A Chinese Dinner

I debated whether or not to do these three recipes as individual posts. But I never do them as individual dishes, only as a complete meal. So, it made sense to post these recipes that way.

I admit that the first time I got interested in Chinese cooking was watching a PBS show in the 80s called The Frugal Gourmet with Jeff Smith. These were in the days long before the Food Network, and Smith's show rivaled Julia Child's, who at that time was the matriarch of TV cooking shows.Smith's television career came to an abrupt close when he was accused of accosting teenage stage hands on the set, and later settled out of court with eight men who filed two separate lawsuits against Smith, claiming they had been sexually abused by him when they were young teenagers in the 1970s. The plaintiff's attorneys were prepared to put eight more witnesses on the stand who also claimed Smith sexually accosted or abused them, but were not a part of the suit. Although Smith never admitted his guilt, one must assume that where there's smoke, there's fire. Smith was clearly homosexual, a pervert and a pedophile. Married and never divorced, Smith was estranged from his wife for decades.

What's sad about Smith's fall from grace over a sex scandal like this is that the guy was a former Methodist minister. Hell, I thought only Catholic priests got away with behavior like this! Smith used to end each of his television cooking episodes with, "I bid you peace." Now we know what kind of "piece" he was really talking about. Smith died in 2004.

Smith wrote several cookbooks, most of which I bought or were given to me in the 1980s. I still refer to them for some good recipes that I frequently use.

Despite his beleaguered personal life, I'll give Smith credit for teaching me two important cooking techniques: (1) how to make an omelet and (2) that I could cook with a wok and know what the hell I was doing. He had a saying that I mentally repeat each time I use my wok to this day, "Hot pan. Cold oil. Food won't stick," meaning that before you start cooking, place the wok on the heat until is starts smoking. Then, you put in your oil. It works.

I won't give you a dissertation on Chinese cooking. There are entire books written on the subject. But I will give you a few salient tips on preparation of these recipes:

• If you're in the market for a wok, buy one that has one long handle, like any skillet would. These are sometimes referred to as a Szechwan wok, as opposed to a Cantonese wok that has two small loop handles on each side. Szechwan woks are built this way because most recipes in this region of China call for stir-frying. In Cantonese, however, most recipes call for braising and stewing. Hence, the difference in configuration of the handles. Although I used a Cantonese wok for over twenty years before getting one with a single, long handle, I realize now what a disservice this did to my stir-frying technique.
• Buy an authentic carbon steel wok, not a bastardized American aluminum version or one with a non-stick surface. Be sure to season the wok as specified in the directions that come with the wok. After you have used the wok a few times, you'll understand why this is important.
• Prepare everything in advance and have your ingredients lined up in the order you will need them in the recipe. Wok cooking is done at a very high temperatures and very, very quickly. The French call this mis en place, or "all in place."
• If your wok has been properly seasoned, all you will need to do to go on to the next dish is give it a quick cold water rinse, and wipe with paper towels. Then, put it back on the heat and bring it to the smoking point.
• "Hot pan. Cold oil. Food won't stick." This is a fact. Allow the wok to get so hot, it starts smoking. Then, introduce the oil. When the oil shimmers and starts smoking, introduce your first ingredients.
• Use peanut oil, not canola, vegetable or olive oil
• If you get one of those "fire rings" with your wok, don't use it. Electric stoves work better than gas stoves, but they both work. Keep the heat on high at all times. If anything is burning, you either have not used enough oil or you are leaving the food in place too long. You should be constantly shaking the wok by its handle, and using the chaun to stir-fry your food. A chaun is that long-handled spatula-looking utensil that most woks come with.
• Authentic carbon steel woks will rust, so be sure you stick it in a pre-heated oven to 200 degrees after washing and drying. Wok manufacturers say that if your wok is properly seasoned you should not use soap, but just scrape any caked-on food with a plastic scrubber and rinse it thoroughly. Frankly, I never bought that. I always gave my wok a soap rinse after scraping and washing because that seems like a hygienic thing to do. My practice has not impacted the quality of my cuisine one bit. Before storing your wok after use, wipe it down with a little peanut oil, which will protect it from moisture, rust and maintains the seasoning.  I actually put my wok in a warm oven after washing so that it has thoroughly dried overnight, then put it away the next morning.
  

