Apple smosh pancake

I am in no way a pancake expert, much less a pancake champion or pancake evangelist. So I humbly submit myself to the pancake geists, fully conceding that my impetus for pancaking was a bowl of apple smosh™ (which, as everyone knows, is what you get when you cook pieces of apple with sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg, covered and on low heat, for the better part of an hour) that was left over from making an apple shrub. 

Here's the result:

And what it looks like, half-eaten:

Anyway, as I said, my pancake recipe is far from professional. But this one came out pretty well, so here's what I did:

1. Mix an egg in a bowl with about 2/3 cup of hazelnut milk.

2. Add flour, stirring vigorously, until you get to the texture of batter.

3. Heat some grape seed oil (or some other oil) in a pan on medium heat. When it's hot, pour half the batter into the pan.

4. Wait until the pancake starts to form tiny bubbles on top, then, instead of flipping it, put it on a plate (wet side up).

5. Add the rest of the better, and again wait for the tiny bubbles. Then add the apple smosh (depicted), and a piece of butter.

6. Put the first pancake on top of this (wet side down). Press the edges so the two pancakes seal together.

7. Cook like this on low heat until you think the insides are cooked enough. That might be 10 minutes? Flipping is also permitted.

Here's what the bottom looked like:

Egg and eggplant udon

This recipe also has lots of variations, but the key ingredients are noodles, eggs, soy sauce, ginger, and scallions. Hmm...this is starting to sound familiar. 

To make the serving shown here (enough for three, though maybe not three ravenously hungry), you'll need:

- 2 East Asian type eggplants (the long thin kind)

- 2 eggs

- 2 cloves of garlic, diced

- 1 thumb of ginger, diced

- scallions, chopped

- 2 or 3 servings of dry udon

- soy sauce and chili flakes to taste

- (optional) sugar to taste

1. Fry the eggplant and ginger on medium heat until the eggplant starts to get crispy on the outside. Meanwhile, boil a pot of water for the noodles.

2. When the water starts to boil, add the noodles to the water, and add the garlic to the pan (the one with the eggplant and ginger).

3. When the noodles are done (this should take about 3 minutes), move them from the pot to the pan, and add soy sauce. Then fill the pan with hot water (you can use the water from cooking the noodles). Stir in case the noodles have stuck to the pan in the meantime.

4. The water should quickly start to boil, since it was boiling in the pot before. Taste to make sure there's enough salt, and if not, add more soy sauce. Now beat the eggs and add them, stirring slowly so they spread out into long strands.

5. Turn off the heat, and add the scallions. Stir for 20 or 30 seconds, and serve.

Actually, I usually use tomatoes instead of eggplant, and then it's sort of like a soup version of tomato fried eggs (番茄炒蛋). You can use other noodles too, of course, like ramen and soba.

Dill winter soup

It's not pretty, but I like it.

Like drinking the brine in a jar of dill pickles, except not disgusting. There is absolutely no oil in this soup, so if you don't have any oil, you can still make this.

1. Boil maybe six cups of water
2. Add a thumb of ginger (smashed & peeled), a clove of garlic (whole), and about a tablespoon of fish sauce.
3. Add some Japanese mountain potato, sliced small.
4. Add a red potato, chopped into cubes. Cook for 20 minutes. If it looks like there's too much water, leave it uncovered. If the amount of water is just enough, cover and turn the heat lower.
5. Add some dinosaur kale, chopped.
6. Add half a red onion, sliced. Cook for another 15 minutes or so.
7. Add some white wine vinegar, maybe a tablespoon or two, and a pinch of salt. Cook for five more minutes.
8. Add a handful of fresh dill, chopped fine. Cook for a minute.
9. Pour some broth in a bowl, and dissolve a tablespoon of red miso paste.
10. Add the soup to this bowl, mix, and eat!

Fried rice log

A cuisine unto itself. A form of art subtler than electronica and louder than oil painting. A way of salvaging leftovers.

As anyone with any sense will attest, this is the best thing to do with leftover rice. I usually use basmati rice, which apart from having a nice flavor seems well suited for turning into fried rice because the grains tend not to stick together as much as other varieties, and they hold their texture pretty well when cooked multiple times.

Let's start with the archetypal fried rice. If you get this one down, you can make any kind of fried rice and it'll be amazing.

Archetype

Rice, garlic, ginger, eggs, onions, scallions, rice vinegar, soy sauce, high heat vegetable oil

No proportions since that wouldn't be in the spirit of fried rice. Add everything to taste, or according to how much you have.

1. Heat a pan and add the oil.

2. Beat the eggs, and cook this briefly, then set aside. I like to not disturb them so they'll turn into a pancake shape that I can cut into even pieces, but it's not a big deal if you just want to scramble them.

