RECIPE: Chinese BBQ Pork

Barbecue pork (or Cha Siu -- which means "fork roast") is a basic ingredient for a lot of Chinese cooking. In a big city, you would be able to buy this lovely red-roasted pork, already cooked, by the pound. You know that taste in fried rice and lo mein and soups, and so many other dishes that you can't quite accomplish at home? It's probably from char siu.

This weekend I finally got the taste right on homemade roast pork. And now I have a freezer full for making char sui bao, or fried rice or soups or twice cooked pork....

The key here is the cut of pork. It can't be a lean cut. I used a Boston Butt Roast, cut into strips. "Country Style" spare ribs, or pork shoulder steaks are also good. The country style ribs are about the right shape and size to get the best surface area to meatiness ratio. (This is also important.)

The second key is the preparation method. You need to marinate the pork in the sauce for a couple hours. (I did about two.) Then when you roast it, you have to be sure that as much surface of the pork is exposed to the hot air as possible. I can tell you from experience that if the meat sits in its accumulated juices, it just isn't the same. In China, they hang the meat in the oven on hooks. Many cookbooks recommend putting them in a pan that has a roasting rack.

I didn't have a roasting rack, or hooks, but I had a pork roast and I wanted Char Sui! So I used a little tender loving care. I separated the pieces of meat so that they were not touching. (In this case, I put them in three small pyrex dishes -- but they probably could have been put in one really big on.)

Since the marinade has sugar and soy in it, the pan drippings are likely to burn. If you have a roasting rack this is easy to deal wiht by simply filling the pan below with water or broth. I simply made sure I watched the oven -- which was at a hot 425 degrees -- and every time I could smell that "pre-burning" smell, I poured in a very small amount of sherry into the pan -- about 1/8 of an inch. I started basting it with a souped up version of the marinade after the first fifteen minutes, and after another five or ten, I flipped the meat over, so the bottom side could get some love.

It probably took 45-60 minutes of roasting, and I turned the oven down later in the process. You could stretch the second half out a long time in a slow oven.

The Marinade (enough for approximately two pounds of meat):

• 1/4 c sherry (broth or water will do)
• 1/4 c. soy sauce
• 1 1/2 tbl. honey (or brown sugar)
• 2 tbl. hoisin sauce
• 1 tbl oyster sauce

Put the meat in a ziploc bag or a container where it fits closely, and pour over it about half the marinade. Reserve the rest of the marinade for the basting sauce. (Do NOT use the marinade that has touched the meat! Throw it away! It is full of bacteria and such, and the basting sauce will not be thoroughly cooked enough to be safe.)

Basting sauce:

• The remaining marinade
• 1 tbl oyster sauce
• 2-3 tbl brown sugar
• garlic, ginger or whatever other spices sound good to you.

The sugar and garlic are prone to burn, so you don't want so much of it in the marinade, but it is fine for basting later on in the process.

This marinade, btw, would also be good for chicken thighs and wings. You need something with enough fat if you are going to cook it as dry as the instructions here. But a lean meat would be okay if you cook it slower, and with more basting (and maybe more crowded in the pan to keep the moisture in).

Drive-by, January 21, 2008

It's much too cold to go anywhere (and certainly too cold to take my camera). So I'm just going to pass on a tip and mention the leftovers I'm eating....

*Got an email tip on a new restaurant in south Lansing which opened this weekend: "Alicia's Authentiic Mexican Deli (Dine in or Carry Out) 6424 W. St Joseph Hwy., Lansing, MI 48917. 517-323-6430. Opening Day!! Friday January 18, 2008." I know nothing about them, but if anybody gives them a try, drop us a comment.

*A friend made an excellent corned beef and cabbage. I'm going to make pirogies from the leftovers. Corned beef with potato and a little cabbage for the filling. I'm going for the easy version of the wrapper: goyoza wrappers from Oriental Mart. Moisten them and slap two together, and they really make a great thicker wrapper. I will steam them then pan fry in butter. You can also boil them. Serve with apple sauce, sour cream, or as I am doing, Labana.

RECIPE: Celery Peanut Salad

Some Chinese places will give you a little bowl of some kind of salad as an appetizer, if they think you will appreciate it. Usually something like the Korean side dishes -- sometimes sweet or sour or spicey, or all three.

This summer I made a whirlwind strategic-strike eating tour out in LA, and one great place we went was Luscious Dumpling in San Gabriel, California. This was a very specialized little noodle and dumpling house. Just a tiny place filled with old Chinese guys eating big bowls of noodles and plates of, well, luscious dumplings. They are famous for their Xiao Long Bao, which means "little dragon dumplings", known popularly as "Soup Dumplings." This is a dumpling filled with hot soup, which will squirt out when you bite into it.


