Upgrade: Pineapple Rava Kesari

Although I've loved Indian food most of my life, I have taken only tentative steps into making it at home. All the different spices and combinations thereof are quite intimidating for an American home cook, even one with a lot of experience with other Asian cuisines. A lot of the Chinese dishes I've shown on this blog use prepared products like fermented bean pastes or dried mushrooms, which are quite complex all on their own. Building a dish from these things is a relatively simple process. Indian dishes, on the other hand, are often built from the ground up using spices. From what I've read on the topic, spices should be as fresh as possible, which means buying whole spices (rather than ground) and buying frequently in smaller quantities. This poses some problems of practicality for me. Luckily, I've had pretty good access to Indian restaurants in places I've lived, including the phenomenal Sharma's Kitchen in West Lafayette and Passage to India in Fargo. It is the latter that inspired my efforts to make rava kesari back in 2012. With the nearest Indian restaurant nearly an hour away from Vermillion, I find myself tinkering at home again.

My original post on rava kesari was groundbreaking in many ways. I rarely make desserts at all, let alone Indian ones. While it was a success, I missed the mark in a few ways, which left room for an upgrade. The main shortcoming of the original recipe was a failure to get the signature deep yellow color. It ended up a somewhat unappetizing yellowish brown instead. I reacted by throwing in some turmeric, which I'm not sure helped much. What I've done this time is make sure to pulverize the saffron and bloom it with a little water. 8 years of cooking experience definitely makes a difference in realizing these kinds of things. As such, the turmeric is gone. The other big change is the incorporation of pineapple. While the dish is perfectly good without it, pineapple is a popular and tasty variant. I referenced a post on Veg Recipes of India for how to incorporate the pineapple, while keeping the structure of the dish consistent with my original post. Combining the sugar into a syrup with the pineapple also speeds up the process, since the sugar will already be dissolved by the time it goes into the semolina mixture. Since the pineapple and pineapple juice are somewhat sweet on their own, I've cut down the amount of sugar a bit. Overall, rava kesari is a really nice treat and quite simple to put together. I highly recommend giving it a try!

Char Siu Chow Mein (叉燒炒麵)

When we're in need of a quick, easy meal, we often turn to char siu. I usually make a few pounds at a time, and it holds in the freezer quite well. Along with fried rice, char siu chow mein is my most common way of using char siu to put together a meal. I've been making this for several years, and it's definitely become a family favorite. Chow mein was also one of grandpa's favorites. He liked to put a little hot Chinese mustard on it, while grandma liked chili oil. I put a little of both on mine. This recipe makes enough to enjoy dinner for two and lunch the next day, which is always a plus when you're stuck at home.

This is a relatively simple dish, which relies on the core trio of napa cabbage, char siu, and egg noodles. I'm still using my second char siu recipe (from 2016), though I've been experimenting with maltose instead of honey. The egg noodles can be reliably found at Chinese stores in their dried form. Look for a bag of thin, yellow noodles with pictures of chickens on it. Fresh noodles sometimes be found in the refrigerated section. One of these days, I'd like to try making them at home. A nice variation to this is to add some thinly sliced garlic in with the napa cabbage. For a vegetarian version, you could replace the char siu with black mushrooms.

Oyakodon (親子丼)

Oyakodon is a classic Japanese dish within the broader category of donburi, which all consist of a bowl of rice topped with some kind of meat, seafood, or vegetables. Common examples are katsudon (sliced cutlets with egg), unadon (grilled eel), and tekkadon (sliced tuna). The word oyakodon translates to "parent and child donburi," referring to the main ingredients of chicken and egg. Of all the varieties of donburi, oyakodon is one of the easiest to put together at home and is always satisfying. I served it with Japanese potato salad.

It is interesting how different the ethos of Japanese cooking is to that of Chinese. Both cuisines emphasize umami-rich ingredients, but very different ones. Chinese food gets a lot of its punch from fermented bean products, which are much funkier and in-your-face than the kombu (dried kelp) that powers so much of Japanese food. Japanese flavors are subtle, and oyakodon is a perfect example. The entire dish is gently simmered in broth with no searing and no frying. Although sushi tends to get most of the fanfare surrounding Japanese cuisine, humbler dishes like this one deserve some attention, too.

Dashi is the main unusual ingredient here. In a previous post, I mentioned substituting chicken stock for dashi for practical reasons. I no longer condone that substitution, as I consider dashi to be the quintessential Japanese ingredient. The aroma of simmering dashi and soy sauce just can't be missed here. I have had success finding both ingredients in Asian stores, but you can also use powdered instant dashi. I now recommend Marc Matsumoto's dashi recipe, and I consider him a go-to resource on Japanese cooking. I also usually put a little mirin into my oyakodon, but it's not essential, and I wouldn't run out to get it just for this, especially if you're limiting grocery runs these days.

