The Wok Project: Kung Pao Chicken

Have you read that Kung Pao Chicken was the "official dish" of the Beijing Olympics? The blogger that posted didn't read the post they cited as carefully as they should have, because the article was about official English translations for Chinese dishes whose literal translations are very unusual--to say the least--in English.

However they did post a rather nice recipe for Kung Pao Chicken. If you compare it to the one that I post here you will find that they are pretty close to each other. The biggest difference is the inclusion of carrots in mine (the inclusion of vegetables in Kung Pao Chicken is common even if it is not traditional) and the use of a little hoisin sauce in the dish, also common but not traditional. The post is located at AppetiteforChina .

The recipe I demonstrate in the video is pretty much the one that Barbara Fisher gives in her Tigers & Strawberries post Kung Pao Creation Myth. Barbara has some interesting research on the origins and name of the dish, and you certainly want to visit her blog.

I mention in the video that there are several Kung Pao Chicken recipes posted on YouTube. You will find quite a bit of variation in these, and there are only a couple I would consider trying. One of the videos has comments that the chicken has to be deep fried. You will find many versions of Kung Pao Chicken where the chicken is deep fried. This is true of many Chinese dishes, a common method of cooking is to quickly deep fry meat and poultry at a fairly low temperature prior to stir frying. This method changes the texture of the meat somewhat, and is common in Chinese restaurants. You can give this a try, but unless you have a deep fryer at home this is a lot of trouble to go through and it also adds additional fat to the dish. You can make very good stir fries without this step, and many Chinese cookbooks do not include it.

The ingredients for Kung Pao Chicken as demonstrated in the video are:

2 teaspoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon dark soy sauce
1 teaspoon light soy sauce
1 tablespoon black rice vinegar
1 teaspoon hoisin sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon chicken stock

Mix all of the above together for the sauce

2 boneless skinless chicken breast cut into 1/2 cubes

Marinate the chicken in:

2 teaspoons light soy sauce
2 tablespoons dry sherry (or Shaoxing wine)
2 1/2 teaspoons of cornstarch

Marinate about 30 minutes

2 carrots cut into thin slices
2 jalapenos sliced
7-8 dried red chilies
4 cloves garlic (chopped)
sliced fresh ginger, about the same amount as garlic
1 teaspoon toasted, ground Sichuan peppercorns
3 scallions cut into about 1 inch pieces
2/3 cups dry roasted, unsalted peanuts

Oil for stir frying -- peanut oil is traditional, I usually use safflower oil because it has a smoke point similar to peanut oil with less saturated fat.

See the video for how to put this all together

Fabulous Focaccia

I love to make bread and especially Italian style breads. I read somewhere that if you go to France the formula for a certain type of bread will be virtually identical from bakery to bakery while in Italy there will be as many different ways to make a type of bread as there are bakeries. Since I have not had the opportunity to travel through France and Italy I cannot attest to the truth of this statement, but it certainly seems that there are a multitude of variations on focaccia bread.

I have tried a variety of focaccia recipes, and virtually all of them have been good. The one given is now my standard recipe as it seems to make an exceptional focaccia bread. If you would like to explore a wide range of bread recipes with an emphasis on the breads of Italy The Artisan is an excellent place to start.

The recipe for my focaccia:

Sponge

3.5 oz (about 3/4 cup) Unbleached all purpose flour
1/2 cup water (100-115 degrees F)
1 teaspoon active dry yeast

Bread

1 pound (about 3 1/4 cup) unbleached all purpose flour
1 cup water (100-115 degrees F)
3 tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon active dry yeast

To make the sponge sprinkle yeast over the water and let stand for five minutes
Mix flour and water/yeast mixture, cover and let rise 45 minutes to 1 hour

Bread

Sprinkle yeast over water, let stand 5 minutes

Add water to sponge, mix well, then add olive oil to the mixture and mix well.
Add about 1/3 of flour to the above mixture along with salt, mix well.
Add all but about 1/4 cup of the remaining flour, mix well and knead until a smooth dough is formed 8-10 minutes. Use the remain flour as needed to flour the board

Coat the dough in a small amount of extra virgin olive oil and cover. Let rise until double about 1 hour.

Divide dough into three parts and spread out in lightly oiled 8 in bread pans (or make 1 large loaf on an 11 x 17 cookie sheet).

Cover and let rise about 1 hour.

While the dough is rising preheat oven with baking stone to 425 degrees.

Coat dough with olive oil and dimple with fingers. Sprinkle with coarse salt and herbs (rosemary, oregano, basil or others as desired)

Place in oven and spray oven walls with water.

Spray oven again at 3, 6 and 9 minutes.

Bake an additional 6-8 minutes, remove bread from pans and place directly on baking stones.

Bake until light brown and the loaves sound hollow when tapped, 10-15 more minutes.

Cool on rack.

The Wok Project: Mongolian Beef

This is the first of a series of videos and post related to wok cooking with an emphasis on Chinese. I plan to show a variety of Chinese dishes, and hopefully teach some new things along the way.

