Cooking Experiment Success!

[shadesofmauve]

First: From my mood when I posted a brief note this afternoon, compared with my mood now, I'm relearning that I really, really, really shouldn't rely on carbs during the day. The instanoodle from Uwajimaya was yummy, but not what I needed.

Second: I just finished cooking a dish from Fuschia Dunlop's Revolutionary Chinese Cooking: Recipes from Hunan Province, and I'm delighted. It's about time I used my wok as a proper wok. I'm only just realizing that I've been scared of cooking with high heat ever since the Three Firetrucks incident -- but damn it, it's my own house, and I don't have to call the fire department if I KNOW there isn't a fire. SO THERE.

I picked a recipe that looked relatively simple, both in preparation and ingredients, because I wanted to be able to taste the one ingredient I was totally unfamiliar with -- fermented black beans. They seem to be a bit sour and a lot umami. I had green bell peppers rather than Italian frying peppers, bacon rather than pork belly, and sherry rather than shaoxing wine, but those were all suggested substitutions. I may try it again when I have more time for shopping -- peppers and pork belly are easy to find. (Not so sure about the wine).



The dish isn't knock-your-socks off, but it's definitely tasty, nicely balanced between greens and meat, and only took 40 minutes to make -- which included rice, rereading the recipe multiple times, and bringing my housemate a hammer and a ziploc bag of pork because I'm crap at judging weight and I needed to know how it compared to a pound. Since I'm a ridiculously slow cook, 40 min is actually pretty good.

Have to note that I roughly doubled the recipe, and any further increase would be impossible, because it really is a true stir fried dish, not a 'stir fry' as my family more colloquially calls them, cooked over medium heat.

I have most of the tin of fermented black beans left, and I THINK that for the first time in several weeks, E and I have a normal weekend. I'm looking forward to a trip out to Hong Phat and a chance to try a few more things from the book.

Comments

[stasia]

I love fermented black beans - black bean crab is amazing, and it's a great sauce for just about every meat. I'd use carrot and chinese greens instead of the pepper (Geordie hates them), with green onion slivers.

Admittedly, I grew up cooking wok style, so this is something that's familiar to me. I wonder if I should hunt up some recipes that work really well for me and see if you'd be interested in them.

Stasia

[shadesofmauve]

eeeew, carrots. :P Clearly, Geordie and I can do a veggie swap if we ever eat together. :P

I cook with asian flavors a lot, but I tend more to Japanese-style sauces and occasional thai curry stuff, with big enough batches that I'm not truly stir-frying ('cause I want left-overs for lunch, darn it -- and aforementioned fear-of-fire-alarms). I'd love to see more recipes!

[shadesofmauve]

Also, I LOVE the smell of seared peppers. Mmmmm. This was particularly nice because it was comparatively easy -- the last time I smelled seared peppers in my kitchen, it was because I was *peeling* the damn things -- enough to make a GIANT VAT of green tomato chili -- and that was a long, hot, miserable day. :P

[westrider.livejournal.com]

My phone's battery died last night, and by the time I got the txt about this, it was too late to reply.

But it reminded me of how it always amused me at the bakery that they had a hammer at the Cake Station, mostly for use with wedding cakes.