Comfort Food

It's been a pretty stressful month for me, and this week is proving to be especially bad. Now, this stress has started to manifest in my food cravings and the meals I have planned for this week. This is the very definition of comfort food: what I want to eat/cook when I'm feeling down.

When I go to the Whole Foods pre-cooked food bar, and they have out "Comfort Food," it's typical American/Southern foods: meatloaf, mac & cheese, casseroles. That's all too heavy to me, and doesn't jive with my palate.

Ideally, I'd have some of my mom's Haitian cooking as my comfort food. I could eat the pants off some braised chicken and rice with red beans, or white rice and black bean sauce, or some bouillon (pronounced boo-yohn). But I'm still working on getting up to my mom's level of Haitian cooking.

Until I get to that level, it seems my tastes tend toward Asian flavors: light, savory, salty, and a little bit sweet. My planned dinners for this week are a couple of good old standbys.

Mapo Tofu

I absolutely love mapo tofu; I sometimes use it as a benchmark for a new Chinese restaurant. It's bold, spicy, and just warms you up inside. The slight numbing sensation and increased salivation caused by the Sichuan peppercorns is just an added bonus :)

Yaki-Udon with Chicken & Veggies

It's super simple, just stir fry the cooked noodles, some broccoli, carrots, baby bok choy, and ginger in the right sauce. It's savory, but has that sweetness from the yaki-soba/yaki-udon sauce, and the bit of spice from the ginger.

Photo from lovehwaseong.kr

Soon Dubu Chigae (Korean soft tofu soup)

This isn't one that I can make myself yet, but sooner or later I will buy a Korean stew pot and try my hand at this. Soon dubu chigae is a hearty, spicy stew made from hot peppers, fish stock, silken tofu, prawns, clams, and a raw egg on top that cooks in the hot broth. Whenever I have a cold that just won't go away, I go to Korea House and order one of these.


I think I've associated Korean food with comfort ever since grad school, when I was commuting from Long Island to UWS Manhattan. My first semester final exams happened to fall on the first day of the NYC transit workers' strike, so none of the subways or city buses were running... and my exam started at 9am. Anticipating the delays on the LIRR, I took the 5am train into the city, and the ride that was typically 1 hour long took at least 2. Then I joined a group of people trying to grab a taxi uptown; easier said than done, when all the cabbies were gouging us.

Luckily we found a really nice van driver who could take us up to around 90th, and I'd have to walk the rest of the way. But I completely forgot to go a few avenues west before getting around 110th, because I ended up on the wrong side of Morningside Park. I backtracked and got to my first exam 35 minutes late. Oh, and the exam was difficult as sh!t.

So I handed in my exam, heart still pounding, feeling like crap, and not looking forward to my next exam in 5 hours. The first thing I wanted to do? Treat myself to a nicer lunch than usual. And so I went to Mill Korean Restaurant on 113th and B'way, and had a pot of soon dubu chigae, and then went to the EE student lounge for a nap.

For a moment, while I was face-deep into that hot stone pot, I didn't hate the world.

What's your go-to comfort food?

Mapo Tofu with Ground Pork [Attempt 2]

I recently discovered that Whole Foods carries Sichuan peppercorns. The last time I tried to make mapo tofu, this was the key ingredient that I was missing, so I decided it's time to revisit this dish. This time around, I searched for a recipe more authentic than the one in my big book o' Chinese food, which a friend told me was relatively legit. Something about the first recipe's use of chicken broth made me somewhat skeptical, though.

Sichuan pepper doesn't give heat like red chili pepper does. It's more of a cooling, tingling sensation on the tongue, and increased salivation. This kid agrees with me (watch his other videos, I really hope my future kids will be as adventurous and curious about weird foods at such an early age!).

About Sichuan Pepper
Doing a little research, I learned that Sichuan peppercorns are actually the outer husk of the dried berries of several kinds of Asian trees of the genus Zanthoxylum. In cooking, its flavor is often described as slightly citrusy, and it creates a buzzing numbness on the tongue. That numbness is due to the berry's bioactive component Hydroxy-alpha sanshool, which excites the sensory neurons that are responsible for our response to capsaicin (spicy heat, like in a chili pepper).

