Recipes – Page 2 – Shananigans Blog

Xinjiang Lamb with Cumin and Sichuan Pepper

It’s been a while good friends. My excuse is that I have had the Chinese branch of the family staying with me for the past three weeks and it hasn’t left much time for blogging or other social media.
My little grandson Dermot is 20 months old now and a bundle of energy and fun. Arriving home from work to his face peering out the window, his jumping up and down with delight to see his nai nai or ye ye at the door as he ventures outside to add his own “ding dong” to the bell while nattering away in his unique combination of Chinese and English, has me nearly undone with joy. He has me interspersing my few words of Chinese with his words of English as he mixes the two up with ease, learning a new phrase each day. Today it was xia yu le – “it’s raining” which he repeated with delight over and over again, rain being a rare occurrence in Beijing. Somehow this made the onset of winter more bearable. Rain or shine, every day is a pleasure when you’re not even two. Now that he’s a little boy I’ve stopped posting photos of him – he deserves his privacy after all – but I couldn’t resist this rear view of him enjoying one of his first visits to the seaside.

Meanwhile Shan and I have been cooking most days, taking turns in the kitchen, working out a rota for when she, Shane and Dermot come to live with us for a time next year. On Monday evening we took a night off to visit China Sichuan in Sandyford where we let Kevin Hui take over and treat us to the flavours of his kitchen. As usual the food stunning, the flavours engaging the palate on so many levels.
One of the dishes he served us was a stir-fried lamb with cumin and Sichuan pepper which was very evocative of the flavours of Shan’s native Xinjiang province in the far north-west of China. Shan is rightly fussy about her lamb dishes. It’s hard to beat the earthy flavours of the lamb reared in the mountains of Xinjiang province but she gave the version at China Sichuan the thumbs up.
Between the two of us we deconstructed the dish, identified the key ingredients and set out to recreate it at home. I’ve tried variations of Xinjiang Lamb on the blog before but I’ve never been entirely satisfied with the result. Tonight, with the memory of the China Sichuan version still fresh in my mind, I produced something that hit the spot.
The trick was to use a lean cut of lamb – canon of lamb – which needed only a very short time marinating in a mix of Shaoxing rice wine, soy sauce and a little cornflour, and t0 “pass it through the oil”, a technique which involves deep-frying the marinaded lamb for just 15 seconds at a relatively low temperature of 140 degrees c to lock in the flavour and tenderness before stir-frying it with the other ingredients. Add freshly ground cumin, ground, dry roasted Sichuan peppercorns, chunks of white and red onions, pieces of dried and fresh chillies and some spring onion greens and it was easy to feel transported back to the mountains of Shan’s home province.
This technique will work equally well with beef. Don’t be tempted to overcrowd the wok with meat – the smaller the quantities, the more intense the flavour experience.
Shananigans Xinjiang Lamb with Cumin & Sichuan Pepper

Serves 2 -3 as a main dish or 4 as part of a multi-course meal
Ingredients

400g canon of lamb or any lean lamb
2 cloves garlic
4 dried chillies (or more to taste)
2 fresh red chillies
1 white onion
1 red onion
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground Sichuan pepper
Pinch of sugar
Pinch of salt
½ tsp Chinese white rice vinegar
2 spring onions (green part only)
Groundnut oil

For the marinade

1 tbs Shaoxing rice wine
1 tbs light soy sauce
1 tsp dark soy sauce
1 tbs shallot oil or groundnut oil
1 tbs cornflour

Preparation and cooking

Cut the lamb across the grain into paper thin slices. Canon of lamb, the equivalent of fillet steak, is the perfect cut for this. It needs very little marinating and works better than leg or shoulder of lamb.
Mix the marinade ingredients, add to the lamb and set aside while you prepare the other ingredients.
Finely chop the garlic and slice the onions into chunks.
Chop the fresh red chillies at steep angles discarding the seeds; break the dried chillies into pieces.
Slice the spring onion greens at steep angles in 3 cm lengths.
Heat the oil in a seasoned wok to about 140 degrees C. Add the lamb and stir-fry gently for about 15 seconds. As soon as the pieces separate, remove them from the oil with a slotted spoon, drain well and set aside. This is called jau yau or “passing through the oil” which makes the meat very moist and tender.
Pour off all but 2 tbs of the oil. Heat the wok to medium, add the garlic, dried chilli and, after about 20 seconds when the flavours have been released add the onion and stir-fry for a few minutes to soften.
Increase the heat to high and add the fresh chillies, cumin and ground Sichuan pepper. Stir-fry briefly until the fragrance is released.
Return the lamb to the wok and stir well over high heat, seasoning with salt and a pinch of sugar to taste.
When all the ingredients are sizzling and well mixed, add the spring onion greens and toss briefly. Then remove from the heat, add a half teaspoon of Chinese white rice vinegar to bring out the flavour, stir briefly and serve.

Tips

If you pop the lamb in the freezer for about half an hour you will find it much easier to slice it very thinly. Allow it to return to room temperature before cooking,
You can substitute beef in this recipe, sirloin, fillet or bavette of beef work well.
To grind your Sichuan pepper, dry roast Sichuan peppercorns in a solid based frying pan for long enough to release the aromas but being careful not to burn and the grind them coarsely in a pestle and mortar or a coffee grinder. I have a small coffee grinder I only use for Chinese spices.
You may also find ground Sichuan pepper in your local Asia market. It is sometimes called “Prickly Ash Powder”.
You can use ground cumin or grind your own from dry roasted whole cumin.

