Mushroom Nian Gao (香菇年糕)

Gong xi fa cai, everyone! I've already written some recipes for the Jewish New Year (see my Rosh Hashanah cocktail), so it's about time I tackle Chinese New Year, a day full of food traditions. Nian gao, or "year cake," is a popular Chinese New Year treat all over China. There are many regional versions, ranging from sweet to savory, but all made from sticky rice flour. The Shanghai style, which we call "tongue depressors" for their shape, are our family tradition. I first made this meatless version for our combined New Year/birthday celebration a year ago. Any meat could easily be added if you want to go that route. 

I've written about Shanghai nian gao twice before, and the differences highlight the evolution of my Chinese cooking. The original 2012 version was very simple, as much of my bachelor cooking was. Back then, I parboiled the rice cakes, which I now know to be unnecessary. By the 2015 version, I was experimenting with Koon Chun bean sauce and napa cabbage. I had recently discovered the method of salting and squeezing the napa to get the excess water out. I've since moved on from bean sauce as the base of a sauce (I still use it for the char siu marinade) and am now doing a classically Chinese combination of ginger, scallions, and soy sauce, lengthened with the mushroom water and thickened with corn starch. 

This recipe uses mushroom-flavored dark soy sauce (Pearl River Bridge brand). Although available at most Chinese stores, it's somewhat niche. If unavailable, regular dark soy sauce would work just fine. Comparing the photos here to my previous versions, you can see the effect of the dark soy sauce in coloring the rice cakes. We rounded out the meal with spring rolls out of the freezer. These fry excellently right from frozen with no problem. I did subsequently make some spring rolls using the 45-degree angle fold, and can report they fry much more evenly. 

Ham Pasta

Comfort foods and family favorites have always been a major part of No Free Lunch. I've featured quite a few of my childhood favorites, like klub, hotdish, and chow fun, but this one comes from Ariel. It was a staple of her family and has been part of our rotation for years. Although I typically do most of our cooking, she's stepped up lately with how busy I've been. This recipe has been an invaluable go-to dinner for us. It's quick and easy, and perfect for a busy weeknight.

What we call "ham pasta" is a variant of an American-style pasta alla carbonara, which adds cream and vegetables to the Italian classic. This is a great example of how foods change and evolve as they move around the world. There's definitely room for both versions. I've actually only made this dish once, and it didn't exactly go over well when I substituted the ham for turkey ham. That being said, this recipe is pretty loose and most of the amounts listed here can be adjusted to taste. 

Chicken and Mushroom Sandwiches

There aren't a lot of restaurant options in Vermillion at the best of times, but back when we could go out, Mr. Smith's was always one of our favorites. Nestled inside the local Ace Hardware, it's a great spot to go for a sandwich, fried chicken, or a loaf of bread. Ariel's favorite sandwich there is the portabella chicken breast. As we're staying home as much as possible, I decided to recreate the sandwich at home. This recipe makes four sandwiches. We enjoyed two with sautéed yellow squash from the garden and saved two for lunch the next day.

As the name suggests, the original sandwich uses chicken breast and portabella mushrooms. I cheated a bit and used chicken thighs and cremini mushrooms instead, which are what I happened to have available from our Costco run last week. The chicken is simply seasoned with lemon pepper, but if you have a preference for something else, go for it. For the bread, I used soft potato rolls. While these are great for hamburgers, I would ideally use something a little heartier. For toppings, we added some romaine lettuce, sliced avocado, and Kenji's ranch dressing.

As I don't tend to order the sandwich, I can't personally attest to how close it was to the original, but it did taste good, and Ariel approved. As sandwiches go, the filling was quite loose, so eating them was a bit of a mess. A better bread choice would have mitigated that problem, I think. If preferred, the sandwich filling could also be adapted as a rice or pasta dish, similar to my chicken and bell peppers. To do this, I would deglaze the pan with a little white wine and chicken stock, reduce and thicken with potato or corn starch. 

Noble Consort Chicken (貴妃雞)

A few weeks ago, a recipe in the Joyce Chen Cook Book called "Empress Chicken" caught my eye. I did a little translation of the Chinese name guifei ji, and discovered the real name is a little more interesting. The Chinese word ji means chicken, but guifei is more accurately translated as "noble consort." In Chinese history, a noble consort was one of the emperor's high-ranking concubines, who ranked just below the empress. I found a few websites claiming the dish was named for a specific Tang dynasty concubine, but like most food origin stories, this is almost certainly apocryphal. What the dish has to do with concubines is anyone's guess.

The dish itself is a classic example of a Chinese-style stew, known as hongshao, or "red cooking." I've made a few of these over the last couple of years, but this is the first to make it to the blog. The basic ingredients are soy sauce, sugar, and a selection of seasonings. Seasonings can include ginger, star anise, cinnamon, or bean pastes. This is the first one I've made that included mushrooms, and I found them a terrific addition. I use black mushrooms (dried shiitakes) a lot in various dumplings and stir-fried dishes, but stewing brings them to life in a new way. They basically last forever, so I tend to stock up when we go to Chinese stores. I used Chinese rock sugar in this dish, which is the traditional choice for this type of stew, but white sugar is fine if you can't get it.

