Category: Cooking

Honestly…. I guess I'm just not able to grill up pretty looking food on weeknights. Probably because my objective is to get the food to the table in less than an hour, clean up, and then have some time to do a post….. But I gotta say, it ain't easy being green.

 And in fact, if you consider that I par boiled the potatoes the night before with the intent to throw them on the grill, perhaps this doesn't even qualify for one of my weeknight grilling posts.

The recipe itself, is based on what Rick Bayless calls his "chimichurri" in his latest book, Fiesta at Rick's. If you ever wanted a recipe for a gallon of Michelada, this is the book for you. In fact, I've kinda planted the seed in the minds of my friends….. just the fact that they are considering digging a pit in their Mom's backyard to do the recipe for a 30 pound lamb based on the recipe in the book…. well, you get the point. In his book, his "chimichurri" is used for a ceviche. I've posted on a more traditional Chimichurri before, but when Bayless mentioned that this was great on chicken; well, I had to just give it a try.

The actual sauce recipe didn't use any acid, which Rick Bayless added in later as part of his ceviche. And for the skin on, boneless chicken legs and the potatoes, I didn't use any acid. The recipe itself is a bit different from what's in the book, I usually use recipes as more of a guideline, and make adjustments for my taste preferences anyway. In this case, I cut down the flat leaf parsley, since I didn't care for an overwhelming chlorophyll taste. I also bumped up the garlic (of course) and the serrano chilies (of course again), and added a bunch of scallions to the whole mess for some additional punch. The sauce came out pretty thick, like a pesto, and smelled wonderful. And to tell you the truth, it isn't particularly spicy either……

 
So form the time I got my chimney starter going……

Spicy Cilantro-Garlic Sauce

16 cloves of garlic
5 serrano chilies
2 medium bunches cilantro, hard stems removed
1/2 of a small bunch flat leaf parsley, hard stem removed
1 bunch green onions
2/3 cup olive oil
2-3 Tb Sea Salt

– Roughly chop cilantro, parsley, serrano chilies, and green onions. (For less heat, remove the seeds and "veins" from the serranos before using)
– Place in a blender with garlic
– Slowly add olive oil while pulsing the blender.
– Scrape excess unblended ingredients off the sides of the blender, and then blend until fairly smooth.

This will make about two cups, more then enough for several uses.

For the chicken pieces, I put about 1 1/2 tablespoons of sauce on one side and lightly rubbed over the chicken. I then turned the chicken over and did the same. I put the chicken in the fridge for about 15 minutes to marinate, and prepped my potatoes. I had sliced two russet potatoes into 3/4 inch slices the night before and parboiled. I rinsed well, to remove excess starch, made sure they were nice and dry, and put them in the fridge. I took them out right before I got my charcoal started. I seasoned with sea salt and fresh ground pepper, rubbed with extra virgin olive oil, and split into two groups. Right before grilling, I tossed one group with red wine vinegar. The other group was grilled on one side, and after turning, I brushed on some of the sauce on the grilled side of the potato. After turning I repeated with the other side, making sure to grill the potatoes, without burning them. Of course I was grilling up the chicken as well.

It turned out to be pretty good.

 
Regular readers may recall that the Missus doesn't eat chicken anymore, so I also grilled up some eggplant, zucchini, and red peppers.

 
Toasted some ciabatta bread rubbed with garlic oil on the grill. I mixed about 1/2 cup of the sauce with a few squeezes of lime to add some acid, which the Missus used as a spread for sandwiches, which She loved. In fact, She had a couple of days worth of sandwiches.

A couple of days later, I repeated the sauce with lime, added a touch more salt, and a few turns of black pepper, and made a salad dressing.

Tomatoes, cucumbers, avocado, green leaf lettuce, a few sprigs of cilantro, and pepinos, made for a nice salad.

I'm always happy to find these recipes that can be used for multiple purposes……. it makes life so easy. 

We grilled the last two evenings, so I figured I'd do one last weeknight grilling post. We've been enjoying weeknight grilling…. it's all about timing, and objective is to get everything to the table in less than an hour. I've already done a post on skirt steak, so I hope you don't mind another. On Monday, I picked up some skirt steak and a ciabatta on the way home…….. I thought I'd do the simple grilled skirt steak, but when I got home I decided something else.

I was inspired by something I had in Xi'an……

They call it Rou Jia Mo…… you can call it a sandwich if you want to…….

 
Basically heavily seasoned meat stuffed in bread. And Xi'an being the end of the Silk Road, you can bet this was wonderfully cumin, salt, and chili heavy.

