shark's fin and sichuan pepper

garlicky pork slices by kattebelletje.

As soon as I found out Fuchsia Dunlop had written a new book with her memoirs on eating in China, I ordered it rightaway. I read it cover to cover in one day. Fuchsia Dunlop's story is very interesting: she did all the things one would have liked to do in China.

For starters, she lived in Chengdu, heart of Sichuan, were the spiciest food of China comes from. Fuchsia Dunlop had ample opportunity, Chinese liuxuesheng [foreign-student] fashion, to hang out in all those eating places instead of staying in her dormitory to study - but then, studying Chinese on the street is studying too, doesn't it? Then Dunlop managed to attend a three month Chinese cooking course in the Sichuan culinary institute, together with a German friend. After the summer, she was asked again to enroll in the real chef training of the same institute. How awesome, to be trained as a Chinese chef for a full year!

This book tells this, and more. How to acquire a Chinese taste takes a very long time; truly enjoying special Chinese textures, like sea cucumber or tripe and that sort of thing. But she is not snobby about this, it just happens as you keep on eating. Dunlop describes how living in China changes you to become two selves, one Chinese, and one English one. But there is a downside too, she was fed up for a while with China and the Chinese, always lusting for food.

Although Dunlop craves Chinese food more than anything, all the Chinese food scares did have her think about being a vegetarian. The growth of the Chinese economy and the opening up to the world might change things in the West as well: what happens when the hungry Chinese turn to the Western cheeses, wines and fish (think of the Japanese tuna scarcity since the Chinese start to eat sashimi?)

After writing her first book (Sichuan cookery / Land of Plenty) Fuchsia Dunlop got a job at the BBC writing about Chinese food, and was voted as culinary journalist of the year 2006. She wrote a second cookbook (about Hunan cuisine), which I own as well now. I like her recipes, they are well written and she sure knows what she is talking about. On the picture here one of the things from Sichuan Cookery / Land of Plenty: garlicky pork slices.

These garlicky pork slices are not made by me, but by Flickr friend FotoosVanRobin, who I met IRL last Wednesday. That was fun! We went to the shops to get all kinds of ingredients and then cooked together. I made some baozi in her wonderfully large steamer, and she had prepared two mouthwatering dishes from Fuchsia Dunlop's books (see photo). Recipe of this pork dish can be found here.

Fuchsia Dunlop. Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China. W. W. Norton, 2008.

bubur sumsum

bubur sumsum by kattebelletje.

I am not a dessert person really. But this bubur sumsum dessert, an Indonesian pudding made of rice flour, coconut milk and pandan leaves, is no hassle at all to make, and everyone really enjoys it so much at the end of their meal. The creamy, silky bubur has a soothing, smooth, pudding-like texture, and the special sweetness of the palm sugar, flavoured with pandan leaves, adds a perfect sweetness to its subtle and bland flavour.

Indonesian children are lucky, it is not only a snack, they can even have it for breakfast. Poor Dutch kids - they are supposed to have healthy breakfasts with brown bread and cheese instead of puddings!

To make this, you will need (humble portion for 4): 50 grams of rice flour (I could only find this in the baby section of my supermarket, so there is a package with a smiling baby in my cupboard right now); 1 tin of coconut milk (400 mls); a pinch of salt (or 2) and 1 shredded pandan leaf. (You can buy frozen pandan leaves from the Oriental supermarket, so stock up on them). Put rice flour, coconut milk, pandan leaf and salt in a saucepan and whisk to combine. Bring slowly to the boil, keep stirring until it thickens. This will only take like 5 minutes, it has become a thick cream. You can now eat the bubur sumsum hot or cold; switch off the heat. It will solidify more if you let it cool.

In a second saucepan, combine 8 tablespoons of palm sugar (dark brown sugar) with 4 tablespoons of water and (again) one pandan leaf. Heat until the sugar dissolves and turns into a syrupy sauce; let simmer slowly to have it take on the pandan flavour. Divide the pudding into bowls and spoon over palm sugar syrup.

Very special! Be careful, you can easily overeat... or you will rush to the shop to buy more tins of coconut milk to make it again the same day.

cauliflower stir-fry

simple stir-fry by kattebelletje.

Cooking can be an elaborate affair, but sometimes it is quick and easy. Like last night. I didn't quite know what to cook so I looked in my fridge to see what I would find there. Half a cauliflower (well, why not?). This is a challenge to some - see Mr. WateetOns' la semaine des choux fleurs - but it doesn't have to be. It can be really easy.

Cut the cauliflower into small florets. Open freezer to find frozen peas. Take about a cup. Cut some cooked frozen shrimp (also from freezer, I used about 4) into pieces.

Stir-fry the cauliflower florets in a wok with hot oil. Keep stirring, don't burn. Add frozen peas. Add a little bit of water, a tablespoon of soy sauce, a pinch of sugar, a bit of salt and let simmer for about 5 minutes. Add shrimp and simmer a little bit more until cauliflower and shrimp are done. Now that's an easy Chinese style dish isn't it?

We had it with a second stir-fry of potato slivers, which I made again to check if FotoosVanRobin's complaint about my long cooking times for that dish were OK or not. Turned out it much depends on the kind of potato you use (but 10 minutes might be a bit much), so the only thing I can say is: check while you cook, don't only go for the egg timer!

baozi

baozi by kattebelletje.