Chen calls for 4 wings and 4 legs. Although I like chicken legs, I went with all wings for consistent cooking time. I scaled the whole thing up a bit to use a full package of wings I found at Walmart and played around with the proportions of ingredients based on what I like. The chicken comes out very tender, and the stewing liquid is full of flavor boosted by the mushrooms. That being said, the difficulty I tend to run into with hongshao dishes is that you have a ton of liquid at the end that is too watery to work as a sauce, but as you reduce it down it gets too salty. I don't think this is the traditional choice, but I think corn starch or some other thickening agent is the way to turn it into a sauce. I used 1/2 tablespoon, but I do think it needed more. I plan to experiment more with honghsao dishes, so you can expect to hear more on this soon.

Upgrade: White Macaroni Hotdish

Hotdish is one of the iconic dishes of the Upper Midwest, particularly associated with Minnesota. Church cookbooks are full of them, and many families have their own house recipes. My family has two, both macaroni-based styles, which we refer to as "red" and "white." This also gives you a convenient wine pairing. The red kind uses tomato soup, and comes from my maternal grandmother. The white kind, which was one of my earliest posts, comes from my paternal grandparents. Although we lost all three of them in the last few years, their legacy lives on through traditions like these. Today, I'm revisiting the white hotdish to how I make it now, a better version than could muster at the tender age of 23. To this day, it is still one of my top comfort foods, and I'll be making it for years to come.

There is a lot of variation in what can go in a hotdish. In Molly on the Range, Molly Yeh gives a four-part breakdown of creamed soup, vegetables, meat, and starch. Yet, with the exception of starch (I think), all of these are negotiable. Her own tater tot hotdish eschews the soup for a homemade mix of milk and stock, while my family's red hotdish uses tomato soup. I've even winged it with just canned tomatoes. My original recipe for this hotdish had no vegetables (just mushrooms), though I now include onions. You could easily replace the meat with more mushrooms to make a vegetarian version. Starches vary greatly, and can include pasta, rice, wild rice, potatoes, or even crushed crackers. The starch component is what holds the dish together and turns a soupy mess into a hotdish. Thinking about this basic formula, shepherd's pie might be the proto-hotdish. The Jewish noodle kugel, Italian lasagna, and Greek pastitsio are certainly cousins, at the very least.

The biggest difference between this version and my original is the scale. This recipe is designed to use a full one-pound box of macaroni, which I wouldn't have done back when I lived alone. With two of us, I like making it bigger so we can have leftovers for a few days of quick lunches. Although I've scaled up the overall size, I've left the amount of meat at one pound of mixed beef and pork, which corrects the overly meaty balance. Adding onions and more mushrooms gives the whole thing a little more variation. For the topping, I use a mixture of grated Swiss and Parmesan and some breadcrumbs for a little crunch. The Swiss is just a basic supermarket block, as the subtlety of gruyère is kind of lost on this dish. That said, I still prefer real Italian Parmigiano-Reggiano for this, which will give you a little nuttiness. Cooking at a high temperature for 45 minutes leads to a soft interior and crisp crust.

Let's talk about the soup. I had actually meant to get this post out several weeks ago, but messed up the recipe by not using enough soup. This hotdish should be creamy and gooey, and the macaroni should be well-coated before baking. I found a giant 26 oz. can, which is about what you need to adequately coat the full pound of pasta here. A regular-sized can then forms the base for the topping, making for a total of 36.5 oz. of soup. I'm not sure the full can was needed at the end, but it doesn't hurt and I wasn't going to save a half can of soup. If you only have three regular cans instead, the total amount will be 31.5 oz. This leaves about a half can for the topping, which should work fine.

Steamed Pork Cake (蒸肉餅)

This Cantonese steamed pork cake might be the least photogenic food I've ever made. Despite its humble appearance, though, it's packed with flavor and easy to make. As you might have guessed, this is true home style food. I have some vague memories of my grandparents making something similar, but it was so long ago that I'm not quite sure. The basic concept is a giant pork burger that is something of a blank canvas. This recipe mixes in ham, mushrooms, and water chestnuts. The Woks of Life has done versions with preserved vegetables and salted fish. I think Chinese sausage, sauerkraut, or even shrimp would work, too. Being cooked entirely by steaming, there is no browning and this dish relies on its ingredients for flavor. We get some umami bursts from the mushrooms and a little crunch from the water chestnuts.