3. Before doing anything else, if necessary, remove stuck spots on the pan and add more oil.

4. Add the ginger and onions, cook until the onions are translucent, or longer if you want them to be sweeter.

5. Add the garlic and cook for another minute, or until it's fragrant but not yet turning brown.

6. Add the rice, and soy sauce. I find pouring the soy sauce onto the rice blobs (assuming the rice is stuck together) works best. For quantity, err on the conservative side. If the rice is really dry, you might also add some water (hot is better), but don't add too much or the rice will turn into mush. It's also easy for the rice to stick, especially if there's not enough liquid or oil. Break up the rice quickly and stir it so it all gets coated in oil. To do the breakage, crushing the blobs with a spatula is effective. 

7. Add a dash of vinegar, and the eggs (optional: add a bit of sesame oil). Cook for another half minute, or until the vinegar stops overwhelming all the other smells.

8. Add the scallions, and cook for 20 seconds or until they're fragrant. 

This archetype is a helpful way of thinking about the roles of ingredients, and figuring out when to add them and how long to cook them. These roles are roughly as follows:

Egg: Needs to be cooked beforehand, then set aside to be added later. Similar: tempeh, eggplant.

Onions: Source of sweet. Long cooking time, lots of surface area and water. Similar: peppers, zucchini, mushrooms.

Garlic: Medium cooking time, loses fragrance if cooked too long.

Ginger: Long cooking time, high heat. Added directly to hot oil at the beginning. Similar: chili pepper / flakes.

Scallions: Very short cooking time, added right before serving. Similar: basil, cilantro.

Soy sauce: The main source of salt and liquid. Joins the flavors of all the other ingredients and gets absorbed by the rice. Similar: fish sauce, saltwater. 

Rice vinegar: Source of sour. Burns if cooked too much. Similar: black vinegar.
Tomato: This isn't in the archetype, but I think it's in its own category. These add lots of water and balance out the other flavors, but they shouldn't be cooked as long as onions. Usually you would add them either right before or right after the rice. Other examples: enoki mushrooms, spinach and other greens.

Almost anything else you can add takes the place of one of these.

Catalog

Ingredient roles in parentheses.

1. Dill (scallions), zucchini (onions), enoki mushrooms (tomatoes), the white part of the scallions (garlic), rice, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, rice vinegar.
2. Tempeh (eggs), poblano pepper (onions), garlic, shungiku (春菊) (tomatoes), soy sauce, black vinegar.

var. 2                                                     

The cooking secret they don't want you to know!

Italian and Chinese chefs hate him! Make your own fresh noodles with this one weird trick!

A few weeks ago a took a class on handmade pasta. We made ravioli with goat cheese and edamame, ravioli with squash, and fettucini carbonara with shiitake mushrooms instead of bacon. What I took away from the class is that making pasta by hand is simpler than I had imagined.

This recipe was my first attempt since then to make some on my own, without adult supervision. In the class, we had pasta machines to roll the dough uniformly flat and slice it into noodle shapes (for the ravioli, we used stencils). I don't have a pasta machine at home, so this time I rolled it and cut it by hand.

Instead of sauce, I fried some vegetables and tomatoes, and then added the noodles to that. Sort of like the sauce I used to have with Lanzhou noodles (蘭州拉麵) in Chengdu. 

NOODLES

1. Put two cups of flour in a mixing bowl. Make a well in the middle of the flour, and add two eggs.

Actually I forgot the proportions, so in the picture below I had only added one cup of flour -- hence the egg overflow. But the texture wasn't right until I added a full second cup. 

Two eggs' worth is just about enough for one very hungry person. I'm sure you can adjust the amount according to how much you actually want to make.

2. Beat the eggs inside the well.

As you mix, the flour should start to get pulled into the egg mixture, making it thicker.

Keep mixing this way until most of the flour is absorbed, and it starts to look like dough, i.e. it's too thick to mix with a fork. Then switch to using your hands. 

3. Knead the dough.

Use a floured surface, and press the dough until it has a uniform consistency, and isn't too dry or too sticky. Then knead some more.

Here's how you can tell if it's done: Form the dough into a ball. Make an indentation with your finger. If it returns to its original shape, you're good.

4. Wrap the dough in plastic or parchment, and let it sit for about half an hour. 

Apparently, this lets the proteins and starches bind together better. You might be able to get away with a shorter wait time.

5. Roll the dough flat.

Also on a floured surface. I don't have a rolling pin, so I used a pint glass. A bottle would also work.

Try to make it as flat as you can, ideally in a rectangular shape.

6. Slice the noodles.

7. Bring water to a roiling burl. Add noodles. Burl for three minutes.

SAUCE

1. Slice four cloves of garlic, half a red bell pepper, two Roma tomatoes, a couple stalks of king oyster mushroom, and a few scallion sprigs.

2. Add olive oil to a heated pan. Add chili flakes, then the garlic, then the mushrooms. Cook for a minute on medium heat.