Chilli Beef in Black Bean and Yellow Bean Sauce

It’s the first day of autumn and, despite the fact that the weather has warmed up a little after last week’s torrential rain, I’ve begun to yearn for spicier food that will warm me up on the inside when I get in at the end of a long day and that I can prepare and get to the table within 30 minutes of arriving home.
It’s not the only thing I yearn for. At the end of this month Shane, Shan and Dermot will pay us a visit from Beijing. Dermot is nearly 19 months old now and a bundle of fun. On FaceTime at weekends he plays games with us as if he wants to show off his latest Chinese words and even the ones he knows in English like “toe toe” for his Daddy’s toes. He joins in the conversation, reminding us in his inimitable way that he is in on the act too and has things to say, offering smoochy kisses to us on the iPad screen and trying to share his grapes and his Lego across two continents. It will be fun to build Lego robots with him and reciprocate those kisses. It will be a joy to give him a hug, if I can catch up with him that is.
When I’m not visualising the outings I will have with Dermot when he is home, the places I will bring him, the friends I will introduce him to, I am thinking about what I will cook for my little Gao/O’Neill family when they are here in Ireland. There will be Irish food of course, maybe even some Italian recipes, and barbecues cooked on the Big Green Egg but I also want to try out on them some of the Chinese-style recipes that I’ve been experimenting with to see what Shan thinks of my efforts.
The recipe below is one of that I have been working on for awhile. I havve been trying to integrate what I’m learning from my Chinese teacher Wei Wei with the way I cook at home and to produce a healthy variation of the kind of Chinese takeaway you might get in Ireland. I got the inspiration for this recipe from a Chinese Beef recipe in The Fasting Day Cookbook but I have adapted it to bring it closer to the methods of Chinese cooking. I have avoided marinating the beef in a mix of sauces, which tends to lead to the beef being more stewed than stir-fried, but I have added in similar flavours at the end of cooking – the aromatic richness of yellow bean sauce mixed with soy sauces and just enough black vinegar to bring out the flavour.
For the black bean sauce I used Laoganma chilli black bean sauce. My teacher Wei Wei tells me that this one sauce has saved from starvation many a Chinese student overseas who doesn’t know how to cook but for whom a dollop of Laoganma evokes the taste of home. You can pick up a jar in the Asia Market or any Asian supermarket but feel free to susbstitute your own favourite chilli black bean sauce.
For me it is the yellow bean sauce that brings me back in time – to my early attempts at Chinese cooking in a bed-sit in Rathmines when a jar of Sharwood’s yellow bean sauce could transform a common-place meal into what seemed to me then to be an exotic oriental feast. That, of course, was more than 30 years before I realised that China was set to become an important part of my life. Sharwood’s don’t seem to do a yellow bean sauce these days but you can pick up a tin of Amoy crushed yellow bean sauce in any Asian market. While you are there you will also find Chinese black vinegars, such as Gold Plum Chinkiang Vinegar, and Shaoxing Rice Wine – I use the cooking rice wine with the red label but I don’t know the brand name.
This is a relatively low fat, low calorie recipe. It is packed with nutrients from brightly coloured vegetables and the amount of oil used in cooking is modest. Feel free to experiment – it will work well with chicken instead of beef for instance – and add your own favourite vegetables It has a kick from the Laoganma and extra chilli but it is not very spicy. Enjoy,
Chilli Beef in Black and Yellow Bean Sauce

Chillie Beef with Black Bean and Yellow Bean Sauce — Chilli Beef with Black Bean and Yellow Bean Sauce

Serves 2 -3 as a main dish or 4 as part of a multi-course meal
Ingredients

350 – 400g of sirloin or bavette of beef
1 red chilli
1 thumb root ginger
1 small head of broccoli
1 red pepper
1 yellow pepper
2 heads of pak choi
4 spring onions
2 tbs Shaoxing rice wine
1 heaped teaspoon cornflour
2 tbs Laoganma chilli black bean sauce
2 tbs yellow bean sauce
1 tbs light soy sauce
½ tbs dark soy sauce
½ tbs dark Chinese vinegar (or Chinkiang vinegar)
Cooking oil
1 tsp sesame oil

Preparation

Slice the beef against the grain into thin slices about 5 cm long.
Marinade the beef in about 2 tbs of Shaoxing rice wine, adding a heaped teaspoon of cornflour and stirring well. Set aside while you prepare the vegetables.
Break the broccoli into florets and blanche or steam for one minute to soften without losing their bright colour.
Thinly slice the chilli, discarding the seeds. Peel and finely chop the ginger.
De-seed the peppers and cut them into diamond shapes about the size of a large postage stamp.
Cut the root off the pak choi, cut the stems into chunks the same size of the peppers and shred the leaves.
Thinly slice the spring onions at steep angles.
Mix the yellow bean sauce, soy sauces and dark Chinese vinegar.

Cooking

Heat a small amount of oil in a wok over a high heat. Add in the chilli and ginger and stir-fry briefly until the aromas are released.
Add in the Laoganma sauce, including the oil from the sauce. Once hot, add in the beef, little by little, and stir-fry briskly until it has changed colour, then remove it from the wok and set to one side.

Beef set to one side afer cooking
Wipe out the wok with kitchen paper and heat about 1 to 2 tbs oil over a high heat. Stir-fry the spring onions for a few moments to release their aroma. Add in the peppers and pak choi stems and stir-fry for a few minutes until softened.

Stir-frying the peppers
Then add in the broccoli and pak choi leaves. Stir-fry for a minute or two until the pak choi has wilted adding a splash of hot water if necessary to help the vegetables cook.

Shredded pak choi ready to wilt
Add in the mixture of yellow bean, soy sauce and black vinegar and stir to mix well.
Return the beef to the wok with any remaining marinade and mix well until heated through.
Remove from the heat, drizzle over a teaspoon of sesame oil and serve immediately with boiled rice.

Stir-fried Sugar Snap Peas with Garlic

This side-dish is so simple that it hardly deserves a blog post all of its own but it is one of those recipes that is very handy to have in your repertoire when you want to rustle up something fast to serve alongside spicier dishes or even with a traditional Sunday roast.
It is one of the many “home style” dishes that my Chinese teacher Wei Wei has taught me since we started combined Chinese and cooking lessons some weeks ago. After a bit of a break over the summer we are back in action now and she has also started adding new recipes to her own blog Wei Wei’s Chinese Kitchen.
No special Chinese seasonings are used in this dish. The secret to the flavour lies in adding half the garlic before stir-frying the peas and the other half at the end. Wei Wei normally makes this with mange tout peas which she plunges in boiling water for about a minute before cutting them. By happy accident I had picked up sugar snap peas by mistake and I loved the crunchy texture and the way the seeds pick up the flavour of the garlic and the oil. They take a little longer to cook. Broccoli can also be cooked in this way and my daughter in-law Shan often serves broccoli with garlic as a side dish.
The night Wei Wei showed me this recipe she also taught me how to make her version of Kung Pao Chicken which is utterly addictive. The results of my efforts are pictured below. The combination of the spicy chicken dish with crunchy peanuts or cashew nuts and the more delicately flavoured peas is a real winner served with steamed rice.