When you sit down at Luscious Dumpling, they give you tea and a little bowl of Celery Peanut and Pressed Tofu pickle (pictured at top). The great sweet, sour and nutty taste reminded me that I used to make a celery and dried shrimp salad like it. Dried shrimps are fine, but ever since our visit to LA, I've been making this peanut version, and it has beena major hit.

And very simple to make. It's basically sesame oil, sugar and vinegar. I like to use a combo of distilled vinegar and sherry, but you can replace both of them with another vinegar. (Rice wine vinegar is traditional. I think apple cider vinegar would probably make a nifty experiment.)

• 1 tbl sugar
• 1 tbl distilled white vinegar
• 1 tsp rice wine or sherry
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 1 cup sliced celery
• 1 handful of roasted cocktail peanuts

You can add garlic, ginger and or hot pepper slivers or flakes. The flavor of the garlic is really strongly enhanced in this dish, so while raw garlic is great (and traditional) you can use garlic powder or no seasoning at all if you sensitive to the taste. (Just don't use garlic salt, as the peanuts already add salt to the dish.)

You can eat it right away, but it is best to let it marinate at least a half hour. It will be great all day, but not as good the next day, so I tend to whip this up as I need it.

Recipe: Yorkshire Pudding

It's Christmas. If you have roast beef at the holidays, you really should have Yorkshire Pudding with it.

Yorkshire pudding isn't really pudding by modern American standards. It's more of an eggy quick bread, but it is so tasty, and actually pretty easy to make. Just eggs, flour, milk and a hot oven.

The problem most people have is the timing. The original recipes were developed for the massive heat and lack of control you get with a wood fired oven. It requires a practiced touch to get the depth of batter and the temperature right, and if you don't know what you're doing, it won't puff up -- it'll just dry out and get hard. Plus the traditional way has you hold the roast AFTER roasting for about forty minute while the pudding cooks. Puh-lease.

I'm here to tell you how to make it good and right and easy. (And this works best if you either make it ahead of the roast, or you do like I do, and don't make a roast at all, but pan grill a couple of nice delmonico or rib-eye steaks. It also tastes good with just plain fried mushrooms.)

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup milk
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 tsp salt.
• fat -- either fat from the beef or butter

This amount cooks great in two bread pans, or an 8x8 cake pan. (You can up the quantities to 1.5 cups each of flour and milk and 3 eggs, and cook it in a 9x9 pan.)

Use a whisk or a mixer to blend the flour, salt and milk. Get rid of most of the lumps. Then add the eggs. Beat or whisk it up good. There should be no lumps, and a little bit frothy on the top, but not a lot. Set the batter aside in the fridge. It can sit there overnight if you want to do it ahead, but 15 minutes is fine.

Next preheat the oven to about 350. (No hotter -- this is where the traditional recipes make it hard.) It doesn't hurt to warm the pans, but you don't have to have them sizzling (which is the traditional way). You just want them to be warm enough for the fat to melt. (ADDENDUM: having the pans sizzling hot when you pour the batter in does indeed make them rise a little higher. You can just stick the pans in the oven for a moment after coating them with fat, and THEN pull them out and pour in the batter.)

For flavor, beef fat is best. Traditionally you get this from the roasting pan, after the roast is done. However, I usually fry up some suet or trimmings to get some fat. You can also do it the easy way and just use butter. Butter is always good.

Coat the inside of the pans with the melted fat. The pudding will rise up, so cover the sides as well as the bottom. Don't be stingy with it. There should be a bit of a pool of fat in the bottom of the pan. (If it starts to thicken, stick it back in the oven for a minute or so.) Stir up the batter and pour it into the pans. It should be about a half inch deep, maybe a little less.

Stick the pans in a 350 degree oven. After 12 - 15 minutes, turn the oven up to 400, then after another 12- 15 mintues to 450. It should be done after about 10 more minutes. It should be nice and golden. If it seems to be burning, you can take it out.

(Traditional recipes will tell you to put it in a 450 oven and turn it down, but if you get the amount of batter or timing or temperature wrong, it won't puff up, and will end up overcooked and dry. By cooking it in a slower oven, you give the whole thickness of the pudding a chance to puff a little and firm up, and then the hotter temperatures at the end crisp the outer layers. NOTE: if you decide to try to make popovers -- the muffin sized version of this -- do follow traditional recipes, as you will not be working with the same bulk of batter, and the traditional way is the only way to make them pop.)

The pudding will fall by about half as it cools. Don't worry about that. Let it cool and firm up. The hardest part will be to get it out of the pan. The bottom will stick a little, especially if you use the deep sided breadpans like I do. One easy way to get it out is to cut it in half, and use a metal spatula to loosen the bottom from the middle. Just beware, these things remain full of hot steam for a long time. Don't burn yourself.

