Apple Cider Char Siu Pork - My Greenwich Wine & Food Festival demo

Whew! I just got back from the Greenwich Wine & Food Festival. It was a crazy whirlwind and a complete blast — so many amazing food vendors, talks, games, and music… all set on the beautiful waterfront. Check out pics on my Instagram here and here.

Though I’m pretty beat, I just had to jump on here and give you my recipe for my apple cider char siu pork, the dish I cooked on the demo kitchen stage. Shame on me for not having it ready!

As I mentioned in my demo, I developed this dish for three reasons:

1) It’s a variation on the dish I made when I was first eliminated on Food Network Star. My dish was good, but my presentation didn’t impress the judges. So this was my chance for demo redemption … if only for myself.

2) I wanted to do a home-cooked riff on traditional char siu pork, a dish that perhaps you’ve had but never thought to make for yourself.

3) Char siu ingredients — cinnamon, star anise, cloves, ginger — are very much in line with the flavors of fall. Add apple cider and you’ve got a Chinese-Autumn dish that’s perfect for the season.

Traditional char siu pork is usually something you’d buy because it requires a special oven and esoteric ingredients. I’m pretty happy that this home version comes really close to the original, uses basic ingredients, and swaps out the typical shoulder or belly for lean and fast-cooking tenderloin.

I also call for something called “apple cider molasses”, a fun ingredient you can make at home. Did you know pomegranate molasses is simply reduced pomegranate juice? That was my thinking here. When you reduce the apple cider, you get a deeper, sweeter, thicker liquid that’s gives great flavor and body to the glaze. The concentrated sugar content also helps give the pork that sticky-sweet-and-spiced yum factor.

You can even make a bigger batch of molasses and use it like a syrup or sweetener. Try it in a vinaigrette, or a pop of flavor in your seltzer, or even a topping on yogurt or ice cream. Once you have the apple cider molasses, this dish only takes 30 minutes.

RECIPE

5 cups apple cider
¾ cup soy sauce
¼ cup hoisin sauce
6 garlic cloves, smashed
2-inch knob of ginger, peeled and sliced
3 tablespoons annatto seeds (optional — adds some of the red color characteristic of char siu pork, but very little flavor)
5 cinnamon sticks
½ cup star anise pods
1 tablespoon whole cloves
¼ cup honey

2 boneless pork tenderloins — 2-2 ½ lb in total
1 tablespoon 5-spice powder
1 tablespoon salt

2 tablespoons grapeseed oil

Add apple cider to medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Lower to simmer and reduce until 20% of volume, about 1 hour. You will have about 1 cup of reduced apple cider “molasses”. This can be done up to 3 days ahead. 

Preheat oven to 425°F. Line baking sheet with foil, making sure it is entirely covered. 

Dry pork loin with a paper towel and cut each tenderloin into two halves, so you have four pieces total. Rub with five spice powder and salt. Bring large skillet to medium-high heat and add oil. Sear the pork loin on all sides, 3-4 minutes on each side. 

Place pork pieces on baking sheet and place in the oven on the middle rack. Roast for 15 minutes. 

While the pork is roasting, add apple cider molasses, soy sauce, hoisin sauce, garlic, ginger, annatto seeds, cinnamon, cloves, and star anise to a saucepan. Bring to a boil and then reduce to simmer. Simmer for 15 minutes, then remove from heat. Strain glaze and add honey. 

Remove pork from oven and turn oven to broil. One by one, place pork pieces in a medium bowl and spoon glaze on top, making sure the entire surface is coated. 

Place pork on top rack and broil for 5 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to rest. Serve with remaining reserved glaze. 

Lunar New Year Eats - Long, Long Life Noodles

Towards the end of any Chinese banquet -- a wedding, birthday, and most definitely Lunar New Year -- you will get a giant platter of noodles.

You’ll reach for your serving but the noodles won’t stop. They’re long and tangled. You look for a knife, but of course there aren’t any knives at a Chinese banquet table, just chopsticks. Not that your grandma would allow you to cut them. Aiya, do you want to cut your life short?

So you pull and pull and before you know it, your small chopstick pinch turns into an entire plateful.

These noodles aren’t just any noodles, they’re longevity noodles -- uncut and extra long. The long life symbolism and somewhat comical way you eat them got me thinking… what if all the ingredients in Longevity Noodles were long and uncut?

And so I added long beans, flat Chinese chives, enoki mushrooms, and bean sprouts. No stunted peas or diced anything -- we’re looking for length! I gave the veggies a little trim but otherwise kept them at full length.

When it comes to a long life, might as well quintiple down, right?

