Writing a Wee Bit Regarding Red Wine...

... try saying THAT quickly 10 times after a few glasses!!

Ok, so I'm writing this blog entry in hopes that a reader will be able to help :)

I am a fan of red wine. In the past I have particulary enjoyed big mouthy reds, the ones that punch you in the face with their tannins and yell "TASTE MY DEPTH" at you.

But recently they've become too much. Especially some of the new world wines, they are too fruity, almost candy-like.

Last June while we were in Vegas we stopped at a place in The Venetian to have some wine with meats and cheeses. I had a glass of a 2008 Mongrana. At first I was not at all impressed; it had very little tannins and the mouth feel of warm water.

BLEURGH! was my initial response...... until...... it really allowed the cured meats and smelly cheeses to shine!

Ever since that night I've been looking for something similar (can't find Mongrana in stores for the life of me). Malbecs just don't cut it anymore. They remind me of a cupcake with too much frosting in a glass!

I've tried Beaujolais: that was great on the tannins, but had an acidity that hung around afterwards.

Tonight I headed to Whole Foods and asked the lady working in the wine section for some suggestions. She sounded like she knew what she was talking about and she gave me some samples to try. She was spot on with the tannins, but the acidity was still too much.

Anyway, after about 10 minutes with her I decided on a Pinot Noir from Oregon. I told her that I had been told somewhere else to stay away from New World wines (not because they are bad, but because they're not what I'm looking for in a wine). She was able to tell me that due to the climate in Oregon it won't have the same candy-ness. I didn't sample this wine, so who knows how it'll taste.

So here is the bottle (and 2 super cute dogs):

Time to open the bottle....

Yay!!! It's delicious! Smooth, round, not too sweet, very little acidity!!!! :D

But please readers, if you have any suggestions of other wines I should try (with the characteristics I'm looking for) please let me know!

And here is a photo of the best wine ever. It also helps that I had great company too, Matt and I had some wonderful conversation that evening :)

I'm super excited that I get to go to Las Vegas again for my birthday :D I bet they won't still have the Mongrana, but I'll enjoy going back to that restaurant anyway :)

Noodley Noo

Matt often calls me Noodley Noo :)

Earlier today I made my  congee. At the same time I figured I'd make a start on dinner too.

For dinner I made Changde Rice Noodles with Red-Braised Beef.

The beef had to cook for 4 hours, so that's why I started it around lunchtime.

Stewing beef was put in a saucepan of water and then brought to boiling point. I had to skim off the scum as it came to the surface. As soon as the water started boiling I removed the beef and set it aside.
In a large pan I heated some peanut oil and then fried some dried chili peppers, star anise and ginger in some chili bean paste. Yummy smells indeed!

I then threw the beef back in and covered it all with water that had boiled with the meat. I then left it on a low burner for about 4.5 hours.

When I was ready to eat I quickly blanched some baby bok choy, heated some rice noodles and chicken stock.

Beef + noodles + stock + a sprinkling of green onion = one delicious dinner! The meat was sooooo tender, it melted in the mouth. Matt would have loved it!

The picture doesn't really do it any justice. But the flavour of beef was splendid, it had absorbed the flavours from the sauce it was cooked in and had a nice kick to it. I think next time I will try and thicken the sauce up a bit just before serving. Today I didn't really serve any of the sauce as it was too watery, I just took the meat.

Looking forward to leftovers tomorrow :) I'll probably have the beef with the congee!

Congee For The Soul

I have a dodgy tummy at the moment.

However, I saw it as a good chance to try my hand at making congee, the chinese equivalent of Chicken Noodle Soup. It's supposed to have restorative properties and can be eaten plain, or highly seasoned and with a variety of meats.
I chose to make a plain version and add some freshly boiled egg.

It's super easy to make although it does take a while, so not as easy as cracking open can of campbells.

1 cup of rice was cooked in 2 cups of chicken stock and 2 cups of water. Start cooking on a high heat until the water starts boiling, then turn it down to low. Apparently the longer it cooks the better, it allows the rice to break down more. Mine cooked for about 2 hours.

You can make it as thick or as runny as you like. If it's getting too dry for you, just add some boiling water.

Here is a shot of my final product.

It was delicious! It's a good job I like it, that one cup of rice made about 8 cups of congee.... I had best go search the internet to see if congee freezes well!

Puffy Bean Curd

Tonight for dinner I cooked one of the dishes that I didn't get around to cooking the other night. It was Zhangguying Red-Braised Bean Curd Puffs.

Bean curd puffs are deep-fried pieces of bean curd. Once fried they take on a spongy consistency which are great at absorbing flavours. I bought the puffs pre-fried in the refrigerator section of the asian market.

I fried some garlic and ginger in a little peanut oil until they were lovely and fragrant. I then added 1 1/2 cups of chicken stock, some soy sauce, salt siracha and chili flakes (the siracha and chili flakes were my own addition).
I cut the bean curd puffs in half and then threw them in the wok too and let them simmer for 8 minutes before adding some sliced green onion and long chili.
Just before serving I put a small amount of potato flour mixed with water to the wok. It thickened the sauce a little and adds a lovely gloss to the food.

The finished dish was absolutely delicious. The puffs really did absorb the flavours and juices extremely well. The naughty westerner in me imagined doing a dish with butter and garlic and these yielding puffs!!!
I look forward to experimenting with the puffs. I'd like to add more veggies next time.