This recipe is adapted from the Joyce Chen Cook Book, which is a very interesting piece of culinary history. Published in 1962, it predates even Pei-Mei's books. Chen understood very well that American cooks would have difficulty finding certain ingredients, and builds substitutions into the recipes. For example, she doesn't even bother with Shaoxing wine and goes straight to the sherry substitution. If you can get good Shaoxing wine, go with that, but if not, amontillado is my preferred alternative. It's also a bit odd in that everything is measured by volume, even the pork. I've converted some of the measurements to weight where it makes sense to do so. 

The most notable ingredient here is the ham. Chen discusses this issue at length, saying that getting Chinese ham in the United States is nearly impossible. That is as true now as it was in 1962, especially in South Dakota. It might be possible to get good ham in a Chinatown somewhere, but I'm not sure. Chinese hams are dry cured, so some other similarly-produced ham is the best substitute. Chen recommends Smithfield ham, a dry cured ham from Smithfield, Virginia. The most accessible alternative might be prosciutto. I used regular supermarket ham, which didn't really add much to the dish other than some texture. As with many dishes, Chen also uses MSG here, which I didn't have. I compensated by increasing the soy sauce and mushroom a bit. 

Joyce Chen had a huge role in spreading appreciation for Chinese food in the United States. Her influence was especially felt in Boston, where she ran several restaurants and had a short-lived cooking show with WGBH. Her rebranding of potstickers as "Peking ravioli" is particularly funny to me. Her recipe for Peking ravioli is pretty standard and quite similar to mine. However, it seems that Peking ravioli evolved in Boston Chinese restaurants into their own thing. Ariel says the dumplings she grew up eating are not quite what we make at home, but couldn't quite pin down the difference. When she took her first bite of this pork cake, she exclaimed that it tasted just like Peking ravioli. Next time we find ourselves in Boston, I'll be doing some research, by which I mean eating dumplings!

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.

Braised Chicken and Mushroom Pasta

We'll return to San Diego shortly, but in the meantime let's dive into some more chicken. Like so many of our family favorite recipes, this one happened by accident. A few weeks ago, Ariel was on her way home from a work trip and it was up to me to have dinner ready when she arrived. I had some chicken and not a lot else. I was thinking about making chicken chasseur again, but didn't have any tomatoes. What I did find was a jar of mixed dried mushrooms. These have a ton of flavor and are a great thing to have on hand. This particular jar came from World Market. The dish came together beautifully, and this is my best attempt to recreate it. 

This recipe utilizes one of my favorite tricks, which I haven't featured on the blog before. I got the idea of using Parmesan rinds in soups and braises from Kenji's "Tuscan" bean soup recipe, which imparts some extra flavor as the sauce cooks. Every time I buy a wedge of Parmesan, I cut the rinds off and freeze them so they are ready to go any time. Similarly, whenever I use chicken thighs, I trim off the excess skin and save it to make schmaltz. Whenever I use shrimp, I save the shells to make soup. There's flavor hiding in these scraps - don't throw them away!

One last note: this is the first post using our beautiful new dishes from our wedding registry! The color is a nice contrast for this decidedly brown dish.

Ingredients

• 4-6 chicken thighs
• 1 large onion, sliced into strips
• 5 cloves garlic (adjust to taste), minced
• 2 Tbs flour
• 1 cup dry red wine
• 3 cups chicken stock
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 cup (about 50 g) dried mushrooms (I used a mix of oyster, shiitake, porcini, and black trumpet)
• 4 inch piece (about 50 g) Parmesan rinds
• 1 lb dry pasta
• Olive oil
• Salt and black pepper

Instructions

Trim excess skin from chicken and season both sides with salt and pepper. In a large sauté pan or similar vessel, heat a little olive oil on medium-high heat. Cook the chicken, starting skin side down, until browned on both sides and the skin has rendered. Remove chicken and set aside, but do not drain the pan.

Drop heat to medium and add the sliced onion to the pan. Season with salt and pepper and cook, stirring frequently, until softened. 

Add garlic, stir together, and cook another minute. Add the flour, stir together, and cook another minute. Deglaze the plan with wine, scraping up the bottom of the pan. Reduce briefly, then add the chicken stock. Stir in the oregano, bay leaf, mushrooms, and Parmesan rinds. Place the chicken back in the pan. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cover. Simmer for about 40 minutes. 

While the chicken cooks, cook the pasta. You can undercook it a bit, as it will finish in the sauce. When the chicken is done, remove from the pan and set aside. Turn the heat up to high and reduce to desired thickness, about 5 minutes. For the last minute, add the pasta to the pan and toss until well coated. 

Serve with grated Parmesan and bread.

Poulet Chasseur, Provençal Style

Bonne fête, everyone, or as we say here in the USA, happy Bastille Day! With all the wedding planning going on, July 14 kind of sneaked up on me. This morning, I grabbed Essential Pepin and Julia Child's The Way to Cook and got to work. When I recently posted my chicken with bell peppers recipe, I commented that chicken is a real workhorse in a busy person's home. With a little French technique, it's easy and inexpensive to turn a few pieces of chicken into a nice dinner. Pepin, in particular, seems to be a master of the humble chicken. 

