We call it "Chinese spaghetti" because the transliteration of the Chinese name is hard to pronounce for some. But in principle, zha jian mian resembles spaghetti and meat sauce. Literally, it means "fried sauce noodles." There are many versions of the recipe, but the one I grew up eating includes ground pork, sweet bean sauce, soy sauce, peas and carrots, and wheat noodles.
This is the "no-brainer" recipe. I'd like to play around with it and see how I might tweak it a little to enrich the flavor. I'll keep you posted on the experiements. In the meantime:
ZHA JIANG MIAN
MAKES ENOUGH FOR 4-6 PORTIONS
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 pound ground pork
1 cup diced tomatoes
1/4 cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons sweet bean sauce
1 cup frozen peas and carrots
Heat 2 tablespoons vegetable oil over medium-high heat in the wok. When the oil just begins to smoke, turn down the heat to medium. Add the ground pork and cook, breaking up the pieces as you go. Once browned, add the tomatoes. Turn the heat up a little, if it seems like it's cooking too slowly. Stir-fry the tomatoes with the pork until the tomatoes cook down and render the juice.
Add the soy sauce and sweet bean sauce. Stir to combine. Then stir in the peas and carrots. Let simmer for 2-3 minutes. If the sauce seems too thick, add 1 cup of water to loosen it up. Taste. If it's too salty, add a touch more water. (The sauce should be a little salty because the noodles will balance out the flavor.)
Serve the sauce on boiled Chinese wheat noodles. Spaghetti noodles work in a pinch.
Even though I own more cookbooks than I can count, I still cook from my refrigerator, which is to say that I open the door, look at what I have and decide what to cook. (This is the opposite of how my husband cooks -- if he cooks. He opens a cookbook, decides on what looks good and then makes his shopping list. Seasonality, difficulty level and what we actually have available in the pantry are secondary.)
What often happens is that I will make "refrigerator soup" or "refrigerator stir-fry." These are dishes determined purely by what I have on hand. Today, I had tofu, fresh yellowfoot chanterelles from the farmers market, cremini mushrooms and some leftover wonton filling (ground chicken, green onions, seasonings) from earlier in the week. So I made a stir-fry of these ingredients, which I paired with udon noodles that we buy by the five-pack in the freezer aisle at Waji.
A couple of notes on technique: While you don't need a wok in order to make this recipe, the benefit is that after you cook the ground chicken, you can just push the meat up the side of the wok (see photo) and let it rest as you cook the mushrooms. There's no need for the extra step of removing the chicken as you would if you were to use a normal skillet. Also, while I give specific amounts for the ingredients, they are based on what I had. You can take the principles of the recipe and apply it to what you have on hand. If, for example, I had only a half cup of ground chicken instead of a cup, then the dish would have been made with that half cup of chicken.
I also chose to make a dark sauce. The dish would have worked as well with a light sauce made from a combination of chicken broth and white wine or simply water and white wine. Since I was serving this to my 2-year-old daughter, I didn't season the dish too boldly. I might have added some chili paste or started by
searing some sliced fresh jalapenos. Of course, you can serve this with hot sauce on the side and maybe some chopped fresh cilantro. Another option would have been to add some dried cellophane noodles directly to the sauce at the end, let it simmer until soft and serve. I probably would have increased the liquid a tad to turn it into a soup.
Method: Heat wok or pan over medium-high heat. Add 1 tablespoon vegetable oil. Once heated, add the ground chicken and cook, breaking up the meat as you go. Once the chicken is mostly cooked-through, about 3 minutes, push it up the side of the wok to rest or, if using a skillet, remove the meat from pan. Add the remaining tablespoon of vegetable oil. Add the mushrooms and stir-fry/saute the mushrooms until soft. Add the chicken back in. Then add the water, sweet bean sauce, soy sauce and combine. If you'd like to make this dish spicy, you can add the chili sauce at this point, too. Gently stir in the tofu and let everything simmer for 2-3 minutes, or just until the tofu has heated through. Drizzle with a touch of sesame oil. Garnish with chopped cilantro, if desired. Serve with rice or noodles.
I had always believed there was no reason to buy a fancy rice cooker, that a $20 basic model would suffice: measure rice, add water, press button, wait 25 minutes and voila. For many cooks, that belief rings true.
For our wedding, my husband, Eric, and I received a Krups all-in-one rice cooker/slow cooker/steamer, which was as fancy a rice cooker I'd ever used. But the rice-cooking function broke within a year, which was disappointing for something that cost about $60. I still managed to use it for more than four years by using the steam function to cook the rice. It wasn't perfect, but it did the job. It wasn't until I threatened to buy a $20 rice cooker from the drug store that my husband finally agreed to discuss replacing our Krups. (You see, for Eric, form often precedes function when it comes to kitchen appliances, which means that my $20 all-function-no-form rice cooker would offend his sensibilities.)
I have always been curious about the Zojirushi cookers that Waji sells, but the price point has been a deterrent. Some models are several hundred dollars -- though they feature induction heating. We settled on a Tiger Jag-B cooker that we found for about $90. It resembles the lower-end Zojirushis, but at a more affordable price. What sold me was that this type of rice cooker has settings for different kinds of rice: three settings for plain rice, as well as options for sweet rice, brown rice, and congee. How great is that? I wonder why I never bothered to look under the hood, so to speak, of this style of rice cooker. I guess I was always put off by the price tag. The first pot of rice I made with the Jag-B was so delicious that I immediately started chastising myself for putting up with the broken Krups for all this time. I have good knives and good pans, why not a good rice cooker? Rice is the core of a Chinese meal, after all.