RECIPE

Note: Stir-fries are easy and very adaptable. All the work is in the prep. Cooking happens in a matter of minutes. The key to stir-frying is to time your ingredients and know how they cook. For example, of all the vegetables in this recipe, only the long beans and Chinese chives sear quickly. The mushrooms and bean sprouts are very watery and will steam before they brown, if they do so at all. So you have to decide what you want to sear and what you want to steam. If you want your ingredients to brown, you may have to cook them in batches so they have room to expel water and brown. Or, you can do as I did and only sear a couple of ingredients, and then add the rest of the watery ingredients to steam all together. This is technically more of a stir-fry/braise, but is equally delicious and a whole lot faster than a true stir-fry.

½ lb longevity noodles (Or any Asian wheat noodle. I like thinner noodles, but they are more prone to breaking which kinda happened here 😬)

1 ½ tbsp oyster sauce
1 ½ tbsp hoisin sauce
3 tbsp soy sauce
½ tsp white pepper
1 tsp sesame oil

1 tbsp grapeseed oil
⅓ lb long beans
½ lb Chinese chives
⅓ lb bean sprouts
⅓ lb enoki mushrooms

Cook noodles according to package instructions. Remove from water when very al dente, since they will continue to cook and absorb water once they’re re-added to the stir-fry. For fresh noodles, this means you could be cooking the noodles for as little as a minute.

Wash, dry, and trim all your vegetables. Mix the oyster sauce, hoisin sauce, soy sauce, white pepper, and sesame oil and set aside.

Heat the wok on high until a drop of water sizzles immediately. Add grapeseed oil. When the oil shimmers, add ginger and stir until fragrant, about 15-30 seconds. Add long beans and stir-fry until the beans start to get some color. Season the beans and other vegetables as you go. Add Chinese chives and continue to stir-fry until they take on color.

Add the mushrooms and bean sprouts. Stir-fry until wilted, about 2-3 minutes. Add the noodles and oyster sauce mixture. Mix gently so you don’t break the noodles.

TIPS & TRICKS

A wok is ideal for stir-fry because its shape is conducive to the browning/steaming method I described above. The ingredients on the bottom sear while the ingredients, piled on top like a bowl, are cooked with steam. (As opposed to a skillet where everything is basically level.) It’s also easier to mix ingredients in a bowl shape. Of course, the classic way of using a wok is to put all ingredients in contact with the wok, ensuring even browning. You control the heat level by moving the ingredients up or down the sides of the wok.

The standard for Chinese chefs is a carbon steel wok, but they can be hard for the beginner or casual cook since they require a somewhat onerous breaking-in process, consistent seasoning (maintaining the oily surface that keeps the wok nonstick-like), and can’t be used with acidic ingredients. That’s why I use the Hestan Nanobond Wok, which combines the best of all worlds. It can be heated to extremely high temperatures like a carbon steel wok (and unlike a non-stick pan), but the titanium coating is non-porous, meaning foods easily release without seasoning or a chemical coating. And unlike cast-iron, the Hestan wok conducts heat quickly, meaning you can cook in a flash. That’s the spirit of stir-fry!

Lunar New Year Eats - Lion’s Head in the Grass Meatball

If you love Thanksgiving, you’re bound to love Lunar New Year too. The holiday is all about family, beloved traditional dishes, and copious amounts of food.

I’m not here to start beef with Thanksgiving -- as far as I’m concerned, we should have a big eating holiday every month -- but Lunar New Year has a couple extra things going for it.

(I’m writing from a Chinese perspective, but countries throughout Asia celebrate with their own traditions.)

For one, when you’re a kid, you get hongbao or lai see, red envelopes filled with money. You receive them from all the married people in your family and at a big party, you can make quite the killing. (This is fun in a different, more expensive way once you’re married.)

Second, Chinese culture is filled with food symbolism. Noodles are a symbol of long life. Fish is good luck because the word is pronounced the same as the word for abundance. Dumplings symbolize gold ingots. The more you eat, the richer you’ll be in the next year. Win-win.

I invented Lion’s Head in the Grass as a way to merge two symbolic powerhouses. We are entering the Year of the Pig, so pork is a must. Pigs are lucky animals and eating pork is said to bring strength and prosperity.

And with its plentiful leafy greens, cabbage represents wealth. This is why you’ll find jade cabbages in many Chinese households. Just make sure you point them inwards, or according to feng shui, your money will fly right out the door.

Lion’s Head Meatballs are Chinese steamed or braised pork meatballs. Stuff that flavorful pork mixture inside a head of cabbage? Lion’s head in the grass.

RECIPE:

MEATBALL
1lb ground pork, 80% lean
½ cup garlic chives, chopped (if you can’t find, can also substitute scallions)
1 tbsp minced ginger
2 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp grapeseed oil
1 ½ tbsp soy sauce
1 ½ tsp Xiaoxing wine
¼ tsp white pepper
2 tbsp salt
½ tsp sugar

1 medium head of cabbage
1 tbsp sliced ginger

Mix all the meatball ingredients together. Stir until just incorporated, making sure not to overmix, otherwise the meat will be too dense. Set aside and let the meat mixture come to room temperature.