Wei Wei's Kung Pao Chicken — Wei Wei’s Kung Pao Chicken

I have previously blogged a recipe for Gong Bao Chicken, as it is known in Sichuan Province, which I learnt at Hutong Cuisine Cookery School but I also love Wei Wei’s recipe which is here on her blog. While the Hutong Cuisine version is spicier, the combination of tomato paste (tomato puree) and hot bean sauce in Wei Wei’s recipe softens and rounds out the flavour of the dish. Where she refers to prickly ash in the recipe that’s the same as sichuan pepper corn. I tend to use cashew nuts instead of peanuts but both work.
Try both recipes and see what you think and accompany them stir-fried sugar snap peas. Enjoy!
Stir-fried Sugar Snap Peas with garlic
Ingredients

2 packets of sugar snap peas (about 320g in total)
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp salt
1 tbs cooking oil
A drizzle of sesame oil (optional)

Preparation and cooking

Peel and finely dice the garlic.
Steam or blanch the sugar snap peas for about 2 minutes at most, then drain. You want them to retain their crunchy texture.
Once they are cool enough to handle, cut the sugar snap peas into two to three sections at steep angles.
Heat a wok. Add about a tablespoon of cooking oil. When the oil is hot add half the garlic being careful not to burn it. As soon as the garlic releases its aroma, add the sugar snap peas. Stir-fry for a few minutes until just beginning to blister but don’t allow them to burn.
Add the salt and the rest of the garlic and stir-fry for about another minute. Remove from the heat and taste to check seasoning. Add a small drizzle of sesame oil if you wish.

Tofu stuffed with pork and mushrooms – niang dou fu – 酿豆腐

We plan to spend this coming Christmas and New Year in Australia with Claire, Mike, Shane, Shan, Dermot and Shan’s MaMa for a very special Shananigans reunion. For Shan, her MaMa and Dermot it will be their first visit to Australia and the excitement about Christmas in the sun and escaping the bitter cold of a Beijing winter is already mounting. I suspect we each have our own mental picture of Dermot’s first encounter with the beach and the sea. No doubt the reality will be a little different but hopefully just as much fun.
It will be MaMa’s second trip outside China in her lifetime. Last Christmas she was here in Ireland with her extended family for Shane and Shan’s wedding. This time there will be fewer people speaking Chinese around her and my goal is to be able to make her feel welcome and by being able to exchange even a few sentences with her in her own language.
And so I have resumed my Chinese lessons with Wei Wei. It is a painfully slow process for me – individual words for foodstuffs and the like come easily. Stringing together whole sentences, and making them sound intelligible to a Chinese ear, is a much greater challenge. But Wei Wei is a patient and thorough teacher and my weekly reward for two hours of her valiant attempts to drum some new phrases into my head is that she introduces me to a new recipe. I prepare the recipe with her and then, a few days later, I try and reproduce it on my own while the balance of flavours are still in my head.
Last week I asked Wei Weil for a recipe using tofu. I had cooked with tofu once before -the traditional Sichuan dish Ma Po Dou Fu was one of the first recipes I tried on the blog – but I hadn’t come across stuffed tofu. Wei Wei’s recipe blew me away with the tastes and textures exploding from a few simple ingredients. It is a rustic, home-style dish with the tofu absorbing the robust flavours of the tangy sauce. It is light and healthy but surprisingly filling and ideal for those avoiding wheat. Indeed it is said that the nomadic Hakka people of central and southern China developed the recipe as a substitute for jiaozi (dumplings) when they were short of wheat. While niang duo fu is good enough to eat on its own, it is equally delicious served over a bed of steamed rice.
Wei Wei has her own blog – Wei Wei’s Chinese Kitchen which you will find at mychinesekitchen.com. There you will find many more of her recipes with detailed photos of each stage of preparation and cooking. One day I hope she starts her own cookery school and restaurant.
The recipe below is Wei Wei’s own unique variation of the Hakka classic. You will find her detailed instructions on how to make it here.
Niang Dou Fu

Ingredients

500g block of firm Chinese tofu
Cooking oil
1 red chilli

For the stuffing

200g minced pork
1 large or two to three small dried Chinese mushroom
1 thumb of ginger
2 spring onions
1 tbs Shaoxing rice wine
1 tbs light soy sauce
½ tsp ground Sichuan pepper powder
½ tsp Chinese Five Spice powder
Pinch of salt
1 egg
1 tsp sesame oil

For the sauce

1 ½ tbs light soy sauce
1 ½ tbs oyster sauce
1 tsp dark soy sauce
1 heaped tsp sugar
1 heaped tsp cornflour dissolved in a small amount of water
¾ cup of water

Preparation

Soak the dried mushroom in warm water for an hour or longer then finely chop, discarding the stalk.
Finely chop the ginger and spring onion, setting half aside for the sauce.
Finely slice the chilli.
Mix the pork, mushroom, half the spring onion and ginger, rice wine, light soy sauce, Sichuan pepper, five spice powder and salt together. Add the egg and, using chopsticks, mix in one direction only until the mix resembles a stiff batter. Beat in a teaspoon of sesame oil, mixing in the same direction.
Cut the tofu into cubes about 4 cm square. Using a teaspoon, make a deep hole in the tallest side of each tofu cube, being careful not to cut through the base – you are trying to create as much space as possible for your pork stuffing. You can reserve the left over tofu for another use.
Fill each hole with the pork stuffing, packing it as tightly as possible so that it comes just to the top of the cube. If you have stuffing left over you can form it into little meat balls.
Mix up the sauce ingredients and set to one side. You can taste test the sauce and if necessary add a little more sugar to get the balance to your taste.

Cooking

Heat a wide, flat bottomed frying pan over a high heat with enough cooking oil to thinly coat the base of the pan. When the oil is hot place the tofu cubes in the pan, stuffing side down. Cook them for about 5 to 7 minutes or until the underside is golden brown. The easiest way to check this is to lift one cube gently with a spatula and, when you are satisfied that the pork filling is beginning to turn golden brown, you can flip all of them over stuffing side up. At this stage you can add any left-over meat balls to the pan, turning them frequently until cooked on all sides.

Frying off the tofu cubes
Continue cooking until the base of each cube is golden brown and then quickly brown the remaining sides. Carefully remove the tofu cubes from the plan and set them aside on a plate lined with kitchen paper to drain.
Wipe out the pan, add a table spoon of cooking oil and, over a high heat, add the remaining ginger, spring onion and chilli and stir-fry for a few moments to release their aromas. Give your sauce a quick stir and add it to the pan stirring constantly.

Chilli, ginger, spring onion
When the sauce bubbles and begins to thicken, gently add back the tofu cubes, stuffing side up, along with any meat balls. The sauce should come about a third of the way up the tofu cubes.
Cover the pan with a lid and simmer for three to five minutes until the tofu cubes have absorbed some of the sauce. Serve over boiled rice and relish the delicious, comforting flavours.