Did you know that Sichuan peppercorns were banned in the USA from 1968 to 2005? Not for health reasons, like with the ban on unpasteurized milk products, but because the peppercorns were capable of carrying the citrus canker bacteria that could have wrecked our citrus crops. Enforcement stopped in 2002, then the ban was lifted in 2005 when they were proven safe as long as the peppercorns were heated to 160˚F to kill the bacteria before import.

我喜歡

Chinese Lemon Chicken

Source: The Food of China by Deh-Ta Hsiung and Nina Simonds

I've been on a mission for the past year, to find the best General Tso's Chicken or Orange Chicken in Austin. For the most part, I'm really a healthy eater. I try to have fresh vegetables with most meals. I've switched from cooking long-grain white rice and jasmine rice to the more nutritious brown or wild rice.

But every now and then, I just crave some cheap, shitty Americanized Chinese food. And few dishes epitomize cheap, shitty Americanized Chinese food like General Tso's Chicken. There's something about that unique breaded texture of the meat, the thickness of the sauce, and that combination of sweet and savory flavors that has me hooked.

Or maybe it's my body saying "you need to eat more greasy stuff and restore balance." I don't know.

At any rate, I've been trying random Chinese restaurants around Austin and seeing how each one's General Tso's Chicken (a.k.a. Orange Chicken) stacks up against the others'. This is all excluding Panda Express, of course. Not to get all Hipster about Chinese food, but they're too mainstream, they lack soul.

Not too long ago, I realized that cooking it on my own isn't very complex. All it takes is a nonstick pan and oil that's hot enough. Plus I already had a semi-authentic Lemon Chicken recipe to work with from my big Chinese cookbook. The final result wasn't quite restaurant quality, but it was surprisingly satisfying.

Ingredients for chicken:

- 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch pieces

- 1 Tbsp light soy sauce

- 1 Tbsp Shaoxing rice wine

- 1 scallion, chopped finely

- 1 clove of garlic, minced

- 1 Tbsp ginger, minced

- 1 egg, lightly beaten

- 1/2 cup corn starch, or more

- Enough cooking oil for frying

Ingredients for sauce:

- 2 Tbsp juice from a lemon or orange

- 2 tsp sugar

- 1/2 tsp salt

- 1/2 tsp toasted sesame oil (I used chili sesame oil)

- 3 Tbsp chicken broth

- 1/2 tsp corn starch

Procedure:

1. In a large bowl, combine the soy sauce, Shaoxing, chopped scallion, garlic, and ginger. Add the pieces of chicken and toss them to coat it all in the marinade. Cover the bowl, and let the chicken marinate in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.

2. When the chicken is done marinating, coat all the chicken with the beaten egg. Coat the chicken with the corn starch, shaking off any excess. I poured the dry corn starch into a sealable plastic bag, added the chicken, and shook it all until everything was coated.

3. Pour the frying oil into a wok or nonstick frying pan, and heat it to medium-high. When it's hot enough, a drop of the egg and corn starch should fry golden-brown within 10 seconds. Add a about 1/2 of the chicken, one piece at a time, and fry them while stirring constantly until they are golden-brown (~4 minutes). Remove the cooked chicken with tongs or a wire-sieve, and repeat with the remaining chicken. I lay out the cooked chicken on paper towels to absorb excess oil.

4. When all the chicken is done cooking, drain out the oil and carefully wipe the frying pan dry. Reduce the heat to medium and let the pan cool a little bit. Mix all the sauce ingredients very well, and add the mixture to the pan. Let it cook while constantly stirring until it's thickened. Return the chicken to the pan, and lightly toss it in the sauce.

台灣 (Taiwan), Part 3: Braised Pork Belly

Recipe Source: http://www.nibbledish.com/people/anjelikuh/recipes/gua-bao-taiwanese-braised-pork-in-sliced-buns

One of the first things I realized about Taiwanese cuisine is that the pig is king. There's an abundance of good fish and seafood, and they do some pretty outstanding things with tofu. But pork seems to be the dominant protein over there, especially pork belly (滷肉, Lǔ ròu).

America's love affair with pork belly has been picking up steam. Just think of how many restaurants or trailers in the past year or 2 that have started serving main dishes out of big hunks of pork belly. It is the brand new hotness. Here's just sample of the porky goodness I had

Northern Taiwanese-style breakfast: a rice ball filled with braised pork belly, pickled mustard greens, tea egg, and crunchy fried pastry bits

Braised pork belly and cucumber on rice, topped with dried shredded pork (肉鬆, Ròu sōng)

Gua bao: braised pork belly, pickled mustard greens, tea egg, and sweetened crushed peanuts in a steamed bun.