The first installment of The Wok Project is Mongolian Beef. Mongolian Beef is a popular item on many Chinese restaurant menus in the US, however it more properly belongs in the category of Chinese-American food as it is not an authentic Chinese dish. However, the flavors and cooking techniques are certainly consistent with Chinese food and given the popularity of the dish I think it is a good introduction to the Wok Project.

Their are many versions of the dish, a Google search will turn up a variety of recipes and a lot of references to the Mongolian Beef at P. F. Changs, which seems to be a favorite. I have not had their Mongolian Beef, and given my experience with our local P. F. Changs (see my post P. F. Changs Disappointment) I may never try it, but it does seem to be quite popular. Grace Young has a recipe from Martin Yan in The Breath of a Wok called Khangis Kahn Beef which is basically the same dish.

The recipe I demonstrate in this video is from Tigersandstrawberries. I have made a few modifications, changing the type of beef, using regular rather than red jalapenos, and skipping the elegant presentation with the cucumbers. When I was editing the video I realized that I probably took too much credit for the recipe by using the word "inspired" as this recipe is essential the same as Barbara's.

To make Mongolian Beef:

3/4 lb beef (I used top sirloin, flank steak can be used as well, or if you want to go all out use the tenderloin that Barbara uses) cut into thin strips.

Marinade:

1 Tbsp Light Soy Sauce
1 Tbsp Dark Soy Sauce
1 Tbsp Cornstarch

Mix above with beef slices and allow to stand for 20 minutes to 1 hour.

1 medium onion -- cut in half and sliced thin
2 cloves garlic -- peeled and thinly slices
about 2 tbsp thinly sliced fresh ginger
2 jalpenos thinly sliced

Sauce

1 tbsp hoisin sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1 1/2 tbsp ground bean sauce (or bean sauce)
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons dry sherry of Shaoxing wine
1 teaspoon Chinkiang vinegar
1 teaspoon chili garlic sauce

See the video for how to put this all together.

P.F. Chang's Dissappointment

I have recently been cooking a lot of Chinese food, and will be posting some videos and recipes in the near future. I have learned a lot about Chinese cooking recently, but in large part to the excellent instructions and recipes on Tigersandstrawberries.com. I have made some really good stir fries recently that are better than what I get at the local Chinese takeouts.

Tonight was my first time to go to P.F. Chang's, and I was expecting--given its somewhat upscale reputation and prices--a very good meal from which I might learn a few things. Perhaps it was my choice of dishes, but I was very disappointed. I had the chicken with black bean sauce. The chicken was described as stir fried, but the chicken in my meal might as well have been poached or steamed. The chicken was white, and lacked any of the wonderful seared, caramelized flavors that are characteristic of the high heat cooking that normally characterizes a stir fry. I am not sure if this is the way the dish is intended to be or if my local (Wauwatosa, WI) P.F. Chang's just failed to make the dish properly, but it was certainly not anything I would want to pay $12 for again, or even $2 for that matter.

Grilled White Whole Wheat Pizza

There are so many great food blogs out there written by people that are much more talented than I am -- both in cooking and in writing -- that part of me questions why I would even attempt to do a blog about cooking. But, after poking around YouTube a bit and seeing some of the videos, the good, the bad, and the downright terrible, that are out there I decided that it would be fun to do try my hand at doing a little video blogging in addition to text blogging, so here goes.

One of my favorite things to cook is pizza, and in the past few years I have found that absolutely best way to cook pizza -- short of investing in wood burning oven -- is to do it on the grill. Several years ago I read somewhere about making pizza on the grill, but my first couple of attempts were much less than satisfactory. Having struggled with the direct on the grill method I tried the stone on the grill method, the stone on the grill with a large clay pot cover method, and even made a sort of pizza stone oven contraption to sit on top of the grill. I had more success with the stone on the grill method, but it kept bugging me that others seem to get great results without bothering with the stone. Finally, one Saturday, I made up a couple of large batches of pizza dough and proceeded to experiment with grilling them directly on the grill. By the end of the day I had several really good cheese pizzas that had been made by directly grilling them, and after that I never went back to the stone.

Last year I went on the South Beach Diet (which has been quite successful for me by the way) which lead to cooking with whole grains. I use white whole wheat flour a lot, it has a milder flavor than regular whole wheat flour with all the nutritional benefits. White whole wheat flour is made from a different variety of wheat, so it is naturally lighter in color and flavor. If you have looked around the net for information on white whole wheat flour you have probably run across statements that white whole flour will substitute directly for white flour without changing the flavor of the food. Don't be fooled by these comments, while I have used white whole wheat in all sorts of things the result is not the same as using white flour. This is not to say that the results are bad, but they are different and will have a slightly different texture and flavor.

This is the case with my white whole wheat pizza crust, it is denser and has more of a whole grain flavor than a crust made with white bread flour, but does not have as strong of a flavor as a crust made from regular whole wheat flour.

Complete directions for making my grilled white whole wheat pizza are available on YouTube.