C. sapidus

I love Southern-style greens, especially collards, although I have never made them myself. Instead, we usually stir-fry greens in a hot wok. A wide variety of greens can be stir-fried successfully, from bok choy and water spinach to Swiss chard and mustard greens. Despite very different ingredients and cooking methods, Asian and Southern flavorings for greens show interesting parallels. For example, we made mustard greens last night. Wash, dry, and trim the greens, cutting the thicker stems in half. Smash garlic cloves, chop into rough chunks, and briefly stir-fry in peanut oil (with thinly sliced chilies, if you like) over medium heat. Raise the heat to high and add the greens. When the greens are almost done (in a very few minutes), add liquid flavorings of your choice. For me, a mixture of meaty fermented soybean paste, salty fish sauce, and sour-sweet Chinkiang vinegar gives a particularly satisfying flavor. Asian and Southern cooking each complement the natural bitterness of many greens by adding meaty, unctuous, salty, sour, and sometimes hot and sweet flavors. Does anyone else find this sort of thing fascinating? If not, we now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Thank you for taking pictures Ah Leung - that is exactly what they looked like. Cool, I learned a new vegetable! I'll be interested to see if they are labeled as Chinese leeks next time I'm in the grocery store.I cut the leeks on the diagonal and added them to the wok while the sauce was "dry-frying" - maybe 5 to 8 minutes total cooking over medium heat. They turned out nicely, and I liked the flavor. Are Chinese leeks typically stir-fried, or are they also prepared in other ways?

Why thank you, Klary! I googled “Fuchsia Dunlop” and “gan bian ji”, and the recipe popped up here (clickety). Scroll down to Monday, September 25, 2006 on the linked site. If that doesn’t work, I will be happy to send a PM. Otherwise, the recipe is from Fuchsia Dunlop’s wonderful Land of Plenty, which I believe is titled Sichuan Cookery in Europe.

Bruce: did you use the American (thick) leeks? Or Chinese leeks (much thinner)? I have seen Chinese leeks occassionally in my neighborhood Asian markets. The flavor seems stronger. They look like big green onions. ← The tops looked identical to thick leeks, but these leeks were thinner - probably about the width of a stubby carrot. Now that you mention it, they did look like green onions on steroids. Does that sound like Chinese leeks? I bought them from a regular grocery store, but I did not notice the label.

Szechuan dry-fried chicken (gan bian ji). Yes, again. This time we followed Ms. Dunlop's suggestion and substituted leeks for celery. Leeks are definitely better.

Shaya: Congrats on the double win – conquering the veal and the anti-anchovy faction. Who would have guessed that veal in wine and stock would turn out the same color as chicken in chile bean paste and black soy sauce. This salad rocks: Happy new year, Nishla! This rocks, too:

Szechuan dry-fried chicken (gan bian ji), jasmine rice, and sliced raw cucumbers and turnips. For the chicken, we used leeks rather than celery as the vegetable. Leeks are definitely better. The turnips were very sweet.

A drupe, also known as a stone fruit, is a "fleshy fruit with a central hard core containing one or more seeds." Typical examples include cherries, peaches, and plums; atypical examples include coconuts and almonds. Information about drupes at answers.com

Thank you, Suzi. Your foodblog conveyed glorious scenery, beautiful food, family warmth, and a wonderful sense of place.

Welcome back, Shaya! You and your dinners were missed. We had another Cradle of Flavor dinner tonight. Fried potatoes with chile-shallot sambal (kentang balado - Indonesia - front right): deep-fried baby Yukon Gold wedges topped with a fried chile sambal. We will definitely make this again. Pan-seared flounder (chuan-chuan – Malaysia - middle): The recipe called for mackerel, but when we defrosted the mackerel it was, um, gross, so we used flounder fillets. The topping was delicious: ginger matchsticks sauteed with slices of red onion, garlic, and chilies, and finished with black and regular soy sauce, sugar, black pepper, and Chinkiang vinegar. Stir-fried baby bok choy with garlic and chilies (tumis sayur - back left): Pretty self-explanatory.

No problem - you should have a PM in your box. Thanks for sharing your continuing series of mouth-watering breakfasts, especially the crab Florentine eggs Benedict.

nakji: Thank you for showing us a fascinating culture through your enlightening photographs and witty prose. Several Vietnamese families lived in our neighborhood growing up, but at the time we didn’t have the good sense to cadge a dinner invitation. We were fortunate to have lots of Pho joints and delicious, hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese restaurants in the neighborhood, though. Your blog reminded me of an incident from my childhood that gave me some perspective on cultural differences. My parents had a huge schefflera plant growing in a pot in the foyer. To us, the schefflera was a beautiful, exotic plant. In contrast, our Vietnamese friends couldn’t understand why we were growing a jungle weed in our house. How did you come up with the name nakji? I love this picture:

Ann_T: Thank you – that lobster looks delicious! Megan: Welcome back – it looks like you had some hearty food over the holidays. Truc: Welcome to eGullet and to Dinner! Red-braised beef with daikon (hong shao niu rou), stir-fried Swiss chard with garlic, and microwave “Texas mashed potatoes”. More information on Chinese eats at home, post #442 (click).