While in the past, I've tended to recreate some classic French dish for Bastille Day, I went with something of my own creation this time, loosely based on my reading from this morning. Julia Child writes that the Provençal style involves olive oil, tomatoes, and garlic. Since Provence is located in southeastern France, next to Italy, this makes a lot of sense. Since Ariel is a huge fan of mushrooms, I decided to add these, as well, positioning my dish as a tomato-forward variant of poulet chasseur, or "hunter's chicken." Interestingly, other countries also have dishes with the "hunter" label, including Italy's chicken cacciatore and Germany's jägerschnitzel, which I covered last year. I chose to serve it with cavatappi pasta, Ariel's favorite, but rice, potatoes, or any other kind of pasta would work well. As a side, we had sautéed string beans from our farm share.

To add a little French revolutionary history, chasseur was the name given to the light troops in Napoleon's army, who served as scouts and skirmishers. The chasseurs à cheval were one of the most distinguished regiments in the Garde Impériale, and the emperor himself was known to wear their uniform on campaign.

Ingredients

• 6 chicken thighs
• 1 onion, diced (about 1/2 lb.)
• 1 lb. mushrooms, sliced
• 6-8 cloves garlic, grated or minced (dependent on size)
• 1 Tbs flour
• 2/3 c dry white wine
• 1 28 oz. can whole peeled tomatoes
• 2 tsp Herbes de Provence
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper
• 1 lb. pasta (optional)

Instructions

Dice the onion, rinse and slice the mushrooms, and grate the garlic ahead of time. Gently break up the tomatoes with fingers. 

In a large sauté pan, heat some olive oil on medium-high heat. Pat the chicken dry and season both sides with salt and pepper. Place the chicken in the pan, skin side down, and cook until the skin is crisp and releases easily from the pan. Flip over and cook a few more minutes, until lightly browned. 

Chicken after flipping

Set the chicken aside (it will not be fully cooked yet) on a plate. Turn the heat to medium and add the onion and mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper and sauté a few minutes, until softened. Add the flour and garlic. Stir well and cook a few more minutes. This will form the base of the sauce. Add the wine and scrape up any browned bits on the bottom of the pan. Bring to a boil and cook down briefly. Add the tomatoes, their juice, and the herbes de Provence. Bring to a boil and reduce to thicken for about 5 more minutes. (Note: I forgot to do this, and reduced at the end. This is fine, too).

Ready to simmer

Return the chicken to the pan. Cover and reduce to a simmer. Simmer until the chicken is fully cooked, about 20 minutes. If serving with pasta, now is the time to cook it, timing according to how long it takes to cook.

To assemble a portion, place a layer of pasta, dish out some sauce, making sure to get a good mix of tomatoes and mushrooms, and add a piece of chicken on top.

Jägerschnitzel

As many of you no doubt know, I'm a great lover of schnitzel of all stripes. All the way back in 2012, I wrote a post on Wiener Schnitzel vom Schwein and in 2015, I did the Japanese version. One variety I haven't done yet is the breaded tenderloin, an Indiana staple I'll have to start making for myself pretty soon. As I've discussed before, schnitzel is a very well-traveled little dish. As I understand it, Austrians are quite particular about how a Wiener schnitzel is prepared and served (with lemon and potato salad) while saucing schnitzels is more of German thing. I haven't asked an actual German or Austrian about this, so don't quote me. Whatever the origin, jägerschnitzel is a classic and an excellent one at that. 

The term jägerschnitzel means "hunter's schnitzel" and refers to a cutlet with a mushroom sauce. There seems to be a lot of different opinions about what exactly is in the mushroom sauce and whether or not the cutlet should be breaded. As usual, I read several recipes I found online and concocted my own based on my preferences. While the classic Viennese style demands veal, I usually use pork or chicken (boneless thighs pounded thin are great for this) for my schnitzels, as both are cheaper and easier to get. On the topic of breading, I sort of split the difference and dredged the cutlets in just flour, skipping the egg wash and breadcrumbs. The flour coating promotes a nice crust on the meat, but by not breading I also dodge the shallow frying process. This uses a lot less oil and you can get straight into making the sauce without having to clean up in between.

Ingredients

Cutlets

• Pork chops (I made 2, but there is enough sauce for about 4 cutlets)
• Salt
• Black pepper
• Paprika
• Garlic powder
• Flour for dredging
• Vegetable oil as needed

Sauce

• 8 oz. mushrooms, rinsed and sliced
• 1/2 onion, diced
• 1 Tbs butter
• 1 Tbs flour
• 1/2 c red wine
• 1 c chicken stock
• 2 splashes Worcestershire sauce
• Pinch of dried thyme
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Vegetable oil as needed

Instructions

Prepare the mushrooms and onion ahead of time so they will be ready to go when it is time to make the sauce. If your chops have a bone attached, remove them and trim off large sections of fat. Place the meat in a gallon-size bag and pound to about 1/3 inch thick.

