Braised Meat

Something that always tastes absolutely wonderful is melt-in-your-mouth braised meats!

When I went to Taiwan in the spring and visited my grandma, she told us about this duck that she had ordered specially made for dinner.  She said, you don't boil it in water at all.  You use two whole bottles of rice wine, a cup of soy sauce, some sugar, and just let it boil until it's dry.  You can also add in garlic or ginger.  The result is this beautifully dark and flavorful meat.  For our dinner, we had the duck, and it was so rich and so flavorful.

The braised duck is on the left.  Head and all!

I've since tested out the technique at home with a nice meaty haunch of pork shoulder.  I cut it up into smaller chunks because I was afraid the wine wouldn't cover it all properly.  You bring the rice wine and soy sauce to a boil first before adding the meat.  After adding the meat, I threw in some sliced ginger and added a few tbsp of sugar.  Then, you leave it uncovered and let it boil for 4 hours.  As time passes, you'll want to flip the meat over and gradually lower the temperature from high to medium to a low simmer until the liquid is almost gone.  Save some though and it will be the best sauce to moisten your meat!

I'm going to attempt this recipe again for Thanksgiving this year.  Thinking of braising a whole chicken. :)

A Look at Stewed/Minced/Braised Pork Rice (滷肉飯)

Braised/stewed pork is an absolute favorite of mine.  Even though I grew up in the US, I have always had a huge love for stewed pork with rice (lu rou fan, 滷肉飯) from Taiwan.  Every time I go back to Taiwan to visit, I eat this almost every day.  It is my go-to when out shopping or when I'm at home and nobody wants to cook.  All my relatives know that all I could ever want to eat when I visit is bowls of stewed pork with rice.  (Click here to see the millions of images of different ones.)

The most common meaty parts that people use to make stewed pork is often the pork belly (or bacony part).  The nice and fatty cut of pork that renders so well after stewing for hours.  Lu Rou Fan is one of Taiwan's most famous dishes next to their beef noodles.  So what makes it so good?  It's simply a bowl of white rice topped with soft and tender pork with a savory sauce.  It's not only available from various small restaurants, it's also all over the night markets in Taiwan too.  Oh yes, it's also quite cheap at a bowl for about $1-2 USD!  People typically have it just so or with stewed eggs or pickled veggies on the side.

From http://reviews.noobcook.com/formosa-chang/

If you're ever in Taiwan, try Formosa Chang's (Hu Xu Zhang 鬍鬚張), which is supposedly the best one.  I've had it and I don't know if I'd rate it the "best", but it was delicious nonetheless.  Another way to find a good Lu Rou Fan is to hit up a busy restaurant district and see where there are long lines.  Oftentimes, the small shops with the longest lines have some of the best, hearty meals!  My uncle showed me this during lunch one day and I could see they'd bring out the huge stew pot and rice pot to the front and just keep scooping lunchboxes of it.  And of course, when in doubt, follow your nose!  The meaty stew that smells wonderful definitely tastes wonderful!

My own renditions of it.

  

Enough about the Taiwan ones now... I've attempted to make it on my own many, many times and I just can't ever get it quite as excellently soft and flavorful as the ones I've had in Taiwan.  It's a hard recipe to master if you're really trying to make the best melt-in-your-mouth stew!

Here are a few recipes I found online:

• http://www.food.com/recipe/lu-rou-fan-taiwanese-stewed-pork-with-hard-boiled-eggs-497671
• http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/07/taiwanese-meat-sauce-recipe.html
• http://taiwanduck.com/braised-pork-on-rice-lu-rou-fan-taiwanese-style-food/

Each recipes talks about similar ingredients for creating a flavorful stewed pork.  My uncle in Taiwan cooks an awesome stewed pork.  He learned cooking from a talented grandma and he has his own restaurant in the Shanghai area now.  When he was cooking it one time, I watched him.  I was only in middle school at the time so I couldn't remember much.  The one thing I remember is that he cut up a huge amount of shallots and fried them in a layer of oil.  Then he scooped out all the fried shallots and fried the meat in the flavored oil.  Oh, it smelled wonderful!

While the meat can be ready in as little as 30 minutes, the trick is to let it simmer for hours so that it's very tender and flavorful.  Someday, when I perfect mine, I'll post a recipe.

Glutinous Sticky Rice

Mmm! There's a lot of yummy stuff out there but the food you'll always crave the most is comfort food. The food I usually crave is flavor-filled and stomach-filling.

A lot of prep goes into making sticky rice. You have to presoak the rice, prep whatever you want to add in to rice, and combine it in the end. I googled a rice cooker recipe and then combined all the ingredients in a frying pan. The style I'm used to is Taiwanese style but Cantonese style is great as well.  The most difficult part of making this is getting just the right amount of flavor.  Mine was still a little flavorless even though the soy sauce color came through.  Have to experiment with this one some more!

