The Chinese Feast

(you say gyoza, I say jiaozi, you say dumplings, I say YUM)

My sister, K, came to visit me over spring break, and she loves to cook and eat almost as much as I do! This year, spring break is the week between St. Patrick's Day and Easter (St. Patrick's and Easter in the same week?! I blame global warming), so to properly honor both holidays, I naturally decided to make a huge dinner of Chinese food with K and S. So maybe it's not a feast by true Chinese standards, but a dinner with more than one course and a side dish is a big deal in Spyhopworld. Not only that, but I hadn't made either dish before (well, not by myself), and K and S had even less experience than I. Still, we girded our loins, and soldiered on into the realm of: Egg Drop Soup, Steam-Fried Dumplings, and Rice!

In reality, this whole fiasco began because I had 3/4 lb. of ground pork hanging around my freezer that I wanted to use for something. By itself, 3/4 lb. of meat isn't really enough to feed 3 people, so I was trying to think of what I could do to stretch it, and then I remembered how much I love jiaozi (a.k.a. gyoza). I hadn't had jiaozi in ages - I hadn't even had Chinese food in ages, and I knew jiaozi were a possible make-at-home food because years ago one of my Chinese professors invited my class to her home to make them for Chinese New Year. We made 400. That sounds like a lot until you hear how many jiaozi K, S, and I made (and ate!) in one night: 50. K and I mixed up the filling, and then the three of us sat down and folded up 50 dumplings at the dining table; K steam-fried them in the frying pan (more on that later), and then I whipped up some egg-drop soup (it's easy). The rice pretty much cooked itself, as per usual. If you added some quick stir-fried bok choi and maybe a dessert, this would make a pretty impressive dinner party. So without further ado, on to the recipes!

Steam-Fried Jiaozi (Chinese Dumplings)
(makes 50, total time: ~1 hour with 3 people)

1/2 pound green or napa cabbage, shredded
3/4 pound ground pork
2 green onions, minced
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, minced
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon vinegar (traditionally rice wine vinegar, but I used balsamic)
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 package of 50 wrappers (mine said 'gyoza wrappers' on them)
~1 tablespoon oil for each frying pan batch
2 tablespoon water for each frying pan batch
small bowl of water

Dipping Sauce
soy sauce
vinegar
sugar or honey
chili oil

1. Combine all ingredients except wrappers and sauce in a large mixing bowl. Mix (hands are best) until just combined. Don't overhandle.




2. Place one wrapper flat in the palm of your non-dominant hand and put about a teaspoon of filling in the middle of it.



3. Wet a finger of your free hand and use it to wet half the edge of the wrapper (a semi-circle). Fold the wrapper in half, pinching the center of the two edge-halves (wet and dry) together. Pleat the dry edge on either side of this center point and pinch the pleated edge to the non-pleated edge, sealing the edges all the way around the semi-circle. I know this sounds complicated, looking at the photos should help.


4. Heat the oil for one batch in a large frying pan to the temperature you usually brown meat/cook pancakes at. Somewhere between medium and high. Place as many jiaozi as possible on the bottom of the pan - they can touch each other, but each should be on the pan bottom. Cover and let brown ~3 minutes, then uncover, add the 2 tablespoons of water, recover, and let steam ~5 minutes. This is what's called steam-frying. Repeat until all the jiaozi are cooked.


5. Mix dipping sauce ingredients to your taste, and consume!



Egg Drop Soup
(4 small or 2 large servings, total time: ~10 minutes)

4 cups chicken broth
2 eggs and 1 yolk
ground ginger, salt, and white pepper to taste
optional: ~1 tablespoon cornstarch to thicken

1. Bring broth to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer.

2. Beat eggs and yolk together until consistency is even. Drizzle the beaten eggs into the broth while stirring the soup in a circle.

3. Add remaining ingredients. Told you it was easy.


P.S. Thanks to K for some of these photos!

Confession + Recipe = Confessipe?