My chops had a weird little bonus piece

Heat vegetable oil in a saute pan on medium-high heat. Use enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan. While the oil heats, season the cutlets with salt, pepper, paprika, and garlic powder. Dredge in flour. When the pan is hot, shake off excess flour and place in the pan. Cook for a few minutes on each side, until the outside is well browned and meat is cooked to desired temperature, adding oil as needed. A little pink on the inside is fine for pork, and will prevent it from drying out. When done, move the cutlets to a plate and cover with foil. You may have to cook the cutlets in batches or multiple pans if you have a lot of them.

Mushroom and onion after butter was added

Add more oil to the pan. Saute the mushrooms and onions together until onions are well softened and mushrooms have cooked down. Season with salt and pepper. Add the butter and stir in as it melts. Add the flour and cook together a few more minutes, stirring frequently. 

The finished sauce

Deglaze the pan with wine and reduce for a minute. Pour in the chicken stock and add thyme and Worcestershire sauce. Bring to a boil and reduce by about half, or to desired thickness. The sauce should be a medium thickness, still pouring easily but not spreading all over the plate.

Serve the cutlets and spoon the sauce all over them. This recipe makes enough sauce for about 4 cutlets. Extra sauce can be stored in the fridge for a few days.

Turnip Cakes (蘿蔔糕)

Turnip cakes are as classic a dim sum dish as they come. That being said, they've never been a go-to for my family. In my mind, that's all the more reason to give making them a try. I had been thinking about it for a while, but when I saw a huge pile of Chinese radishes at Better World Market (West Lafayette's newest Chinese store), I decided to go for it. Since this is a dish I'm mostly unfamiliar with, I closely (for me, at least) followed Henry Chan's recipe from Classic Deem Sum. Grandpa recently gave me this book, which was also responsible for the baozi of my childhood.

Overall, the turnip cakes turned out great. The Chinese radish has a unique flavor, and the sausage, shrimp, and mushrooms dot the cakes nicely. The cakes are quite dense, and I might experiment by lowering the amount of flour in the future. I will definitely be ordering them next time I go to dim sum.

This recipe features many interesting ingredients, a few of which are new to No Free Lunch. Dried black mushrooms and dried shrimp were both featured in my marathon Shanghai shaomai recipe. The big star here is, of course, the Chinese radish, also known as a daikon. It is a root vegetable that sort of resembles a huge, white carrot. Note that despite the name, this dish does not contain turnips. This recipe also uses rice flour, not to be confused with sweet/sticky/glutinous rice flour, which I used for tangyuan. 

The last new ingredient is one I've been wanting to discuss for a while: Chinese sausage. I have a huge weakness for these greasy little guys. Specifically, I'm using Cantonese lap cheong, which are dried, hard, lightly sweetened. You'll find them in the refrigerator section of most Chinese stores. I chop them up and cook them a bit like bacon - on low to medium heat so the chunks of fat render out. This is great for fried rice, as you can use the grease to cook the rest of the ingredients. I also like them with scrambled eggs.

Ingredients

• 4-6 dried black mushrooms, depending on size
• 1/3 cup dried shrimp
• Warm water
• 1 lb. Chinese radish/daikon (about 1 whole radish)
• 1 cup chicken stock
• 1 Chinese sausage, minced
• 2 Tbs minced scallion (use only the white bottom part)
• 1 Tbs Amontillado sherry/Shaoxing wine
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• Pinch of white pepper
• 2 Tbs vegetable oil (substituting for lard)
• 2 cups rice flour
• Vegetable oil to grease pan and fry the cakes

Instructions

Start soaking the mushrooms in warm water to reconstitute. The mushrooms need to soak about 30 minutes. Soak the shrimp in 1/4 cup warm water to reconstitute for at least 10 minutes. Reserve the shrimp water when done. While the dried ingredients soak, peel the radish and remove the ends. Grate the radish. I chopped it up into small pieces and used the grater attachment on the food processor.

Grated radish cooking

Combine the shredded radish with the chicken stock and the shrimp water in saucepan or wok. Cook, covered, on medium-high for about 15 minutes. Stir occasionally.

Minced mix-in ingredients

While the radish cooks, remove and discard the stems from the mushrooms and mince the caps. Mince the shrimp. If you haven't already, mince the sausage and scallions. Add the mushrooms, shrimp, sausage, scallions, wine, salt, sugar, pepper, and oil to the pan. Cover and cook 10 more minutes. 

The finished batter, before flour is added

Remove the mixture to a large bowl and let cool to room temperature. Once cooled, add the rice flour to the mixture and mix in thoroughly. Oil a square cake pan and pour the batter into an even layer. Use a wet spatula to smooth the top. Smoother is better, to get more even browning later on.

