Blessings Darlings!
I now have 7 cucumbers harvested from the garden, patiently waiting in my kitchen to be used. While green salads are a great place for cucs, as are watercress sandwiches, for using LOTS of 'em we need a main course dish.
Bon Bon Chicken is my go-to main dish for cucumber season. My husband brought this recipe into our marriage with him. He got the original recipe from the Chinese cooking classes he took with Pansy and Chu-Yen Luke before we even met. We've modified it for our tastes. It does take some ingredients that many folks don't keep around their kitchen .... but since I DO keep them around it's not a problem for me. If gluten-free matters to you, it's easy to make this gluten free, you'll just have to make sure that your light soy sauce is gluten free.
BON BON CHICKEN SALAD
4 oz. bean thread
1 lb boneless chicken
1 lb. small cucumbers (think kirby, not 'salad' cucs)
1 Tbs salt
4 tsp finely chopped fresh ginger
4 garlic cloves, well chopped
4 Tbs Tahini
3 Tbs light soy sauce
3 Tbs Chinese black vinegar
4 tsp sesame oil
1 Tbs sugar
1/2 Tbs chili oil .... or more to taste, but this is powerful.
If you're like me, and boning cheap leg quarters for the chicken, you'll get a pound from 2 meaty leg quarters. But the Chubby Hubby says that the Luke's adapted their REAL Chinese recipes by adding more meat, for American tastes, so reducing the meat may well be more authentic.
Soak the bean thread in water to cover for half an hour. While that soaks, bring a couple of cups of water to a boil, add the raw chicken, and simmer 'till it's cooked thru'. Take out the chicken and let it cool to room temperature, then cut it into thin and short strips. Salad size, you might say!
Cut the cucs the long way, then slice those halves the short way into thin slices. Remove water from them by sprinkling them with the salt and letting them sit while do make the salad dressing. You make the salad dressing by combining the rest of the ingredients. Squeeze the water from the cuc slices. If you are avoiding salt you might want to rinse them, too, I do.
Cut the hydrated bean thread 3 inches long. Drop them in boiling water for 5 minutes, then drain.
Now everything goes into a big serving dish and gets tossed, plated, and eaten.
Serves 4.
Showing posts with label Chinese cooking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chinese cooking. Show all posts
Monday, September 3, 2012
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Slip Me Some Spice
Blessings Darlings!
My Mother, bless her heart, was never an inspired cook. She was constrained by the times she was born into (born during WWI, teen during the Depression, young adult during WWII rationing) and the challenges of kashrut. Salt, pepper, onions, and garlic were about the only seasonings she used, and she insisted that "Jews don't use gravy."
So, shall we say, as a cook I am not my Mother's daughter. While I started slow, by high school I was experimenting with foods from health food stores (Dannon yogurt! Exotic! Yeah, I'm OLD) and started making bread from scratch. My husband, whose Mother had a similar generational if not religious upbringing, came into my life having already broken out into Chinese cooking and always trying new foods at ethnic restaurants.
So today I'm going to share with all y'all two spices that are important in my life. They are cumin and ginger.
GINGER
Many folks only know ginger from its role in sweet foods. From Red Hots to pumpkin pie to gingerbread, cooks first get to know ginger in powdered form. Big, bulbous, fibrous spicy - these attributes of ginger root make working with it directly a bit intimidating at first. It's used a lot in Chinese cooking to kick things up.
It's easy to start by peeling about a square inch of ginger root and chopping it finely. DO NOT START BY USING A MICROPLANE GRATER ON GINGER. Recipes call for CHOPPED ginger for a reason - microplaned it's stronger than you will expect. Saute' it lightly in some olive oil, then add a pound of green beans and saute' them until done. Experiment from there in other dishes later.
My 'secret' ginger use? I use those peels from the ginger root when I make chicken stock. They add a wonderful depth to the flavor.
I also grow ginger, but .... I'm not good at it. I can't stop it from going dormant in winter even tho' I bring it in, and it starts up LATE in spring. I certainly don't get enough for me to use my own much of the time!
CUMIN
You might now know it, but you've probably already met cumin before. It's one of the ingredients in some good chili, and in some tacos. Which, when you think about it, makes it a pretty NEW addition to actual Mexican food, since it's a native of the middle east and India! You'll use this spice ground, rather than in the whole seed.
To me it particularly shines in middle eastern food. Tzatziki Sauce is one of the staple sauces of my kitchen. A simple mix of yogurt (usually Greek yogurt, tho' 'regular' yogurt is fine if you want a thinner sauce), lemon, salt, garlic, cumin, and chopped cucumber, I use it as a sauce on sandwiches (felafel, gyros), as a salad dressing, as an accent to roast lamb, etc.
I've been failing at growing this, too. Le sigh.
So, go forth and play with your food! It's fun, and alchemical.
Frondly, Fern
My Mother, bless her heart, was never an inspired cook. She was constrained by the times she was born into (born during WWI, teen during the Depression, young adult during WWII rationing) and the challenges of kashrut. Salt, pepper, onions, and garlic were about the only seasonings she used, and she insisted that "Jews don't use gravy."
So, shall we say, as a cook I am not my Mother's daughter. While I started slow, by high school I was experimenting with foods from health food stores (Dannon yogurt! Exotic! Yeah, I'm OLD) and started making bread from scratch. My husband, whose Mother had a similar generational if not religious upbringing, came into my life having already broken out into Chinese cooking and always trying new foods at ethnic restaurants.
So today I'm going to share with all y'all two spices that are important in my life. They are cumin and ginger.
GINGER
Many folks only know ginger from its role in sweet foods. From Red Hots to pumpkin pie to gingerbread, cooks first get to know ginger in powdered form. Big, bulbous, fibrous spicy - these attributes of ginger root make working with it directly a bit intimidating at first. It's used a lot in Chinese cooking to kick things up.
It's easy to start by peeling about a square inch of ginger root and chopping it finely. DO NOT START BY USING A MICROPLANE GRATER ON GINGER. Recipes call for CHOPPED ginger for a reason - microplaned it's stronger than you will expect. Saute' it lightly in some olive oil, then add a pound of green beans and saute' them until done. Experiment from there in other dishes later.
My 'secret' ginger use? I use those peels from the ginger root when I make chicken stock. They add a wonderful depth to the flavor.
I also grow ginger, but .... I'm not good at it. I can't stop it from going dormant in winter even tho' I bring it in, and it starts up LATE in spring. I certainly don't get enough for me to use my own much of the time!
CUMIN
You might now know it, but you've probably already met cumin before. It's one of the ingredients in some good chili, and in some tacos. Which, when you think about it, makes it a pretty NEW addition to actual Mexican food, since it's a native of the middle east and India! You'll use this spice ground, rather than in the whole seed.
To me it particularly shines in middle eastern food. Tzatziki Sauce is one of the staple sauces of my kitchen. A simple mix of yogurt (usually Greek yogurt, tho' 'regular' yogurt is fine if you want a thinner sauce), lemon, salt, garlic, cumin, and chopped cucumber, I use it as a sauce on sandwiches (felafel, gyros), as a salad dressing, as an accent to roast lamb, etc.
I've been failing at growing this, too. Le sigh.
So, go forth and play with your food! It's fun, and alchemical.
Frondly, Fern
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