Remove the core of the cabbage using a paring knife. Continue cutting into the cabbage, carving out pieces of cabbage. Once you begin seeing the layers of the cabbage, and you have enough room for leverage, use a spoon to scoop out the inside. Make shallow cuts into the cabbage with the paring knife, then remove the excess cabbage with a spoon. Continue until the outer shell of the cabbage is ½ inch - ¾ inch thick.

Fill the inside of the cabbage with the pork mixture. Pack lightly, making sure there’s still some airiness inside.

Boil a full kettle of water. You will need this as you replenish your steaming liquid.

Place a round pan grate in the bottom of your wok. Pour hot water to the level of the grate and add sliced ginger.

Place stuffed cabbage onto the grate, cover, and simmer on medium for 50 minutes. When the water gets low, refill with the water in your kettle. Serve in a bowl with your steaming broth.

TIPS & TRICKS

If you don’t have a wok with a domed lid, you can use a wide skillet and then cover with a foil tent. You can also use a lidded pot.

Ideally you should use a wok. I use the Hestan Nanobond Wok, which is wide and flat at the bottom (as opposed to narrow or rounded), which means better contact with my range’s flame. When compared to a flat lid, the domed lid fares better with moisture retention and air circulation. Plus, a domed lid is high enough to clear a whole head of cabbage. :D

#FoodNetworkStar Episode 4 Recipe: Ketchup Shrimp

Oh I know what you were thinking when I said I was making ketchup shrimp on Episode 4. 

Ew, ketchup? That’s an insult to shrimp. 

But trust me, ketchup shrimp is a nuanced and complex dish. If I didn’t mention its main ingredient in the title, you wouldn’t even know it had ketchup. 

But I think ketchup is great, so I let the dish wear its name loud and proud. So what’s the story behind it? 

Ketchup shrimp is a treasured Tom family recipe. I’ve eaten it for as long as I can remember. Without fail, my dad makes it for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but he’s also known to make it just because. And why not? It just takes a few pantry ingredients + shrimp. It seriously takes 10 minutes or so. 

But ketchup shrimp isn’t a Tom family invention. In fact, it’s a staple in many Chinese-American households. When you think about it, ketchup is a magical ingredient. It’s sweet, a little tart, and has tons of umami, a “meatiness” that fills your mouth. 

When Bobby and Giada announced that our challenge was to make a typical weeknight meal, I immediately thought of ketchup shrimp. It's fast, interesting, and has a bonus: if someone else got the shrimp before I did, you can easily use this same recipe (with some considerations for the meat) with chicken or pork. 

RECIPE
Ketchup Shrimp 

1 lb shrimp, cleaned with shells on  
10 cloves garlic
3-inch knob of ginger
1 tbsp vegetable oil 

½ cup ketchup
2 tbsp hoisin sauce
2 tbsp Chinese black vinegar (if you don’t have this, you can substitute rice vinegar or even balsamic vinegar) 
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce 

Peel ginger. Finely dice the garlic and ginger. Heat a frying pan on medium. Add oil and heat until shimmering. Add garlic and ginger and saute until fragrant and golden, about 2-3 minutes. Remove the garlic and ginger, while keeping the oil in the pan. 

Increase heat to high. Add the shrimp in the fragrant oil and saute for 2-3 minutes on each side, until the shells have a bit of color on them. Remove the shrimp and add them to the garlic and ginger. 

Mix all the remaining ingredients together -- ketchup, hoisin sauce, black vinegar, and worcestershire sauce. Add to the hot pan and reduce for one minute, until just slightly thickened. Add the shrimp, garlic, and ginger and stir, coating the shrimp with the sauce. Keep stirring until the sauce is thick and clinging to the shrimp, about one minute more.    

TIPS & TRICKS 

• One of my goals as a cooking teacher is to eliminate the need for a cooking teacher. So I try to explain why steps are the way they are. For example, why do you cook the garlic and ginger first, remove them, and then add the shrimp? Well, garlic is notorious for burning and turning bitter, so it needs to be cooked at a medium heat. Shrimp needs a high heat to achieve browning. When you saute the ginger and garlic on medium first, you ensure you don’t burn the garlic, and you also flavor the oil for the shrimp. 

• This dish is endlessly adaptable. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever made the same version twice. Sometimes I’ll add sriracha, sometimes soy sauce or fish sauce. Sometimes I’ll add sesame oil. The proportions are very flexible, so feel free to experiment.  

• Yes, keep the shell on! The shell has so much flavor. Think of it this way -- seafood stock is made from crustacean shells. By keeping the shells on, you are getting both the meat, and a super-concentrated “broth”. 