Drunken Shrimp

This shrimp dish was a Frugal Gourmet recipe from his first cook book. He called it "Shrimp With Gin." I thought that was a rather mundane name for a dish, and I renamed it. I also use a lot more gin than the original recipe. And I use cleaned and shelled shrimp. Smith's original recipe called for leaving the shells on. I have never made it that way because that sounds like a real pain in the ass to eat.

This is an easy recipe and it is really, really good. I used to go through the work of getting fresh shrimp, and then cleaning, shelling and de-veining the shrimp. Tiger shrimp worked really well using this method. Looking for less work in my advancing years, I now buy the flash frozen uncooked, shelled and cleaned shrimp carried in our neighborhood grocery store. The size of a shrimp is indicated by the number of shrimp per pound. The smaller the number, the larger the shrimp. Less than 15 (sometimes labeled "U-15s") is jumbo shrimp; 16 to 20 is extra-large shrimp; 21 to 30 is large shrimp; and 31 to 40 is medium shrimp. I generally buy the 16-20s.

One thing you cannot scrimp on is the grated fresh ginger. There is no substitution and I've tried dried, pickled and everything in-between. You simply have to put up with buying fresh ginger root, and then grate it using a cheese-grater. The good news is that you do not need to peel the ginger root. You'll find that the grating process using a cheese-grater will separate the ginger meat from the peel pretty well.

Ingredients
½ cup peanut oil
1 tbsp salt dissolved in the oil
2 tbsp chopped garlic, mixed in the oil
2 pounds of shrimp, peeled, de-veined with tails removed
5 tbsp fresh grated ginger root
1 small stock of green onions, washed and cut diagonally into 1-inch pieces
½ cup light soy sauce
1 cup gin

The Recipe
Heat the wok to the smoking point and then put in the peanut oil with the salt and garlic. Cook the garlic for a bit, but be careful not to burn the it.

Add the shrimp. They will spit and hiss at you!

Stir-fry the shrimp until they turn pink. Add the ginger root and onions and stir-fry for a minute or two until the onions collapse. Add the soy sauce. Remove the wok from the heat and add the gin. Return wok to the heat, and allow the liquid to reduce a bit, but not too much, about 3-4 minutes. Remove the dish to a serving bowl and hold in a 200-degree oven until ready to serve. It is highly recommended that you serve this dish in a small bowl. You'll want to drink the sauce!


Szechwan Green Beans

This also is an easy dish to prepare, but takes a bit more time. You'll never want green beans any other way. Make sure that you use only fresh, uncooked green beans, and that you have snapped off the ends. Don't make the mistake of buying a vegetable that looks like green beans, but they're called "pole beans." This variety has a nasty string that lines the seam of the pod and it is tough, stringy, and difficult to remove. You'll gag on them.

This recipe came from a very obscure cookbook printed in 1972 with an unimaginative title called The Chinese Cookbook by Craig Clayborne and Virginia Lee. It was given to me by a family friend who collected cookbooks, but after becoming widowed and retired, no longer cooked. She gave me a boatload of obscure and probably out-of-print cookbooks that dot areas of my kitchen and book shelves today. Cookbooks from this era are interesting because they are so uninteresting; no photography, few graphics and nothing, really, that would distinguish it from a typical novel, save for the content and title.

Ingredients
1 cup peanut oil
2 tbsp hot pepper oil (available in the Chinese section of grocery)
1 pound ground pork
1-½ pound fresh green beans, rinsed, snapped and cut into 2-inch pieces
3 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tsp Splenda (dissolved in the soy sauce)
1 cup dry sherry wine
1 tsp salt (dissolved in the sherry)
1 tsp dried red pepper flakes

The Recipe
Heat the wok until smoking. Drizzle 2-3 tbsp of the peanut oil into the wok and let it heat until smoking. Drop in the ground pork and stir-fry until all pink color is gone. Remove meat and keep warm on a platter.