I was also itching to use the very potent five spice from QingDao that Fifth Aunt sent home with us. It's the same five spice that she uses in her own home made sausage. First I got the hardwood charcoal going in my chimney starter. This was basically a retread of my Cumin Lamb and Grilled Cumin and Sichuan Peppercorn Lamb Chop recipes. And you all know how much I love cumin lamb.   

I marinated the skirt steak in shaosing, premium soy sauce, premium dark soy sauce, five spice (just a pinch, a little of this goes a long way) and cumin. I was out of sweet bean paste, so I used some sambal olek to add some zip.

I sliced three cloves of garlic lengthwise and sauteed them over medium-low heat until soft. I added sliced green bell pepper and sliced onion. I was going for a bit of color, and wanted the natural sugars to develop. I didn't want it too sweet, but I added some shaosing, sea salt, cumin(of course), and a dash of premium soy sauce.I'd use this as the veg for my sandwich. Figuring that this was going to be pretty strong flavorwise, and perhaps teetering on the salty side, I decided to grill some tomatoes along with the meat to add a bit of "acid" to the dish. Once everything was ready to go I seasoned the skirt steak with more ground cumin, ground Sichuan Peppercorns, sea salt, and ground chili.

Grilled medium rare, stacked on the bread toasted on the grill, all finished off with scallions and cilantro.

 
Maybe if this was a weekend I could talk the Missus into making Dan Bing…. but heck this was a weeknight.

This evening I thought I'd want something a bit lighter. I stopped by Seisel's with nothing in mind, and ended up leaving with just a couple of Veal Bratwursts……. and weeknight grilling on my mind. I picked up some local asparagus from the fruit stand, went home, got my charcoal started…. and came up with this.

I tried to use stuff we had on hand. While prepping the vegetables, I simmered the Brats in Killian's Red…. because there was a bottle in the fridge. The eggplant was coated in olive oil, oregano, and salted. The tomatoes in oil I had leftover from making garlic confit and oregano. Same oil for the asparagus, along with sea salt, and finely ground black pepper.

I grilled the vegetables…. the asparagus were thin so I didn't have to peel them. We still had ciabatta left so I sliced it, grilled it slightly with the garlic oil, and spread a little Boursin I had in the fridge.

I got my vegetable peeler and shaved some leftover imported parmigiano reggiano, and I had dinner. Funny thing the brats was my least favorite part of the meal. And it was done pretty quickly…..

I realize that these really aren't recipes per se, so thanks for hanging in there and reading. But it was fun grilling over charcoal and getting the table in less then an hour. I'm going to continue doing stuff like this over the summer and fall, but I'll get back to writing out regular recipes in the future.

On our visit to Beijing, we encountered a dish that we loved. It was called "ugly fish"……. a day later we went to a restaurant that served something very similar, the specialty was called "Wushan Fish"….. it is the stuff of later posts, but I'll give you a preview of the "Ugly Fish":

It is kinda ugly, eh??? But this was among the five best dishes we had during our visit to China, which we'll cover in a future post. My thing was to make this on a weeknight…. and I chose boneless chicken legs as my subject. So this is my first attempt at "Ugly Chicken".

I'll admit that I didn't reach the pinnacle of ugliness….. but even grilling with charcoal, I finished everything within an hour which is what I think weeknight grilling is all about.

So in sequence, this is the blow by blow……I marinated some boneless (but still with skin) chicken legs with a tablespoon of sweet bean paste, some shaosing wine, and two tablespoons of premium soy sauce. I went and got some hardwood charcoal started in my chimney starter…..

And when things got hot enough, I mixed a blend of sea salt, a tablespoon of white sugar, cumin powder, I ground some Sichuan Peppercorn from Sichuan (roasted from from my "stash"), and ground chili, and set out to make the ugliest chicken I could find…….

 
What came out was some major "Ma – La" (numbing hot) stuff……

 Those toasted Sichuan Peppercorns from Chengdu numbed me from my nasion to my chin! Man those peppercorns are really top-notch!

It tasted fantastic with rice……

It was pretty darn good……. which reinforces my belief that you can grill up some pretty good stuff on weeknights…….

This past weekend, we had the pleasure of celebrating a wonderful housewarming party given by two of my favorite folks! Congrats MrC and TammyC, we had a great time. While doing some serious munching TammyC asked me, "how come it seems like you don't cook much anymore?" I had to laugh, and I explained that I've just been doing a lot of the same stir fry, and have made a few dishes that we had in China, but am waiting until after I do my post on China before publishing them. Anyway, I thought I'd do a post on what we had for dinner tonight. The Missus wanted skirt steak, AKA "harami" or "arrachera". You'd be hard pressed to beat the wonderful flavor of grilled skirt steak. You really don't need to do much to it……. and it's pretty quick. Even grilling on charcoal (a combo of hardwood & mesquite), along with a couple of ears of corn, some eggplant, zucchini,sliced onions and green bell peppers, and making a chipotle-tomatillo salsa took only a shade more than an hour total.

