Risotto with an Asian twist

Last week I posted a recipe using Yunnan's dried mushrooms, which were kindly sent directly from Shangri-La by our friends at Songtsam Lodges (here). Yesterday I made mushroom risotto, with an Asian twist, as suggested by Ling. This is an adaptation of Jamie Oliver's recipe.

Ingredients

1 litres vegetable stock
1 small knob of butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
handful of dried Yunnan mushrooms
1 cup frozen peas
400 g risotto rice
2 wineglasses dry white wine
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
knob of butter
Grated cheese (ideally Parmesan, but otherwise, whatever Jenny Lou's has to offer)

Method
1)

 In a pan, heat the olive oil and butter, add the onions, and drained mushrooms and fry very slowly for about 15 minutes without colouring. When they have softened, add the rice and turn up the heat.

2)

 The rice will now begin to lightly fry, so keep stirring it. After a minute it will look slightly translucent. Add the wine and keep stirring.

3) 

Once the wine has cooked into the rice, add your first ladle of hot stock and a good pinch of salt. Turn down the heat to a simmer so the rice doesn't cook too quickly on the outside. At this point you may add the frozen peas (they are the only type of peas available in Beijing in February). Keep adding ladlefuls of stock, stirring constantly and allowing each ladleful to be absorbed before adding the next. This will take around 15 minutes. Taste the rice to see if it's cooked and carry on adding stock until the rice is soft but with a slight bite. Season to taste. If you run out of stock before the rice is cooked, add some boiling water.

4) 

Remove from the heat and add the butter and grated cheese. Stir well. Place a lid on the pan and allow to sit for 2 minutes to let it cream out! Serve with crusty farmhouse-style bread and butter.

Festive Cheesecake

I made New York cheesecake for the first time yesterday. It is delicious and I prefer this baked version to the other, easier, no-oven-needed version that is made with condensed milk and whipped cream.

I used a recipe I found online on the BBC Good Food website (here), it takes 900g cream cheese, and given the price of cream cheese in Beijing, it was not a cheap treat; but worth it every kuai. The only problem I encountered was the amount of time you need to prepare it - it's not complicated, but you do need time to let it finish baking/dry in the oven (2 hours with the oven off) and then cool down (at least 8 hours in the fridge). I had visitors for Sunday Lunch and I only started making it at 9am, but yesterday it was very cold in Beijing (minus 12 Celsius), so I could speed up the cooling down process by leaving it (covered) outside, in the garden, until it was time for desert. You can see from the photo that it is slightly runny. Next time I will follow procedure and I am hoping it will be perfectly light and airy.

Although the cheesecake was very good yesterday, today it's even better! I added seeds and juice from a couple of passion fruits for the topping. The tartness of the passion fruit goes very well with the dense, creamy filling and the thin, crusty base made with gingerbread cookies instead of digestive biscuits.

Cheesecake with a festive, tropical twist, I love it!

The Food of China - Real Chinese Food

On a recent visit to England with my family, we were craving Asian food, so we decided to buy some ready-made Thai and Chinese meals at Tesco's. I was horrified when I tried celebrity chef, Ken Hom’s supermarket version of Kung Pao chicken because although I was not expecting it to be haute cuisine, the dish did not resemble the original a bit. Although the dish was flavoursome, the chicken was tender and cubed in uniform-sized pieces and it had a good, colourful appearance, it tasted more like a thick massaman curry than Sichuanese Kung Pao – I suppose this was due to the addition of some kind of peanut paste for flavour rather than real, crunchy peanuts. I was disappointed, and although I have followed Ken Hom since the 90s (I've even had a wok from the KH brand since then that I still use!) I realised that it will be difficult to find ‘the real thing, real Chinese food’ when I move out of Beijing. I know I will miss it so I have made a point of learning some traditional recipes. In the process, I have become fascinated with the Art of Chinese Cuisine.

China is a huge country, with an ever-growing population to feed and a diverse climate and geography. Even within China you will find different variations of your favourite dish. China also has many neighbours that bring their own culinary influence (Vietnam and Myanmar to the South; Nepal, India, and the ‘Stans to the West; Russia and Mongolia to the North; Japan North and South Korea to the East). It is a country that covers all kinds of landscapes and climates: from tropical monsoons, to arid deserts, luscious, bamboo covered jungles, and the highest mountain ranges on earth. With such diversity, China’s cuisine is bound to be extremely varied, too. China has one of the great food traditions of the world and eating plays an important role in daily life, rituals and festivities.

In Western countries, when we think of Chinese food, images of egg fried rice, spring rolls and chow mian come to mind, because we have been mainly exposed to Cantonese food, which is but one of the many regional cuisines. Generally speaking, and not to overcomplicate the classification, there are eight major regions in Chinese cooking: Shandong, Anhui, Zhejiang, Guangdong (Hong Kong, Cantonese), Hunan, Sichuan, Fujian and Jiangsu. Food regions can also be divided into cardinal points: the food of the North, East, South and West. 

One of the main perceived divisions within the country is between north and south, which runs roughly along the Yangtse river. This imaginary boundary is supported by the idea that culturally (and not just culinary), the two regions have two different identities. The staple food of the south is rice - white and polished grains, usually steamed. But rice doesn’t grow well in the harsh climate of the north, where wheat, maize and millet are grown as staple and made into breads, buns and noodles. 

I wrote some impressions on 'the man of the north' on a recent post in my blog about life in China (see here)

The real Kung Pao chicken, cooked at "Black Sesame Kitchen"

I have a new project in mind: I will be exploring the different regional cuisines of China and reporting back on my findings and impressions, but for the time being, I will share a recipe for 'the real' kung pao chicken, adapted from a cooking lesson that I took at Black Sesame Kitchen, a cooking school in Beijing (see link here).

Kungpao Chicken 宫保鸡丁

300g chicken thighs, deboned (or chicken breast) cut into cubes

1 tsp salt

100ml water

1 tbsp cornstarch

1 tbsp oil

oil for stir-frying

1 tbsp Sichuan peppercorns

a handful of dried chilies (to taste)

1 tsp chilli flakes

1 tbsp each, leeks (cut into 1 cm squares), ginger and garlic (chopped)

1 red bell pepper, cut into cubes of a similar size to the chicken

Sauce:

1 tsp cooking rice wine

1 tbsp Shaoxing rice vinegar

1 tsp dark soy sauce

1 tbsp light soy sauce

salt, white pepper, to taste

2 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp water

2 tsp cornstarch

5 tbsp cooked peanuts (deep or stir fried in advance)

To tenderise the chicken, cut into cubes, season with salt and add to a bowl with water, making sure the liquid is absorbed. Add cornstarch and coat well.

Heat some oil in the wok until hot enough deep fry the chicken, making sure it doesn’t stick together. Cook for about 1 minute. Remove the chicken from the wok and set aside.

To infuse the oil with spices, heat the wok and add a little oil. Add Sichuan peppercorns and allow them to infuse in the oil taking care not to burn. Once the fragrance is released (approximately 15 seconds) remove the peppercorns from the oil. Then add dried chilies and toss for 5 seconds.

Add chili flakes and stir for 2 seconds and then add leek, ginger, garlic and bell peppers and stir-fry for 1 minute. Add the chicken back into the wok and toss for another minute.

Spoon the sauce mixture over the chicken, mix thoroughly and let it cook for a couple of minutes. Add the peanuts, toss and serve.