If you are making a roast, make the pudding first and cover it until the roast is ready. You can pop it into the oven for a few minutes to heat it back up again. (It makes great leftovers.) If you're making it with steak, just cook the steak while the pudding is in the oven.

And that's a great holiday tradition.

Make Your Hot Chocolate Richer

Since we have a winter storm heading our way, I'll pass on a little tip on how to make even the most ordinary hot chocolate cup a little richer. Just use an ordinary vegetable peeler to grate in a little bit of unsweetened baking chocolate.

Not only is it easy, but it can be cheaper than the gourmet mixes (which tend to be full of transfats and artificial ingredients, especially the kind you mix with water). I usually just use a spoon of Nestles in some super hot milk, and then grate in the baker's chocolate.

A quick dash of cinnamon is also nice. And apparently good for you -- they say it helps your body deal with blood sugar, and perhaps can help those who are insulin resistant. (Given the latest studies on Alzheimers -- that it may be another form of diabetes -- that's a really good thing. Who knows, cinnamon may have as much to do with the low rates of Alzheimers among curry eats as Tumeric does.)

RECIPE: Chocolate Nugget Cookies

(Continuing with recipes for the Thanksgiving week -- I'll get back to restaurants on Monday.)



I invented this ultra-chocolate cookie recipe after going through a whole book of "chocolate cookie" recipes and not finding a single one that was chocolatey enough. They're simple and really satisfying. (And they freeze really well. Which is good because if you keep them in the freezer, you won't be tempted to eat them all in one sitting.)

• 1 stick butter
• 3/4 c. brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup flour
• 2/3 cup cocoa
• 1 tsp baking powder

Cream the butter and sugar together, then stir in the egg and vanilla. Mix the dry ingredients together, and then mix them into the batter. Scoop out lumps a little smaller than a walnut. Bake at 350 for about 13 minutes. Cooking time depends on size of cookie and the variations your oven. I use a cookie scoop to keep the size regular and that helps a lot -- since chocolate cookies don't really brown to tell you they are done. Timing is everything.

These are actually best just undercooked. Once they cool, they take on a fudgy texture - not gooey, but rather a moist cookie that fractures the way fudge does when you break it. Melt in your mouth.

Blatant Advertising:


I love my cookie scoop. I LIVE by it. It really has made my life much easier. As I said above, a scoop is particularly important for this recipe. The ideal size for these cookies is the small scoop by Oxo. (It's also a very good sturdy scoop -- I've had other brands fall apart from over use, but the Oxo is still going strong.) This size is great for small meatballs too. The medium size is good for large meatballs and for a more medium sized cookie. You should be able to find this in town, or you could buy it from my Amazon link: OXO Good Grips Small Cookie Scoop.

RECIPE Mandarin Pancakes

You're going to have left over turkey this weekend. Why not have fun with it? Make Peking Turkey!

I love making Mandarin Pancakes (aka Peking Doilies or Lotus Pancakes). They're fussy and fun, and really not that hard. And this is the same dough you use for potstickers and green onion pancakes. This recipe makes 16 small (4 inch) doilies.

All you need is:

• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup boiling water
• a little sesame oil (plain salad oil will do in a pinch, or any other fat, for that matter)
• 1/2 cup more flour for rolling the pancakes out

For the filling:

• Hoisin Sauce
• Green Onions
• Leftover Turkey (or chicken or pork -- don't forget this is a good use for the skin! For vegetarians, I have made fake duck skin out of dried bean curd skin -- moisten it, and then fry it until the surface is crispy.)

I also recommend a covered plate or some tin foil -- in which to keep the cooked doilies warm and moist while you roll and cook the rest. Oh, and you'll need a ROLLING PIN (or something that can be used as such -- you could try a tortilla press, but I don't know what effect that would have on the layers).

Boiling water dough is sweeter and more tender than most doughs, but mixing in the very hot water is a trick. A friend got me a Kitchenaid Stand Mixer this year, and I love it for this -- you can pour the boiling water in as the thing mixes (be sure to use a dough hook!). No problems holding the bowl, the spoon and the container of hot water. However, you can make it just fine with a bowl and a wooden spoon. Just pour the boiling water in all at once, and then start stirring. It won't look like it wants to combine right, but have faith. Lumps don't matter in this dough.

Eventually, as you stir, everything will come together into a sticky ball. Scrape that onto a sheet of plastic wrap (...oh yeah, you'll need plastic wrap, or something like it), along with any loose bits left in the bowl. Wrap it tight, and let it sit for a while -- anywhere from ten minutes to a full day. This step is essential. It not only allows the sticky gluten to "rest" (which makes it less sticky, and more pliable), but it also gives the water a chance to soak more evenly through the dough. (I told you lumps don't matter. Although if you ended up with a bunch of hard lumps, you'll probably want to let it sit longer than if you didn't.)

