Hollow stem vegetables with fermented tofu

This is a very basic recipe, but to do it well, it has to be done right. Combined with my parents' and relatives' secrets, and my own experiments, here is what I've found works best.
Ingredients:

1 bunch of hollow stemmed vegetable (sometimes called Chinese water spinach or Ong-Choy) Make sure the bunch is very fresh, with no wilted leaves.
4–5 cubes of fermented tofu (see pic below):

(Made in Taiwan. See?)
5 tbs olive oil
3 cloves of garlic
salt
white pepper
a small sprinkle of Hondashi:Separate the stems from the leaves. Cut the stems into 1 inch sections. Soak stems and leaves in two different bowls for 1 hour. Wash and strain both, then pat dry with paper towels.

Mash and cut garlic into chunks. Heat the olive oil in a wok, and throw in the garlic until the oil is very very hot, but make sure to not burn the garlic. Throw in the stems. Stir and coat the stems in the oil. Cook for 3 minutes until the stems turn a bright green color. Add 2 cubes of the fermented tofu and stir until veggies are coated in deliciousness.

Throw in the leaves and stir fry for 2 minutes. Add remaining fermented tofu. Stir until everything is fully coated. Just before you take it out of the wok, add salt, white pepper, and hondashi. Stir to fully flavor.

SO DELICIOUS!!

Baby octopus and tomatos stir fry, Taiwanese style

Ingredients:
1.5 lb baby octopus or squid
2 tbs sesame oil
cornstarch
salt
white pepper
A LOT of freshly ground black pepper
3 cloves of garlic, mashed and cut into chunks

1/2 cup soy sauce
1 tbs sugar
3 tbs olive oil
1 medium tomato, cut in half then sliced into 1/4" pieces
1 tsp chili pepper flakes

Massage salt, black and white pepper, soy sauce, sesame oil, and sugar into baby octopus. Let it marinade for 30 minutes. Heat up oil in wok and throw in garlic until it sizzles. Next throw in the tomatoes and chili pepper flakes. Let it cook for 2-3 minutes. Coat marinaded octopus with cornstarch, and throw it in the wok. Stir fry for 8-10 minutes. Serve over rice, with a side dish of hollow vegetables with fermented bean curd (recipe to come!).

Zucchini and Squash Fritteres

These are so good and easy to make. Use a large grater to grate one squash and one zucchini. Coat lightly in flour. Add one egg (or egg white if you want to be healthy) and mix it all up. Add salt and pepper, and any spice you wish to taste. Heat up olive oil and pan fry, about 3-4 minutes each side until golden crispy. Thanks to Nicole for this recipe!

All Season Bean Salad

Julia Child's recipe, with some modifications from yours truly.

Beans take well to salad dressings, herbs, peppers, onions, and garlic, but be sure to warm the beans before dressing them so they will absorb these added flavors.

Yield: Makes 6 to 8 servings

Ingredients:

3 cups of warm home-cooked beans, or canned beans such as cannellini (I used edamame beans, white corn (both frozen), and canned navy beans.)

3 Tbs finely minced onions or scallions

1 large clove of garlic, puréed and then mashed with 1/4 teaspoon salt

Half of a large lemon

2 Tbs or so good olive oil or salad oil
Herbs, such as fresh or dried thyme, oregano, and sage (I used sage. It's important to use fresh herbs in this recipe. Makes a world of difference.)
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Additional elements, such as one or a combination of: strips of red or green bell pepper or pimiento; hard-boiled eggs; rounds of red onion; sardines, tuna, and/or salami; spinach leaves or salad greens (I used bits of pancetta to make it a full meal!)

Preparation:
Flavoring the beans. Toss the warm beans in a big bowl with the onions or scallions, garlic, several tablespoons of oil, herbs, lemon juice, salt, and pepper to taste. Let stand 30 minutes, tossing several times, and correcting the seasoning.

Serving. Build an elaborate composition with eggs, sardines, and so forth, or use a simple decoration of spinach leaves, strips of red pepper or pimiento, and onion rings. I used pancetta and it was delicious! I served this on the side of zuchinni and squash fritters (recipe to come!)

Another secret from uncle 4 - stir fried squid with Taiwanese cabbage

At dinner last night, I wrangled another recipe from our family's most illustrious chef, Uncle 4*.

*Side note: If Auntie 1 had kept up on her computer classes and remember how to get to our family blog, she may disagree with me on who is the most illustrious chef in the family. But yesterday she said she's forgotten about how to get into her email again, so let us leave Uncle 4 as our family's top chef for now.

The recipe is for Uncle 4's squid and Taiwanese cabbage stir fry. I remember this dish from a couple of years ago when Aaron visited Taiwan for the first time and proclaimed this dish to be his favorite of the trip. It's really no surprise after you've tasted it!

As we sat around the dinner table, a few of us fought to be the hand model in the picture of the dish. I will post the picture soon so you can see the winner who was photographed with the stirfry!

This stirfry is a little spicy, very savory, and tastes full of fresh seafood flavor. I'm not sure what to use to reproduce the great umami from the fresh squid but I'll definitely try when I get home.

Uncle 4's Stir Fried Squid with Taiwanese Cabbage
(all parenthetical comments directly quoted from the dinner table)
Serves 4-6

Ingredients
2 cups small squid (with skin), rinsed very briefly (or else you will wash the flavor right off!), and cut into medium size pieces
3-4 cups Taiwanese cabbage, washed, cut into about 1 inch pieces
salt
white pepper
cornstarch
garlic, minced
scallion, cut into 1 inch pieces
1 small red chili pepper, in 1/3 inch dice
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons black vinegar
cooking oil

Equipment:
A well-seasoned wok. (Auntie 1 claims that the wok is "seldom washed" to retain the flavor. The wok at my grandma's house has seen a lot of delicious dishes in its day. I'll probably use my cast iron pan at home to approximate the flavor.)