 
This is not a recipe…. I mean, can I call meat plus four ingredients a recipe????

Anyhow, I used  Rick Bayless's recipe from his book Authentic Mexican as my source, only adding some Mexican Oregano.

There are just a couple of key points. After grilling, remember to let the meat rest a few minutes to let the juices redistribute. Shirt steak will be a tough cut, unless you slice it across the grain in 1/4" to 1/3" slices. Don't do that, and you might as well eat shoe leather. Skirt steaks are pretty thin so it's over direct heat all the way…..

So what's the recipe???

Not much really. 1 1/2 lb shirt steak, seasoned with sea salt, pepper, and a pinch of crumbled Mexican Oregano. Grilled 'til medium rare.

Really…… that's it!

I'm figuring this'll be good in tortillas, maybe as fajitas, in a sandwich perhaps….. or on top of rice.

And now it gives me no excuse for not grilling on a weeknight. Heck, if I had a gas grill, it would be even quicker…..

I've never been a big fan of bittermelon. Our neighbors growing up were Okinawan, so every so often there would be Goya Chanpuru, basically an egg – tofu – bittermelon, and pork (and sometimes Spam) stir fry of sorts. I still had never developed a taste for it. Same with the Missus……

But a funny thing happened on this trip, we had bittermelon several times, and kind of enjoyed it. I'll pass on dipping it in honey, though. So naturally, after arriving back home, we've been cooking with it.

This post is more about my bittermelon education, rather than a bunch of recipes. As you see in the photo above, in my first few attempts, I did the usual cross slicing of the bittermelon, and using a spoon removed the pith, where most of the bitterness is retained. I used to two different tricks to remove excess bitterness….. the first was salting the bittermelon, then letting it sit for 20 minutes or so before rinsing and stir-frying. The second was the blanch method, which is what Ba Ren uses, as you can tell by this photo of their stir-fried bittermelon (which is pretty good, BTW).

It was still a bit too bitter for us, however. That's when the Missus decided that we should "shave" the bittermelon. Doing so would minimize the amount of pith and for our tastes, gave us the right amount of bitterness.

 
I found that you really didn't need to salt the bittermelon for very long when shaving. Just ten minutes or so, enough time for me to prep my other ingredients (save one). Not to delve too deeply into the "Qi" of food, but bittermelon is considered cooling, thus folks are advised to eat it during the summer. I thought I'd balance things out a bit by adding a few "warm" and "hot" ingredients to the dish. Namely Red Bell Peppers, onion, and blanched garlic. For me this was a natural combination, the sweetness of the red bell peppers and blanched garlic offset the bitterness. There were a couple of items we had in China that seemed to complement bittermelon for our tastes. One of them was Baihe – Lily Bulb. After tasting the sweet-oniony-mildly starchy flavor of fresh Baihe, we ordered it whenever we saw it on the menu. I also loved the onion like flavor that finished with a good bit of starchiness…… onion flavored potatoes…. talk about my dream vegetable.

Unfortunately, fresh lily bulb is hard to come by in these parts. I did find dried lily bulbs (i.e. dragon teeth), which I've had in soups, and wondered how these would fare in a stir-fry.

I made sure to rinse these well, three or four times, I then poured mildly boiling water over the bulbs and covered with a plate for about 10-15 minutes until the bulbs had softened. Getting back to the Qi of food, Lily Bulbs are also considered a major "Yin" food. It is also often used to clear up dry cough, sore throat, insomnia, and restlessness.

A quick stir-fry in the Big Kahuna, with a simple seasoning of good quality sea salt resulted in this:

The bittermelon combined with red bell pepper and blanched garlic was fabulous. It's too bad that the dried lily bulb just didn't work out too well. It is not nearly as full-flavored as the fresh stuff, and the texture is too starchy, lacking that bit of onion-like crunch.

Another item we had with bittermelon were ginko nuts. I won't go into the supposed health benefits of ginko nuts in this post, as they range from asthma and skin ailments to gonorrhea….. And like the lily bulbs, fresh ginko nuts are hard to come by. And when available (Nijiya and Mitsuwa has them once in a while), they are quite expensive. So we decided to go with the canned stuff…. which also needs a quick rinse, since the smell can be pretty off-putting. We also thought the addition of sweet onion would add another nice layer of flavor, along with some "Yang" to balance the "Yin".