Upgrade: Steak au Poivre

Steak au poivre is a special dish for No Free Lunch, as it was the post that started my tradition of doing a classic French dish every Bastille Day. Simple but delicious, it's a classic for a reason. My original recipe holds up very well, so this Upgrade is more of a refinement than an overhaul. There, I suggested using "your favorite cut" of beef, so I've done just that, with a nicely marbled ribeye. I typically make one to split for the two of us. Roasted red potatoes and Ariel's homemade challah were excellent accompaniments. 

Other than swapping the top sirloin for the more luxurious ribeye, I've made a few small adjustments. Most importantly, I used half black and half green peppercorns. This cuts the spiciness, but leaves enough to cut through the rich sauce. I've also used shallot instead of onion, which is the more traditional choice for pan sauces. I never used to bother with shallots, but I've come to appreciate their subtlety. Finally, I had some cream on hand, so I used that in place of half and half. 

Dry-Cooked String Beans (乾煸四季豆)

Somehow, it's been over two years since I've done an interpretation of a Peimei dish. Since moving to South Dakota, my access to Chinese vegetables has been irregular. The only ones to be found in Vermillion are napa and the big white bok choy. I'm not a huge fan of the big bok coy (as opposed to the smaller, green Shanghai bok choy) and, while I like napa, it's better as a component than as its own dish. As such, I've turned more to broccoli and string beans to fill in. 

Dry-cooked string beans are one of the most recognizable dishes from Sichuan province in western China. The Chinese name ganbian sijidou does directly translate to "dry-cooked string beans." Traditionally, the beans are deep fried, which dries them out and gives them a wrinkly appearance. Much of what I've read about the dish online looks for ways to get around the deep frying, which is kind of a hassle. Interestingly, Kenji uses a broiler. I've chosen to stir fry. 

The interesting exotic ingredients here are the preserved vegetables. Peimei's recipe calls for zhacai, while others I've seen use yucai. Both are varieties of Sichuanese preserved mustard greens. As I don't have access to either right now, I used sauerkraut instead. It didn't occur to me while I was cooking, but it hit me when eating that Peimei's recipe lacks garlic. I think this would really kick it up a notch, so I've included it in the recipe.

Pan Roasted Chicken with Mustard Sauce

Like a lot of my dishes, this pan roasted chicken evolved over time until I decided it was ready for the blog. Usually just called "mustardy chicken" (not to be confused with the breaded version) in our house, it quickly became a family favorite after I first came up with it a few years ago. When we moved to South Dakota and all our belongings were stuck in warehouse purgatory back in Indiana, we bought a pair of cast iron pans (pictured in this post) at Costco, and this was the first dinner I made. Although it tasted especially good that day, I recommend classing it up a little and not eating off disposable foam plates. 

The recipe lends itself well to variation. The thighs can easily be swapped out for breast. While it does work best with skin on, the skin can be removed, if desired. A little more oil will need to be used without the fat from the skin. Most herbs will work fine. I frequently make it with tarragon, but our chives recently came back for spring, and I used those. Being close to the end of our two-week grocery plan, we didn't have much left in the way of sides. I had a few potatoes left, which I sliced thin and sautéed with butter while the chicken cooked.

San Diego Part 5: National City

School's out for summer! Had this year gone as planned, we would have been gearing up for our now-canceled vacation. It seemed like as good a time as any to get back to reminiscing about the vacation we did have.

Day 7 in San Diego was pretty laid back. We spent some time lounging around Mission Bay before heading to National City. Located immediately south of San Diego proper and adjacent to Naval Base San Diego, National City is a diverse area full of interesting restaurants. What brought us to National City was the Wild Foodies tour. Our guide walked us around the area and we sampled items from his favorite spots.

We started at Tortas Oasis, a casual spot featuring one of the more underrated parts of Mexican cuisine. Tortas are sandwiches consisting of a variety of different fillings on a large roll. We tried the lomo pork torta. We were pretty hungry, and the torta was so good I was unable to take a picture. I did get a shot of the menu, which also has a lot of interesting Mexican drinks.

Tortas Oasis

The next stop was Royal Mandarin, a restaurant with a good mixture of Americanized and traditional items that I think is a real key to success for Chinese restaurants. Royal Mandarin is apparently famous for their salt and pepper chicken wings. I have to admit, for all I go on about authentic Chinese food, I am a huge sucker for these things. The combination of crunch, salt, and a little heat from the white pepper is a winner, and these were a good example of the style. I will probably try making them at home some time.

Salt and Pepper Chicken Wings

Next, we made a quick stop at Chinese Canton Bakery for a coconut bun. The fact there are two Chinese bakeries in walking distance (stay tuned) makes me intensely jealous of the people who live in the area. 

