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!!