It is funny how lately my new food surprises don't come from a new cooking technique. I have been surprised by the excellent taste of mapo tofu that materialized; I have been surprised by the delicious flavour of the Chinese eggplant recipe; and yesterday I was shocked to find my homemade baozi (Chinese meat buns) tasted really great. Great as in “if I ordered this in a restaurant I would be happy and come back again” kind of way.

But the funny thing was this didn't have to do anything with my cooking techniques. The secret was all in the ingredients. For my mapo tofu recipe, I found adding a lot of oil to fry meat and chili sauce in, makes the difference between pretty OK and great; for the eggplant I found buying Chinese slender eggplants does the trick (so tender and not-bitter); and for the baozi (meat buns – white dough with a meat or vegetable filling, eaten as snack in China, called bapao in Dutch because of our Indonesia connection) using the right flour turned out to be vital. Without this flour, your buns might not get the right texture and you might end up with a food experiment: interesting, but just for once.

I bought an interesting package with a dark green Chinese paksoi cabbage on the front with a very white flour inside. On the package it said 'low gluten flour' in Chinese, but “Plain Flour” in English. The package explained it was suitable for Chinese style buns. So: I found a recipe in one of my older Chinese cookbooks and gave it a try. For the dough, you will need 300 grams of white flour (low gluten) and 120 grams of sugar. I thought this was a bit much on the sweet side (and I ran out of sugar) so I added about 70 grams. Then 2 tablespoons of lard, one tablespoon of baking powder and 250 mls of water. The dough became a bit sticky so I added a bit more flour, so in the end I am not sure if it was supposed to be supple like that. Cover with a wet towel and let sit for 10 minutes.

For the filling, you will need: 125 grams of ready charsiu meat (Chinese style cured pork); one tablespoon of soy; one tablespoon of sweet bean paste; one chopped clove of garlic and 2 small spring onions. Fry garlic and onions in some oil, add soy, sweet bean paste and meat; stir to combine. Thicken with 2 tablespoons of cornstarch diluted with some water. You will need a thick filling. Add some drops of sesame oil and some pepper. Don't add salt since the bean paste and meat are quite salty by themselves.

Cut the dough into 12 portions and shape into rounds. They might be sticky, flour your workspace. Then take a large tablespoon of filling and pleat the dough to close the baozi buns. It actually doesn't matter if they are closed tightly or not, because they will expand and be artistic and fluffy anyway. Shape them one by one – you will find you can make them quite quickly. Handle them gently, the low gluten content makes them tear easily. Put on a floured tray until ready to steam. Put in a bamboo steamer, lined with baking paper and steam for about 10 minutes until puffed up and ready to eat. They will have doubled in size and taste great! The dough is light and spongelike, like a cake, and has a slight sweet flavour. The filling is savory and delicious.

I never suspected the dough to have anything to do with the sweet flavour I tasted when having a baozi, so this was quite an eye opener for me. I always thought the sweetness was in the filling somehow. You could make this with minced meat or ckicken too, easily. Just fry it beforehand and add flavorings, then use cornstarch to thicken it up. Easy and tasty snack.

lentil stew

lentil stew by kattebelletje.

One can't have too many cookbooks, don't you agree? Well... I own over 150 I think (but then I count the small ones too); but that doesn't keep me from leafing through cookbooks when I am in a bookshop. Even if I feel the overkill more acute than, say, one year ago, I am still tempted to buy a good book when I see one.

So, last week, after putting it off for quite a while, I bought Sam & Sam Clark's Casa Moro, which is the second in their Moro series of three. All recipes have Spanish, Moroccan or Turkish influences, and the two chefs really know how to make their recipes tasty and to-the-point; the only problem is that you just don't know which recipe to try first!
Here is my first choice from the book: a lentil stew. Some people hate lentils, but I really like them. Here they are combined with Spanish chorizo, so how can anyone resist?

For a stew for two, start to fry 20 cms of thin chorizo ("the frying kind") in some olive oil in a stew pan. (I was lucky to stock this my fridge, since I have a Barcelona food connection!) This chorizo is so heavenly, anything with it will taste good, and this lentil stew really got alive from its flavour. Take out the chorizo and keep the orange oil.

In this oil, fry one chopped onion and one carrot with 4 tablespoons of fat bacon dice. The original recipe called for something called tocino, but I figured bacon strips would do, too. After frying for 10 minutes, add 1 chopped clove of garlic; one (fresh) bay leaf; 1 pre-soaked dried nora pepper and 120 to 150 grams of lentils - I used Puy lentils.

Add half a litre of water and let simmer for about 30 minutes. Check for it not to get too dry. The lentils take on the wonderful chorizo and bacon flavours and are transformed to a deep earthy dish, which is great with crusty bread or any kind of flatbread. Before eating, splash on some extra salt and pepper, olive oil and 3 tablespoons of chopped flat leaf parsley.

This book is going to be my new best friend. I have also cooked a cauliflower, chickpea, cured lemon rind and coriander salad; and am planning the lamb mince and potato patties for tonight. Keep you posted!