100 replies to this topic

[nakji]

Really? I have. Pretty much every time I've eaten at a Chinese friends' place. Maybe it just depends on how ambitious the cook is?

[liuzhou]

It might just be where I am in China -a regional thing. My sister-in-law is a very ambitious cook. I've never seen her make a soup.

[Dejah]

In my Toisanese family, for as long as I can remember, we've always had soup. It can be simple like watercress, melon, or chayote in pork stock, or a long simmered soup. So when my Mom came for supper, there is always a soup, a stir-fried vegetable, and a steamed dish.

Maybe in China, people are not so obsessed about a "pot for everything", so much of the meal is prepared in the wok. Me? I have a soup pot, a wok or two, and a steamer. I use 'em all...IF I don't have to do clean-up!

[CFT]

Soup made in a wok? Never heard of that before.

[Snadra]

I finally got this book last week, and on Friday spent some time picking up a few ingredients. A few basic stir fries and master stock dishes are the extent of my expertise, so this whole boom is quite exciting.

Tonight I cooked my first dish from this, Twice Cooked Pork. For once I followed the recipe exactly (other than subbing green onions for leeks) but we found it overwhelmingly salty. It was quite simple to put together once the pork had its first cooking, and I'd like to try again, but before I waste another hard-to-access free range pork belly on it, does anyone have suggestions on how to tone down the salt? All the sauces list salt as an ingredient - maybe I've purchased the wrong ones?

[rarerollingobject]

IIRC, I found this recipe very salty too, and added way more sugar to balance it out.

Couple of thoughts:
* Did you rinse the black beans? Assuming the ones you got were the dryish ones, rinsing the salt off is a usual first step.
* Not sure if you got 'sweet wheat paste' or the 'sweet bean paste' alternatives the recipes talk about, but if you happened to get 'brown/yellow bean paste' instead, that is much saltier than the sweet wheaten paste (which itself is already about the saltiness of Vegemite, IMO).

Or, more sugar!

[Snadra]

Thanks, RRO! Just what I needed!

I did use the dry beans, and didn't rinse, so I will do that first. I used sweet bean sauce, as I didn't see the sweet wheaten paste at the shop I went to. However, I'm going to another one over the weekend for a few bits i forgot last time, and will see if they have it.

It's a start. I also suspect I was a bit too zealous in the initial fry stage and let a little too much fat render, but that wouldn't cause saltiness. It's a good job I didn't follow my instinct to salt the cooking water, eh?

And the additional sugar is a good idea for next time. And I wonder if I should drop the dark soy as well...

[jo-mel]

Soup made in a wok? Never heard of that before.

Somewhere, in one of my Chinese cookbooks, there was mention of "Wash the Pot Soup". It was a matter of not letting anything go to waste. The wok used for cooking, simply had some water added to it. The remainders of whatever was cooked in the wok was mixed into the water, heated --- and you have a VERY simple soup! I did it, with water, but it was better with chicken broth.

[patrickamory]

Those of you who have made the red-braised pork - is there a conflict between braising it at an extremely low heat and having the sauce reduce?

I'm over an hour in and still have a ton of sauce in the wok at a gentle simmer. It doesn't seem like it's going to mostly reduce.

Safe to turn up the heat, or will I dry out the meat?

[patrickamory]

I ended up letting it cook for almost 3 hours till the sauce was about 1/3 the original size. The meat was soft & meltingly tender.

[Chris Hennes]

Once again, Traditional Dan Dan Noodles (dan dan mian) (pp. 87–88)

This is one of my go-to recipes from the book for a fast, easy, and delicious weeknight meal. I served it with stir-fried asparagus, which was an excellent combination, with the cooling sweetness of the asparagus serving to calm the searing heat from the sichuan peppercorn and chile oil in the noodles. And the weather was great, so we could even eat outside.