When I got back home, I was seriously craving some gua bao, so I looked up a recipe. Whole Foods sells pork belly pretty cheaply by the pound, and the Asian market sells frozen buns and pickled mustard greens. Oh, it is on!

I had to make a few adjustments for ingredients, but in the end the pork belly was delicious. I realized that the recipe was a lot like one I tried from a Chinese cookbook, for "red-cooked pork." That recipe was a failure because I tried using lean pork loin. Cholesterol be damned, the fat is essential.

Before and After

I didn't look up how to make a tea egg, so I let some boiled eggs stew in the braising liquid with the pork, still delicious. I'd never used pickled mustard before, so I didn't know if anything special was done to it before it was served in Taiwan, so I just left it raw and chopped it. I told my friend at work, who's no stranger to Taiwanese pickled veggies, and shook his head in shame. Apparently, I'm supposed to sweeten it and cook it first. Whatever. It all came together pretty nicely with the buns and some chopped cilantro (Taiwan loves cilantro, and so do I).

Like the Detroit Grand Pubahs said, "we can make sandwiches."

Do you have any particular favorite pork belly (or bacon) dish? I wouldn't mind some inspiration for a future post.

Ingredients:

- 1/2 lb raw belly pork, cut to 1/2-inch thick slices

- 2 cloves garlic, smashed

- thinly sliced ginger, 3 or 4 slices, 1-inch long

- 4 green onions, chopped into 3-inch pieces

- 1/4 tsp Chinese Five Spice powder

- 2 Tbsp brown sugar

- 1/4 cup shao xing (rice wine)

- 1/2 cup dark soy sauce

- 1.5 to 2 cups of water (or enough to cover the meat)

- 2 soft boiled eggs, shells removed but edible parts still intact

- pickled mustard greens

- cilantro

- crushed peanuts, sweetened with some sugar

- steamed Chinese sandwich buns

Procedure:

1. Bring a Dutch oven to medium high heat and sear the pork belly to a good brown on all sides. No oil is necessary, the belly fat renders out nicely. But if you really want to, you can use a teaspoon of veg oil.

2. Once the meat is browned, add all of the following ingredients to the pot: garlic, ginger, green onions, 5 Spice powder, brown sugar, shao xing, soy sauce, and water. Bring the pot to a boil.

3. Once the liquid is boiling, lower the heat to medium and simmer for 1 or 1.5 hours. The braising liquid will reduce and thicken.

4. When the meat is done and the eggs are stewed, remove them from the braising liquid. Dice the eggs and the pork belly. Chop some cilantro and some mustard greens. Combine them into a bun, sprinkle the peanuts, and enjoy the sh-t out of your gua bao.

台灣 (Taiwan), Part 2: Night Markets

As I was saying in the last post, night markets are God's gift to the world. If a night market were a song, it would be my jam. I went to 2 of them, plus a few "old street" daytime/evening market districts and was fully immersed in the local street food scene. These were the top picks.

Jiufen Old Street

It was formerly a gold mining city in the early 20th century, until its decline in the 1970's. Since the 90's, it's been revived for its old town appeal, and is now a major weekend hot spot for Taipei city dwellers. When I asked my Taiwanese friend at work for trip suggestions, this was his #1.

For my first full day, my friend and gracious host, Jason, was excited to introduce me to 3 of his favorite Taiwanese specialties. Ba Wan (ground pork and veggie filling inside a shell of glutenous rice), Jiufen's special pork and fish ball soup, and taro ball soup.

All around Jiufen, there are shops and stands selling random teas, snacks, condiments, souvenirs, etc. One had a particular... odor. Not completely unpleasant, but certainly not familiar. It was the legendary stinky tofu. But we didn't eat it there, Jason said to save it for the good stuff at the Shilin Night Market. Besides, all of the snacking we'd been doing left me stuffed.

Keelung Night Market

After Jiufen and its neighboring city of Jinguashi, we went to night market in Keelung. Everybody knows about Taipei's Shilin Night Market, but apparently Keelung's has much more (and better) street food. The highlights: tempura fish cakes, gua bao (braised pork belly sandwich), mian xian (thin noodles in soup), oyster omelette, and Pao Pao ice. Another highlight, the mian xian stand's owner chatting with me and Jason, making sure I get a good impression of their country, and exercising whatever little Mandarin vocab I picked up.

