Niu Rou Mian Yong Kang Style

I've heard of this soup before and I'd been surfing through Strictly Dumpling channel on YouTube where he has a couple of different videos about Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup.

First up, his video of Yong Kang and two other places. The Yong Kang soup is well known for its quality and affordability.

He has two other related videos. A beef noodle tour in two parts  and a video recipe for how he makes this at home. His recipe seems influenced by the Saveur recipe I used and discuss below, but he does a number of things differently. He also includes potato because he likes potato. 

The Yong Kang style appealed to me and looked to be worth trying. I'm following the Saveur recipe for this blog post, which makes a lot of soup. Well, followed it as much as I could. I had some sourcing difficulties with the beef shank.

My local asian grocer had boneless beef shank, but it seemed to me that bones were an important part of the flavor. So I ended up mixing the marrow bones with the boneless shank. 

As with Strictly Dumpling's recipe, it starts with bringing the beef parts to a boil to help remove extra scum from the stock. 

While that was coming to the boil, I filled a larger pot with the onion, garlic, pepper corns, tomato, star anise and chiles and ginger. Then topped with the "rinsed" beef. 

The pot is very full. Soon, a really interesting aroma of ginger and spiced tomato came from the pot. It was quite appealing. The tomato gave up color to the stock fairly quickly.

Simmering now. Savuer instructs to use a sort of poaching method I've usually seen for chicken in Chinese cuisine. After an hour at a simmer, take the pot off the heat, cover and let stand for an hour. Jeff Smith does this for his poached chicken, though in that case you only bring the water and chicken to a boil, then let stand covered for an hour. 

Well, it wasn't enough. The shank was still quite tough. Now collagen (gristle) breaks down into flavorful juice at 180 degrees. This is the secret of the plateau when smoking pork shoulder or when you're making a pot roast. At 160, that meat is tough and hard and dry. But you get up into the 185 range and the meat is tender and moist when you use tough cuts. I took the shank's temperature, and it was 186. But this is more than regular gristle. It borders on cartilage or tendon.

Now it could also be that my simmer isn't hot enough for the recipe as tested at Saveur. I'm cooking at 5000 feet elevation so my boiling point is only 202 F. It needed more cooking time. I gave it another hour at the simmer.  You'll see I've got better fat rendering as well. 

Remove the solids, reserve the meat, strain the stock. Saveur's instructions on seasoning the stock are weak. Between sugar, soy sauce and black vinegar, you can tilt this a lot of different ways. 

Break up the meat into your desired chunks. Shank has a lot of interior tendon/gristle that gives that slippery but chewy mouth feel that Chinese love. Meanwhile, boil up your noodles and blanch some baby bok choy.  Assemble your bowl. I'm using a lot less noodle than is traditional judging by the videos and photos. But that's just too much noodle for me. 

Add the broth and enjoy. Have some extra soy, vinegar and sriracha at the table. I added four drops of sriracha. 

Yes, this is pretty good soup. I'm tempted to compare it pho but it's a rather different approach and result. This is richer and heartier than pho. I like the stronger flavored vegetable accompaniment in this soup too to give you some contrast to the richness. 

But there are some other variations and instructions to consider. At the second place in the opening video, they offer a chile bean paste at the table as a condiment. Cathy Erway uses chile bean paste in her stock for her version of this soup in her book The Food of Taiwan: Recipes from the Beautiful Island. She changes some other things as well in ways that I think are worth considering besides recommending three hours of cooking. Saveur went with a lot of black pepper corns, probably because it was an ingredient their readership could readily source. Cathy uses sichuan pepper corns in a lesser amount. And more rice wine and the bean paste as noted. 

Having made Savuer's recipe, I'm now more interested in Cathy's version. As a compromise, I added some bean paste to the leftover broth I still have from Savuer's recipe as that's the biggest difference I think. Simmer that for a bit for the flavors to work.   Visibly there was little difference beyond some floating chile flakes. But the flavor was more full as well and better balanced. Do use the bean paste.