Beer Can Chicken

What a glorious Irish summer we have been enjoying. It reminds me of the idyllic summers of my Wexford childhood or my rose-tinted memories of them anyway. Irish seaside holidays are back in fashion. Duncannon is teeming with families, small children licking 99 ice-creams, trailing sandy towels up the tiny main street, teenagers in languid groups chatting, the beach packed with cars acting as windbreaks for impromptu picnics of sandwiches, crisps and fizzy drinks, the picnics of my childhood, the new playground a hive of energetic activity as little ones “wheeeee” down the long slide, even the grown ups getting in on the act in the adult playground, the familiar sounds of the commentary from weekend GAA matches echoing down the strand on car radios as we all tune in with bated breath to the latest Wexford hurling performance.
Up the hill our little Duncannon house is an oasis of calm by comparison. It is perfect weather for barbecuing and last Sunday I organised a family get together to mark my Mum’s and my birthday the previous week. My extended family are now beginning to put in special requests for their favourites from the Big Green Egg – “any chance of those fantastic spareribs?” (Adam Perry Lang’s Reliable Pork Spareribs) “or that beef that Jack said was the best ever?” (Adam Perry Lang’s “Get a Book” Whole Beef Brisket). Well no actually, the chef had other plans. On the menu last Sunday were

Shananigans Pulled Pork

Beer Can Chicken

Chilli Crusted Rack of Lamb

not to mention steak, burgers, sausages and lots of vegetable dishes. Tis far from chilli crusted rack of lamb they were all reared…

Pork Butt ready to cook in the early morning sunshine

As I get more used to cooking with the Big Green Egg, the full versatility of this all in one kamado oven, smoker and grill is becoming more apparent. If I get up early enough I can have the pork butt on by 7 am cooking low and slow and later there is lots of space to cook the beer can chicken and to add the racks of lamb while the pork is resting, tweaking the temperature up as needed.

We cooked the pork butt to my own recipe for Shananigans Pulled Pork, a recipe with a Chinese twist created with the help of the chef in Roches Bar in Duncannon. This time I injected the pork with an apple juice and sugar mix before cooking which made it even more tender and I’ve added that variation to the original recipe.

The Pork Butt returned to the grill wrapped

We served it Chinese style with thin Chinese pancakes, the type used for Peking Duck, homemade hoi sin sauce from the recipe on my blog post for Peking-style Roast Duck, shredded carrots and spring onion. The sauce was a big hit with our visitors.
The rack of lamb is another Adam Perry Lang recipe – crusted with a chilli and wholegrain mustard blend and drizzled with herb oil before serving.

Nearly every BBQ cook has their own version of Beer Can chicken. Mine is a variation of yet another Adam Perry Lang recipe and is finger-licking good every time. Last Sunday my guests decided that it tasted particularly good drizzled with the hoi-sin sauce.
Beer Can Chicken

Ingredients

1 large free range or organic chicken
1 can larger beer such as Heineken

BBQ fuel

Good quality charcoal lump wood
A handful of apple or cherry wood chips, soaked (optional)

Garlic Marinade

¼ cup rapeseed oil
¼ cup Worcestershire sauce
2 tbs soy sauce
8 garlic cloves, peeled and roughly chopped
1 medium onion chopped

Puree in a blender. The marinade will keep in the fridge for a week.
APL’s Seven Spice Dry Rub

½ cup dark brown sugar
½ cup paprika
¼ cup salt
¼ cup chilli powder
¼ cup dry mustard powder
1 tbs ground black pepper
2 tsps Old Bay Seasoning
½ tsp ground ginger

Mix the ingredients in a jar and store for up to 6 months in the fridge. If you can’t find Old Bay Seasoning just omit or add another spice of your choice.
Cider Mop Spray

½ cup apple juice – I use Crinnaghtaun but any tart apple juice will work
½ cup water
2 tbs cider vinegar

Mix the ingredients in a spray bottle. The spray will keep in the fridge for a week.
Preparation and Cooking (Allow at least 3 hours for cooking plus marinating the chicken overnight.)

Coat the chicken generously in the marinade. Place in a freezer bag or covered dish and marinate overnight in the fridge or for a few hours at room temperature. Bring to room temperature for at least one hour before cooking.
Prepare your Big Green Egg for indirect cooking with the plate setter legs up and stainless steel grill and heat to about 130 degrees C. Meanwhile soak a handful of apple or cherry wood chips in water. When the Egg is nearly at temperature, drain the wood chips and add to the charcoal. Place a drip tray on the plate setter under the grill and half fill with water.
Discard half the can of beer or add it to the drip pan. Remove the chicken from the marinade and place it upright on the beer can, legs down. Sprinkle with enough of the rub to coat. Don’t worry if there’s any excess. It will fall off during cooking. Carefully place the chicken and beer can on your stainless steel grill.
After about an hour, when the rub has formed a nice crust, give it a spray with the cider mop spray and then spray it at about 30 minute intervals until an insta-read thermometer in the inner thigh reads 74 degrees c. This takes around 3 hours depending on the size of the chicken at the temperature of your BGE. Don’t let the drip tray dry out. Add more water if necessary.
Remove the chicken from the grill and discard the beer can. Use mitts and be careful as the beer can gets very hot during cooking. Allow the chicken to rest for 30 minutes before carving.

Tips and variations
To oil your grill – to 1 cup of rapeseed oil add a few black peppercorns, 2 star anise a bay leaf, sprig of thyme and sprig of rosemary. Halve a red onion and stick a fork in the half with the root. Dip it in the flavoured oil and use it to brush your grill as needed during cooking.

Drip pan – I use and old roasting tin that fits in the BGE. You can also use a disposable roasting tin or deep pizza tray. I usually add the leftover beer to the drip pan.
If you don’t have a Big Green Egg – we have cooked this chicken successfully on indirect heat on our Outback covered gas BBQ by heating just the middle of 3 burners and placing the chicken to one side. It can be cooked on any covered BBQ, charcoal or gas.
Rotating your chicken during cooking – some recipes recommend rotating the chicken at intervals to make sure all sides are cooking evenly. I don’t find this necessary on the BGE but it may be a useful step if you are cooking on another type of charcoal or gas barbecue.
Ways with leftovers
Sichuan Chicken Salad

Sichuan Spicy Chicken Salad — Spicy Sichuan Chicken Salad

Last Monday night I needed a Sichuan fix so I used the leftover chicken in the recipe for Spicy Sichuan Salad which I had learnt how to make at Hutong Cuisine cookery school in Beijing last year. This is a very tasty summer salad and the smokey, succulent chicken works perfectly in it.
Beer Can Chicken Legs with BBQ Sauce
Adam Perry Lang likes to halve his chicken, glaze it with diluted BBQ sauce and return it to the grill on direct heat for about 15 minutes until it is crisp and glazed. I don’t bother with this step because we love the flavour of the roasted chicken but I have glazed leftover chicken legs and wings and popped them under the grill the next day for a very tasty Monday night supper. You can use any good quality BBQ sauce or your favourite homemade recipe.