Out of all of it, gua bao was my favorite. Pork is king in Taiwanese cuisine, and they have seriously got braised pork belly down to an artform. Imagine a fluffy bun, filled with chopped pork belly (cooked in soy sauce, rice wine, and Chinese 5-spice), tea- and soy sauce-marinated hardboiled egg, pickled veggies, sprinkled with crushed sugared peanuts.

Shilin Night Market

Any travel show or travel book about Taipei will have a segment dedicated to Taiwan's biggest and most famous night market. It's in the northern district of Taipei city, and it draws a huge crowd. Unfortunately, when I went I was still pretty stuffed from my lunch in the basement of Taipei 101, 6 hours earlier (best bi bim bab I've ever had). But I got myself some kumquat juice, grilled mushroom skewers, duck tongue (I saw Andrew Zimmern eat it, I had to try it), and the one and only...

Stinky Tofu

It's fermented tofu, deep fried and grilled again with a good sauce, and topped with cabbage. The smell: I don't know how to describe it, maybe like old sweatsocks or garbage. It's unmistakeable. The taste: slightly tangy but still really tasty with the sauce, definitely more flavorful than normal tofu. The aftertaste: kind of like how it smells. I was feeling a little self-conscious about my breath afterward. The verdict: I want more!

台灣 (Taiwan): Part 1

I began my trip with 5 days in Taiwan, staying with my good friend from grad school Jason, and my time there was nothing short of a blast.

As far as I've noticed, Taiwan isn't much of a famous vacation spot (unless you're of Taiwanese/Chinese descent, of course). It mostly comes up in people's minds as "that place where my MP3 player comes from," or "That's in China, right?" But Taiwan has a lot more going for it than most people would know.

It's tropical island, so it's nice and warm year round; in mid/late-November, the highs in Taipei were in the low 70's, and down south in Tainan it was almost 80. Most of the island (especially inland in the north) is mountainous with dense forests, and it's in a volcanic/seismic zone so there are lots of great natural hot springs. I didn't visit any of them, but there are great beaches all around, national park hiking trails, canyons, etc.

The island's seen more than its fair share of settlers and colonists back in the day, from the indigenous Taiwanese tribes, various regions of mainland China (in lots of waves), Japan, Portugal, Holland, Spain, and probably a few more. Fast forward to modern times, Taiwan became an economic powerhouse for real, and Taipei is at the center of it all.

From my tourist perspective, what were my biggest take-aways?

1. Night markets are the shit! Lots of cheap souvenirs, and even cheaper (yet delicious and safe) street food. Everybody's out and about, so it makes for fun interactive people watching.

2. Chinese food is far more diverse than the average American will ever know. What we know of as "Chinese food" is Americanized Cantonese food. Taiwan's food has influences from all sorts of Chinese regions (Fujianese, Sichuanese, Hakka, indigenous, etc). I didn't learn enough to identify influences, but everything I ate left me saying "Holy crap, this is the best thing ever!"

3. We, as English speakers, have it much easier when traveling abroad than many of us would expect. Japan and Taiwan make everything really accessible for us, with bilingual street signs and public transit, and info desk workers who speak at least some English. Then again, you'll sometimes find some... questionable translations here and there, like the one above.

4. Black people are a rare breed in Taiwan. I only saw 2 or 3 others during my whole trip, and I get the feeling many Taiwanese have only seen a couple of us in their lives (outside of the media). A tour group of elementary school kids saw me in the National Palace Museum of Taipei. After whispering amongst themselves "ooh, hēi rén," a few of them approached me, smiling and giving me their most enthusiastic "Hello!" One of them shouted "Hello! Obama!" I had to laugh out loud for that one. That same night, some teens awkwardly approached me at a Metro station to take a picture with me. Kinda surreal, in a fun way.

5. Taiwanese politics is probably more of a spectacle than American politics. I arrived right before their version of midterm elections, and they go way above and beyond the USA in terms of campaign ads. Yes, those are crowds of demonstrators spelling out "Change." In parts of Taipei, every street was lined with banners, flyers, and posters for candidates. In Tainan, I saw campaign crews on street corners and bowing to passers by, or candidates walking down streets with megaphones and their entourages. If I could vote, I would support the guy who wears polo shirts bearing his cartoon image.