3. Add the tomatoes and peppers. Continue cooking for a few minutes.

4. Add a tablespoon or two of oyster sauce (I used a vegetarian, mushroom-based version), and a small splash of soy sauce.

6. Turn heat to low and wait until the noodles are done. Then add the scallions.

7. Now add the noodles. You can strain them first, or just pick them out of the pot with chopsticks or your hands. Just kidding about the hands.

8. Stir-fry for about 10 seconds, until the sauce and pasta are well combined. I fried them for about a minute, but I think this made the noodles too soft, since they had already been boiled long enough.

I actually used only half the noodles for this, so the other half I dipped in flour to keep from sticking, and put in a plastic container in the fridge. That was a couple days ago, and I haven't looked at them again since, so if there are any problems with this storage method I'll update this.

BPLJ

Lemon juice and black pepper. Am I right? Few things are better, especially when it comes to finding ways of using the rigatoni left over from the recipe two weeks ago.

I initially didn't have very high hopes for this dish, because I didn't have any onions, spinach, or seitan. But this just shows again that lemon juice and black pepper will always triumph. It was a win.

Here's what I did have:

- 2 cloves of garlic

- a handful of scallion bulbs

- some tempeh (a few ounces, maybe?)

- a few fresh basil leaves

- a pinch of herbes de provence

- a dash of chili flakes

- some parmesan-like cheese

- the aforementioned BP&LJ (amounting to one lemonsworth)

1. Heat the pan on low heat and add a little olive oil.
2. Add the tempeh, sliced thin. Fry on low heat until the bottoms start to darken, then flip. Add chili flakes and BP.
3. Wait a minute, then add the garlic, but don't stir it so much the tempeh is disturbed.

4. When the garlic starts to cook, but before it browns, add the chopped scallion bulbs, the herbes, and some salt.

5. Turn up to medium-high heat. Add the pasta. Stir-fry until the pasta is well heated, then add about 2/3 of the lemon juice. Keep stirring.

6. Cook this for another few minutes, then add the basil and turn off the heat. Add the rest of the LJ.

7. Put the pasta in a bowl. Grate cheese on top. Add more BP.

8. Goes with white wine of course.

Addendum: Cooking Challenges

The basil I bought last week, put in one of those supposedly biodegradable green bags, then tucked in the back of the fridge was almost completely dried out and dead when I found it again today. There were a few leaves that still seemed edible, but they were severely wilted. The first thing I did before I started chopping was to pick them off the stems and put them in a cup of water. By the time I needed them, they had revived significantly.

Keeping any kind of greens fresh for a long time is a challenge. Now I remember I have had some success with keeping them in the fridge in a bowl of water. But I don't remember if that always worked. I'll try it next time and report back.

Egg pancake

Egg pancake (蛋餅) is one of my favorite foods in Taipei.

Pictured here is my novice's adaptation.

UPDATE: new photo, slightly better than the last attempt

note that scallions have been replaced by cilantro

First, make the batter. Beat an egg, then add a cup of water, and mix vigorously with a fork. Add two tablespoons of corn starch, and mix again. Add half a cup of flour, and mix again. The texture should be very watery; if it's thick at all, add more water. Let this sit in the fridge for at least half an hour while the chemical reactions happen.

I think the one shown here was too thick. You want the batter to fill the whole pan when you pour it, and be very thin. If it's not thin enough, the middle will be thicker than the edges, and the pancake texture will be doughy, when it should be light and crispy (but not brittle).

Chop some scallions and beat an egg. To the egg, you can add salt and pepper.

Usually they're cooked on a big, flat grilling surface, but a frying pan works too. Heat the pan on medium/high heat, add a generous amount of oil, and put in the scallions. Try to spread them out in the pan -- otherwise they might make the pancake too weak where they're clustered together. 

Fry the scallions for a few seconds, then add the batter. Tilt the pan in a circle so the edges and the middle have the same thickness. If there are any holes, fill them with more batter. 

Fry this until it starts to get crispy on the bottom, and doesn't stick to the pan (having a cast iron or nonstick pan helps). Slide the pancake onto a plate. 

the egg is underneath this dubiously textured pancake

Add the egg, also tilting the pan to spread it out. Immediately turn down the heat so it doesn't get overcooked, and put the pancake on top of the egg, crispy side up. The egg should be only partially cooked, so the top will stick to the pancake.

right after the flip

Now flip the whole thing over, so the egg side is up, and turn off the heat. Here, you can add whatever else you want in your pancake. The usual thing is 醬油膏, a thick, sweet soy sauce paste. You can also add that on top at the end.

ver. 2 - cilantro instead of scallions

Finally, roll it up, put it on a plate, and slice it. Serve with a cup of sugar soaked in black tea.

Variations

I had some batter left, so I made another one. This time I added more water and I think the texture came out a little better.

This time, instead of putting an egg inside, I added tempeh (which I fried first) and kimchi.

I also made one with kimchi and arugula: