Remembering China 46: “House Special” Spicy Capsicum Saute

When a favorite restaurant dies, you undergo a bereavement process as a former patron. You try to replace it with another one, usually failing to do so. Then occasionally, you come across a dish at another place that tastes familiar, but doesn’t -quite- get there. You see glimmerings of the original, enough to make you do a double take, but then you come to your senses and again realize you are someplace else. Its like walking down the street and seeing someone who resembles another person who has been dead for years, or playing with another person’s pet that looks remarkably similar to one of yours which passed away. You tear up a bit, think about the good times, and then move on.

Such as it is with my favorite Chinese restaurant, China 46, which closed down in September of 2007. I haven’t taken this loss particularly well, as there were a lot of dishes that were prepared there that I cannot get at any other Shanghai/Sichuan restaurant I’ve been to, and this includes the very good local newcomers such as Chengdu 1 and Petite Soochow, which I recommend heartily. I thought I had moved on until I had this dish recently at China Palace restaurant, a small authentic Chinese place in Durham, North Carolina:

Spicy Capsicum Pepper Saute with Pressed Tofu, from China Palace restaurant in Durham, NC.

This dish closely resembles another dish at China 46 restaurant, which was called “House Special Saute” and consisted of ground pork with finely chopped Chinese green peppers and pressed tofu, in a spicy Sichuan hot bean sauce. The China Palace version here is excellent, using julienned pressed tofu and shredded portk, but it is not the same — the China 46 one was drier and less saucy and a much finer dice.

Once I had this dish, I was committed to faithfully replicating the China 46 version, at least as close as to it I could recall. I don’t have original photos of the dish I am trying to replicate, so I am just going from memory here.

Spicy Sichuan Capsicum Saute, fondly remembered and re-created from the late China 46 restaurant in Ridgefield Park, NJ.

Re-Create this fantastic Sichuan dish in your own home. Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

Re-engineering the Classics: Charlie Deal’s Kung Pao Chicken

I’ve been wanting to do a post series on re-doing classic dishes in a healthier way for some time now. To start it off, I thought nothing would be better than giving props to someone who I thought that nicely re-engineered one of my favorite Sichuan Chinese dishes, Kung Pao Chicken.

Charlie Deal’s Jujube Restauant in Chapel Hill, North Carolina is known for its inventive Asian Fusion cuisine. The dish which struck me the most there was his Kung Pao, which is radically different and much more healthier than the one that is made in most Chinese restaurants, which typically has a great deal of oil and not really that much vegetable content in it, if at all. Most versions as served in the United States at Chinese-American restaurants just consist of Chicken, Peanuts, Hot Peppers, and maybe some chopped up celery as an accent flavor. In my opinion, the definitive version of the dish is published in Fuchsia Dunlop’s Land Of Plenty, which is one of the best and most authentic Sichuan cookbooks there is.

Here’s one of my favorite traditional versions, from Chengdu 1 restaurant in Cedar Grove, NJ:

As you can see, it’s in a brown sauce, thickened with cornstarch, with basically no vegetable content in it other than water chestnuts and maybe some onion. It’s tasty, but not optimized for my current diet. It’s also heavily dependent on sopping the sauce up with rice, which leads to more carbyness ingestion.

Here’s another variation that I had at a Korean-Chinese place that I really enjoyed. Again tasty, but healthy, no.

Here’s another really good version of the classic at Mary Chung’s in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There’s no veggies in this at all. I can’t believe I used to eat like this all the time.

Here’s Charlie Deal’s version at Jujube Restaurant. The difference is dramatic — the vegetable to protein ratio is much higher, and he is using a lighter sauce, which is essentially just soy, Chinese Black Rice Vinegar (which gives the dish its amazing tang and brightness) and seasoned with Sichuan Peppercorns, a small amount of sesame oil, ginger, garlic, and dried Sichuan hot peppers. Another thing I like about this dish is that during dinnertime he does it in a completely vegetarian version using Soy chicken, which cuts down on the fat tremendously.

I loved this dish so much that I ate it on two of the three visits that I made to the restaurant so far. I also was determined to try to replicate it at home and make it part of our usual Asian stir fry night repertoire.

To make my version of this dish, you will need the following

8 oz “Soy Chicken” or Firm Tofu (that has had the water pressed out of it)
12 ounces Chicken Breast, cut up into small pieces (or omit to have completely vegetarian)
1 Bunch Scallions, chopped, whites and greens separated
1 large thumb Ginger, minced
6 cloves Garlic, minced
1 small Napa Cabbage
1lb of Baby or Shanghai Bokchoys or one big regular Bokchoy, chopped, hard and leafy parts separated
8oz of Mungbean Sprouts
8oz of Snow Pea Pods
1 oz peanuts
1 Tbsp Chinese Five Spice Powder
1 Tbsp Sichuan Peppercorns
1 Tbsp Cornstarch
10-15 Dried Sichuan Red Chiles or any other small dried red chile
1 Tbsp Sesame Oil
3 Tbsp Soy Sauce
2 Tbsp Chinese Black Rice Vinegar (Chinkiang grade preferable)
White Pepper to taste

Want to learn how to make this great dish? Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more..