While you wait, get your other stuff ready -- chop the green onions, shred or slice the meat, get out your bottle of hoisin. If you want to be really fancy, you might mix up a sauce to taste with hoisin, sugar, oyster sauce and water, but plain hoisin will do. And if you want to go whole hog and make scallion brushes, you have to cut a 2 inch piece of scallion, cut little slits in each end to make the "brush" part, and then stick them in ice water to make the brushes curl up.

Now, get out a covered plate or a big sheet of tinfoil in which to keep the cooked pancakes. Get out your rolling pin, and put a scoop of flour onto the surface where you'll roll out the pancakes.



When you unwrap the dough, it should be sticky, but firm enough to hold its shape. Just scrape loose anything that sticks, and pat a little flour onto the surface. You don't need to knead it. Just pat flour onto sticky bits so you can handle it. It is easiest to divide this evenly by rolling it into a tube shape, and then cutting it in half. Cover half with the plastic for later so it won't dry out, and then divide up the remining bit into eight peices. (Just keep rolling the snake out thinner and cutting it in half and in half again.) You want to try to get the pieces all the same size, but if you can't, that's okay. You just want to remember to use littl pieces with little pieces and big with big.


Take two pieces. Pat them into disks. Pour a drop or two of Sesame oil on one of the disks and spread it around to cover the surface -- this will allow the two pieces to be separated later. Stack the dry disk on top of the oiled one, press them down a little flatter, and start rolling them out as a two-layered pancake. Pat the sticky bits with more flour as necessary. When they are as thin as you can reasonably get them (about a four-inch tortilla), it's ready to cook.

Have a pan already warmed up on medium to medium-low heat. A dry pan, no oil! These won't stick to a dry pan. After a minute or so, the dough will start getting translucent. Flip it over. The other side should have formed some white spots that were just beginning to turn brown. A little bit of brown spots are okay, but if you get big brown spots you cooked it too long or too hot (probably both) -- and if you do that, it will be hard to pull them apart. It is okay if you under cooked it a little, because you can always flip them over again. While cooking the second side, you'll start to see the pancake puff up -- that's a sign it is done, although it's good to let it puff more for a minute, as long as you aren't burning it.

Put the cooked pancake in a covered container -- in tinfoil or under a lid -- until you've cooked more of them. By the time you're done with all (or if you're impatient, with half), they should be just cool enough to handle, and you can start pulling them apart -- just remember there still might be some HOT steam inside the freshest ones.

The edge where you can pull them apart won't be as obvious as in the picture, but it's kinda like opening a plastic vegetable bag at the market. Just keep teasing the edge until you find a seam. If it starts to tear, back off, work it along the other direction, or try to get your fingers inside and separate them from the middle. (The edges are where they are cooked together, after all.)

Spread on some hoisin sauce, drop in some meat, and sprinkle generously with onions, wrap it up, and voila! You have a fun and delicious treat.

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Lassi Come Home

Usually, when I go out to eat, I don't bother with a beverage. I don't drink, and who needs extra calories piling up on top of the food? Water is fine.

However, whenever I eat at an Indian restaurant, I have a very hard time resisting a Mango Lassi. It's a simple drink, made of yogurt and sweetened mango pulp. (The original "smoothie".) Lassis are also generally available in mango or plain flavors (and the plain can be sweet or salty) and sometimes is available in other fruit flavors, like strawberry.

Not only is a lassi rich, but the sharp sweet and sour flavors are great for cutting the heat in a spicey dish. Which is why it can be good to make them at home. (As I did this weekend for my Oscar party, for which I made hot wings.)

Oriental Mart (2800 E Grand River Ave, east of East Lansing) -- and probably other asian groceries around the place -- offers canned mango pulp (sweetened). You really do want to get canned or frozen pulp. Processing a mango is difficult and messy, and the sweetness varies a lot.

To make a proper lassi, you mix about a half cup of pulp with a half cup of whole-milk plain yogurt. (And I like to drain the yogurt a bit to make it richer -- scoop some out of the container, and drain off the whey that drains into the hole.) And then a half cup of water. You can add some ice to replace some of the water. Or, as I did with the Oscar party, put in a half cup of sparkling apple or grape juice. (You know, the St. Julian's stuff.) If you like it sweeter, put in a little sugar or honey.

Or if you want to see what it tastes like before you try to make it, order up some mango lassi you visit one of the local Indian restaurants:

India Palace, 340 Albert Ave, East Lansing
Sindhu, 4790 S Hagadorn Rd, Hannah Plaza, East Lansing
Taj, 2820 E Grand River, Lansing (West of Frandor)

All three of these restaurants have decent lunch buffets, if you want to try a variety of their food. (And note: I've never actually had a lassi at India Palace.)
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