Ready to steam

For the next step, you will need to rig up a way to steam the cake. The way I did this was to put a wire steamer rack (available in various sizes at Chinese stores) in the wok and set the pan on top. A high-domed lid will likely be needed to fit everything inside. Bring water to boil in a wok with the rack in place, filling water to about an inch below where the pan will sit.

My steaming setup

Carefully place the pan on the rack and cover. Steam the cake for 50-60 minutes. Keep extra hot water on hand to refill the wok. This is easy to do with an electric tea kettle. Check the water level every 10 minutes and refill as needed. Check if the cake is done by inserting a toothpick. If the toothpick comes out clean, the cake is done.

The finished cake

Remove the pan from the heat and let the cake cool to room temperature. Place a cutting board on top of the pan and carefully flip over, letting the cake drop out of the pan. Cut into pieces as desired. I did 12 rectangular pieces (3 x 4 pieces), which are roughly the size you see in restaurants. You can also make smaller pieces if you want to go for a finger food style.

Cut and ready to fry

Select the pieces you want to eat now, and refrigerate the rest in a sealed bag. In a nonstick pan, heat a little oil on medium-high. Sear the cakes on both sides until golden brown. This is quite fast, maybe a minute on each side and serve immediately.

Sam's Spaghetti

Happy Halloween and a happy birthday to my father, Sam. Today, I am pleased to present one of his original creations, a historical recipe from his younger days. In the late 1970s, he was working in his first job out of college. His colleague, Dan, asked if he had a spaghetti sauce recipe, and he came up with something on the fly, and likely forgot all about it. Soon after, both he and Dan had moved on from the company. Decades later, they reconnected, and he learned that "Sam's spaghetti," as it was now known, had become a beloved family tradition. To this day, Dan's (now adult) sons still ask for it.

The sauce itself is quite thick, and a deep red. Using tomato paste is an interesting choice, and gives the sauce a real intensity compared with my usual sauces with crushed tomato as a base (see beef ragù and fettuccine in tomato sauce). This sauce is certainly of the "old school" of Italian-American cookery, but continues to be delicious nearly forty years after its inception.

This version is slightly edited from the one provided by Dan. The original uses "3 mushrooms," but I brought this up a little to use an 8 oz. package. I used my own mixture of herbs rather than the recommended Italian seasoning, which I do not have. Finally, it can be useful to save a little pasta water to thin the sauce to your desired consistency.

Ingredients

• 1 onion, diced
• 8 oz. mushrooms, sliced
• 1 lb. ground beef
• 5 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup red wine
• 12 oz. tomato paste (1 large can)
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1/2 tsp dried basil
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• 1/4 tsp dried rosemary
• 1 bay leaf
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Cooked pasta (reserve some of the cooking water)

Instructions

In a large saute pan, heat a bit of olive oil on medium high heat. Add onions and mushrooms and cook until softened. Remove from pan and set aside.

Season the beef with salt and pepper. Add to the pan with the garlic. Add more oil if needed. Turn heat up to high and cook until the beef is browned. Deglaze the pan with wine. Add tomato paste, water, and herbs. Return the mushrooms and onion to the pan. Mix well and bring to a boil.

Reduce heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes. This will be just enough time to prepare the pasta. Taste the sauce and season with salt and pepper as desired. If the sauce is too thick, mix in a splash of the pasta water. Serve with grated parmesan.

Potstickers, the Hard Way

I've been working on perfecting my potstickers for years now. I look at my original post from 2012, and it's almost funny how simplistic it is. Last year's "Part II" stepped things up considerably, and at the time I thought that was going to be it. In that post, I said "the entire process is now done from scratch." As it turns out, that wasn't completely true. The day has finally arrived where I decided store-bought ground pork is not good enough. That's right, folks, the meat grinder, passed down from Ariel's bubbie, came out to play for the first time today. You might be wondering if it was worth it. Oh, yes. These are the best potstickers I have ever made. 

Creating the perfect potsticker filling is the real focus of this post, but I also include all the other steps for completeness. As I've mentioned before, grandpa and grandma have always been vague about what goes into the filling, and I have tinkered with it a lot over the years, incorporating elements of other recipes and my own experimentation. I think I've finally nailed it here. The dried mushrooms contribute their nice earthiness. Using both parts of the napa, and lots of it, lightens the texture and adds a little crunch. The classic combination of ginger and garlic comes through on each bite. And then, of course, there's the meat.

The trouble with prepacked ground pork is that the customer typically gets no information about either the cut it came from or the fat content. Contrast this with beef, where you get the lean/fat ratio and the cut (sirloin, chuck, and so forth). Last time I made dumplings, the pork was too lean and they ended up a little dry. I chose pork shoulder for grinding. Importantly, there is a good amount of fat throughout that keeps the dumplings moist. It's also my preferred cut for char siu, which was the delicious destiny of the rest of the roast. Shoulder is also excellent for any kind of stew. Using the rather ancient and venerated grinder was a little intimidating at first, but it ended up working very well. It will no doubt feature in future posts.

