A vegetable stir-fry in Winter

We all know that stir-fries involve a hot wok and stirring around cut vegetables. But almost every time I think of making one, I have to think it through from square one. Here is a technique that works. First make up a sauce that you add at end for flavor, and help steaming at end. This you can save in refrigerator for next time because it makes plenty. Put up rice in rice cooker.

Then cut up vegetables; toast sesame seeds. Happily I have carrots, onions and cabbage from my winter CSA. (Sad) broccoli I picked up at the supermarket. 

Stir-fry sauce:

Soy sauce, 1/4 c. (4T)

Water, 6 T

Rice vinegar, 1T+

Sugar, 1 T (optional) or maybe try some mirin

Miso, 1 T

Cornstarch, 2 t

Garlic powder, 1/4 t

Ingredients:

Tofu, 1/3 block, cut into small-ish cubes. Don’t bother pressing.

Vegetables, garlic and ginger, see below

Sesame seeds

Heat the wok and add a couple T sesame oil (plain, not toasted). Add tofu and let sit for a couple minutes. Stir, and scrape up and let sit to develop a bit of color. Remove onto a plate.

Add a bit more oil and sauté: 

Onions

Carrots, cut into matchsticks (or slices)

Broccoli, cut into florets, medium size

Shiitake mushrooms, sliced

Cabbage, thinly sliced

Garlic, grated

When nearly cooked, add some of the stir-fry sauce, stir and cook a bit.

Add in grated ginger.

Serve with rice. Top with toasted sesame seeds.

Here’s a stir-fry recipe for Summer, which uses a similar technique. Celery is a fine addition.

Bucatini with Maitake mushrooms

I have been enjoying branching out in the world of mushrooms. I have long passed white mushrooms, dwelling in the land of crimini which is always a superior mushroom because it has flavor, unlike white, and also shiitake. 

I was poking around the packaged mushroom display at Honest Weight Food Coop and have tried several interesting varieties, and there’s really no going back. Roasted exotic mushrooms are superbly delicious and very healthy as a bonus. Maitake — or hen of the woods — are a current fave. Delicious plus they lack the sometimes objectionable quality of squeakiness that many mushrooms have. Just cut off the base and separate the stems into chunks and roast. I also like beech (Shimeji). I want to try King Trumpet (Eryngii).

Here’s a good recipe to showcase roasted maitake mushrooms:

Preheat oven to 425-450 degrees.

Put prepared mushrooms on baking pan, drizzle with olive oil and add S&P. Roast for about 15 minutes to get slight char. 

Remove from oven and sprinkle with sherry vinegar. Set aside.

Put up pot of water to boil.

Put a couple T butter and 1 T miso on counter to soften, and then mix up.

Sauté: 

Shallot, chopped

Fresh thyme

Pancetta

Garlic, chopped

Whatever greens you have on hand, even par-cooked frozen spinach will do.

Cook bucatini until al dente or slightly less. Reserve cooking water.

Drain pasta. Put miso butter mixture into sauté pan. Dump in pasta and mix with contents of pan, with a bit of reserved pasta cooking water to make a sauce. 

That’s it! 

Roasted chicken thighs, Sichuan style

Pining for my favorite Sichuan restaurant, I have started filling my pantry with quality ingredients and have started cooking Sichuan dishes. Fuchsia Dunlop is an approachable, reliable guide — Land of Plenty and her update in The Food of Sichuan. I am going to explore my at-home library, including Double Awesome Chinese Food and Dunlop’s Every Grain of Rice. A good food source, Mala Market, also has recipes. Also check out China Sichuan Food and Woks of Life (here’s the 25 recipes e-book). I’m going to try Chinese Cooking Demystified videos on You Tube

Ingredients:

Bone-in chicken thighs, 3 or 4

ginger, about 5 slices, 1/4″ thick

scallions, 5, cut into 3″ lengths

Soy sauce, 2 T

Oyster sauce, 3-1/2 T

Chile crisp, 1 T

wine or water 1 T

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425°.

Mix up sauce in a bowl. Wipe chicken dry and season with S&P.

Heat 1-2 T large sauté pan over medium-high heat, and when hot, add 1-2 T vegetable oil and sliced ginger. Cook for one minute, and then increase heat and add chicken, skin side down. Sear until browned, and then flip to sear on other side.

Add scallions and sauce to pan, pouring over chicken and scallions.

Put chicken pan in oven and cook for about 25+ minutes until 165°. You may want to turn and/or spoon sauce back over chicken mid-way through roasting.

