Spicy Noodle with pickled Vegetable and Ground Pork

 中文： 雪菜肉碎拌面

Noodle to Chinese people is just like pasta to Italians. We are obsessed with it and devoted to create many, many, many varieties.

I, too, love to make noodle from scratch at home.  They are mostly for breakfast.  I usually make dough and toppings ahead of time so that I can make noodle soup fast in the morning. 

Ingredients：

1 cup bread flour
1/4 cup of water
a pinch of salt

 

Pickled vegetable and ground pork toppings：

1/2 package of chopped pickled vegetable (available in any Asian grocery store)
1 cup ground pork
2 gloves of garlic, peeled and sliced
1 slice of ginger root, minced
freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon oyster sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/4  to 1/2 cup chicken stock, hot
1/4 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon garlic water (minced garlic in water)
1/4 teaspoon ground Sichuan pepper corns
2 to 3 tablespoon chili oil sauce (available in any Chinese grocery store. I use homemade version.)
1/2  teaspoon sugar
chopped cilantro
roasted soy beans
chopped green onion
salt to taste
2 tablespoons oil for cooking ground pork

 

Directions：

In a medium bowl, combine bread flour, salt and water.  Mix them together and then knead into a smooth dough ball.  Cover with plastic wrap and let it sit for at least 1 hour.

Heat a wok over high heat.  Add oil to the wok, along with garlic and ginger.  Add ground pork and salt, black pepper and oyster sauce.  Stir fry the ground pork on high heat until the pork is golden brown.  Add chopped pickled vegetable.  Stir fry for a couple more minutes.  Remove from heat.

Bring a large pot of water to boil.

Run the dough through kitchenaid pasta roller several times until the dough is smooth out.  Set the thickness to 3 and run it through one more time.

Use the pasta cutter attachment to cut it into spaghetti size noodle.

Isn’t it beautiful? O(∩_∩)O~

 

Cook the noodle in boiling water for 30 to 45 seconds.  Drain and transfer to a bowl.

Add cooked ground pork, chicken stock, soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic water, ground Sichuan pepper corns, chili oil sauce, sugar, salt, cilantro, green onion and roasted soy beans.

Mix well with a pair of chopsticks.  Now it is time to enjoy a bowl of tasty noodle!

Raspberry Frozen Yogurt

 中文： 树莓酸奶冰激凌

Well, I was actually planning on making ice cream.  But there was no eggs left in my refrigerator, so I changed to frozen yogurt, which turned out to be a great sweet surprise too.

When making ice cream or frozen yogurt, I always go with fruit jam instead of fresh fruits. Jams contain less water and are packed with more intense flavor.  They usually contain more sugar too.  All these help ice cream and frozen yogurt freeze beautifully without getting too much ice particles in them.

I use homemade yogurt and homemade raspberry jam and blueberry jam.  Store bought ones would work fine too.

For homemade yogurt:

 http://www.yankitchen.com/english-blog/homemade-blueberry-yogurt

 

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups of plain yogurt
4 tablespoons honey
1/2 cup raspberry jam
1/4 cup blueberry jam

 

Directions：

Freeze the ice cream for at least 24 hours before ice cream process.  Refrigerate both yogurt and jams for at 4 hours or overnight.   

Homemade version yogurt

Start the ice cream machine.  Add yogurt and honey.  Let the machine run for 15 minutes.

Add raspberry jam and blueberry jam.  Run the machine for another 5 to 10 minutes. 

Transfer the frozen yogurt to a glass container with lid.  Cover and freeze for 4 to 6 hours.  You can also serve it as soft served frozen yogurt right out of ice cream machine.  It is very good too. 

 

Thanks to the raspberry jam and blueberry jam, the frozen yogurt has this beautiful bright purple color and very intense berry flavors.  O(∩_∩)O~。。。

Enjoy!

Crispy Pork Belly

中文：脆皮烧肉

Crispy pork belly is a very traditional dish in Southern China.  They are usually sold in BBO store or Dim Sum restaurants.  It is also one of my childhood favorites. 

There are Chinese BBQ stores in troy area that sell crispy pork belly too.  I always buy some whenever we are in town.  But the favors and crispiness are not so consistent.  Sometimes it tastes good, while some other times it quite unbearable.  So I started to DIY crispy pork belly at home so that I can make sure it is hot and crispy, just the way I like it.   

There are some secrets to make pork skin extra crispy.  Some use baking soda, and some people use vinegar.  I use both to make my own crispy pork belly.  And the results show vinegar works slightly better than baking soda.

