Simple Asian Slaws

Salads aren't really common in China though the concept is picking up. Frankly, the safety of raw vegetables wasn't very good historically speaking. While the green head cabbage common in the West isn't part of historic Asian cuisine, they had a range of its relatives and mustards. Still, green cabbage is a versatile and inexpensive vegetable and I like it. It works in most places the celery cabbage or Napa cabbage would be used more traditionally.

When cooking Chinese on a weeknight, there's not usually much time to prepare a vegetable if you're stir-frying the protein or your wok is otherwise occupied. This is when knowing how to season up some simple sliced cabbage, carrots and onions is a handy thing.

Nuoc Cham

Nuoc Cham is one way. I do this more for accompanying a steamed fish dish as I like how the lime plays to the cilantro and fish.

For speed, dress the slaw with nuoc cham to taste just before serving. For better flavor and texture, dress it early and let it stand refrigerated a couple of hours, stirring now and then. Just before serving, pour off the dressing and accumulated liquid from the vegetables. Dress again, using a bit less nuoc cham to account for what was absorbed.

If you're going to use nuoc cham, don't do a salted drain period with the slaw vegetables. Because fish sauce is so salty, it's best not use salt to wilt and drain the vegetables before hand.

Chinese Salad Dressing

There are a number of variations on this out there, and even some good commercially bottled dressings. This is a simple one to mix together and is easy to scale up or down as needed. This one is close to one by Nina Simonds, but modified by myself under the influence of Mai Leung's cookbooks. This works well measured in teaspoons or tablespoons for a triple batch. Just depends how much you need.

4 light soy sauce (not lite or low sodium)
3 rice vinegar
2 toasted sesame oil
1.5 sugar
1 dark soy sauce

Combine and mix until the sugar is dissolved. This one doesn't emulsify well, just stir before pouring.  It's good on many vegetables or salads. I'm particularly fond of it on sliced cucumber with a little chopped green onion. It's also a welcome dip for a hot pot.

Because I use Ve Wong XO soy sauce which is low in sodium naturally, I can salt the slaw vegetables to wilt and drain off their liquid. Otherwise, it's as with the nuoc cham where it would be too salty.

Spicy Red Dressing

I first encountered this in  Yong Yap Cotterell's Chinese Cooking for Pleasure as the flavored base for Sichuan Chicken Cakes. Shortly after seeing this there, I came across Lexington Slaw which is a pretty similar concept.  It's surprisingly simple, basically spiced up ketchup. Yong Yap just used ketchup and dried chile flakes.

Ratios suggested below are a broad guideline. Start small and increase the amounts to taste. Dress it very lightly.

10 parts Ketchup
1 part Sriracha (Huy Fong will work fine, but Shark is better if you can find it)

Prior to mixing:

After mixing:

As cabbages and such are not uniform in size and people's preference for heat varies widely, it's best to assemble this to taste. Start lightly with ketchup, a 1/4 cup will dress quite a bit of cabbage. Similarly, sriracha gets hot fast so start with a small amount, mix it in and taste. Continue adding ketchup and sriracha in small amounts until the balance is to your liking.

This is the slaw I served with the Hoisin Simmered Strips.

Spinach with Scorched Garlic

This is one of those simple dishes in which description fails to capture the result. Scorching garlic, while generally a cooking mistake, seasons and scents the oil that brings out the best of the spinach, a lighter pungency from the garlic with the earthier flavors from the spinach.

Because the garlic is left intact, it's not too strong and can withstand the cooking that would ruin minced or sliced garlic.

1 pound spinach, washed, drained, chopped in 1 inch pieces
4 cloves garlic crushed but still in one piece
1 tablespoon oil
salt to taste
1/4 teaspoon sugar (optional)

Bring a good volume of water to a boil, 3-4 quarts is good. Do not salt the water. Use the heating time to finish prepping the other ingredients.

Blanch the cut spinach in the boiling water for 1 minute. Drain, and shock the spinach with cold water.

The spinach will have collapsed and cooked down. Drain, blot or spin the spinach in a salad spinner to remove excess liquid. Spinning works best. I find it easiest to season the spinach after spinning.

Now, when you stir fry the spinach, it will not leak out bitter liquid. The blanching and spinning turns spinach into a great vegetable for stir frying. You can blanch ahead of time and keep the spinach refrigerated or at room temperature for an hour or two before cooking.

Heat the oil in a wok on high heat. Add the garlic and stir fry until the garlic has taken on some dark color on all sides.