• So you have the shell on, how do you eat it? That's up to you. Personally, I suck the sauce and use my tongue and teeth to finagle the meat out. Sometimes some shell will accompany your bite… just spit it out. My husband peels the shrimp, and then swipes up the sauce on the serving plate. Whatever floats your boat, but remember -- shells are your friend! 

Supermarket Hot & Sour Soup // My Food Network Star Culinary POV

As anyone who watches Food Network Star knows, you can’t just be a good cook and an engaging TV personality. You have to have a CULINARY POV. This might seem simplistic -- I can’t be boxed in! -- but just think about it. Bobby Flay = Southwestern flavors and grilling. Giada De Laurentiis = Italy meets California. Ina Garten = simple but luxurious crowd-pleasers. 

But I’m a home cook and I basically just cook what I feel like. There’s no reason to limit my repertoire in the same way, say, an executive chef has to. Bobby Flay can’t just decide to serve ramen at Bobby’s Burger Palace. 

The casting agency even asks you in the very first application: What is your culinary POV? 

So I had to do some soul searching. Do I cook modern, flashy foods? Or do I go healthy? Or, as my husband suggested, do I make side dishes my POV? 

I’ve watched enough seasons of Food Network Star to know that your best, most authentic culinary POV is never some convoluted, contrived thing. In fact, it’s the cuisine that’s right under your nose. What you grew up with. What you crave. 

I love my "ethnic" supermarkets, my international cookbooks, my food travel shows. My family lives all around the world in Madagascar, China, France, and Norway. It took me a hot sec to realize it, but my culinary POV is: easy international cooking tweaks -- with a focus on Asian cuisine.

When I say “easy”, I mean no special equipment or hard-to-find ingredients. I mean food that can be transformed using a simple spice blend or sauce. I mean demystifying ingredients that’ve been staring you down at the grocery store, daring you to tackle them. 

Which brings me to hot and sour soup. If you’ve had it, it’s very likely you don’t even know what’s in it. Pork and mushrooms, okay. But bamboo shoot, wood ear mushroom, lily flowers? Even I don’t really know what lily flowers look like. Once I *thought* I bought them, but they turned out to be pickled mustard greens. Based on the ingredient list, you might think hot and sour list is out of your reach.

But I’m here to tell you -- it’s not! It’s actually a really easy soup that you can make with items you can find at any grocery store -- not even a fancy one.

RECIPE 

(adapted from Joanne Chang's Food 52 recipe)

1 tsp olive oil
½ lb ground pork (I used 80% lean, but feel free to use whatever.) 
7 scallions, sliced
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 inch knob of ginger, minced
1-1 ½ lb mushrooms, chopped to bite-size (I used a combination of beech, shiitake, and oyster. You can use any combination you like, or even dried.)
32 oz chicken broth
1 tsp sugar
3 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
8 oz firm tofu cut in ¼” slices (I used baked tofu, which is denser than regular tofu, but either works.) 
½ cup unseasoned rice vinegar (if you can't find unseasoned, just skip the sugar in the recipe and proceed as normal) 
1 tsp white pepper
2 endives cut in ¼” slices  

Add oil to a large pot and heat on medium-high until shimmering. Add pork, separate the meat, and cook until some of the fat is rendered out, about 1-2 minutes. Add scallions, garlic, and ginger. Season and cook until aromatic and slightly browned, about 2-3 minutes. Add mushrooms and season again. Cook mushrooms until they have reduced by half, 4-5 minutes. 

Add chicken broth, sugar, soy sauce, and sesame oil. Bring to a boil then simmer for 1 minute. Add tofu, rice vinegar, white pepper, and endives. Simmer for 2 minutes. Serve hot! 

TIPS & TRICKS

• White pepper might be the most esoteric ingredient in this recipe. You can substitute black pepper no problem, but I’d encourage you to add white pepper to your pantry. White pepper is actually the same plant as black pepper, but it’s just processed differently. It has a musky heat that’s characteristic of Chinese dishes, and is an easy Asian twist you can add to any dish that normally calls for black pepper.

• Why endive? Endive isn’t a typical hot and sour soup ingredient -- or an Asian ingredient for that matter -- but it does a great job pinch hitting for bamboo shoot’s bitterness and lily flowers’ crunch.

• I don’t like gloopy soup, so I don’t use cornstarch or any other thickener. Chef’s prerogative!

• Many recipes might call for you to add the mushrooms with the broth. You know this type of mushroom, whether it’s hot and sour or tom yum soup. It’s spongy and floats around. It’s fine! But I want a full-bodied soup so I cook the mushrooms down *before* I add the broth. This concentrates their flavor and makes sure they aren’t water-logged and flabby once the broth is added.

• Adding the vinegar and white pepper at the last minute is key. Cook either of them too long, and you'll lose the hot and sour of hot and sour soup.