（Reference links listed as below.  My thanks to the original authors.

 http://bbs.wenxuecity.com/cooking/1397482.html

http://bbs.wenxuecity.com/cooking/1390207.html）

Ingredients：

2 pieces of pork belly (about 2pounds. Bigger pieces would work better )
1 teaspoon ground white pepper
1/2  teaspoon five-spice powder
1/4  teaspoon ginger powder
1/2  to 1teaspoon sugar
salt to taste
1 1/2  to 2 teaspoon rice cooking wine
1 teaspoon soy sauce
2 teaspoon vinegar
Coarse sea salt

 

Directions：

In a small bowl, whisk together ground white pepper, ginger powder, five-spice powder, sugar and salt. 

Rinse the pork belly and pat dry with paper towel.

With a meat tenderizer, punch the pork skin repeatedly until the skin is covered with tiny holes. Try not to punch too hard.  We want the needles from meat tenderizer just to pierce through the skin, not the whole piece.  If you don’t have a meat tenderizer at hand, a fork, or some metal skewers will do the job too. 

 

Place the pork belly skin side down on a cutting board or large plate. Rub the meat with rice cooking wine and soy sauce, and then apply the dry rub mix.  Do not rub on the skin side.  

Turn them over with skin side facing up.  Do not cover.  Refrigerate overnight. 

Heat a toaster oven to 400F/ 204°C.  

Wrap the pork belly tightly with foil.

Sprinkle a pinch of baking soda on top of pork skin.

Cover the skin top with a layer of salt.  Both coarse salt and table salt work fine. 

Bake in the toaster oven for 15 to 20 minutes. Bigger piece of pork belly may require longer baking time. 

The salt will form some sort of crust.  Remove the salt crust. 

Continue to boil for 15 to 20 minutes or until the pork skin pops. 

Slice into thick pieces. Enjoy! 

Baking soda is one way to get crispy pork skin.  I also try using vinegar, which is also a very good alternative.

Preheat the toaster oven to 400F/204°C.  

Wrap the pork belly tightly with foil.  With a brush, brush the vinegar to pork skin.  And then cover the skin a layer of salt.  Both coarse salt and table salt will be fine.

The rest is the same.  Bake in toaster oven for 15 to 20 minutes.  Remove the salt crust on top.  

Continue to boil for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the skin pops. 

It is crunchier than the ones baked with baking soda.  And the texture is better too. 

You can enjoy them with hot sauce; 

Or with hoisin sauce; O (∩_∩) O~ 

Shrimp Cocktail

中文： 鸡尾虾

Is there any appetizer simpler and easier than this one?  I don’t think so.  I love to serve shrimp cocktail when I host a party or have companies because it takes no time to prepare and look great! 

Cocktail sauce is also sold in any grocery store.  I just prefer to make my own version because I like it spicy with a gentle hint of tomato taste. O(∩_∩)O~

Ingredients：

1 pound fresh or frozen jumbo shrimps
1/4 cup siracha hot sauce
1 to 2 tablespoons ketchup
freshly ground black pepper
salt to taste

Cook the shrimps in boiling water for two minutes.  Drain well and place them in a large plate. 

In a small bowl, combine siracha hot sauce, ketchup, black pepper and salt.  Whisk them together and it is ready to be served with shrimps together.

It is so easy that even people with no cooking skills can nail it too.

Grilled Peach with Ice cream

Summer is coming! O(∩_∩)O~。。。More and more fresh seasonal fruits are popping up in the market.  I bought some yellow peaches on my last grocery shopping trip.  They turn out to be quite tasteless and disappointing.  So I give them a little makeover.  I grill them with brown sugar and top with a couple scoops of ice cream.  Wow! What a huge difference in flavors!  

Ingredients:

4 to 6 yellow peaches
3 to 4 tablespoons brown sugar
1 to 2 teaspoons cooking oil
a couple scoops of ice cream (I prefer vanilla or coffee flavor ice cream)

Directions：

Rinse and pat dry the peaches.  Remove peach cores and cut each peach into 6 wedges. 

In a big bowl, toss the peach wedges with oil and brown sugar until they are evenly coated. 

Heat a grilled pan on medium high.  When the pan gets hot, places peach wedges onto the grill pan cut side down.  Grill about 2 minutes each sides or until they get beautiful grill mark and brown sugar gets caramelized. 

Remove the pan from heat.  Transfer peaches to a bowl or plate, and top them with a couple scoops of ice cream.  I use coffee ice cream this time.  They really go well together. 

Actually you can grill a lot of other fruits in the same way.  But I think the peaches work a lot better than others. O(∩_∩)O~