Dinner 2015 (part 4)

[ElainaA]

Dinner tonight was from the garden

 

Pasta with slow roasted cherry tomatoes. I posted this recipe awhile ago on the gardening thread.

 

Salad with fresh shelled runner beans

 

Here is the before picture of the beans. Isn't it sad that fresh beans lose their lovely colors when you cook them? I was so disillusioned the first time I grew borlotti beans and cooked them. 

[scubadoo97]

Tonight with little prepared for dinner, I was rummaging through the freezer and saw a piece of pastrami I had corned and cooked on a smoker and finished sous vide. I was not as thrilled with this compared to the other half that was done completely on the smoker but with nothing planned for dinner this was a likely choice.

I reheated the meat SV @ 180 for a couple of hours, sliced thin and served with a potato pancake utilizing my spiralizer which has sat too idle for the last couple of months.

Edited August 27, 2015 by scubadoo97 (log)

[Norm Matthews]

I was going to try a new shrimp recipe but Cassie didn't like the idea of shrimp with pasta so I was going to make it with a cilantro sauce but then I saw one for Shrimp Avocado Bisque and decided to try it. I added some scallops to it. I let the bisque get away from me for a second and it boiled so it was not as smooth and creamy as it was supposed to be but we all liked it anyway. Also had asparagus and a salad.
 

 

[huiray]

Pork Hocks in Black Vinegar with Ginger.

Pork hocks well-blanched in boiling water then cleaned under the tap and placed in a clean pot. Water & Chinkiang vinegar (1:1, to cover the hocks), lightly smashed ginger pieces (LOTS), palm sugar, turbinado sugar, salt, lightly crushed garlic cloves. Simmer. Adjust seasoning/salt/sugar (rock sugar), add water as needed. Add hard-boiled eggs almost at the end.

 

Flash stir-fried long baby bok choy. (peanut oil, salt)

 

Several bowls of white rice.

[Paul Bacino]

huiray  --  That broth looks interesting,  Gonna search out this Black vinegar.  If you have any additional tips.. let me know.  The Hocks are not smoked correct?

 

Thanks Paul

[Anna N]

Not very different from a couple of nights ago since this was just leftovers from then. I added some peas for flavour and a bit of variety. The rice was reheated in the microwave but the chicken thighs were done in the Breville XL and I was quite impressed how crispy the skin became.

[huiray]

huiray  --  That broth looks interesting,  Gonna search out this Black vinegar.  If you have any additional tips.. let me know.  The Hocks are not smoked correct?

 

Thanks Paul

 

 

Paul, yes, that's right - the hocks are fresh, unsmoked, still slightly bloody. The fei sui treatment (the blanching and washing) is strongly recommended, and the coagulated bits and blobs including at the ends of the bones are rubbed off under the tap.

 

I imagine you have found some stuff already about Chinkiang vinegar. One simply looks up "black vinegar" or "Chinkiang vinegar" and lots of stuff pours out. Looking up "black vinegar pork hocks" and variations thereof will also give you info on this dish, in a general sense, with many recipes -but which all have certain central components in common, of course.  Traditionally, a kind of vinegar called "sweet black vinegar" is needed, not just "black vinegar". In my case with this iteration that I made I used recipe P50 in "madam choy's cantonese recipes"** (Epigram Books) as a jumping off point, and adjusted some of the quantities, used Chinkiang vinegar and added in some garlic.

 

In the past with other iterations of this that I have made I've also put in star anise pods and/or stick cassia (not true cinnamon, which gets "lost" in this intensely-flavored and potent dish) which sort-of carries suggestions of using sweet black vinegar to start with.

 

BTW, enough salt is needed, and *definitely* quite a bit of sugar if one is not using sweet black vinegar to start with - taste as you go along - otherwise the dish becomes very, very unbalanced in taste.  The final dish is NOT "sweet" as one might think of a "dessert-like" dish.  If one follows (or is concerned with) principles of Chinese medicine etc, then the type of sugar used is not immaterial ("heatiness" vs "cooling" properties ascribed to different forms of sugar :-) ) - but otherwise one need not be too concerned.

 

** One can get this now from Amazon, even.

Edited August 27, 2015 by huiray (log)

[dcarch]

-----------------------------------

Flash stir-fried long baby bok choy. (peanut oil, salt)

DSCN6067b_800.jpg

 

Several bowls of white rice.

 

Great dishes!

 

How do you clean the sand out from the inside of the bok choy.

 

They tend to be very sandy.

 

dcarch

[Paul Bacino]

Thanks!!    Huiray

 

So with the   addition  of  " palm sugar, turbinado sugar "  You sweetened the pot to make your sweet Black Vinegar.

 

So just  "  Black Vinegar  " is more versatile ,  and I can adjust my own sweetness levels ?  Correct

 

I did pick up the book to try..  btw

 

cheers

 

Paul

[Shelby]

Made a big pot of spag. sauce to freeze so had some of that for dinner over zoodles.

 

[Paul Bacino]

Shelby  --  do you flash cook those noodles ?

 

Looks good!!

[Shelby]

Shelby  --  do you flash cook those noodles ?

 

Looks good!!

I didn't last night.  I salted them, let 'em sit for a bit and then squeezed the daylights out of them.  They were juicy.

[kayb]

Huiray, I'm going to try those pork hocks. Chinkiang black vinegar is now on my list for my next trip to the Asian market. As I don't have the book, any guidance as to the proportions of turbinado/palm sugar to vinegar? Also, how long before the end should the eggs be added?

 

Opened up a jar of my fresh-canned tomato garlic sauce the other night; pureed it with the immersion blender, added some red wine and a bit of fresh-canned tomato juice to thin it down, made meatballs and had pasta and meatballs. Very good. Think I'm going to enjoy this sauce.

 

 

 

[suzilightning]

NORM  - Johnnybird adores shrimp with pasta - either cold with some lovely veg and an Asian spin or with pesto and extra olive oil.

 

Fresh tomatoes and a great salad of potatoes and green beans.  Protein is some chicken saltimbocca.

[Anna N]

Pressure cooked lamb stew.

Potatoes and carrots were pressure cooked separately.

[patrickamory]

Smacked cucumbers Sichuan style, Good Mother Stallards cooked with Benton's slab bacon served with white rice and peas, and a small but very dense roast chicken.

 

 

 

 

 

[scubadoo97]

Clean out the fridge night.

Had a bunch of honeydew from the other day blended it with cucumber, celery and avocado to make a soup

Used left over potato pancake diced and fried and paired with diced tomato and avocado. Served along seared tuna

[huiray]

Thanks!!    Huiray

 

So with the   addition  of  " palm sugar, turbinado sugar "  You sweetened the pot to make your sweet Black Vinegar.

 

So just  "  Black Vinegar  " is more versatile ,  and I can adjust my own sweetness levels ?  Correct

 

I did pick up the book to try..  btw

 

cheers

 

Paul

 

Well, yes and no regarding "creating" the sweet black vinegar.  

 

The "sweet black vinegar" traditionally used – a common brand is this one ( and another image here) especially for many folks from the Canton/Hong Kong tradition; and which I did not have on hand at the time (and seldom do) – is *quite* sweet, of thick consistency, and has definite cassia & star anise notes.^¶¶  It is also much less acidic and more mellow than Chinkiang vinegar, with its own flavor profile too - so using Chinkiang vinegar plus sugar is in a sense playing games with the ingredients, even if I like Chinkiang vinegar in its own right.  Note that any of the vinegars mentioned so far are different from ordinary (white) rice vinegar, or plain cheap black vinegar; and also different from Western-style vinegars which tend to be higher in acetic acid content and much sharper.  

 

I also used palm sugar plus the turbinado sugar - rather than plain castor sugar - because "sweet black vinegar" also has this caramel-y-like characteristic. I thought of using jaggery rather than the turbinado, but didn't...I really should have. I also didn't have true gula melaka on hand - I would have used THAT instead if I did have some. I also left the simmering pot uncovered for a while, adding water once or twice - to reduce the acetic acid content a bit. :-) As for my correcting the "sweetness level" in the latter stages with rock sugar - eh, I used that just for the hell of it. :-) 

 

If you try this dish and go with the Chinkiang vinegar plus sugar, use caramel-y sugars plus whatever else you may feel like and adjust as you go along as I mentioned. One might also cut back on the vinegar to start with.  I might be inclined to toss in that cassia and star anise too, especially if you have not had something similar before, so that it might be more towards the traditional dish.  NOTE that the dish *may* be somewhat of an acquired taste for some, and I can imagine that various folks in these parts would find it...very strange or unappealing.

 

The traditional dish is also directed towards post-partum women in confinement recovering from childbirth - and uses a GREAT DEAL of ginger following the reasons for why the dish is made in the first place – for boosting the "heat" of the woman - according to the precepts of Chinese medicine.  However, the dish is enjoyed by both men and women for the taste memory and its taste for its own sake  – so the amounts of the ingredients including the amount of ginger used and others as well can and should be adjusted to suit one's preferences and desires.^§§

 

NOTE also that many folks use the "sweet black vinegar" *but* cut it with a "normal" black vinegar --- both to reduce the sweetness as well as add a bit more sharpness to it.

 

I'm sorry if all this is confusing, but perhaps it is a sort of explication of the various things that go on when one cooks "on the fly" and turns over in one's mind what goes on and into a dish.

 

 

^¶¶ which is why I said that when I added cassia sticks and whole star anise to some iterations of the dish it approximated more what using "sweet black vinegar" at the beginning would have been, aside from the sugar content.

 

^§§ I'm not sure, but for this iteration I think I used - for maybe a pound-and-a-half of sliced pork hocks, something like just short of a half pound of root ginger.