(the impostors)



(deeeleeshus)

I have a confession: these are muffins. That's right, I made muffins, perfectly good muffins, and then decided I actually wanted cupcakes, so I iced them. Shocking, I know. But hear me out: what really IS the difference between muffins and cupcakes? I mean I know in general muffins can have things baked in them, like nuts or fruit, and are generally larger than cupcakes, but really, you COULD bake cupcakes with nuts in them and make them really big. In this case, I think the plain muffins were a little less crumbly-cakey than a cupcake would be, but I think the real difference between cupcakes and muffins is frosting. I'm pretty sure if you fed a naive test subject one of my frosted muffins, and told them it was a cupcake, what they would say would be "Mmmmm!" and not "This is no cupcake, this is a MUFFIN IMPOSTOR!"

And now, for side-by-side comparison: the muffin recipe I used and a basic cupcake recipe, both found online at either, recipezaar, allrecipes, epicurious, or cooks.com, I don't remember (oops). P.S. - I multiplied my muffin recipe by 3, because it makes 6 muffins, and the cupcake recipe makes 18.

Muffins...................................Cupcakes
3 cups flour.......................................3 cups flour
3/4 teaspoons salt...........................1/2 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons baking powder............2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/8 cup of oil.....................................2/3 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup sugar...................................1 3/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups milk................................1 1/4 cups milk
1 1/2 eggs.........................................2 eggs
...........................................................1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Not identical twins, but maybe sisters, right? Clearly the muffins aren't as sweet as the cupcakes, but once you slap that frosting on top, they're really not lacking in sweetness. In case you were wondering about the recipe instructions, both follow the usual quickbread formula: you combine the dry ingredients (flour, salt, and baking powder) in one bowl, the wet ingredients (fat, sugar, milk, eggs, and vanilla) in another, beat the wet ones well, then slowly add the dry. The muffins bake at 400, and the cupcakes at 350, both for ~20 minutes.

Overnight Bread

(a few slices of bread for sandwiches)

One of the recipes I'm definitely keeping from the Hillbilly Housewife experiment is her recipe for Overnight Bread. I'd never made bread before trying this recipe, but I found it easy and accessible. I've heard a lot of people talk about using bread makers, but for a bread this simple I almost think it would be more work to take the machine out and clean it and start it up. I make two loaves at a time, which works because I only have 2 pans, and besides that homemade bread doesn't keep like store-bought bread does because it doesn't have any preservatives in it. I also make my bread half-whole wheat, and I think the flavor and texture turn out pretty nicely. This is a light bread, and it tends to be a little crumblier than the store-bought stuff I'm used to, but I'm not sure how it compares to other similar recipes.

Oh, and there's a reason for the name. This bread is best made before bed, because of the very long first rise.

Overnight Bread
adapted from Hillbilly Housewife
(makes 2 loaves, total time: ~18 hours)

2 cups warm tap water
1/3 cup non-fat dry milk
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 packet yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 of 1/3 cup of vegetable oil
3 cups all-purpose flour
3 cups whole wheat flour

1. Mix water, dry milk, and sugar in a very large bowl. Sprinkle the yeast on top, and allow to sit for a few minutes.

2. Add salt, oil, and flour. Mix with a wooden spoon until the dough becomes too thick, then use your hands to bring it together the rest of the way.

3. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead for 10 full minutes. Coat the dough with oil, replace it into the bowl, cover, and let it rise for 12-18 hours, until it has doubled in size.

4. Punch the dough down, divide it into 2 loaves, and place them in oiled loaf pans. Cover both, and let rise again, 2 hours, or until they've doubled in size.

5. Bake the loaves at 350 for 40 minutes. Cool them for a few minutes in the pans, but then turn them out and cool on a rack until they reach room temperature. I wrap mine in paper towels and place them in large zip-loc bags.

Notes: You could of course use actual milk instead of water and dry milk powder, but first you'd have to bring it to the temperature of warm tap water.

Curry in a Hurry Without Worry

(Yes, this is a picture of the recipe book, and not the food. The book is prettier, trust me.)

Have you ever had one of those days? You know, when you get home from Kendo and you're dog tired and starving and it's almost 10pm? And all you have in the kitchen is half a bag of lentils and half a can of tomatoes? Ok, so maybe that's just me, but anyone can appreciate a dinner you can put together when time and ingredients are lacking. That is why I make Dal. I have this bright little paperback cookbook called Curries Without Worries. I normally cook Thai curry (I know, I know, I'll get around to posting that recipe someday), but this book is devoted to basic Indian recipes. I'll admit I haven't gotten around to some of the more effortful dishes from it - Roghanjosh: the ultimate Kashmiri lamb dish, for instance - but there are two pages of my copy that are well worn. One of them is the primer on how to cook long-grained rice (basmati, etc), and the other is the page labeled "Delicious Everyday DAL."

