimes, the dough may  double in size before designated time. In that case, remove the dough earlier. 

Punch down the dough, fold it gently into a ball, cover and let it rest for about  10 minutes.  

Evenly divide the dough into 16 pieces.

Using a rolling pin, flatten each dough piece out into a thin flap, roll it up from one end like a jelly roll, and then roll them up again like a dough lollipop as shown in the picture.  

Roll out all the dough pieces to desired thickness, about a quarter inch thick again, cover and let them rest another 10 minutes.

Preheat the electric grill.

Place the bread dough on grill surface, one inch apart from each other, cover, and grill 3 to 4 minutes. 

Grill 6 to 7 pieces at a time, very efficiently.  

Pull the meat from pork hocks, tear or cut into small pieces. 

Mix well with the thick sauce. 

Slice the bread in half and stuff it with pulled pork.

Time to enjoy！

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