 

 

kayb, to answer your questions --- I *think* I used something like 2 "pieces"/'whorls" of palm sugar (Thai-type) plus maybe 3 (or 4?) semi-heaped tablespoons of turbinado sugar for what I think I started out with as about one-and-a-half cups or so of Chinkiang vinegar plus the initial starting equivalent amount of water. I added several large lumps of rock sugar plus some more turbinado sugar later; I guess you just simply have to taste it to your preference. Still, does that give you a ballpark idea of starting amounts?  As for the hard-boiled eggs: I really "cheated" this time around - there wasn't really enough space in the main pot for me to add the eggs in so I turned the heat down to the lowest setting, scooped out enough ladles of the "sauce" into a small saucepan with the de-shelled hard-boiled eggs in them to cover them (plus a bit of water), simmered them as such for maybe 3-4 minutes, enough to "stain"them appreciably, then just dumped everything back into the main pot and brought everything back to a quick simmer before shutting off the heat. In various recipes out there folks have put in the eggs as far back as an hour before the end of cooking but that gives you pretty "hard" eggs.  I just barely "hard-boil" the eggs I add in in my case, so they don't get too hard.  Some people *like* them very firm.  One's personal preferences come into play here.  And no, please don't invoke MC notions of "perfectly cooked" eggs here - the situations are not comparable.

 

 

BTW, to both kayb and Paul Bacino --- if you got yourself a bottle or two of Chinkiang vinegar one should keep in mind that the vinegar that really makes "hot and sour soup" pop (if you make it yourself one day) is Chinkiang vinegar, not ordinary rice vinegar. (And definitely not Western-type wine vinegar or white vinegar)

[liuzhou]

It is worth noting that, depending on where you are in the world, you may not find anything labelled Chinkiang vinegar in your Asian store. You won't find it in many shops in the Chinese mainland.

 

You may be offered Zhenjiang vinegar instead. It is the same thing.

 

Zhenjiang is the official transliteration, as adopted by the Chinese government (1958), the United Nations,  the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the United States' Library of Congress, the American Library Association, and many other international institutions. It is also a lot nearer to the Mandarin pronunciation.

Chinkiang is the old, outdated Wide-Giles transliteration, today rarely used outside of the USA.

 

Perhaps, of course, it may not be labelled in English at all. In that case, the Chinese to look for is either 镇江 or 鎮江, both of which say Zhenjiang. The first is the simplified Chinese as used in mainland China (including in Zhenjiang); the second is traditional Chinese as used in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

 

Here is the bottle I am using. 

 

[liamsaunt]

scubadoo97, that tuna looks perfectly cooked!  I want some.

 

Spicy summer vegetable soup.  I have a cold right now and this hit the spot.

 

 

 

[Shelby]

Ribs, Hatch chile and tomato mac and cheese and spinach.

 

[Norm Matthews]

suzilightening, I suspect Cassie didn't like the pasta and shrimp idea because it came from an Hispanic website and she is half Mexican and said that no recipe with spaghetti can be Mexican.  She can be a picky eater at times too. 

 

Cassie

[Dejah]

Been on a road trip since Aug 13 and, in spite of many lovely meals out and in friends' homes, I am SO ready to get to the farmer's markets and my kitchen at home!

The meals presented are all fabulous!

Huiray's Pork Hocks in Black Vinegar brought up many memories for me. For each of my children's births, my Mom made gallons of this soup, kept in crocks in an extra fridge...a couple of weeks before the due date. She also put daylily buds, peanuts, and hard-boiled eggs in the soup. The balance was perfect - tangy and gingery enough to "burn the back of the throat" ( not really burn but don't know how else to describe it) yet balanced with sugar tho' not cloyingly so.  The vinegar is to tighten up the uterus after birth, the peanuts to increase the milk production, and so on. There was enough fat and gelatin to form a fat cap on top and the liquid would be gelatinous. Mom would heat a bowl of it up with all the goodies before I'd devour it. When the baby is one month old, friends and relatives would come to visit.The visitors were given a choice, this soup, or one made with whisky, chicken, lilybuds, peanuts, etc. Most of the men-folk declined both and just went for the whisky!
I've tried to reproduce Mom's recipe, but it never tasted the same. I miss my Mom.

[kayb]

liuzhou, thank you for your detailed instructions. I've printed out the pic of the bottle and stashed it in my purse, so I can compare when I get to the Asian market next! 

 

Kay

[mgaretz]

Last night I went to grab my phone to take a picture, but it was upstairs charging and we were too hungry to wait, so no pics!

 

I made a stir fry with char siu (made SV with pork tenderloin), bok choy (the full sized stuff, cut up), mushrooms, carrots, celery, onion and snow peas.  Sauce was soy, hoisin, cream sherry, garlic, ginger, red pepper flakes and cornstarch.