Directions:
In a plate, season the squid with salt, white pepper, and MSG (which I don't have at home. I'll have to ask for a substitute). Sprinkle the squid with about 5-6 Tablespoons of cornstarch, massage it into the squid until the squid is coated with the starch.

Heat "plenty" of oil in your wok over medium high heat. Add scallion, garlic, and chili pepper. Fry until fragrant.

Add the squid and stir fry until barely opaque. Remove and set aside.

With the left over oil in the wok, stir fry the Taiwanese cabbage until cooked through. Add more garlic and hot chili at this point if desired.

When the cabbage is soft, return the squid to the wok and stir fry to combine. The starch in the squid and the juices from the cabbage should create a slightly thickened sauce. If you'd like more sauce, add a little more water and thicken with corn starch.

When the stir fry has the consistency you like, add about 1 teaspoon of sugar and 2 tablespoons of black vinegar (you don't want to taste the vinegar in the dish but just to balance out the flavors).

Serve immediately.

Family Kitchen Roadtrip - Matterhorn and Alembic Bar in San Francisco

For a little trip outside of our family kitchens, here is a look at our recent tour of San Francisco, where we ate, drank, played with kitties, and repeated the process over three days!

We kicked off the weekend with a fondue dinner at Matterhorn, a Swiss restaurant near my house. The smoked cheese fondue was pretty good, but the star of the night was the steak fondue in oil - with six different types of dipping sauces, no less. The appetizer dishes that came with the fondue were really refreshing - especially the baby artichoke salad with lemon zest. We lingered over the fondue pots and drank some really good, reasonably priced wine.

The next day we went to one of my favorite places to hang out, Alembic Bar in Haight Ashbury. They have wonderful handcrafted old fashioned drinks and a very eclectic menu. We ordered just about every offal that they had on the menu that night, much to the horror of the vegan diner who was sitting next to us on what seemed like her first date.

As we ordered a raw calamari salad to start and followed it by baked bone marrow, roasted madallions of beef tongue, oysters, and house-made corn nuts (memories of 7th grade beckons), we overhear the vegan diner saying to her date, "Bone marrow? Who would think of such a disgusting thing to put on the menu?"

Ah. Well, Amy says you can't trust a vegetarian. I don't even want to know what she would say about vegans.

While the vegan and her date dined on olives and nuts, Amy's oysters arrived fresh on the half shell.


Then the waiter delivered the magnificant baked bone marrow with toasted bread - I didn't catch the look on the vegan diner's face as I was busy spreading marrow on the bread anyway. The marrow is flavored with capers, parsley, and roasted garlic. You spread it over toasted artisan bread. The texture is soft, buttery, fresh, and rich.


I suppose this must have looked pretty scary to a vegan - after all it is a big bone cut lengthwise, probably requiring a band saw. Whatever. It was delicious!

A "Special-ality" - Chris's Meat Loaf

I have gleaned yet another secret recipe from Chris's ever-surprising repertoire! This time, he brought a secret bag of ingredients to make meat loaf. But being a former investigative journalist (kidding!), I spiked his drink with truth serum (not really!) and got this recipe out of him (seriously!).

Now this is comfort food at its finest - and just the thing to christen my cast iron skillet.

The meatloaf is a mixture of three different kinds of ground meat: beef, pork, and lamb. Chris says his mother usually use all beef at home. Mix in one chopped onion, an egg, garlic salt, crumbled bouillon, and a handful of fresh bread crumbs (we use the bag we got in North Beach when Joey took me on a tour).


Usually the recipe calls for some ketchup but I didn't have any so Chris improved with some shrimp cocktail sauce.

After mixing in all the goodies, you can form the meat loaf in a cast iron skillet in whatever shape you want. For example, the shape of Taiwan:



Or, more appropriate to its name, you can form it into a ...



... meatloaf.

Slather some more cocktail sauce or ketchup on top and sprinkle some regular or brown sugar over the ketchup/cocktail sauce. Bake, covered, at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes, then bake, uncovered, until the top is nice and brown (about 15 more minutes).

While the meatloaf baked, Chris whipped up some mashed potatoes - using a hand held mixer to make sure that the taters are nice and airy.

The result? A delicious, comforting, savory meat loaf dinner!



Mojo and Keelo circled around the kitche and salivated/tried to get onto the kitchen table as the meatloaf baked in the oven.



But wait, Mojo Jojo is looking so weird in that picture! The flash never does him justice. Here is a picture of Mojo looking more like himself:


There, that's better.

Chris's Meat Loaf
1/3 lb ground beef
1/3 lb ground pork
1/3 lb ground lamb
1 egg
1 onion, finely chopped
1 pork bouillon cube, crumbled
about 1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
pinch each of oregano and thyme
1/4 cup ketchup, plus more to glaze
pinch of sugar

Preheat oven to 350F.

Mix all the ingredients together, add more breadcrumbs if necessary. Mixture should be soft. Don't overmix.

Shape the loaf in a cast iron pan, or if you don't have one, use just a regular baking pan. Glaze with more ketchup and pinch of sugar.

Cover, bake for 40 minutes or until the meat loaf is cooked through. Uncover and bake for about 15 more minutes until the top is golden brown.

Swat kittens away before you open the oven door.

Slice and serve with mashed potatoes!

Chris says the leftovers would be perfect for a meatloaf sandwich, but I ate it with rice, of course!