A quick, and I mean quick stir-fry over 55,000 BTU's produced this:

Which is what I've been making, sometimes three times a week.

Along with that dish in the background (a recipe is forthcoming), this was one of the several dishes we had in China that we "brought back" with us. I guess I've changed my opinion of bittermelon!

I realize I forgot to list the health benefits of bittermelon, which is a pretty long list. Bittermelon is supposed to help digestion, constipation, promote liver health, and more recently some studies have indicated that bittermelon may be helpful in treating HIV. There are debates as to whether it is quinine that makes bittermelon bitter. Many cultures do use bittermelon both prophylactically, and to treat malaria.

I'm not sure about all that…. so can I just say that I(now) like eating the stuff?

A couple of days ago, on June 7th to be precise, Honolulu's two long-running, major newspapers, The Starbulletin and The Honolulu Advertiser merged and became one. Sadly, as with all of these types of "reorgs" and mergers there were casualties. And one of my favorite long running columnists Wanda Adams, who penned the "My Island Plate" column was one of them. After leaving Hawaii, the newspaper's weekly food and restaurant sections, and later blogs like Ono Kine Grindz (here's a link to Reid's older posts) were kind of my lifeline…. I was able to read about how food was changing "back home" as well as keep up on old favorites. So naturally when Wanda Adams' book, "The Island Plate: 150 Years of Recipes and Food Lore from The Honolulu Advertiser" came out, I made sure to get it. Doing a search, I can't find it available anywhere for sale except here right now. As I mentioned in the comments of another of my favorite author's, Rachel Laudan's blog post this past March announcing that The Island Plate II: More Recipes from The Honolulu Advertiser had come out, I was thrilled and made sure to order it. Both volumes have recipes of items that are near and dear to my heart. And though I may have my versions of the dishes being mentioned, like this one, it is still a wonderful read, giving you a "feel", history, and lore, of "da kine local food". And one more thing, it seems that Wanda Adams has entered the blogging world with Our Island Plate, so go check it out.

Meanwhile, I feel kinda sheepish starting this post with a paragraph like the one above, and making the following confession. For some reason, I've made this a couple times this year, but my photos really don't look all that appetizing.

To quote, "they looks like brown and black turds….." Sigh……

Anyway, this is something you can't really find anywhere but in Hawaii. I know they used to serve it at Bob's Hawaiian Style Okazuya in Gardena (16814 S Vermont Avenue, Gardena, CA). That version made the Missus and I swell up pretty good, but was tasty. This version is basically my mochiko chicken dressed up with nori. Over the years, I've replaced the cornstarch with regular rice flour, it adds a bit more crunch, and adds to the sweetness. If making mochiko, I'll add baking soda, but I find it doesn't work as well with the nori wrapping.

Wrapping is easier than it seems…..most nori already have lines going horizontally across the sheets…. you just get those kitchen shears out and start cutting.

It can get messy, but isn't too hard. The hardest thing is keeping your hands clean and rather dry between pieces of chicken.

Nori Wrapped Chicken:

2 1/2 – 3 lbs chicken thighs cut into strips about the width of your thumb, and about 2" long.

Batter:
 Dry Ingredients
3/4 Cup rice flour
3/4 cup mochiko
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tsp salt

 Wet Ingredients:
5 cloves garlic minced
1/3 cup green onion minced
2 eggs beaten
1/2 cup soy sauce (I use Aloha Shoyu for this)
ginger juice to taste
sambal olek (optional) to taste

1 Package Nori cut lengthwise into 1" strips
Canola Oil

– Combine dry ingredients
– Combine wet ingredients.
– Add wet to dry and mix well, you will use this as a marinade.
– Add chicken strips and mix well, until chicken is fully coated. (I use a ziplock bag for this)
– Marinate overnight.
– Bring canola oil to 350
– On a large cutting board roll the chicken in nori. When done rolling, place the chicken crease side down. This will ensure that the nori doesn't come apart during frying.
– Fry in small batches. While chicken is frying, roll more chicken.
– When chicken is dark reddish brown, floating, and bubbling has diminished it should be fully cooked. Remove to a large plate or pan lined with paper towels. 

You can serve with a variety of dipping sauces if you want. My favorite is the old standby hot mustard and soy, you can do Kewpie Mayo topped with Shichimi Togarashi, Ponzu Sauce, or whatever. I'm sure yours will look much better than mine do!

And yes, I've made mochiko chicken wings…….