Spicy Fava Beans

中文：辣拌蚕豆

Fava beans don’t seem to be popular in America.  My local grocery stores don’t sell them at all.  I bought some from a Mexico grocery store last time I went to Westland area. 

When cooked, they taste a lot like lima beans, with a mild nutty flavor and smooth texture. There were no fava beans where I grew up.  But they are grown everywhere in my husband’s hometown.  It is a widely popular ingredient in Sichuan local cuisine.  So he taught me how to cook them.

How cute they are!  

Ingredients:

1/2 pound fava beans
3 tablespoon chili sauce (available in any Asian grocery store)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 to 1 1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon sesame oil
chopped green onion
chopped cilantro
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
water

Directions:

Bring a medium pot of water to boil.  Add fava beans and cook for 8 to 10 minutes.

 Drain the beans. 

In a large glass bowl, mix well together cooked fava beans, chili sauce, soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, salt, green onion and cilantro.

Cover and let it sit at least 2 hours.  The longer it sits, the better all flavors combine better.  

Grilled Burger

One of the reasons we love summer is that we love grilling! We grill all kinds of stuff.  Chicken wings, kebabs, steak, fish, you name it.  We haven’t grilled burgers before.  So we had our first during the past weekend.

I make the beef patties from scratch because I always prefer grind meat needed for cooking at home. 

Beef patties ingredients：

1 pound ground beef
1 egg
1 small onion, finely chopped
1/4 cup bread crumbs
freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon paprika
a pinch of garlic powder
salt to taste

 

Burger ingredients：

4 burger buns
8 slices of bacon
cheese (I use bacon cheese from trader joe’s which is pretty awesome.)
thinly sliced onion
lettuce
mayonnaise

 

Directions：

I bought a big package of chuckeye.  It is about 4 pounds.  I grind it all and save the rest in a couple Ziploc bags and freeze them for later use. 

Cut the chuckeye beef into small pieces and run through a meat grinder.  

I use a heavy duty meat grinder like this one: 

 

In a large bowl, add ground beef, egg, chopped onion, bread crumbs, black pepper, sugar, paprika, garlic powder and salt.  

Mix with hands just until everything combines and mixes evenly.

Divide the beef into four parts.  Make each part into a big ball with hands and then pat them down into beef patties.

With a thumb, make a dent in the center of each patty so that the whole patty will grill evenly on the grill.

Preheat the grill to 450F/232°C.  Wish a cloth brush, brush some oil to the griddle.

Grill the patties for 2 minutes. Someone decides to switch to hot dog.  So we grill three patties instead of four. 

2 minutes later

Flip them over.  Well, it looks like someone needs more practice. 

Top the patties with bacon cheese and grill for another 2 minutes.

Another 2 minutes later, the cheese melts.  It smells and looks so good.

Transfer the patties to the other end of the grill where temperature is much lower. Let them sit for a couple minutes.

Heat the buns on grill.

They just get more beautiful, don’t they?  The bacon cheese from Trader Joe’s is one of my favorite cheeses.  It goes well with sandwiches, salad or wine. 

With a spatula, spread the mayonnaise to the bread buns, top with a beef patty, bacon, onion and lettuce.  

Ok, now the burgers are done.  Time to enjoy them!

Feels pretty good to eat a burger you make from scratch 。。。

Take a big bite. 

It is really tender and juice.  The bacon cheese adds ton of great flavor to the burger.  And it is priceless to enjoy a summer evening in the yard with your loved ones. O(∩_∩)O~

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~