From Duncannon via Beijing – Shananigans Pulled Pork

Well hello there. I’m the pool of liquid on the sofa in Shane and Shan’s Beijing apartment trying my best to reconstitute myself into human form. I am back in China for a second time in as many months and it is hot, hot, hot. Summer has arrived with a vengeance. The temperature rises from 28 degrees C at 6 am to a humid high of 36C in the early afternoon and then slowly drops again overnight. Even now at 11 pm on a Saturday night it has barely slipped down to 32C and the timid air-conditioning in this 21st floor apartment is making little impact. I am nearly as well cooked as the slow-cooked pulled pork in the recipe below.
It is my fifth visit to Beijing in less than two years and I am reminded how definite the seasons are here – the cold, sharp winter followed by a short Spring, a long stifling summer and a short autumn. The locals adapt. “Beijing air-conditioning” is the preferred attire of the menfolk with their t-shirts rolled up to allow any breeze to cool their bellies. The women carry home enormous water melons tied up with string to eat in wedges or press into juice. The streets in this residential area are teeming with people and makeshift stalls have sprung up all over the place selling juices and yoghurt drinks. Girls in pretty short dresses carry floral umbrellas to ward off the sun’s rays. The skies are uncharacteristically clear of smog and a soft wind rustles the trees providing limited shade on the uneven sidewalks. In the evenings groups of every age gather in any open space they can find to perform exercises to music.

Exercising in Beijing - a long way from Duncannon Beach — Exercising in Beijing – a long way from Duncannon Beach

My visit this time is part business, part family reunion and it comes with the unparalleled pleasure of knowing my grandson Dermot is sleeping soundly in the next room. In the six weeks since I last saw him he has changed again from toddler to small boy. He has the same impish sense of humour but it now comes with a patter of conversation in Chinese and I’m struggling hard to learn new words as fast as he does. By our next reunion he will have will have long passed me out and he already understands what is said to him in Chinese and English.
I will fill you in on some of my dining experiences on this trip over the next few blog posts but first I owe it to my loyal followers to post the recipe for barbecued pulled pork which I have been working on for the last while.
When I started the blog in the Summer of 2012, my first original recipe was for Sichuan Seafood Duncannon Style, named for the little fishing village in the south east of Ireland where I like to spend my weekends. The recipe was subsequently included in Goodall’s A Modern Irish Cookbook, which was recently awarded “Best in the World” at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. This is a book of recipes from Ireland’s thriving food blogging community and represents what Irish home cooking looks like today in all its diversity. All the profits are donated to Cork Penny Dinners and Crosscare charities and it can still be downloaded from www.goodalls.ie for €2.99.
Anyway the excitement about the award reminded me that it was about time that I came up with a new recipe. I wanted to create one that would use the best of Irish ingredients, have at least a hint of Chinese flavours, be influenced in some way by Duncannon and be capable of being cooked on the Big Green Egg as, after all, that’s where I do most of my BBQ cooking. Cue Twitter to the rescue. My friend Sinead @BumblesofRice happened to mention the fabulous pulled pork she had tasted at Roches Bar in Duncannon during our #Funcannon June bank holiday weekend.
A tweet to Cindy @RochesBar was all it took to get hold of the recipe their chef Craig Power had used. He has recently returned from England to his family home in nearby village of Slade and he cooks his pork shoulder in the oven for 12 hours at low temperature using a five spice rub and Stonewell Craft Cider. Like all good chefs he doesn’t use measurements so the recipe below is my own interpretation of his basic idea adapted for the barbecue. Along the way I consulted other Twitter friends and BBQ experts – @bbq_joes and @RoomOutside – and of course I can never fire up the Egg without reading every relevant recipe from @AdamPerryLang – my favourite BBQ guru.
This day last week, Summer Solistice -夏至 or xia zhi in China- was the perfect day to try it out. It was a glorious day in Ireland and one that made me dream forward to when Dermot comes to live in Ireland and can roam free in the clear, fresh air of an Irish summer in our Duncannon garden.
So with thanks to my Twitter friends for the inspiration, here goes. This could be cooked on any covered BBQ using indirect heat. Just allow yourself plenty of marinading and cooking time, starting with rubbing the pork the night before and getting your BBQ on early the next morning for an evening dinner. It needs very little minding but including the time it takes to light the BBQ and rest the pork it takes about 11 hours. Believe me, it’s worth the wait, it tastes delicious.
Shananigans Duncannon Pulled Pork

Pork shoulder ready for a long slow-cook

Ingredients

1 bone in whole pork shoulder, fat scored
2 bottles Stonewell Craft Cider or any dry cider
4 star anise

Injection (optional)

1 cup apple juice
½ cup water
2 tbs light brown sugar
1 tbs salt
Dash of soy sauce

Rub

3 tbs soft brown sugar
3 tbs Chinese five spice powder
1 tbs salt
1 tsp ground pepper

Cider Mop Spray

½ cup apple juice – I used Crinnaghtaun but any tart apple juice will work
½ cup water
2 tbs cider vinegar

Wrap Mix

6 tbs honey
2 tbs apple juice

Glaze

Hoisin sauce – any good quality bottled sauce or make your own from the recipe in the post for Big Green Egg Peking Style Roast Duck

To serve

Hoisin sauce
Homemade apple sauce – simply peel and chop a large cooking apple, add a tablespoon of water and sugar to taste. Simmer gently in a saucepan or cook for 5 minutes in a covered bowl in a microwave until softened. Stir before serving and adjust sweetness to taste.
Chinese pancakes (the type used for wrapping Peking Duck which you will find in the freezer section of your local Asian market)

For the BBQ

Oak lump wood
Apple wood chips (optional)

Method
The night before

Combine the rub ingredients and mix well.
Pierce the pork fat all over at about 3 cm intervals by inserting a small blade deep into the flesh and twisting aggressively to create small holes.
If using the injection, mix the injection ingredients until the sugar is dissolved and inject the mix deep into the pork butt with an injection needle.
Season the pork all over with the rub and massage it into the holes, reserving any leftover rub for later use.
Let it stand in the fridge overnight, on a plate or in a covered bowl, to absorb the flavours.