Mizducky: That looks delicious! In a similar vein (probably both of us were inspired by sheetz) . . . . . . we made Sichuan red-braised beef short ribs with daikon, and stir-fried Swiss chard with garlic. We simmered the short ribs with beef stock, Sichuan chile bean paste, Shaoxing rice wine, ginger, scallions, dark soy sauce, star anise, Sichuan peppercorns, and cardamom. After two hours we removed the beef, skimmed most of the fat, and strained and reduced the remaining sauce. We then cooked the daikon radish until tender in the reducing sauce. This was the first time I made a red-braised dish, but it won’t be the last. I don’t have access to cao guo, so I substituted green cardamom pods. Does anyone know how the taste of cao guo compares with that of cardamom? I had mixed feelings about skimming the fat – it had a lot of flavor, so I drizzled a little over the beef on the plate. Are Chinese braises normally skimmed and strained, or is that more of a European thing? Red-braised beef with daikon (hong shao niu rou), stir-fried Swiss chard with garlic, and microwaved“Texas mashed potatoes”

Yes, there was salt in the dish, although it wasn’t particularly salty. Should it have been? The sauce was brown from the shrimp paste, but I used Thai (gapi) rather than belacan. Our Asian grocery does carry belacan. I wonder how different kinds of shrimp paste affect the final flavor of the dish.Percy: Thanks! Enjoy the subtropical sun, return home, cook and take lots of pictures. Doddie: Thank you! If you are willing to travel from South Korea to Maryland, we would be most ungracious not to make dinner for you. Marcia: Nice-looking meals!

Ordered seven new (to me) books, courtesy of Christmas gift cards: Into the Vietnamese Kitchen – Andrea Nguyen Modern Art of Chinese Cooking – Barbara Tropp Fish & Shellfish – James Peterson Exotic Ethiopian Cooking – Daniel Mesfin On Food and Cooking – Harold McGee Joy of Mixology – Gary Regan The Man Who Ate Everything – Jeffrey Steingarten Thanks, Santa!

Fish sauce and a wide variety of Asian cookbooks - sounds like my kind of place! I noticed a few Indian cookbooks - do you cook Indian food often, and do you have any trouble getting ingredients for Indian food?

alanamoana: The wonder is that the shortbread turned out. What you didn’t see was pound cake -- nobody did. After lining up all of the ingredients and dumping sugar and butter in a bowl, I discovered that our hand mixer was dead. I couldn’t figure out how to “cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy” without a mixer, so no pound cake. That would be a more typical outcome of my baking projects. GTO: Thank you – I like the edges, too. Mrs. Crab bought some Scottish shortbread with “stem ginger” that was very good. Ginger shortbread will probably be my next baking project. Does anyone know if “stem ginger” is the same as candied ginger? Does anyone have a reliable recipe for ginger shortbread?

Sourdough buttermilk pancakes sound so delicious. And mimosas, too, of course.

Lemon vanilla pistachio shortbread. A modest effort from one with much to be modest about when it come to baking.

Thanks! The recipe is from Mai Pham's Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table, reproduced here (link).

I love the gross-out food ideas, but this isn’t one of them. While visiting my mother on Christmas eve and chatting around the kitchen table, my sister constructed this gingerbread, fruitcake, and sugar cookie replica of a Russian cathedral. I had suggested using onions for the onion domes, but my idea was rejected as inedible.

First, I want to thank guppymo for starting this thread and sharing so much delicious Vietnamese food. We love Vietnamese food and make it at home from time to time. If others are cooking Vietnamese food, this would be a great place to compare notes -- like on Chinese Eats at Home (link) and Thai Cooking at Home (link). With that in mind, we grilled five-spice chicken today. We cook this frequently, but this batch was the best so far. Apparently, the secret is to marinate the chicken overnight and grill over a medium to low-medium flame. The lower heat crisped the chicken skin while preserved the haunting aroma of freshly-toasted and ground star anise. The ginger, garlic, and five-spice flavors permeated down to the bone, and the meat was tender and juicy. Gosh, I hope this is repeatable. Vietnamese five-spice chicken (ga ngu vi huong) Edited to add links.

Awesome! The Atlantic tuna available to us just isn't the same. Probably a year, but she passed through Honolulu regularly for a couple of years afterwards. Cool, thanks. Feel free to tell the food-related parts of the long story, if you like.

MiFi: That looks delicious! We had bricklayer’s eggs (huevos al albanil). Yes, again – they are that good. Roasted Poblano chile rajas were a great addition.