Chicken Adobo

Lisa's Filipino Cuisine was next, where we filled up on chicken adobo (chicken braised in a vinegary sauce) and sisig, a crispy pork dish. This actually inspired me to try making chicken adobo in the Instant Pot at home.

Sisig

For dessert, we tried some Filipino ice creams. The cheese and corn flavor was interesting, but a bit too weird for us. Ube ice cream, on the other hand, was a hit. Ube is a yam with a startlingly purple color popular in many Asian cultures. I'm surprised I had never heard of it, but now I've started notice it in Asian grocery stores. We recently picked up a package of frozen ube. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with yet, but I'm sure it will be interesting!

Ice cream at Lisa's

Our next stop was 85C Bakery Cafe, a Taiwan-based chain that has spread quickly all over the west coast. They serve a wide variety of Chinese buns and pastries, as well as a selection of coffee and tea. We picked up a few buns to bring back to the hotel. The tour finished up with a walk through the local Asian market, which definitely made me miss the access we used to have back in West Lafayette. 

I have one more San Diego post coming soon, on our final, action-packed day. 

Upgrade: Guinness Stew

I've recently found myself thinking about the earliest days of No Free Lunch. I was 23, in my second semester of grad school, and I didn't really know what I was doing. I had only been seriously trying to cook for myself for about a year and a half at that point, but I did my best. These days, I'm blogging with an enthusiasm I haven't felt since those heady days in 2012. Going back through my old recipes, there's a lot of room for improvement with all I've learned in the last 8 years. Thus begins a new semi-regular feature: No Free Lunch Upgrades. I'm going to recreate some of my old favorites, maintaining the overall structure of the dishes, but upgrading them with better technique and ingredients.

Guinness stew was my fourth-ever recipe, and represented an important step in the development of how I cook and write about cooking. It's my Goldfinger, if you will. The basic recipe is actually pretty good, and I didn't change it too much. Instead of generic "stew meat," I use a chuck roast and break it down myself. This has the advantage of full control over the size of the pieces and selection of a well-marbled piece. Instead of beef bouillon, I use chicken stock, pumped up with some tomato paste and soy sauce to add complexity. The last change is removing the potatoes from the actual stew and serving with mashed potatoes instead.

A Socially Distanced Menu: Week 2

Welcome to part two of my two-week coronavirus menu. Late in the previous week, we heard our favorite Chinese store, the Hong Kong Supermarket in Sioux City, was temporarily closing due to the evolving pandemic. We decided to make a quick trip to stock up on supplies there and at Sam's Club. This definitely augmented our options, but didn't change our plans too much. With new cases mounting in Sioux City, we probably won't be back in a while. We had great variety in the week's meals, including some old favorites dating back to the "classic" (2012) era of No Free Lunch and some new ones, as well.

Sunday: I made my version of pollo a la plancha, which I featured in a post. It's always a great thing to discover another easy, versatile chicken dish to have in the repertoire. This can easily be done with either breast or thigh.

Monday: Of all dishes in need of a post, crab pasta is perhaps the most overdue. This is a dish completely of my own invention, loosely based on the aglio e olio concept. I saute onions and garlic, add chopped imitation crab (as I've written before, a very underrated ingredient), and then add pasta with some pasta water. Some chopped herbs finish it off. It's one of those things best not overthought, and I usually don't measure. That being said, a recipe is forthcoming.

Tuesday: The original plan of defrosting some walleye from the freezer was replaced with some fresh salmon from Sam's Club. I've been getting skin-on salmon more often these days, and working on my technique to get it crispy on cast iron. This time, though, I went for skinless and the tried-and-true panko crust. We had the roasted mushrooms I wrote about earlier as a side.

Wednesday: While I am a fan of mapo doufu, Ariel is not, mostly due to her dislike of Sichuan peppercorn. As such, I hadn't made it in a long timed. In my original post, I used extra-firm tofu because anything softer wouldn't hold up well to frying. I now view the frying step as superfluous, and I think it's more of a Peimei quirk. As such, I think a softer tofu works better, but you can only get firm and extra firm in this town. Such is life. In any case, I omitted the Sichuan peppercorn and just added a bit to my own portion and toned down the heat by mixing regular bean sauce with the hot bean paste. Pea tips, which we picked up at the Chinese store, are always a welcome side dish. Relative to my previous post, I now use a lot more garlic, thinly sliced instead of minced.

Thursday: Chicken and mushroom pasta returned, better than ever with the addition of the mushroom juice I saved from Tuesday. As one typically doesn't have that on hand, I would now recommend adding a little soy sauce (mix of light and dark, if available) to the braising liquid to add some extra depth.