Steam-Fried Dumplings (Guo Tie) and Xiao Long Bao

An easy go-to to keep in the freezer are dumplings! They are actually quite quick to prepare and so tasty if done right. Typical methods for dumplings are either to boil it in water or to fry them. The method my mom taught me works wonderfully and it's so easy!

1. Add some vegetable oil to a heated pan at medium-high to high.
2. Layer in the dumplings so that their flat bottoms touch the surface of the pan.
3. Add in water to cover the dumplings a little under halfway.
4. Let the water boil until it dries out. This takes about 10 minutes for smaller amounts and possibly 20 minutes for a large pan filled all the way.
5. Once the water dries completely, watch for signs of crisping on the bottoms and take them off the pan when it's fried to your desired crispiness.

Five steps, frozen food, hot pan and oil and water. So easy!

Now, for the mini pork buns (xiao long bao), I tried steaming them as restaurant ones are always steamed. That turned out much harder and to be a lengthy process. I used the same technique as I did for my dumplings (since these were also frozen) and it works just as well for the xiao long bao! The only thing you have to be careful about is keeping the buns placed spaciously in the pan so that they don't touch each other. Once they stick together, it will tear a hole in the skin more easily and then all the delicious juices will escape. So, after steam-frying the xiao long bao with the same technique, I carefully transferred them to a plate. When I bit into them...ooooh so juicy and meaty! I even tried packing some for lunch after cooking them and it turned out just as tasty after coming out of the microwave. Success.

Taiwan-Style Beef Noodles

Homemade is always the best!

Far as I know, this is the Taiwanese style of Beef Noodles. Made for me by my dear friend's mom--she even made noodles from scratch! Oh, deliciousness all around. I'm not able to take spicy foods very well so I ate all the beef, noodles, and veggies but could barely drink the soup. I attempted to make this on my own at home but I'm afraid I still need better skills and timing to pan-fry the beef just enough with the sauces so that the flavors really blend.

The noodles from scratch. (These were whole wheat but still great!)

Congee

My favorite get-better-soon meal.

Congee (or rice porridge) is simply rice cooked with a little more than double the amount of water you usually use. Like a good Asian, I always use a rice cooker to cook my rice. The current one at home is a Zojirushi. Our family always bought the "elephant" brand probably because it just works well. We had one of the newer ones without the water on the outside for a while but then we switched back to the older style.

I discovered that I had to cook the rice twice for it to really be soft enough. This probably could've been remedied with just adding more water to the outside of the pot and adding more water to the rice itself as well. I ended up cooking once, adding more water for both, and cooking it again. By the way, congee can also be made on the stove top. It just requires more supervision so that your rice doesn't stick to the bottom of the pot or burn.

Scallion Pancakes (蔥油餅)

I love these so much. One of my favorites ever since I first had one, scallion pancakes done right are absolutely delicious.

Making one from scratch is quite difficult in the aspect of making the proper dough in so many layers that when cooked, flake so beautifully yet don't lose the chewiness. My alternative is to buy premade scallion pancakes frozen from the Chinese supermarket. To cook, simply heat up a pan, drizzle in the oil and let it sizzle. Generally, I like to dip both sides of it in the oil of the pan before laying it flat to cook. Medium to medium-high heat works great. Always bring up the temperature when you're just about done to get a great crisp on the outside. If you ever want to add an egg, simply scramble it on top of the pancake before flipping it over and you'd have a delicious scallion pancake with egg (蛋餅).

I add some extra style to my scallion pancake by roughing it up. I learned this from watching street vendors in Taiwan make 抓餅 (literally: grab pancakes). The thing is basically a scallion pancake shredded loosely so that it becomes more of a finger food. It's light and the dough is still great but you get more crispy parts than just frying a plain scallion pancake.

The end result--a yummy breakfast!

Snow Ice (雪冰) from Taiwan

This is something called snow ice (雪冰). Straight out of a shop in one of the night markets in Taiwan.

You know how most ice desserts are with the crunchy chips of ice ground up and flavored? This is on a completely different level. The ice is as fine as a fresh snowfall, light and fluffy to the extreme. This one as you can see is loaded with strawberries and strawberry flavoring. The combination of instant-melting-in-your-mouth ice blended with sweet, delicious flavor makes a very happy me! Not to mention, the price is only a little over $1 USD for such a big heap of ice presented in a wonderfully large dessert dish. We shared this one between two people and still didn't finish the entire thing.

My winter break 2010 was spent mostly in Taiwan visiting my family for the first time in a long time. Winter in Taiwan was still chilly (and apparently, chillier than it has been in the past few years) but this delectable dish was great after running around catching the MRT and shopping in three different locations all in the span of a day. Shopping and food is my favorite combination of activities. More like food first, then shopping. In my book, being a food enthusiast > shopaholic.