Prepare the Big Green Egg

Remove the pork from fridge and allow to come to room temperature while the Big Green Egg is heating up. Sprinkle with the remaining rub.
Prepare your grill for indirect cooking using oak lumpwood and heat to 130 degrees c. Soak some apple wood chips if you have them and drain them and add to the Big Green Egg when it has come to temperature. Insert the plate setter with legs up and place a drip pan under the grill rack. Add a bottle of cider and the star anise to the drip pan.
Place the pork butt, fat side up on the grill. Mix the ingredients for the cider mop spray and place in a spray bottle. After about 3 hours, when a nice crust has formed on the pork, spritz the pork with the spray. Spritz it at hourly intervals thereafter. Cook for about 6 hours before wrapping in foil.

Six hours later

After 6 hours get two large sheets of foil and place them on top of one another. Remove the pork from the grill and place it on top of the foil. Combine the honey and apple juice for the wrap mix. Drizzle the wrap mix over the pork. Wrap up the pork to make a sealed parcel. Return it to the grill and cook for 2 hours or more until an instant read thermometer reads 88 degrees C.
Remove the pork from the grill. Wrap the foil package in heavy towels and rest for at least one hour.
Carefully unwrap the pork, reserving the honey and apple juices. Spritz with the apple spray. Drizzle the reserved juices and some hoisin sauce over the pork and return it to the grill for up to 30 minutes to tighten and carmelise the glaze
Serve the whole shoulder of pork on a platter. Pull the melting, tender pork apart into shreds and chunks with two forks or “Bear Claws”. Serve with apple sauce, hoisin sauce and pancakes on the side and allow your guests to help themselves by spreading some of the sauces on each pancake and wrapping them around the pork shreds.

Gan Guo Tu Duo Pian – Hunan Spiced Potato and an easy Chinese dinner party menu

I’ve started Chinese lessons. Once a week Wei Wei, who was Shan’s bridesmaid, comes to my house. We spend a few hours poring over her notes while I try to get my head and tongue around Chinese phrases, echoing the sounds and tones familiar in Beijing. My dream is to surprise Shan’s Ma Ma, my qing jia mu, with a text message in Mandarin characters and by addressing her in Chinese the next time we meet. I’ve a long, long way to go.
The language lesson finished, Wei Wei and I roll up our sleeves, get out the cleaver, chopping board and wok and she teaches me a new recipe. To start with she is helping me to recreate some of the dishes I came across on my last visit to Beijing. It’s fun, the hours fly by and I am learning at all sorts of levels.
Wei Wei writes her own blog MyChineseKitchen.com and is an accomplished Chinese cook. Her Mum and Dad taught her basic techniques from a very young age in her home town of Tianjin and she has wielded a cleaver for as long as she can remember. Next week her parents are coming to visit her and her husband Oisin in Ireland for the very first time, no doubt bearing a suitcase full of ingredients like Shan’s family did at Christmas.
Last weekend our friends Brenda and Jimmy were coming to Sunday dinner. I wanted to serve a meal like Shan and her Ma Ma would cook, a selection of dishes for sharing, some spicy, some light. Gan guo tu dou pian was on my mind – a potato dish that I had tasted in our favourite Chinese Duck Restaurant XiHeYaYuan in Beijing and which I wrote about here. Gan guo translates loosely as “dry wok”. It is a style of cooking that comes from Hunan Province where the food is rich and spicy and in restaurants in China it is served in a little cast iron pot at your table over an open burner. As well as gan guo made with slices of fried potato and smoked Hunan pork, I had also enjoyed gan gou niu wa, made with bull frog, at our Hunan dinner at Pindian in Wangjng.
As luck would have it, Wei Wei also loves the dish which she and Oisin used to have every time they visited a local Hunan restaurant they called “The Cheap Place” in Beijing . She has come up with her own recipe for gan guo potatoes which tastes exactly as I remember it in Beijing and she has set out the steps for making it in detail here on her own blog. We used her recipe for my first cookery lesson and as we worked she taught me the Chinese words for the ingredients and helped me improve my knife skills and cooking techniques.
The next day I made the dish again working without a recipe, using the instincts Wei Wei had helped me develop to balance the flavours. My proportions were a little different to Wei Wei’s so here is what I did.
Hunan Spiced Potato – Gan Guo Tu Duo Pian

(Serves 4 as a side dish or 2 as a main course)
Ingredients

3 firm medium potatoes
4 slices of Hunan smoked pork or pancetta or smoked streaky rashers, rind removed
1 red chilli
1 green chilli
a small thumb of ginger
4 cloves of garlic
1 leek
½ an onion(red or white)
1 stick celery
1 spring onion
cooking oil
coriander to garnish (optional)

For the sauce

1 tbs hot bean sauce
2 tbs light soy sauce
¼ tbs dark soy sauce
1 tbs shaoxing rice wine
2 tsps sugar
salt to taste

Preparation

Wash and peel the potatoes and slice them about ½ cm thick. Wash the potato slices twice in cold water to rinse out the starch and pat them dry.
Slice the pork or bacon into thin pieces a littler smaller than the potatoes slices.
De-seed and thinly slice the chillies; slice the ginger, peel and slice the garlic.
Slice the leek, onion, celery and spring onion into julienne strips.
Mix all the sauce ingredients and set aside.

Cooking

Heat sufficient oil in a wok to about 140 degrees to fry the potato slices in batches until golden, setting them aside to dry on a dish lined with kitchen roll.
Empty all but just over a tablespoon of oil from the wok. Over a medium-high heat stir-fry the chilli, garlic and ginger for a few moments to release their aromas being careful not to burn them. Add the pork slices and stir-fry until they turn colour.
Add the leek, onion, celery and spring onion and stir-fry briefly before adding the sauce and mixing well.
Fold in the cooked potato slices and keep stirring until the sauce has almost evaporated, being careful not to break up the potato slices. Season with salt to taste. Serve immediately, garnished with coriander if using.

I had some of the very special cured pork from Hunan Province which Shan used in her home-style dinner. It has an amazing umami flavour and adds an extra jolt of authenticity to the taste. But any good quality cured or smoked pork or bacon can be used, even Italian pancetta.

This was just one of the dishes I served at dinner last Sunday. Here is the full menu:

Confit Duck Spring Rolls with Tom Chef’s Chilli Jam

*****

Adam Perry Lang’s Beer Can Chicken

Sichuan Dry-fried Green Beans, Vegetarian Style

Broccoli Stir-fried with Garlic

Bai Cai with Ginger, Dried mushrooms and Oyster sauce

Gan Guo Tu Duo Pian

Steamed rice

*****

Strawberry, raspberry and orange tart

We slow-cooked the Beer Can Chicken to moist perfection on the Big Green Egg. APL’s recipe has enough Asian flavours going on to make it a good foil for Chinese vegetable dishes.