Friday: I handed the reins over to Ariel here, and she made waffles from Stella Parks' recipe on Serious Eats. We had never made yeast-based waffles before. Like pretty much all of Stella's creations, they turned out great. I added a side of roasted potatoes, seasoned with the spice blend I put together as a gift for our wedding guests. A post on that is definitely coming soon. We had just enough leftover potatoes to make a pseudo-tortilla for lunch the following Monday.

Saturday: When we initially planned out the fortnight's meals, we left one day as "freezer figure it out," meaning we would throw something together based on what we had in the freezer. This often means cooking some frozen dim sum (potstickers, har gao, and buns) or heating up a frozen container of soup. This time, though, I pulled out a ribeye steak, which we shared as a steak au poivre. I used my own recipe from 8 years ago, which I'm pleased to report is pretty good! I had some green peppercorns on hand this time, which have a milder flavor and are definitely the way to go for this dish. Since I had the cognac out, I made myself a sidecar, which was quite delightful. I think grandpa would be pleased to know his cocktail shaker and glasses are being put to good use. As I experiment more, and the coronavirus situation drags on, you might see drinks pop up more often on the blog!

A Socially Distanced Menu: Week 1

Coronavirus has brought about many changes. Economists, for one, are likely to study the impact for years to come. That being said, we can all try to make the best of it. With everyone staying home, creative and resourceful cooking is more important than ever. We are only going grocery shopping every other Sunday, so we've had to plan ahead 14 days worth of meals to make sure we don't have to go out. Despite (or maybe thanks to) this, we've been eating quite well. Let's take a quick look at what we did for the first seven days of our last set of meals.

Sunday: I made pulled pork, similar to my existing recipe, but done in the Instant Pot. I cut the pork into chunks and browned it before pressure cooking for 30 minutes with a natural release. I skimmed off the grease and reduced down the sauce. The pork was incredibly tender and juicy, and done in a fraction of the time. For dinner, we had the pork on baked potatoes, inspired by Big Daddy's, one of Ariel's favorite spots from her Tulsa days.

Monday: Back in February (a lifetime ago, it seems), we attended a cooking class in Sioux Falls led by Lance White, a local chef and caterer. Probably the most interesting thing we learned was his technique for quickly making soups, specifically shrimp bisque. My version used a homemade shrimp stock I made using shrimp shells and vegetables. I also made a Caesar salad loosely based on Kenji's recipe.

Tuesday: I've been making Chairman Mao's braised pork belly regularly over the last year. My version is loosely based on one from the Woks of Life. I'm sure a full recipe will appear on the blog once I have experimented a bit more. I paired the pork with broccoli stir fried with garlic.

Wednesday: With a box of whole squid in the freezer, I made fried calamari. I used potato starch to make the coating, which yields very crispy results. This idea was inspired by using potato starch to coat karaage (Japanese fried chicken), and is definitely worth a post in the future. I paired this with more Caesar salad.

Thursday: The pulled pork from Sunday came back as a filling for quesadillas. We had pinto beans with onion and garlic as a side. Considering how much I enjoy them, and their utility as a quick, easy meal, I'm surprised I've never actually blogged quesadillas before.

Friday: The leftover stars aligned for lunch. I used the leftover tortillas, pork, and beans from Thursday and leftover rice from Wednesday to make Mission burritos. For dinner, Ariel made Kenji's white bean soup, adding some chicken sausage.

Saturday: We made Molly Yeh's pitas (from Molly on the Range), tzatziki (Wanderlust Kitchen), and hummus (modified from Yotam Ottolenghi's recipe in Jerusalem), and combined with some frozen gyro meat from Sam's Club to make sandwiches. The meat is a great convenience product for something that's not easy to do at home.

Overall, the week's selections were a nice mix of easy standbys and some new experiments. I'll follow this up soon with our menu from the second week!

Roasted Mushrooms

I usually feature main dishes or, often, one-pan meals on this blog, but easy side dishes that allow you to focus on the main dish are an important part of a cook's repertoire. I've been making some version of these marinated, roasted mushrooms for several years. The dark/light soy combination is one I use quite often and one that complements mushrooms well. The long roasting time gives the mushrooms ample opportunity sweat out liquid, concentrating the flavor, a technique I owe to Kenji. I reserved the liquid and added it to a particularly tasty batch of braised chicken and mushroom pasta a few days later.

I usually use cremini mushrooms for this dish, but you could really use any kind. In researching this post, I discovered the three types of mushroom you typically see at the supermarket (around here, anyway) are actually all the same mushroom. White/button mushrooms are at the most immature stage. As they grow, they turn brown and become cremini mushrooms, sometimes called "baby bellas." The most mature mushrooms are the much larger portobellos. I generally find the creminis have more flavor than the white mushrooms.