Recipes by Ingredient + Prep – Page 45 – Writing With My Mouth Full

Sichuan Chicken

Sometimes, the best part of leaving filthy New York City is coming home to it. A day after I returned, I picked up my latest farmer’s share and got back in the groove of cooking again. In the Philippines, all the food we ate was done for us whether it was from a restaurant, from a street vendor or from one of my many relatives who cooked us a meal. When I picked up my share of scallions and green peppers, I thought of a stir-fry dish that would be easy to make for my first dinner back.

I was eating a lot of pork while I was in the Philippines so it wasn’t weird when I wanted to eat something with chicken. I had already gotten the sushi out of the way my first night back–my way of cleansing my system after returning from a vacation–and a quick toss of greens with breast fillets was a no-brainer as a next step towards getting back to my routine.

I marinated the chicken here overnight, but you can certainly spend less time and just marinate while you chop the rest of the ingredients. I also skipped the peanuts and used sherry vinegar instead of Chinese vinegar for the sauce and that’s why my version is paler than the traditional one. You can use balsamic vinegar as well to get that dark color.

Ingredients:
2 lbs boneless chicken breasts, without skin, sliced in smaller pieces
1 green bell pepper, seeded, chopped
4 scallions, white parts only, chopped
4 garlic cloves
a small knob of ginger, peeled, thinly sliced
3 Thai chiles, seeded
1 tsp whole Sichuan pepper
a handful of roasted unsalted peanuts (optional)
peanut oil

For the marinade:
2 tbsps light soy sauce
2 tbsps rice wine
2 tbsps cornstarch
1 tbsp water
salt

For the sauce:
3 tbsps sugar
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp light soy sauce
3 tbsps sherry vinegar
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp water

1. Combine all the ingredients for the marinade in a large container with the chicken pieces. Mix well and set aside in the fridge until ready to cook.
2. Combine the sauce ingredients in a small bowl. Set aside.
3. Using a large skillet, add some peanut oil and heat over a high flame. When the oil is hot but not yet smoking, add the chiles and Sichuan pepper and stir-fry briefly until they are crisp and the oil is spicy and fragrant. Try not to burn them.
4. Add the chicken and the bell pepper and fry over a high flame, stirring constantly. As soon as the chicken pieces have separated, add the ginger, garlic, and scallions and continue to stir-fry until the chicken is cooked through and white. Feel free to drizzle some more peanut oil to add some moisture.
5. Give the sauce a stir and add it to the skillet, continuing to stir and toss. As soon as the sauce has become thick and shiny, add the peanuts, if using and stir them in.

Sweet Corn Soup with Vanilla Bean and Pancetta

Serita came back from Bali a couple of weeks ago and brought home fresh–and very fragrant–vanilla beans. I was able to get my hands on a few of them. I wouldn’t have thought about corn soup with vanilla if I didn’t have them, but once I did, I only imagined a soup that was velvety and smooth. I followed an existing vegetable soup recipe as my guide, but I added heavy cream to complement the milk that came from puréeing the corn kernels. To give it some extra body, I added mashed boiled potatoes. The corn was naturally sweet, so adding pancetta just rounded off the taste. It was the perfect balance of salty and sweet; a great appetizer for another Supper with Strangers.

Ingredients:
5 fresh corns on the cob, husk and silk peeled off
1 vanilla bean, scraped
2 potatoes, peeled, boiled, mashed
half a pint of heavy cream
1 tbsp sugar
a chunk of pancetta, chopped, fried until toasted
fresh nutmeg
salt

1. Steam corn for about 10 minutes. When cool enough to handle, slice off kernels into a sauce pot. Cook kernels with vanilla and mashed potatoes in low heat until combined. Mix in salt and sugar and stir well.
2. Transfer to a food processor and purée. Add a little heavy cream in batches until desired smooth consistency is reached. Feel free to add a little water if it’s too thick.
3. To serve, spoon corn soup in a bowl, sprinkle pancetta and grated nutmeg on top.

Roast Pork Tamales

Because I bought the roast pork to assemble these tamales, I’ll let you call me lazy. For our second Supper with Strangers, our featured ingredient was corn and we served mini roast pork tamales as amuse-bouches. How lucky was I to discover homemade pork stock from the Dr.’s fridge made from the leftover pig’s trotters I bought last week? (Thanks for letting me gloat.) Sure you can also use store-bought stock, but it made a difference here. Of course, if you roast your own pork, then you can save the stock when you boil the pork before roasting.