I used the recipe from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Every Grain of Rice for the vegetarian version of Sichuan Green Beans but you can also use the recipe here on the blog and just omit the pork.

I had picked up some interesting Chinese leaves from the Asia Market with long green stems and delicately flavoured leaves. Wei We said they were a type of Chinese cabbage – bai cai . Shan had given me some wonderful speckled dried mushrooms which are called xiang gu because of their excellent flavour.

Wiang Gu Dried Mushrooms — Xiang Gu Dried Mushrooms

Rehydrate a few dried mushrooms in hot water for half an hour, then slice them thickly and stir-fry them with a few slices of ginger and spring onion (no garlic) until soft before adding the bai cai until it wilts down. Add a dash of oyster sauce, season with salt and the earthy flavour of the mushrooms combined with the delicate cabbage will transport you to MaMa’s kitchen in Beijing.

I worked the way Shan had taught me in Beijing, preparing all the ingredients well in advance and lining them up in separate dishes, cooking the lightest vegetable dishes first and then, a quick wipe of the wok and on to the next one so that I was able to get each bowl to the table in quick succession and join in the conversation.

Dessert was a random find from Twitter – a recipe from Catherine Fulvio’s blog to which I added a few raspberries. This was a great success and has now been included in my limited repertoire of sweet treats. We loved the crunchy, no-bake base, which was made from amaretti biscuits, and the tang of passion fruit, yoghurt and orange zest in the filling.

No bake strawberry, raspberry and orange tart

Now it’s time to start planning my next visit to China in two weeks time. Nai Nai hugs coming up…

Funcannon BBQs on the Big Green Egg

Our second last meal on our recent trip to China was the Grill Mates BBQ with Shane and Shan’s friends in a hutong on the outskirts of Beijing. While the menu that day had all the hallmarks of a classic American BBQ, the experience of sharing good food with family and friends, everyone helping themselves from a communal table, felt quite Chinese. I arrived home looking forward to a summer of experimenting with my Big Green Egg and to putting into practice what I learnt at Barbecue Joe’s cookery class at Cloughjordan House Cookery School in April.
And so for the last two weeks I have been getting to know my Egg all over again and my go to chef for inspiration is Adam Perry Lang whose recipes push me outside my comfort zone, but in a good way. APL is one of those generous chefs who posts many of his recipes, including from his Serious Barbecue cookbook, on his excellent website. He also picks up on tweets that mention him. Let’s face it, we amateur cooks all get a great kick when the chef who devised a recipe sends us a nice comment on a photo or a tweet.
The previous weekend it had rained non-stop in Duncannon and we were up at 6 am on the Sunday setting up the Big Green Egg to cook APL’s aptly named “Get a book” Whole Beef Brisket for 12 of my family. It took 8 hours but was voted by my little nephew Jack as “the best beef I have ever tasted”.
We also cooked APL’s Beer Can Chicken, sitting two large organic birds over cans of Heineken. This was something I had wanted to try out since I tasted Elvis’ version in Beijing. The result was moist and delicious chicken which fed us for most of the week.

Well you would be sore if your butt had been stuffed! — Beer can chicken hot off the BBQ

And let me confess a little secret. Because the whole beef brisket took so long to cook, we actually cooked the chickens on our old Outback Gas BBQ on indirect heat, covered and with a packet of wet oak chips in punctured tin foil sitting on the lava rocks. There was so much smokiness going on with the brisket and other vegetables that no one even noticed. I also skipped the last stage of APL’s recipe, that called for cutting the chicken in half down the backbone and glazing it with his sweet and sticky BBQ sauce because the skin was already nice and crispy. Instead I just served the sauce on the side. The following day though I reheated half of one of the cooked chickens, glazed with the sauce, under our ordinary grill for a feast of leftovers of sticky deliciousness.
The weekend just gone by was a bank holiday here in Ireland and Duncannon was in fete for a military re-enactment taking place in Duncannon Fort. A brother of my friend Bumbles of Rice, who also hails from these parts, labelled the village #Funcannon for the weekend and got it trending on Twitter.
We travelled down from Dublin in glorious sunshine on Saturday but by Sunday rain was threatening. Undaunted, we invited my family to another barbecue. I had an added incentive to try new recipes. Joanne Cronin who writes Stitch and Bear had given me a tin of Old Bay Seasoning which she had picked up in the States and which features in many of APL’s recipes.

A feat of engineering propping up those ribs

On the menu we had APL’s Reliable Pork Spareribs which I served as a starter. Over seven hours on the Big Green Egg at a low temperature, they were moistened with a mustard spray, drizzled with a spicy rub, sprayed with apple juice and cider vinegar, wrapped with honey, brown sugar and apple juice, coated with BBQ sauce and sprayed with apple mist once more. The result was succulent and delicious and the four racks of ribs, with the tender meat falling off the bones, were gobbled in minutes. My brother’s dogs were the lucky recipients of the leftovers. I hope they weren’t expecting any meat as every last morsel had been sucked off by my hungry guests.

The mammy likes her ribs (great appetite)

We followed the ribs with Leg of Irish Spring Lamb based on Adam’s recipe in his BBQ 25 cookbook which I downloaded from Kindle Book Store on my iPad. I scored the leg of lamb in a cross-hatch pattern and marinated it for three to four hours in a mix of rapeseed oil, chopped rosemary, flat leaf parsley, thyme and cumin. I put it on the Big Green Egg, on indirect heat, while the ribs were still cooking which meant the temperature was lower than the recommended by APL and it took longer to cook. I glazed it at intervals with a mix of a half cup of olive oil, lots of crushed garlic, the grated zest and juice of a lemon, a few tablespoons of honey and more chopped flat leaf parsley.

Once the internal temperature had reached 60 degrees C on my snazzy, new super-fast Thermapen thermometer (or 71 degrees C if you prefer well done lamb) I rested in on a board dressing of Broighter Gold rapeseed oil infused with rosemary and mixed with fresh flat leaf parsley for about 10 minutes before carving. The meat was so moist and tender that we did not need gravy.

We threw a few burgers and steaks on the barbecue for hungry young people . With the beef and lamb we served lashings of Irish new potatoes, baby peas, roasted vegetables, mushrooms cooked with thyme in butter and olive oil and asparagus. I marinated the asparagus tips in a little Broighter Gold rapeseed oil infused with lemon and griddled them on the BBQ for a few minutes on each side. Once they had nice scorch marks on both sides but still had a good crunch I removed them from the BBQ and drizzled them with a little balsamic vinegar. These were greeted with sighs of approval.