Layla Fries (Za'atar Fries)

A local restaurant, Layla's, serving middle eastern food is where I first encountered a za'atar seasoned french fry.  On the menu, they're referred to as Layla Fries. There's a number of recipes for a za'atar fry on the net and it's not really a complicated thing to do. At Layla's, the potatoes are fried a little darker than is common for a french fry and the fries are served with a fabulous harissa-spiked toum.

Some definitions:

Za'atar A blend of herbs and spices common throughout the Levant. Wild variants of thyme, marjoram, sesame seed and savory and often some sumac. It varies some by region and even by household.

Harissa A hot chile paste of North Eastern Africa. You can find jars or cans at most middle eastern grocers even though its not traditional to those cuisines.

Toum A form of aioli from the Levant.

One of the things I do differently is to bake the "fries". It's lower fat, and less hassle for home cooks generally. This method works pretty well with Extra Virgin Olive Oil so you get some of that flavor if you want. Because the oil is applied to the potato, which is full of water, the olive oil is buffered from the high heat and doesn't lose all of its flavor.

Another is for the toum. To make toum from scratch, which is certainly the best toum, makes quite a bit, most of which I end up wasting. Regular commercial mayonnaise substitutes very poorly as the base for toum. It's too tangy, too sweet, too whipped. But being an Asian focused food blog, I have Kewpie Mayonnaise in my refrigerator too. And Kewpie Mayonnaise is denser, less whipped and not as acidic. It works pretty well as a stand in for the mayo-like component of toum with a little doctoring. Allegedly, Kewpie is made with rice vinegar. Toum is made with fresh lemon juice and  a little splash of fresh lemon juice brings Kewpie Mayonnaise into the right flavor profile.

Specific amounts for the fries will vary with the size of potatoes you use and how you cut them. So the recipe will include lots of "as needed" and "to taste". For the photos show here, I used three medium-large potatoes and two sheet pans for baking them. Russets are my preference in a french fry though Yukon Golds are good for this too.

Peel and slice your potatoes into french fry shapes, lengthwise.  3/16" on a side and as long as you can get them is what works best.  Thinner potatoes crisp up on the surface and are soft inside. Larger fries are harder to bake evenly and often end up mushy and limp.

Heat the oven to 425. Arrange racks to the center. If you're using two baking sheets, arrange racks as close low center and upper center as you can. Swap the pans on the racks halfway through cooking.

Rinse and drain the potatoes to remove excess surface starch. I like to spin the rinsed potatoes in my salad spinner to dry them well.

In a large bowl, toss the fries with oil, about 2 teaspoons per potato. If you cut your fries larger, it will take less oil as there's less surface area to coat.  I used a Spanish Extra Virgin olive oil, but canola or plain vegetable oil  will work fine.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone liner. Using a parchment sheet or silicone liner guarantees good release and you can use a little less oil as well.  Arrange the potatoes on the baking sheet so they don't touch. This helps them cook evenly.

Bake them 15-20 minutes, then toss them to move the bottom side to the top as much as possible for even cooking. Switch the pan positions if baking two pans.

Bake another 10 - 15 minutes. if using two pans, combine fries on to one pan. Set the oven to broil. Broil the fries until they have brown spots, and toss to expose less cooked areas of the potatoes. Repeat until the potatoes are to you liking.

Season with za'atar, sumac generously and some salt. Toss the potatoes to coat evenly, repeating the seasoning as needed. Be generous with the za'atar and sumac.

While the potatoes are baking, prepare the harissa accented toum.

1/4 cup Kewpie Mayonnaise
1 large clove of garlic minced to a paste
1-2 teaspoons  fresh lemon juice.
1/2-1 teaspoon harissa using more or less to taste

Mix in the lemon juice and harissa in small additions tasting between each addition. In the photo, I'm adding the first dose of harissa to the Kewpie Mayonaisse.

If you're reading this from Utah, it will look like a pale fry sauce when you're done.

At the table. I grant you that sauted zuchinni, hot dog and fries is a little bit odd for a combination, but it was a birthday meal request. The toum is in the small ramekin for dipping.