Triangle Dining: Jason in the Raleigh News and Observer

Read the rest of this story on the Raleigh News & Observer site (click)

Triangle Dining: Pho 9N9

Pho 9N9 Vietnamese Cuisine
2945 S Miami Blvd, Durham, NC 27703
(919) 544-4496

It’s no secret now that I’ve been staying in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area for the past several weeks, traveling back and forth between my home in New Jersey on a four month project. The RDU/Triangle area, while not as ethnically diverse as say, San Jose and the Silicon Valley, is of equal importance to our nation’s high tech industry, due to the presence of many large technology companies in the Research Triangle and surrounding areas. And as we all know, you can’t feed computer geeks without having decent Asian food around.

The weather is just starting to turn warm here, so I’ve been in the mood for light cuisine. I was pointed towards Pho 9N9, a small Vietnamese pho shop that is on the outskirts of Durham, by my old friend, fellow foodblogger and native Triangle resident Varmint.

Pho 9N9 is located in a rather non-descript and rather industrial looking strip mall, which houses mostly commercial businesses. That’s just fine with me.

Serious Pho in the Triangle. Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

OTB Recipe Archive Now Available

After several days clicking away at the keyboard, Rachel has created an index of all the recipes appearing on OTB. You can see the Recipes tab above. If you read OTB regularly, you will realize that not all of our recipes are traditionally formatted. Some are just a general description of how we made the dish pictured. Other times, the recipe we used may be someone else’s and there will be another link for you to follow. There are two tables, first the recipes are sorted alphabetically, then by date, most recently published first.

We hope you enjoy exploring the OTB archives this way. We’ll try to keep it updated as new recipes are created, but if you think we’ve missed something, feel free to post it in the comments so we can keep the list up to date.

Grilled King Oyster Mushrooms a la NYT

When we were called and asked to prepare a dish for Kim Severson’s “Fat Pack” article in the New York Times that the photographer could watch me cook that very weekend, we took one look in the refrigerator and noticed we had a package of great, big, phallic King Oyster eryngii mushrooms, along with our usual staples of soy sauce, hot chile peppers and scallions.

“How about grilled King Oyster Mushrooms?” Rachel said to Phaedra, the NYT Dining Section photo editor.

“Great! We’ll be there Saturday morning at 9am”.

The resulting recipe that was used in my photo that accompanies the piece — which was originally intended to be published but ended up on the cutting room floor — pretty much came together last minute as the photographer was setting up. My idea was to replace the fattening butter yaki that typically is used as the prime flavor component of this dish with something more like a teriyaki sauce or a Korean BBQ marinade, but with an Awase Miso and fresh chili punch, and using a small amount of molasses instead of sugar.

Grilled King Oyster Mushrooms

1 bunch Scallions
2 tsp Awase Miso paste
1 tsp Ginger, grated
1 clove Garlic pureed
1 small Hot Red Pepper, minced
1/4 tsp White Pepper, freshly ground
1 tsp Molasses
2 Tbs Soy Sauce
1 Tbs Rice Vinegar
2 Tbs Chicken Broth (optional, use water if a vegetarian dish is desired)
1 tsp Roasted Sesame Oil
1 pound King Oyster Mushrooms
1/2 tsp Sesame Seeds

Clean scallions and separate the white part from the green. Slice the scallion greens and reserve for garnish. Mince the scallion whitesand put in a bowl with the miso paste, grated ginger, garlic, minced red pepper, white pepper, molasses, soy sauce, rice vinegar, broth or water, and sesame oil. Stir to combine.

Begin heating your grill pan or outdoor grill. Lightly spray the grate with cooking oil, or use a silicone basting brush to apply a scant amount of oil.

Slice the king oyster mushrooms lengthwise into 1/3 inch thick planks. Brush one side of each mushroom slice with the glaze as you place it, glaze side down, on the grill. Then brush the tops of all the slices. Grill for 3-4 minutes on each side, turning when the underside is well marked and basting to use up the glaze.

Serve hot or at room temperature, garnish with reserved scallion greens and sesame seeds. Serve with brown rice as a side dish (serves 4) or main course (serves 2). The leftovers are great sliced and added to a salad.

Soup, Glorious Soup: Part 2, Beans and Grains

In Part I of “Soup, Glorious Soup” Rachel presented a variety of recipes for lentil soup. Now, she’ll share some ideas for using other legumes and whole grains in soups.