Even though the pork was store-bought, these tamales still required some work. I soaked the dried corn husks for about an hour before I sat down to assemble them, and when the husks weren’t quite pliable, I soaked them overnight. You can get masa harina from the Spanish or Mexican aisle of your grocery store or ask for the flour they use to make tortillas. It should be where the corn husks are if your store is organized.

Use a whole corn husk if you want to make your tamales bigger and obviously use a larger ball of masa and pork. If they’re bigger, then you can get away with just putting a heavy bowl over them to keep them closed until you’re ready to steam. If making extras for later, store in a resealable freezer bag and steam frozen for an extra 5 minutes.

Ingredients:
6 dried corn husks, rinsed clean, soaked in water overnight, dried with paper towel, halved
2 cups roast pork, shredded with a fork
2 cups masa harina
pork stock
half a stick of butter, melted in the microwave
chili powder
salt

1. Get your masa ready. In a large bowl, combine masa harina with the butter, chili powder, salt and some of the pork stock. Mix with your hands and pour in a little bit of the stock at a time until the consistency is spreadable.
2. Assemble the tamales. Starting with a spoonful of masa, mix in a bit of the shredded roast pork and make a small ball with your hands. Spread masa with pork on half a corn husk with your fingers. Fold sides until they just overlap and then fold the top and bottom flaps over. You can tear a thin strip of corn husk to use as a ribbon to tie each tamales close.
3. When ready to cook, boil some water in a large skillet. Steam tamales in a metal colander placed inside the skillet for 15 minutes, covered.

Beef Burgers with Blue Cheese

Burgers are burgers, right? It’s summer and you’ve gone to your fifth barbecue this season and yet, you really haven’t had a decent burger. There must be something you can do to make it more than just a burger. Over the weekend, the Dr. and I invited several people to upstate New York where we rented a house. We drove the night before bringing with us a cooler full of meats I ordered from my CSA share, or Community-Supported Agriculture. I ordered them ahead of time from Lewis Waite Farm in Greenwich thinking of the lamb chops, pig’s trotters and beef burgers we could grill for us and our friends.

Cameron volunteered to make patties out of the grass-fed ground beef with smoked Gouda cheese and the prerequisites: garlic, onions, parsley. Two days later, I couldn’t help but recreate them at home. I used my grill pan and turned the vent on high to absorb the smoke and the smell. Instead of smoked Gouda, I used the blue cheese I’ve kept fresh in the fridge using Press’n Seal. The flavor is more fierce than the ones Cameron made because of the cheese, but man, did I have an excellent dinner for a Monday night.

Ingredients:
1 pound ground beef
a small chunk of blue cheese, crumbled
1 medium red onion, finely chopped
half a bunch of parsley, finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 red chile, seeded, finely chopped
oil, salt, pepper

1. Combine all ingredients, except the oil, in a bowl with a dash of salt and pepper. Form extra large golf-sized balls with your hands to help them stick together and then gently flatten them out with your palms to form patties.
2. Heat some oil on a grill pan over medium-high heat. When almost smoking, add the patties to fry. I was able to fit 3 of the 5 patties I made. Using an iron grill press, put on top of the patties to weigh them down. Remove press and flip the burgers slowly using a heat-resistant spatula. Replace the press to cook the other side of the patties. Each side can be cooked medium-rare in about 3 minutes. Remove to a plate and finish cooking all the other patties.
3. Serve sandwiches in toasted buns with some hot pickles and mustard.

Garlic Scape Pesto

This season’s prettiest produce is definitely the garlic scape. I’ve received eight stalks so far from my farm share this season. If it weren’t for the garlicky smell, I don’t think its identity would have been obvious to me.

Garlic scapes are the flower stalks that shoot up from the garlic bulb. They curl up when they’re long, but they’re usually cut off for the garlic bulbs to grow bigger. I’ve used them like minced garlic cloves and I’ve also sliced them thinly to add to breakfast omelets. Pesto, though, is the way to go if you want to use them before they dry up. After a couple of servings of this garlic scape pesto on toasted bread and on gnnochi, I returned the rest of it to the food processor and added fresh basil leaves to tone down the garlicky flavor.

Ingredients:
8 garlic scapes, chopped
a handful of pine nuts
1 cup Parmiggiano Reggiano, crumbled
lemon juice
olive oil
salt, pepper

1. Pulse garlic scapes, pine nuts and cheese in the food processor until puréed. Slowly drizzle a little bit of olive oil while pulsing. Add lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste. Store in an air-tight jar in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.