If you've bought rice recently, you may have noticed the "new crop" label on bags. New crop rice available from November through February tends to be the "freshest." It's probably more accurate to say that new crop rice contains more moisture. Rice aficionados swear by the flavor difference of new crop. It's worth spending the extra money for a brand such as Tamanishiki. Just look for the golden yellow bag with the "new crop" label. It is an absolute revelation to taste rice this good. One bite will make you understand why the Chinese believe that rice is the centerpiece and the accompanying dishes are considered "condiments."
The wonton soup you love so much at your neighborhood Chinese restaurant probably isn't all that good.
Back when my family had a Chinese restaurant in Missouri, wonton soup was a popular item. But there was nothing to it. It had been "dumbed down" to make it faster and cheaper to produce. The wontons were made in-house, but the amount of filling was probably half of what we'd include if we were to make them for ourselves. The soup was water-based instead of stock-based, so there wasn't much depth to the flavor. We weren't trying to dupe the customers. It was more a function of our trying to meet expectations that Chinese food should be cheap and fast. People were willing to wait 30 minutes for their Domino's pizza, but they scowled if they had to wait more than a few minutes for their order from us.
But that was the middle of the Midwest back in the '80s and '90s. If I were to run a Chinese restaurant today with what I have learned about restaurants through my work as a newspaper food writer, it would be a different animal: I would love it if the Chinese equivalent to La Carta de Oaxaca existed in Seattle. For about a split second after the first time I ate at La Carta, I thought about getting back into the biz. The simple sophistication of food and atmosphere at La Carta inspired me. But then I came to my senses.
In a way, this blog is the manifestation of that initial desire to share the kind of Chinese cooking I make at home. In fact, I purchased the domain name just after my revelatory dinner at La Carta some four years ago and I'm only now putting it to use. Better late than never, right?
Homestyle wonton soup for me involves, more often than not, scratch chicken broth. If I have the time, I make the broth from a whole chicken with ginger, shiitake mushrooms, maybe a stalk of green onion, soy sauce and a splash of white wine. It simmers for a couple of hours to develop that richness from the chicken and from the shiitakes. The wontons themselves take very little time to make, especially considering I made all the wontons that were sold in the restaurant from the time I was 8 years old until I left for my first newspaper job at The Denver Post when I was 24. Long time. Many, many, many wontons. I basically could make 108 wontons, which is how many fit on a tray, in about 7 minutes, or 6 seconds per wonton.
If I don't have the time, I might make a celery broth. My mom did this and, even though I didn't like to eat celery back in the day, I loved the flavor it imparted. Now I use Chinese celery, which you can find in an Asian grocery store. It resembles its Western counterpart in color and general shape, but the stalks are longer and much thinner. The flavor is more aromatic than regular celery. I stir-fry the chopped celery in some soy sauce, add water, let simmer and build the flavor from there with the addition of white pepper, maybe a splash of white wine and some sliced shiitakes. (Next time I make the celery broth, I'll jot down a more explicit recipe to share.)
The other time-saving and budget option is to make broth from chicken bones, which I can buy from Uwajimaya for less than $2.50 for a pack of four breast frames. I simmer the bones in water with sliced ginger in a lidded pot and I can get a light broth within an hour -- in which time I can multitask and make the wontons while dealing with my toddler, checking my email (or Facebook and Twitter) and putzing in the kitchen.
I mentioned the other day that I own several OXO kitchen utensils that were designed specifically for the Japanese market. One of the pieces is a skimmer, which deftly does the trick of removing the foam from the surface of the bubbling liquid. I checked with my friend who works at OXO and the Japanese line is indeed available only in Japan. So if you want these tools you have ask someone who lives there to send some or try to get them off Amazon Japan -- though I'm not sure if and how that works.
Wontons are easier to make than potstickers, for sure. But there's still some dexterity involved. If you've ever made tortellini, though, this will be easy. (Sorry about the fuzzy focus. My hubby the TV producer wasn't home yet to help with shooting the video.)
The best part about this recipe is that the ingredients cost me less than $10.
SIMPLE WONTON SOUP
Serves 4
Broth:
4 chicken breast frames
2 1/2 quarts water
4 slices ginger (about 2 inches long, 1/8 inch thick)
6 dried shiitake mushrooms
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup white wine
1/4 of Chinese cabbage, sliced (about 4 cups)
Wontons:
1/2 pound ground chicken
1 stalk green onion, finely chopped
1 tablespoon soy sauce or salt to taste
1/8 teaspoon white pepper
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1 egg, beaten
1 package wonton wrappers
To serve (optional):
Chopped cilantro
Chili sauce
Broth: Combine the chicken breast frames with the water and ginger. Bring to a boil then turn down heat to medium. Start skimming the scum off the top. After about 20 minutes and a final skimming, add the soy sauce, shiitakes and wine. Cover pot with lid and let simmer for another 20 minutes, adjusting the heat as necessary so the pot doesn't boil over. Taste the broth and add some salt, if needed. Remove the bones and discard. Add the cabbage, replace the lid and continue to simmer on low until ready to serve.
Wontons: In the meantime, combine the ground chicken, green onions, soy sauce, white pepper and sesame oil in a bowl. Mix well. Place about a teaspoon of the chicken filling on the corner of a wonton wrapper and roll it up a third of the way and then use a little bit of beaten egg to help seal the wonton. (See the video for a demonstration of the folding technique.) Repeat until finished with the wrappers. There are about 40-45 wrappers in a package. Bring a pot of water to boil and cook the wontons for about 5 minutes. Strain and transfer the wontons to the soup and let simmer for a few minutes. Taste the soup again and adjust the seasoning, if needed.
Serve immediately with optional cilantro and chili sauce.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009 at 10:48PM 