Add the spinach and stir fry to coat the spinach evenly in the oil, breaking up any clumps.

Serve immediately.

I picked up this dish from Barbara Tropp's The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking. It's out of print as are many of the best Chinese cookbooks, but still readily available in the used book market. 

A similar dish done with Yu Choy can be seen at the Steamy Kitchen blog. The basic idea is adaptable to any quick cooking greens.

Hoisin Simmered Strips

The original version of this dish uses a whole 5-6 pound stewing hen and a proportionally longer cooking time. Here, I simplify this using leaner tender cuts and cooking them quickly though the steps are the same. It's not as rich or intense, but makes for a simpler quicker meal that is still quite good.

As written, this recipe uses a lot of meat. It's one of those dishes that you can make ahead of time and reuse in different ways. For a smaller version, you can reduce the amounts to 1/4 that listed. The ingredients will scale will at that ratio.  I'll list those amounts in parentheses.

4-5 pounds lean tender chicken, or pork in strips. (1 pound) Chicken tenderloins work well and are already the right shape.
salt
rice wine

I'm using up a package of chicken tenderloins and pork sirloin tip roast. Trim off any sinews or unwanted fat. Chicken tenderloins often have some of the tendon still attached and its best to remove that.  Season with salt and a few drops of rice wine on each side. Let sit for at least 15 minutes.

Sear off strips in a hot lightly oiled pan on high heat. You don't want to cook it through, just put color on the strips and develop some fond in the pan. The meat will stick at first, but release when it's been seared on the surface. Turn and cook on the other side. Don't stir fry or otherwise disturb the meat, you'll only have a sticking problem. Remove seared strips to a plate and repeat in batches as necessary.

My pan is heavily loaded, arguably overloaded. I'm cooking on induction on maximum wattage. And you'll see it colors and releases well without rendering out liquid or steaming the meat. Work within the limits of your stove and pan.

The brown bits left in the pan are the fond. Notice there aren't meat bits stuck all over the pan. The fond is the basis of many pan sauces in Continental cuisine and it will improve the sauce for this dish as well.

Remove pan from heat, and add the sauce ingredients.

4 large cloves garlic, minced (1 clove)
4 teaspoons minced ginger (1 teaspoon)
3/4 cup water (3 tablespoons)
3/4 cup hoisin sauce (3 tablespoons)
4 tablespoons mushroom dark soy (1 tablespoon)
4 tablespoons rice wine (1 tablespoon)
1 tablespoon sugar  (1 teaspoon--this is technically more than 1/4 but it works)
1 teaspoon salt (1/4 teaspoon)

Bring to a boil over medium heat, scraping up your fond. Return the strips to the sauce and simmer gently until done, 15-20 minutes.

Remove the strips, slice them, brush with toasted sesame oil and drizzle with the cooking sauce to taste. Serve extra sauce at the table. Keeping the servings arranged as strips improves the presentation.

Sliced

Sauced

Served

A different method for passing through oil

I was streaming some TV this evening through the apps feature of my TV. I chose an episode of Great Chef's Holiday Table, the one with the Wong Brothers making their Lettuce Blossom (video link)  It's a nice chicken and vegetable filled lettuce cup or wrap.

Some interesting technique is demonstrated in the video. I give time marks to the different technique points.

• 2:03 double cleaver mincing.
• 2:30 marinate in quite a lot of cooking oil, but this turns out to be a prelude to passing through oil. And I don't think its really a marination step, but a measuring step.
• 3:02 the commentary indicates to stir fry the chicken. This is a bit of a misnomer in this case. By adding the room temp chicken and oil to the hot wok, it all heats up more slowly and par cooks the chicken gently. The chicken is strained out of the oil with a spider,
• 3:26 then truly stir-fried in much less oil with the vegetables following on quickly. 

I liked this technique of passing through oil for a few reasons. It premeasures the amount of oil needed. By mixing the oil with the chicken before heating, you know how much oil you need. This is a little less hassle and more efficient. 

You don't have to measure the temperature of the oil to keep it cool enough. Passing through oil technique usually targets an oil temp between 250 and 275 F. You can visually gauge the progress of the chicken and simply remove it at the right time without fussing with thermometers. 

Additionally, the meat will not all cook together quickly as can happen with the usual technique when you first add the meat to the hot oil 

However, you're still limited by not overloading the wok. The commercial wok stove they used had plenty of power to heat the chicken up. It will take some experimenting to see how well this technique translates to home equipment.