Remove chicken from oven and let rest for five minutes or so. Good served with rice and steamed broccoli, or even better Gai Lan with oyster sauce if you have access to fresh Chinese greens.

Source — Woks of Life

Stewed puy lentils

Puy lentils are delicious and remain firm but palatable when cooked. Here’s I like to cook ‘em:

Sauté onions, then carrots, celery, parsnips, garlic. Add in lentils and stir. Add broth and water and cook about 30 minutes, until near done. Then add in tomatoes and sausage and/or spinach and heat through. Top with olive oil. Serve with garlic crostini.

Ingredients:

Lentils, 1 c, picked over and rinsed

Onion, 1 minced

Carrot, 1 good-size carrot, diced

Celery, 1 stalk diced

Parsnips, 2 small or 1 large, diced

Garlic, 2 cloves, minced

Tomatoes: either a good smudge of paste added before lentils, or else 1 c canned tomatoes added at end

Chicken or vegetable stock and water to come to ~3 c

Chicken sausage, optional

Thyme sprigs (the leaves will fall off and you can remove stems at end)

Sweet red pepper flakes with cumin

Bay leaf

Directions:

Sauté sausage in olive oil in medium soup pot over energetic heat to brown a bit and cook through, and remove to small bowl and set aside.

Sauté onion for several minutes with salt until translucent. Add carrots, celery and parsnips and cook about 5 mins or so until tender, adding salt. Add sweet pepper flakes, cumin and garlic and sauté for a minute or so. Add in tomato paste and cook for a couple minutes. 

Add in lentils, and stir. Add in thyme and bay leaf and stock and water.
Bring to boil and simmer partially covered for about 35 minutes until lentils are almost entirely tender. Add in tomatoes, sausage and spinach and cook about 10 minutes longer.

Serve with garlic crostini and topped with olive oil or yogurt/oil/lemon topping:

Idea to top lentils:

Yogurt (Greek or thick part), 1/2 c

Olive oil, 1 T

Lemon juice, 2 t

Salt 

Guidance

New York Times recipe for Puy lentils

Prior stewed lentil recipe

Baked tofu with chile crisp

Yes, chile crisp is an amazing condiment/ingredient! I get mine here.

I have not eaten good Szechuan food at my favorite Chinese restaurant in many months; this may please your palate and your heart as it does mine, limping along until reopening — and hopefully happy dining out! — in 2021.

Make a marinade; dip your tofu slices and roast at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. In winter roasted cabbage is really an okay vegetable, especially when roasted with. . . chile crisp! Make some rice and you have a happy meal. Green beans if they’re around are a good side dish — just drizzle with oil, S&P and roast alongside the tofu.

If you have time, it’s a good idea to press your tofu to drain of some water. It’s okay without doing this too — just squeeze the block of tofu in a towel and proceed. 

Here’s the marinade:

Chile-crisp, 3 T

Soy sauce, 3 T

Black vinegar, 1-1/2 T

Sesame oil, 1-1/2 t

Honey, 1 T

Garlic cloves, 2 minced

Ginger, grated or minced, about 1″ or so

Scallions — white for marinade, green for topping for serving

Optional additions to marinade: ground and sieved Szechuan peppercorns; Pixian bean paste

Tofu, cut in 1/2” slabs

Cilantro — for topping to serve, optional

Cabbage, cut into 1” wedges

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425-430 degrees. (higher if green beans, up to 450 °)

Get out sheet pan and put a piece of parchment paper on it, if desired.

Make marinade and dip tofu slices in and lay on sheet pan. 

Slice cabbage into 1” wedges, separate a bit and lay on sheet pan. Drizzle with neutral oil, S&P.

Roast about 20 minutes. Turn tofu and cabbage. Cook until everything looks cooked about 5 -10 minutes more. 

Source

Simpler idea for roasting tofu sans chile crisp:

soy sauce or tamari, garlic, honey, ginger, and sesame oil 

Here’s a version of chile crisp that should be available at your local Asian store: Lao Gan Ma Spicy Chili Crisp.

Roasted winter vegetables

If you don’t know what to eat in mid-December, then I suggest you do as I did and haul out your root vegetables and cabbage and roast on a sheet pan. Put up some farro to cook in 30 minutes, and you have a delicious meal. Make some yogurt/buttermilk dressing and it’s good to eat room temp as leftovers. 

