Right Wing Nation

What a find! Real Thai Recipes. If nothing else, go just to look at the pictures.

Check out the Carnival of Education.

There are very few cookbooks that are so comprehensive and so exemplary they qualify as what I call kitchen bibles, the only cookbook you’ll ever need for its topic. In order to qualify as a kitchen bible, a cookbook must not only have a great many high quality recipes, but extensive information on ingredients and method. These two have both. I’ve gone through one copy of each and I’m working on my second, and I’ve also given both of these as presents. These are must have cookbooks.

If you make bread, Bernard Clayton’s New Complete Book of Breads is the bread baker’s bible. It seems only to be available in paperback at the moment, and I’m finding it difficult to imagine such a large cookbook in paperback, but there you have it. Mr. Clayton (whom I’ve met, by the way–he lives outside Bloomington) covers everything you need to know, and then a great deal more, and has some of the best recipes for breads here ever collected.

If you like Chinese, there is only one cookbook you will ever need: Irene Kuo’s Key to Chinese Cooking. Like Bernard Clayton, Kuo more than covers everything you will ever need to know, and the quality of these recipes stands far above nearly every other Chinese cookbook I’ve used. It’s out of print–only God knows why or how–but there are used copies available from Amazon (click the link above–and read the customer reviews, if you don’t believe me).

Kuo has a lot of western Chinese recipes, but if you are particularly fond of western Chinese–Szechuan specifically–Mrs. Chiang’s Szechwan Cookbook: Szechwan Home Cooking makes a fine addition to Kuo. It isn’t a kitchen bible, and it doesn’t have nearly as many recipes as Kuo, but the recipes are top quality.

Here are three of my favorite recipes from Kuo, all western Chinese. I’ve adjusted the recipes as I’ve cooked them for various reasons (dried tangerine peel is nearly impossible to find, I like painfully hot food so I double the chilis, etc.)

A few words about the ingredients. Wine rice is not rice wine; it’s fermented rice, and believe it or not, should be available in any Chinese grocery in the refrigerator section (make sure you refrigerate it at home). Dark soy sauce is not the same thing as light soy (Chinese) or medium (Japanese, like Kikkoman). It’s not as salty as either light or medium soy. I like Pearl River Bridge from mainland China and available in any Chinese grocery. You can buy it in large quantities, and it’s great stuff (I use the mushroom soy). The odds are your supermarket doesn’t carry szechuan peppercorns, but you’ll find them in any Chinese grocery–but they go by lots of different names. They look kind of like black peppercorns, but they’re a dark reddish-brown. The flavor is unique and impossible to describe.

Tangerine Peel Chicken

1 lb. boneless, skinless chicken, in small cubes
2 T. each: oil and sesame oil
1 t. salt

Dry seasonings

1/2 tangerine peel, shredded
4 dried chilis (the small red ones–chiles de arbol are available everywhere, and work perfectly for Asian, since they’re primarily hot and don’t have a distinctive flavor of their own)
3 green onions, diced
4 quarter-sized pieces ginger, minced
1 t. szechuan peppercorns, toasted and ground

Liquid seasonings

3 T. each: dry sherry, dark soy sauce, wine rice (this is fermented rice, not rice wine, and you’ll find it in the refrigerator section of your local Chinese grocer)
1 T. sugar

First, put a large piece of cheesecloth folded double in a strainer over a small container, and measure into the cheesecloth the wine rice (like I said, it’s fermented rice–you don’t eat the rice, you extract the sticky liquid and use that). Bunch up the top of the cheesecloth and squeeze out the liquid, then discard the rice and the cheesecloth. Add to it the rest of the liquid seasonings, and stir until the sugar is dissolved.

Combine the dry seasonings on a saucer.

Heat a wok until smoking hot over a high flame, then add the oils and swirl the wok to get the oil up the sides. Add the chicken and the salt, and flip it around in the hot oil for about a minute, until all the pink is gone. Add the dry seasonings, mix well, then add the liquid seasonings. Cover the wok, reduce the heat to very low, and cook for fifteen minutes. Remove the cover, turn the heat up on high, and flip until the liquid is evaporated. I always drizzle a little bit of sesame oil on right before serving it.

Spicy Pork With Peanuts

1 lb. pork (boneless ribs are good), diced

Marinade

1 T. each: dark soy sauce, cornstarch, oil

2 T. oil
4 dried chilis
3 quarter-sized ginger slices, minced
1/2 c. salted peanuts

Sauce

1 t. cornstarch
1 T. dry sherry
1 1/2 T. dark soy sauce
1 T. each: red or black Chinese vinegar, or red-wine vinegar, and sugar
1/4 t. salt
1 t. sesame oil

Mix the sauce ingredients until everything is dissolved, and reserve. Put the diced pork in a large bowl, and add the marinade ingredients. Stir until the pork is coated, then put in the refrigerator for an hour (this helps the marinade to stick to the pork). Bring a pot of water to a boil, stir the marinated pork well to separate, then dump it into the boiling water. Stir just to make sure all the pieces are separate, and when the water starts to come to a boil, drain the pork.

Put the wok over a high flame until smoking hot–and turn on the fan and open the kitchen window, because you are going to get chili fumes! Add the oil to the wok and swirl to coat, then turn the heat down to low and add the chili peppers. Press them and flip them in the oil until they turn black, then add the ginger and stir. Turn the heat back up high, and add the pork, flipping the pork for a minute or so to coat with the spicy oil. Add the sauce mixture, and stir until it coats everything. Add the peanuts and serve.

Spicy Beef

1 lb. shredded beef

Marinade

4 T. dark soy sauce
1 T. dry sherry
1 t. sugar

1/2 c. oil

4 dried chilis
2 c. shredded celery stalks
1/2 c. shredded carrots
1 t. salt
2 t. sesame oil
1 t. szechuan peppercorns, roasted and ground

Mix the marinade ingredients until the sugar is dissolved. Put the beef in a bowl, add the marinade, and stir until all the beef is coated. Refrigerate for an hour.

Heat a wok over a high flame until smoking hot. Add 5 T. of the oil and swirl. Stir the beef to separate, then add it to the wok. Turn the heat down to medium and flip the beef about 5 or 6 minutes, until the beef is dry. Drain and reserve.

Add the remaining 3 T. oil to the wok, still over medium heat, and add the chilis. Flip them around until they are black, turn the heat high, add the vegetables and salt. Flip in the hot oil for about 1 1/2 minutes. Return the beef to the wok, and cook with the vegetables for another 30 seconds or so. Add the peppercorns and sesame oil, mix well, and serve.

Comment or trackback, as long as you link to here.