Today I had a tooth filled. Yuck. After which I made and ate a pot of Chinese soup with shrimp, BBQ pork, yellow onion, poblano chile, fish cake, bok choy, brown Miso, a shitaki mushroom and Vietnamese Banh noodles flavored with rice wine, soy, sesame oil and dashi flavoring.
For dinner I wanted to use the two boneless pork ribs, so I minced about two Tbs. of ginger and a like amount of garlic (the dish is supposed to be made with more garlic than ginger but I vary that depending upon my mood) and cut up the about 1 1/2lb. of meat. I then sliced 1/2 poblano chili into thin ¾ inch long slices and diced three thick slices of onion. I stir fried all of this in about 2 Tbs. of peanut oil with some sesame oil and a heaping tsp. of Garlic Chili Sauce. After the meat had turned brown on the outside I put it aside and diced three shitaki mushrooms and three Chinese eggplants. I sautéed the mushrooms and eggplant in two or three Tbs. of peanut oil and cut up a 14 oz. block of medium tofu and soaked about two Tbs. of shredded black wood ear in about 1 cup of boiling hot water for about fifteen minutes and made about three cups of chicken stock with 1/2 Tbs. dry chicken stock powder. Since the volume of ingredients exceeded the capacity of my small 14” wok, I got out the larger 18 or 20 inch wok and combined the cooked eggplant and mushroom mixture with the pork mixture in the large wok.
I then added about 2 Tbs. rice cooking wine and one tsp. of sesame oil and 1 Tbs. of soy sauce to the mixture and then added the tofu and the 3 cups of chicken stock and the wood ear with its 1 cup of water. This brought the level of the stock to the top of the mixture of ingredients in the wok, which is what you want to do so the entire mixture will stew. I then turned up the heat and covered the mixture to let it simmer for about 30 minutes.
While the Ma Po Do Fu was cooking I cut up four or five heads of thin tall White Bok Choy, separating the stems from the green leafy heads and another Tbs. of ginger and three cloves of garlic. I then heated about 1 Tbs. of peanut oil and a dash of sesame oil in the smaller wok and sautéed the ginger and garlic for a minute and then threw in the white heavy bottom portions of bok choy.
Suzette came home and offered to do something to finish dinner, so she cut up two green onions and heated some of the PPI rice.
After it had stir fried the white bok choy bottoms for about six minutes, we threw in the green heads and the two diced green onions and I threw in a dash of salt and two dashes of sugar and poured on 1 Tbs of rice cooking wine and about ½ Tbs. of soy sauce and (since I did not make more chicken stock) about four Tbs. of cooking liquid from the Ma Po Do Fu and covered the smaller wok, so that the Bok Choy would steam and cook.
I then made a thickening mixture using about two to three Tbs of cornstarch, about 1 tsp. of sesame oil, about 1 Tbs. each of soy sauce and rice cooking wine and about ¼ cup of water so the cornstarch would go into solution.
I poured about four-fifths of the thickening mixture into the Ma Po Do Fu and the rest onto the Bok Choy. After a few more minutes of cooking the liquids in each of the woks began to thicken and Suzette did a final heating of the rice and went down to the basement fridge for a couple of beers. You want the sauce to be viscous but not hardened or gooey and definitely not thin and runny. Practice will teach you how much thickening is needed for the volume of food and degree of liquidity of each dish.
We were both hungry and ate large bowls filled with the steaming rice, Ma Po Do Fu and stir fried Bok Choy. See pictures of the finished dishes in their woks.
There was some left over that I think we will take to the Neighborhood pot luck cocktail party tomorrow night.
Later I cut up about 1 cup of fresh strawberries and scooped about 4 Tbs. of Lala strawberry yogurt over them for a healthy dessert with a cup of green tea and a glass of about 1 Tbs. of cognac mixed with about ½ Tbs. of Santa Clara Rompope.
Bon Appetit
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