This recipe will make at least 150 potstickers, with a little filling left over. It's a good thing they freeze well. I like making potstickers in large batches, as you save time in the long run. You can put frozen potstickers right in the pan and they defrost as they steam for a quick and easy meal. The leftover filling can be cooked like a burger and put on a sandwich. It can be stir fried with a little bean sauce and noodles, or it can go into a frittata. The possibilities are quite endless.

Ingredients

Filling

• 2 lb pork shoulder, with fat
• 2 lb napa, both stalks and leaves
• 1 cup dried black mushrooms, minced (about 12-15 mushrooms)
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 Tbs fresh ginger, minced
• 2 large eggs
• 1/3 cup green onion, finely chopped
• 1/4 cup fresh chives, finely chopped
• 3 Tbs soy sauce
• 1 Tbs salt
• 1 Tbs sesame oil
• 1 tsp black pepper
• Extra salt for the napa

Wrappers

• 7 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups boiling water
• 2/3 cup cold water

Everything Else

• Vegetable oil for frying
• Chinese black vinegar for dipping
• Splash of soy sauce for dipping

Instructions

Filling

Ahead of time, put the mushrooms in a bowl of hot tap water. Let stand at least 30 minutes. Once soaked, remove the stems and finely mince the caps.

Roughly chop the napa, including both the white center parts and the yellowish/greenish leafy parts. In a large bowl, salt the napa and toss to combine. Let stand at least 20 minutes. Working in batches, wrap the napa in a clean towel and wring. Squeeze out as much water as possible. Once this is done, finely chop the napa.

If using ground pork, skip the next step. Otherwise, continue on. Cut the pork into small chunks, making sure to include the fat, and grind. A food processor can be used in place of a grinder. The grinder was quite straightforward to use, and the only challenge was figuring out how to best clamp it down. We ended up opening a drawer to give it room to screw in, and then putting some cardboard on the contact spots to protect the surfaces and stabilize the grinder.

Meat grinder or time machine? Maybe both.

Combine mushrooms, napa, and pork in a large bowl. Add all other filling ingredients and mix thoroughly but gently. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside in the refrigerator until ready to fill dumplings.

The filling can be varied to taste. A good way to test the filling is to form a small patty and cook it in a frying pan.

Wrappers

Mix the flour and boiling water, and let stand for 3 minutes. Add cold water and knead into a smooth dough. Roll out on a floured surface, as thin as possible. Using a pint glass or similarly sized glass, cut circles out of the dough. Ball up and scraps and roll out again until all the dough is used.

To avoid dough drying out, it is best to keep the dough in a bag or under plastic wrap. Roll out dough as needed as the dumplings are filled. Usually, we make the dough in two batches -- the amounts given in the ingredients section reflect a double recipe.

Assembly

Prepare the "assembly station" with a large sheet pan and a bowl of water. For each dumpling, take a round wrapper and add a small amount of the filling, around 1/2 Tbs. Take care not to overfill. Over time, you will get the feel for it. It is important to also make sure the filling stays in the center and does not get into the seal. Usually, I form the filling into a slightly elongated shape parallel to the direction of the fold.

Dip a finger in the water and run it around the edge of the wrapper. Fold over and pinch into a moon shape, making sure to seal tightly. Wet the top edge and form 2-3 pleats in the same direction. For detailed photos of wrapping potstickers, see my original post.

Once the sheet pan is filled, place in the freezer. Once the dumplings are fully frozen, they can be transferred safely to a bag. If the dumplings are bagged too early, they will stick together. The potstickers can also be cooked immediately, but I find they are much easier to detach from the sheet pan once they are at least a little frozen.

Cooking

The key to cooking is the right pan. Nonstick with a well-fitting cover is essential. Add just enough oil to the pan to make a thin layer. On medium high heat, cook the potstickers until the bottoms are lighly browned. Add about a centimeter of water (if the pan is full) and cover. Cook until the water is fully absorbed. Add more oil if needed and fry until the bottoms are crunchy and well-browned.

Serve with Chinese black vinegar, either straight or with a splash of soy sauce.

Chicken and Mushroom Curry

It's been over 3 years since my last curry recipe, and I think it's about time we returned. I've done two other chicken curries in the past, but this one is a little different. Those used dairy-based sauces for a creamy texture, whereas this time I've gone tomato and stock-based. This dish is inspired by some curries I've had in restaurants along with recipes I found online. And by the fact I had a half pound of mushrooms in the fridge. Speaking of the fridge, this was also equally delicious the next day.