Dal is essentially lentil curry. All you need are lentils, some type of vegetable, water, and spices. It's so warm! So fragrant! So tasty and spiced and comfort food-y! You don't know how many times lentils have rescued me when I'm saying to myself "Oh my GOD there is nothing in the kitchen to eat. I am SO hungry . . . man I really don't want to go to the grocery store. I'm so tired! Wheat thins are not dinner!"

Delicious Everyday DAL
adapted from Curries Without Worries by Sudha Koul
(4 servings - ok, so I ate half -, total time: 40 minutes)

1 cup lentils
6 cups water
1/2 to 1 (14.5 oz) can diced tomatoes
2 garlic cloves, minced
4 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon ground ginger
S&P to taste
chili powder to taste

1. Bring all ingredients to a boil over high heat.

2. Reduce heat to low, simmer for ~30 minutes, until lentils are tender.

3. Yes, that's really it.

A few notes: the original recipe calls for more authentic ingredients, like real tomatoes, fresh ginger, coriander, and ghee instead of butter. I'm sure it tastes great like that, but it tastes great like this too. You can serve this with rice or flatbread; most recently I served it with garlic toast, but that's just me.

Colors

Well, I'm getting mixed signals, so I'm going to keep playing around with the blog colors a little. Right now I have them set up in an ode to the blue cupcake photo. :)

What Do You Think?

I'm trying to decide whether I like the black background or white background better. What do you think?

The Hillbilly Experiment: What I Learned

(kneading 2 loaves of HbHw's 'overnight bread' /flex)

This was my normal food-day before the experiment: wake up 30 minutes before class, drink a glass of milk, go to class, possibly make a sandwich for lunch, or eat chips and hummus, make a 4-serving dinner, eat half, eat dessert (probably oreos). Not all pizza and ramen, to be sure, but not great either. This has been my typical food-day during the experiment: wake up 1 hour before class, make and eat breakfast with juice or milk, make a sandwich or something more substantial for lunch, make a 2-serving dinner and eat half, make fresh bread, muffins, or iced tea as needed. At first I didn't think I'd be able to eat all the food that was slated for each day, but boy was I wrong. Other things I've learned:

1) Dishes speak louder than words, especially if that word is "vegetarian." I'd discussed trying a mostly vegetarian diet with S before, but he wasn't big on the idea. I think a lot of people think of skimpy, unfilling food, or tons of salads when they think "vegetarian." If you want to cook vegetarian food and you're feeding other people, don't start out by saying "vegetarian;" believe me, you'll have them at "lentil and vegetable soup with dumplings."

2) On the note of vegetarian food: legumes, whole grains, dairy, and greens are your friend. I really already knew this, but I'd never put it in practice. If you're not going to be eating much meat, you can use the proteins found in legumes (beans, peanuts and lentils), whole grains, and dairy to create proteins that are just as complete as those found in meat. Especially if you're a woman, eat your greens to get the iron you won't be getting from meat (believe me, anemia is no fun).

3) Baking is not as complicated as I thought it was. This menu has pretty much been a baking boot camp for me; for some reason I always thought baking as more complex and tricky than cooking in general. Turns out, making everyday baked good like bread, muffins, and biscuits is not that tough. Making your own iced tea's not so bad, either.

4) Homemade bread products taste MUCH better than store-bought. The bread, muffin, dumpling, etc recipes on this menu are pretty much as basic as you can get, but they knocked the socks off anything I've ever bought in the taste department. Never before have I had the thought "hmm, maybe I'll just have some bread as a snack."

5) Lastly, caloric drinks should be consumed like foods, and not like water. In this case I'm just talking about juice and milk, but it really goes for soda and other things as well. Even though orange juice and skim milk are good for you, it's cheaper, and really better for you, to treat them like foods. You might eat bread and ice cream, but you wouldn't just spend all day eating them. Water is free, and great for you, and tea is pretty close to free, and just fine for you if you don't sweeten it with sugar.

Oh, and collard greens are actually really tasty. Who knew?