Fortunately I did this just as the snowstorm hit and I didn’t get plowed out until the following night and then didn’t leave the house in the car anyway for another day so there I was at home eating . . . . roasted vegetables. No complaints really. 

I dumped all the vegetables onto a sheet pan at once, tossed with olive oil and S&P. Next time I might stagger and put the harder/longer-cooking items on to cook first and cabbage and onions, for example, later. Then they are all done at the same time and you don’t have to do what I did and pull onions off the (hot!) pan with tongs. 

Here’s how I did it:

Preheat oven to 400 or 425 degrees.

Cabbage, cut into 1” thick wedges

Potatoes, peels on, cut into small-ish pieces or slices

Sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into small-ish pieces or slices

Parsnips, peeled and cut into small-ish pieces

Turnips, cut into small-ish pieces 

Carrots, peeled and cut into small-ish pieces 

Butternut squash, cubed (or other squash such as acorn or delicata, sliced into rings)

Onions, peeled and cut into wedges

A few garlic cloves, peeled

Mix vegetables with olive oil, S&P

Roast for about 20 minutes, and turn. Remove what is done, such as onions, and continue roasting, checking and turning every 6-8 minutes or so. Or even better: Add onions and cabbage later on.

Serve vegetables warm or room temp — they are fine to hang out on the tray. Good with warm farro. Here’s how to cook farro: Rinse 1 c farro. Put in medium pot with 3x water, bay leaf and good pinch of salt. Bring to boil covered, then simmer 30. minutes until tender. Drain. Let sit. (To cool for other uses, spread out on sheet pan.)

Next day, take out vegetables and farro to come to room temp. Make dressing.  It’s good drizzled over farro and vegetables. In the summer I might add dill or other fresh herbs.

Dressing:

Buttermilk, 1/4 c

Yogurt, 1/4 c (use the congealed, firmer part, or else Greek yogurt perhaps)

Garlic clove, grated

Sweet red pepper flakes

Cumin 

Hot red pepper flakes

S&P

Olive oil, ~1 T

Lemon juice, ~ 1 t

Inspiration

Fish braised in coconut milk — Thai curry style, with greens

 

This is a very delicious, soothing and easy fish dish as a change of pace from roasted fish. You make up a Thai curry-type mixture of shallot, ginger, chiles and garlic, sauté them, add coconut milk and fish sauce and a bit of brown sugar, and braise the fish stove top for about six minutes or so. Remove — to preheated dish in low oven — and add greens and cook them a few minutes. Then serve: fish, greens, sauce and hopefully some rice. It’s a fine thing when you have a hankering for the Maesri curry in a can and the cupboard is bare! I might try this technique for boneless chicken breasts. If you do have the curry paste, add 1/3 to 1/2 can after sautéing shallot mixture briefly, and cook/stir that before moving on to add coconut milk. Off the charts delicious I have been making regularly since. It is super-easy to make and yes, you can proudly serve it to guests because the flavors are complex and it is so delicious.

Ingredients:

Shallot, 1/2 thinly sliced

Garlic, 1 clove, thinly sliced

Ginger, 1” piece, peeled and cut into thin matchsticks

Thai or Serrano Chile, thinly sliced (I used less than a whole, but a whole next time will be fine)

Thai red curry paste, 1/3 small can (optional but great!)

Coconut milk, 2/3 can (I prefer Chaokoh brand)

Fish sauce, 1 t (Red Boat is excellent)

Light brown sugar, 1/2 t

Baby bok choy, spinach, braising greens or Napa cabbage

Lime juice

Optional: cilantro and scallions — top top finished dish

Directions:

Put up rice to cook.

Prepare shallot, garlic, ginger and chile pepper

Preheat oven to low. 

Collect other ingredients; rinse greens and drain, open coconut milk and curry can. Get out fish and season with salt.

In sauté pan, heat over medium heat and add 1 T grapeseed or other vegetable oil. Add shallot, garlic, ginger and chile and cook stirring for two minutes. Add salt. Add in curry paste, if using, and sauté for a minute or so. 

Add coconut milk, fish sauce and brown sugar, and stir and simmer for a couple minutes to dissolve sugar. Add fish and cook over low heat covered about 6+ minutes until cooked through. Remove with fish spatula to warmed serving bowl and put into oven.

Add greens to coconut milk mixture and cook over medium to medium-low heat, covered if there are a lot. Takes just a couple minutes. 

Serve fish, greens, some broth, and rice. Squeeze some lime on top of fish and greens. Top with cilantro and/or scallions if you want to. 

Source: Colu Henry, New York Times