If you're in a time crunch but want a hearty feeling stew I'd recommend using these guys, they are really good in the mouth and absorbed the flavours so quickly (8 minutes of cooking time). Plus one serving (2oz) is only 100 calories with 2g of fat. They're also low in protein though too :(

There's no one here to kiss this cook tonight. Matt is in Orlando this week and then in Norway the week after.
But make sure you kiss YOUR cook!

Chinese Feast

This week I got two Chinese cookbooks from the library. They both claim to be 'authentic' chinese cook books.

I decided to make an evening of it, to cook one dish at a time, nibble on it and then start the other.

The first dish I cooked came the "Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook; recipes from Hunan province". The dish was 'Fire-Baked Fish Stir-Fried with Bell Peppers'.

Noodle fish were salted and soaked in a little rice wine: (the black dots are the eyes!)

They were then drained and tossed in flour before being deep fried in peanut oil:

When they had crisped up they were removed from the oil. Most of the oil was poured out of the wok before frying some ginger, chili pepper, bell pepper, chili flakes and spring onions.
When these had become lovely and fragrant the fish were thrown back into the wok to be coated with the peppers. The finished dish was lovely!

I was very excited about trying the next dish 'Roasted Peppers with Preserved Duck Eggs'. I see these preserved duck eggs every time I got to Cleveland Asia Market and I've always wanted to try them, but haven't had a recipe to do so. With the cookbook from the library I was now armed with a recipe. Here are the eggs in their box:

The eggs are a lovely blue colour, with some black spots.

To start, I charred some red bell peppers under the grill (broiler) and then peeled away the skins. 

It was then time to shell a preserved egg (also known as century eggs). My apologies that the photo is not very clear, but I hope you can see that the egg inside the shell is solid and black. It has what I assume to be denatured protein in snowflake like patterns on the surface. It smelled somewhat like wet dog, although the smell was not overpowering. The eggs have been preserved by burying them in salt, tea leaves and rice husk, covered with sodium bicarbonate and left for 40-50 days.

The thought of trying the egg meant it was time for a quick drink of wine ;)

I got to wear the dress that my big sister had made for me when she was living in china 10 years ago. I'm happy that I can still fit in it :)

So back to the preserved duck eggs..... They were sliced open using some cotton thread (apparently you shouldn't do it with a knife) and then served with the peppers drizzled with some vinegar, soy sauce, garlic and sesame oil. 2 of my language partners told me that these eggs are best served with vinegar but as I didn't know how the peppers were going to turn out I added some good ol' kimchi to the plate so that we'd have some vinegary food that we definitely like on there.

I was brave and took the first bite of the preserved eggs. You can definitely tell that they are eggs, but they have a distinct flavour. It was not super pungent and not offensive at all, just different.
However, recently I cooked a rice dish that had hard boiled egg chopped up in it. It was yummy, but when I reheated it in the microwave it caused the white of the egg to get a couple of brown spots which held a very pungent liquid in them. I ended up throwing the reheated leftovers away because of the smell and taste of that brown liquid. I assume that the microwave had denatured the protein even more in the egg white and the result was the nasty brown stuff.
The preserved eggs had a milder version of that taste/smell. I think that I had I not previously had the horrible reheat incident I would have been able to appreciate the preserved eggs more. But unfortunately they reminded me too much of that other meal :( They did go well with the kimchi, but that aftertaste still made its way onto the palate.

The next dish was a 'Cantonese-style Roast Duck and Cucumber Slices with Salt and Pepper' from the "Everyday Easy Chinese" cookbook. The name pretty much tells you how to make it :

Penny showed particular interest in this dish too :

Next dish (from the same book) was Sichuan salt and pepper squid. I made a dipping sauce using fat free mayo and siracha. It was good, but not great.

The final dish of the night was Matt's favourite (and it's also known to have been Chairman Mao's fave too!): 'Red-Braised Pork'

Pork belly was blanched for 4 minutes:

It was then chopped into bite size pieces and stewed for a couple of hours with sugar, shaoxing wine, ginger, star anise, dried red chiles, cinnamon, soy sauce and dried mushrooms.

The result was a lovely fragrant dish with very succulent meat. I personally couldn't eat the huge chunks of fat, but I thanked them for making the sauce ultra yummy. I served it with a little bit of rice.

So all in all the night was a good success. I had another 2 small dishes (tofu and vegetable) that I wanted to try but it got too late. I started cooking at 6pm and we didn't finish eating the pork stew until 11pm.

I really enjoyed trying some new food and I'm glad that Matt was willing to do it with me :)

As always, don't forget to kiss your cook!!

Chinese curry

Today I received some recipes from one of my language partners.
I decided to cook a chinese chicken curry!

I started by sautéing cubed potatoes and carrots in a little sesame oil. When they had softened I set them aside and browned some chopped chicken breast.

Then I added a packet of curry (it was solid!) and some water (about 2 cups)

I added back the potatoes and carrots and then added some chopped onions and celery. It was strange adding the onions last, we always seem to add onions FIRST in western cooking :)

I let it cook for about five minutes before serving it over some Jasmine rice.

It was delicious!!!! It was also extremely easy to cook.

I think it would have looked prettier if I'd have chopped things into smaller chunks, but it still tasted wonderful. I will definitely be making this again. Plus there are left overs too :)