Here's another blog from me, but I'll tell you why this time it's different. I tend to start blogs when I have time and end up forgetting about them when I'm swamped. However, I've been cooking quite regularly and cooking a lot more Chinese food too! I imagine that it will be easier to keep up with a blog about food that I make on a regular basis.
It's funny. I had never thought of myself as much of a cook until I moved to Seattle. I dabbled in a dish or two when I was in Taiwan, but cooking was never regular as it was always easier and even cheaper to eat out. Cooking in Seattle, the first year, began as a necessity. Now with Jason, it has become quite enjoyable and a hobby we share!
Now that I no longer have regular access to good Chinese food, I have to try and make it myself. It also helps that almost everything I make is new to Jason, and he absolutely loves my cooking. It's such a huge motivation to cook more and become a better cook when there is someone else there to enjoy it. (But don't assume that I do all the cooking. Jason is the baker in the house. He makes all the breads, scones, pancakes...) We differ in our cooking styles too. While he's the scientist, measuring everything out, following every line of a recipe, I go with my gut feeling--a dash of this, a pinch of that!
Well, enough of the intro. Here is what I made tonight:
1. Pork ribs and bitter melon soup 苦瓜排骨汤
2. Stir fried cabbage with tofu and red peppers 辣椒炒白菜
Here's how I made them. Now, because I don't really follow recipes, I can't write them either. OK it's not that I don't follow recipes, they're just more of a rough guide. I sometimes look one up to get a general sense of how long something should be cooked, what herbs might go in the dish, but then I end up adding my own ideas later. So here's a rough idea of how I made these two dishes.
1. Pork ribs and bitter melon soup
I bought one package of pork ribs. I boiled a pot of water, threw in the ribs and turned the heat down to a simmer. I added a few slices of ginger and a few cloves of garlic. As the ribs cooked, I scooped out the fat that began to collect at the top. Allow the ribs to cook for at least 2.5 hours, or until the meat becomes really soft and start to fall off the bones.
If you've never seen a bitter melon before, they look like a light green knobby version of a cucumber. Cut it in half and you'll notice that there are seeds down the middle. Slice it open like you would a bell pepper to get the seeds out. Cut them into chunks or slices. I heard that if you soak them in salt water first they're not as bitter, so I did that as the ribs cooked.
About an hour and a half into cooking the ribs, I added the bitter melon. Basically, the longer the bitter melon stays in the broth the softer it gets and the more the bitterness gets into the broth. I thought it gave the broth a nice kick.
Add salt to taste, and you're done!
2. Stir fried cabbage with tofu and peppers
I'm not a chef and am "just learning to be Chinese" (hehe), so I have no idea whether these two dishes are actually supposed to go together. My goal tonight was to make the soup, but figured we couldn't just have the one dish! So I decided to make a dish that had a stronger flavor to go with the rather mild-flavored soup. I've attempted this dish before and thought it was pretty easy.
This is a Sechuanese style dish, and having had it before I have a general idea of how it SHOULD taste. This is how I make a lot of my food the first time--based on what I had before.
1 small cabbage, cut roughly into chunks (by the way, this dish works best with the round cabbage, not the long Chinese cabbage).
Fried tofu cubes (you can buy a package of already deep fried tofu from a Asian market), cut in halves
Some dried whole red peppers
Red pepper flakes
Soy sauce
Rice vinegar
Heat some vegetable oil in a wok (I never use butter when cooking Chinese food)
Throw the tofu cubes first, let it cook for a bit
Then throw in the cabbage
Medium heat seemed to work.
Pour in the soy sauce--enough so that it kind of coats/colors the cabbage
Mix it around so the tofu soaks up the soy sauce
Shake pepper flakes into the mix, enough so that you see speckles of it on the cabbage leaves
Then add in about a capful of rice vinegar. Yes, I said a capful. Because sometimes when I don't know how much of a sauce to put in, and I want to be conservative I just fill up the cap of the bottle and pour it in. It should give just enough of a sour kick to the cabbage to bring out its sweetness.
I guess you can tell by how I write this, how I cook. It really frustrates Jason when I pretty much can't give him proper instructions.
Next time I will write about a couple of dishes I've attempted in the past and the search for the right Chinese ingredients!