The curry turned out quite spicy, and this will come down to how spicy your particular garam masala blend is. It may be best to leave out the crushed pepper until the end if it is still desired. Always taste your sauce (after the chicken is cooked) and season accordingly. This curry also goes well with some plain yogurt or Greek yogurt on the table to cool things off to taste.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 lb chicken thighs, deboned
• 2 onions, diced
• 1/2 lb sliced mushrooms
• 3-4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 Tbs ginger, minced
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp ground turmeric
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper (optional)
• Dash of cinnamon and cardamom
• 1 15 oz can diced tomatoes with juice
• 1/2 cup chicken stock
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Canola oil

Instructions

Ahead of time, chop the onion, mushroom, garlic, and ginger. Remove skin and bones from chicken, if needed. Cut the chicken into 1 inch squares, then season lightly with salt and pepper.

 In a deep saute pan, dutch oven, or wok (anything with a lid works), heat a bit of oil on medium high. Briefly brown the chicken on both sides, then set aside. Add more oil if needed. Add all the spices to the pan and stir into the oil for a minute. Add onions and saute for a few minutes. Add mushrooms, garlic, and ginger, and cook a few more minutes, until mushrooms start to soften.

Pour in the tomatoes and the juice from the can into the pan. Add the chicken stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium, cover, and cook for 10 minutes. Remove the lid and cook uncovered 10 more minutes to let the sauce reduce.

Salt to taste. Serve with rice and plain yogurt, if desired.

Coq au Vin

Today I'm blogging from a new location, with a much appreciated gas stove. I'm also continuing the recent trend of "Francophilia" on Sans Déjeuner Gratuit. I have no idea if that was correct French. Coq au vin is a traditional, rustic, and hearty French dish, which, like many French dishes, lends itself to a multitude of regional and personal variations. Traditionally, the dish is made with an old rooster ("coq"), which necessitates a long baking time. With a regular chicken from the grocery store, we don't need to do that. I only baked mine for 30 minutes.

The wine used is generally a red Burgundy, but any good quality French red wine will do. Other variations exist, such as the Alsatian coq au Riesling, one of the many German cultural influences felt in the region. Whatever you choose, I must remind: only cook with a wine you would drink. I consulted, by way of their recipes, many eminent chefs for inspiration, including Julia Child and Alton Brown. In my version, I have attempted to reduce the number of steps, and I've chosen to throw basically all the ingredients in at once before baking the dish.

Ingredients

• 5 strips thick side pork, bacon, or lardons
• 1 whole chicken
• 4 cups button mushrooms (or chopped up larger mushrooms)
• 2-3 carrots
• 2 stalks celery
• 1/2 onion
• 1 jar pearl onions, drained (about 25 pearl onions)
• 2 tsp crushed garlic
• 1/4 cup brandy
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 2 cups red wine (preferably Burgundian)
• 1 bay leaf
• A few sprigs fresh thyme
• A few sprigs Fresh parsley, chopped
• 2 tbs flour
• Salt and pepper
• Olive oil, as needed

Instructions

Cut the bacon or side pork (henceforth referred to as the "pork") into small pieces, about 2/3 inch wide. Cook in a large frying or saute pan until slightly crisped and plenty of fat is rendered into the pan. Remove the pork from the pan, shaking the excess grease back into the pan. Set aside in fridge.

While the pork is cooking, break down the chicken into pieces: 2 legs, 2 thighs, 2 wings, breast cut into 4 pieces, and back cut into 2 pieces. Keep the skin and bones intact. Clean the offal out of the back. Liberally dust with salt and pepper. Working in batches, brown all feasible sides of the chicken pieces in the pork fat and transfer to a large pot or dutch oven. 

Next, thoroughly brown the mushrooms. I did this in two batches. Transfer the mushrooms to the pot with the chicken. While browning the second batch of mushrooms, the pork fat dried up. If this happens, supplement with a little olive oil.

Finely dice the carrots, celery, and onion. Add these, along with the pearl onions and garlic, to the pan. Brown everything. Deglaze the pan with brandy and add to the pot. You can also wait and add the pearl onions at the end, which will preserve their structural integrity.

How many mirepoix photos on one blog is enough?

Add pork, chicken stock, wine, bay leaf, and thyme to the pot. Cover and bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes.

Before baking

Take the pot out and put it on the stove. Turn up heat to high and bring to a boil. Take the chicken pieces out and set aside to avoid overcooking. Reduce for several minutes, by about half, until the flavors intensify. Add the parsley while doing so. Stir the flour in with a little water to form a slurry. Add to the pot and stir to integrate and thicken the sauce. Taste as you go. At the end, salt and pepper to taste. Mine didn't need any extra salt, but a little pepper gave it a boost.

Notice difference in color and "water level"

Remove bay leaf and thyme sprigs when done. Add the chicken pieces back in and simmer a few minutes. Serve with potatoes (mashed or boiled) or noodles and french bread.