Actually, my biggest takeaway was how cool the people are, how rich the culture is, and how freaking amazing and CHEAP the food is. I could definitely see myself enjoying an extended stay in Taiwan, should the opportunity come up.

Quick Stir-Fry Sauce

I don't have any photos for this post, or a nice story to go along with it. I'm just trying to get into the habit of updating a little more regularly, plus I wanted to log this before I forget.

The other day I was craving some stir-fried pork and tofu with veggies, and I wanted to pick up this "House of Tsang" spicy Sichuan stir-fry sauce I used to use for a similar dish in college. This stuff really delivered the heat, and had a really nice consistency to it, from what I remember. But I realized I'd have to stop by the store on the way home from work to pick some up. But then I figured I roughly know how to make my own stir-fry sauce and I have a lot of chili-sesame oil, to hell with the store-bought sauce.

So for 1 standard block of firm tofu, 2 large peeled and sliced carrots, and 1 small crown of broccoli, I made my stir-fry sauce out of the following:

- 2 Tbsp dark soy sauce

- 2 Tbsp rice wine (shao xing)

- 1 Tbsp oyster sauce

- 1 or 1.5 Tbsp hot chili-sesame oil

- 1 tsp cornstarch dissolved in 2 tsp water

- 2 tsp minced fresh garlic

- 2 tsp grated fresh ginger

- 2 stalks of scallion, finely sliced

1. Combine the soy sauce, rice wine, oyster sauce, sesame oil, and cornstarch mixture in a bowl, and whisk it well.

2. In the clean pan on medium-high heat, fry the ginger, garlic, and scallion in 1 or 1.5 Tbsp of cooking oil for about 30 seconds (enough time for it to get fragrant but not burn).

3. Pour the soy sauce mixture from Step 1 into the pan on medium-high heat. Keep stirring while the sauce begins to thicken from the cornstarch.

Mapo Tofu with Ground Pork

Recipe Source: The Food of China and some experimentation

Recipe Result: Great taste and texture

As much as I like meat, I do enjoy some tofu every now and then, and I don't think that tofu necessarily has to be a meat-substitute. That's why I love mapo tofu; the soft tofu complements the minced pork, and the chili-bean paste makes it really spicy and hearty. Back in college, there was a Pan-Asian restaurant near campus, Lulu's Noodles, and one of their best dishes was the mapo tofu. Instead of ground pork, they used sliced barbecue pork... outstanding. I especially liked how my friend Mona, a native Mandarin speaker, translated the name to "Old Bitch Tofu," and referred to Girish as such for ordering it every time.

The cookbook I got the recipe from didn't do a very good job of giving this recipe a lot of flavor. Every time I followed the recipe exactly, the sauce was really bland and watery and the tofu lacked flavor (surprise, surprise). But I tried messing around with the amount of soy sauce used, when to add the tofu to the pan, and the amount of broth to add at the end for the final sauce. I think the recipe I've got now is definitely a step up from the book's. You can find my version after the jump.

Yangshuo Eggplant with Pork

Recipe Source: Gourmet's Adventures With Ruth on Create

Recipe Result: Pretty good, you can really taste the eggplant itself... but needs more sauce

Growing up, my mom would often make Haitian braised beef with eggplant. The beef would be cooked in a way very similar to my Haitian chicken recipe, but the eggplant was essentially mush, and that made me dislike eggplant as a kid.

Fast forward to my undergrad years. We had some food trucks on campus, a couple of them serving Thai food, and that's where I rediscovered eggplant. Granted that the chopped chicken and eggplant from the Thai trucks was probably loaded with fish sauce and MSG, I realized that eggplant doesn't have to be a beige, flavorless mush.

For a while, I tried to recreate that flavor and texture, but I just didn't understand how to work with eggplant. I'd try to saute and braise it, but it just seemed to absorb all the oil I'd put into the pan, or never really cook all the way through unless I let it over cook and become mush. But lately I've been having some good luck getting that nice texture with stir-frying really quickly over high heat. And there's something about Asian flavors that really makes the eggplant stand out.

So I stumbled upon this recipe while watching a food/travel show on PBS. I've tried it a few times, and I think I've almost nailed it. You can find my recipe after the jump. Give it a try, let me know how you like it, or let me know how you made it even better.