Return wok to the heat and add the remaining oil, including the hot pepper oil; heat until smoking. Carefully drop in the green beans. They will splatter, sputter and spit at you! Stir-fry for about eight minutes just until the beans are showing a little bubbling and brownness on their skins. When the green beans are cooked, remove from the wok and discard all but a couple of tablespoons of the oil.

Return the green beans and the cooked ground pork to the wok and heat through. Add the remaining ingredients and stir thoroughly. Allow the sauce to simmer and thicken slightly. Remove the dish to a serving bowl and hold in a 200-degree oven until ready to serve.


Pork & Mushroom Lo Mein

With wheat out of my diet, this is one recipe that I'll just take extra medicine for and move on. It is that good. I make a ton of it because it's almost better as a leftover. This isn't anything like the lo mein that you will find on a typical Chinese restaurant menu. I took two root recipes from the aforementioned Chinese Cookbook and have made many modifications over the years to this standing recipe that I can call my own. If this is too much food for you to make, just cut the whole ingredient list in half. But I implore you to note, the leftovers are sublime.

This recipe calls for using the fresh pasta you can buy in the grocery store that's refrigerated and sold in clear plastic containers. Buitoni is a national brand that I see frequently. Click here to read about it on the Buitoni website. Don't be tempted to use dried pasta, however, like the kind sold in boxes on your grocer's shelves. That's fine for spaghetti and meatballs, but it won't work nearly as well with this dish. Trust me, because I've tried. I also want to call attention to the fact that you want to buy linguine, not spaghetti or fettuccine or angel hair pasta. The thick, flat density and shape of linguine will hold up to the double cooking method and won't break up into a hunk of semolina mess.

This recipe also calls for fresh shiitake mushrooms, but if they are not available, you can generally find dried shiitake mushrooms in the Chinese food section of your grocery store. Reconstituted shiitakes according to the directions on the package will work just fine with this recipe.

Ingredients
1 cup peanut oil
1 pound ground pork
8 oz fresh or reconstituted dried shiitake mushrooms, with stems removed and sliced into long pieces.
1 large or 2 small heads of bok choy, sliced using the leaves and half the stock
2 9-oz packages of fresh linguine, cooked in boiling salted water until al dente, 3-5 minutes
1 cup dry sherry wine
½ cup light soy sauce
1 cup chicken stock
1 cup red wine vinegar
1 bunch chives, roughly chopped

The Recipe
Cook your pasta first in boiling salted water 3-5 minutes. Drain pasta through a colander, and then re-fill the same pot in which you cooked the pasta with tepid water. Put the colander in the water and hold the pasta until ready to introduce to the recipe.

Heat wok to the smoking point. Drizzle 2-3 tbsp of the peanut oil and let the oil heat until smoking. Drop in the ground pork and stir-fry until all pink color is gone. Remove meat and keep warm on a platter.

Add remaining oil and drop in the mushrooms. Stir-fry for a couple of minutes until the mushrooms are tender. Then, drop in the bok choy. Stir-fry for another five minutes until the boy choy collapses, the leaves take on a dark green color and the stocks are tender.

Return the pork to the wok and heat through. Remove the colander of pasta from it water bath, allow to drain, then shake vigorously to remove as much water as possible Add the chicken stock and then the well drained pasta to the wok. Methodically stir-fry while cutting the noodles into pieces with your chow until all pasta is about 2-3 inches in length. Mix the meat, vegetables and the pasta thoroughly, and keep the mixture in motion so the pasta does not stick.

After 4-5 minutes, add the sherry, vinegar and soy sauce. Mix thoroughly and cook another couple of minutes. After the liquid is partially absorbed and reduced, add the chives and mix again. Remove the dish to a large serving bowl and hold in a 200-degree oven until ready to serve.

This recipe is delicious with additional vinegar sprinkled on once you've dished it into a serving bowl, so serve it with red wine or rice wine vinegar on the side.

Eat all of these dishes together with chopsticks. If you don't know how to use chopsticks, learn. It will make you appear more worldly and significantly enhances the enjoyment of eating Chinese food.