Chunky Bean and Vegetable Soup

The first recipe is for split pea. Split pea soup has always been one of my favorites – I make a vegetarian version that you’d swear was cooked with a ham hock. And, contrary to popular belief, it’s hardly necessary to soak beans before cooking them, as you will see in the second recipe. I just simmer for an hour or so before adding the other soup ingredients and my mixed bean soup is perfectly tender. The third recipe below is for an addictive minestrone. Finally, I present Mushroom Barley. I brought this soup over to a friends house for part of a dinner we were making together. Jason’s friend went crazy over it, the wife has asked for the recipe for her mother - she said it tasted just like her grandma’s. Even the kids liked it, and it’s vegan!

If you don’t read the rest, there’s NO SOUP FOR YOU! Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

Soup Glorious Soup: Part 1, The Pulse of Life (UPDATED)

Rachel has turned herself into a regular Soup Diva. Here’s the first in a series of articles about how to make some easy, healthy and nutrilicious soups. Take it away, Rachel.

Photo: French Lentil Soup.

In our Top 10 Lifestyle Changes list, we recommend adding beans and lentils (aka pulses to your diet. They are high in protein and fiber, while being low in fat. One of the primary ways we like to include legumes in our diet is in soups. Below are five lentil soup recipes. I didn’t even like lentils when we began all this healthy lifestyle stuff, back in October, but I’ve found many different varieties and recipes and have grown to love them.

In Part II, I’ll share some ideas for using other legumes and grains in soups.

Red Lentil Curry Soup

Soup’s on! Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

NJ Dining: Julia’s Market and Café

Rachel has recently started contributing articles directly to Off The Broiler. As I was on a business trip to California all last week, Rachel started to do some scouting of lunch spots on her own. Here’s a friendly cafe in East Rutherford that specializes in Vegetarian and Vegan options — Jason

Julia’s Gourmet Market and Café
216 Park Avenue

East Rutherford, NJ 07073

201-531-9099

Julia Enerson with a Veggie Delight Sandwich

OTB’s good friend, Christine Nunn of Picnic Caterers, recently recommended we check out Julia’s. She knows we’ve been trying to eat healthier and her neighbor’s place offers several vegan and vegetarian options in addition to traditional deli options. Julia Enerson has been operating the place for three years with her husband, Bill Spada. Their café features weekly specialty sandwiches, salads, and home style dinners to take out, although there is seating for about 15 in the store. During recent visits, two soups, salads and a sandwich were sampled, pulling from the healthier aspects of her menu. The Turkey Vegetable Soup has large chunks of carrot and zucchini, and can be ordered with or without noodles (16 oz, $3.95). The vegan Mushroom Barley was thick with pearled barley and full of fresh mushrooms. The same size portion is served in house, an enormous bowl, so you could easily make a meal out of Julia’s soups. Both soups were rather lightly salted, allowing the guest to season to their taste.

Julia’s vegan Mushroom Barley Soup

All of her deli sandwiches can be ordered over greens for those of us watching our carbs. So the Veggie Suspect Sandwich was ordered as a salad instead. Julia’s “signature balsamic” dressing is drizzled over greens, marinated artichokes, sun-dried tomatoes, roasted peppers, avocado, fresh mozzarella, and tomato slices, and served with an 8-grain roll. She also features a daily “grain salad.” And that day’s was Cous Cous with chick peas, broccoli and grape tomatoes with lemon-oregano vinaigrette alongside. (Of course, it must be acknowledged that cous cous is not a grain, but a pasta.)

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Veggie Delight Salad

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Passing on the full complement of meats and cheeses available, the Veggie Delight sandwich was also vegetarian, this time featuring grilled vegetables, including eggplant, portabella, zucchini, red onion and sliced hearts of palm. Fresh mozzarella cheese is optional. This was also served on the 8-Grain roll, but don’t worry, Julia has a large assortment of breads and wraps from which to choose. I wanted to try her Turkey Chili, since that’s something we make at home and I like to compare mine to others. Unfortunately, she had run out of that day’s supply. Perhaps if one of you in OTB land visit, you can let us know how it is.

 

– Rachel Perlow 

The Big Salad

Julie: Please come, Elaine.

Elaine: No, no. How about if you bring me back something?

George: Sure, all right, what do you want?

Elaine: Um, hum, I don’t know.. . . A big salad?

George: What big salad? I’m going to the coffee shop.

Elaine: They have big salads.

George: I’ve never seen a big salad.

Elaine: They have a big salad.

George: Is that what I ask for? The BIG salad?

Elaine: It’s okay, you don’t…

George: No, no, Hey I’ll get it. What’s in the BIG salad?

Jerry: Big lettuce, big carrots, tomatoes like volleyballs.

George: You know, if it was a regular salad, I wouldn’t have said anything. But you had to have the BIIIIIG salad!