Keeping it simple - dessert — Keeping it simple – dessert

Dessert was simple – fresh raspberries, strawberries and peaches served with little meringues and cream and then my nieces and nephews entertained us for a few hours with mimicry and dance and general good humour.
Last night we had a dinner of leftovers in Duncannon – a Lamb Hash of cooked Wexford new potatoes crushed in duck fat to which I added shredded leg of lamb which had been smoked on the Big Green Egg and roasted vegetables from Sunday’s BBQ including peppers, aubergines, courgettes, red onion, tomatoes and mushrooms. When it was all sizzling away nicely and lovely and crispy on the base, I made space to crack in two eggs and flashed the frying pan under the grill to set the egg white and crisp up the topping. A drizzle of Adam Perry Lang’s BBQ Sauce and I didn’t even need to fire up the Big Green Egg to recapture the flavours of our BBQ in the rain.
As we polished off the leftover leftovers today I mused about my Big Green Egg, how it has become like an old friend now, one whose temperament I have got to know and learned to managed so his temperature and mood stay steady. I learnt a lot from my class with BBQ Joe. He taught me to understand how the fibres of the meat react at different temperatures, the importance of the temperature plateau and of resting the meat after cooking. His tips for lighting the BBQ with a Lidl weed burner, using a super fast Thermapen to check internal temperature and oiling the griddle with half a red onion on a fork dipped in olive oil flavoured with spices and herbs, have left me feeling more confident and professional around my Egg. It is a joyous learning experience.
I’ve discovered that barbecuing is a forgiving way of cooking food. A few degrees heat either way makes no difference to slow cooked meats once you eventually get to the correct internal temperature. While the Egg is a magic piece of kit, most of the recipes work equally well on other covered charcoal or gas barbecues. But leftovers from the Egg taste simply wonderful with the traces of smokiness still lingering.
Last week the Goodall’s Modern Irish Cookbook, won the Bloggers’ Cookbook Award in the Gourmand World Cookbooks Awards 2014. The book includes one of the early recipes from this blog – Sichuan Seaf00d Duncannon Style. So on our “Funcannon” weekend, Duncannon was featuring, in a small way, on the world stage.
I think it’s time to develop a special Duncannon recipe for the Big Green Egg, don’t you. Watch this space.

A selfie from my giddy nieces and nephews

Sticky Indonesian Pork Stir-fry

Every time we travel to China we return a few pounds lighter despite eating our way through most of the trip with a typical dinner including five or six different dishes. We also feel physically better after a few weeks of Chinese food and, although we try many unusual ingredients, we have never once experienced a bad stomach during our travels there.
I’m convinced that the reason we feel so good on the food is that there is a much higher ratio of vegetables to meat or fish in the dishes. Rice or noodles are served with each meal but almost as an afterthought to mop up any remaining sauces. Groundnut or vegetable oil is used for cooking. There is virtually no dairy in the diet and only the occasional pinch of added sugar.
Chinese cooks don’t count calories or use recipes. They use their senses – sight, taste, smell, texture – and a lot of heart in their cooking. They know instinctively if a dish is healthy by the range of colours on the plate. They tend to eat until they are about 70% full and you never leave a Chinese table with that leaden feeling of having too much meat in your stomach. Yet may find a few Chinese who prefer Vegetarian Meal that something with meat.
Building on our Chinese experience, I have been trying to have two days a week, over recent months, where we eat very lightly, a variation of the 5:2 fast diet which we are following as much for its health benefits as to lose a bit of weight. My daughter Claire in Australia introduced me to The Ultimate 5:2 Recipe Book by Kate Harrison. This is a great little book, with recipes that pack a punch of flavour, are satisfying to eat and a feast for the eyes as well as the taste buds.
There are at least 11 recipes in the book that I return to again and again and, in many cases, the only concession to a “diet” in the recipe is the use of Fry-light one-cal spray instead of groundnut oil. I’ve discovered to my surprise that this spray works really well in a wok and for roasting vegetables in the oven and now it is often my first choice for cooking. Apart from that, the balance and range of ingredients in the recipes is very similar to the type of main course dish Shan or her MaMa would rustle up at home in Beijing using whatever ingredients are to hand.
The recipe below is one of our favourites and an easy one to prepare on a weekday evening after a busy day’s work. It is described as Indonesian but it’s flavours are very similar to those of the southern Chinese province of Yunnan. For those who care about these things the calories per serving are just 204. Try it out and feel free to vary the vegetables or substitute chicken or tofu for the pork.
Sticky Indonesian Pork Stir-fry

Serves 4
Preparation time: 20 minutes plus 30 minutes marinating
Cooking time: 10 minutes
Ingredients

400g lean pork steak diced into small cubes
2 tbs ketjap manis (Indonesian sweet soy sauce)
1 tbs light soy sauce
juice of half lime plus remainder in wedges to serve
1 clove garlic finely chopped
thumb of root ginger finely chopped
one-cal cooking spray or groundnut oil
1 red and 1 yellow pepper, de-seeded and cut into wedges
1 red chilli, thinly sliced
4 spring onions, thinly sliced
225g tin of bamboo shoots, drained
8 baby pak choi, leaves separated or two pak choi, roughly chopped
chopped fresh coriander to garnish (optional)

Method:

Mix the ketjap manis, soy sauce, lime juice, garlic and ginger in a bowl. Add the pork, mix well and marinate for 30 minutes.
Spray a wok with a little one-cal cooking spray or heat about 1 tbs oil. Remove the pork from the marinade and cook for about 3 minutes until browned all over.
Add the peppers, chilli and spring onions and the remainder of the marinade. Fry for 2 to 3 minutes until the pork is cooked through.
Add the bamboo shoots and pak choi and heat through for 1 – 2 minutes until the pak choi has wilted. Add a splash of boiling water to help steam the vegetables if you feel the wok is getting too dry.
Stir through the coriander, if using and, if you wish, serve with steamed rice (calories not included!).

Shan's Home-style Chinese Dinner

This is how the blog began – with Shan teaching me how to cook authentic Chinese dishes at home. Looking back at my very first post in July 2012, it all seems such a long time ago. At first it was a way of getting to know my daughter-in-law to be as well as a gaining a deeper understanding of her culture. Since then this blog has developed in all sorts of unexpected ways. While Shan got diverted by her pregnancy with our first grandchild and the early months of being a mother, I went on to explore Chinese cuisine in cookery books, restaurants and any classes I could find.
There’s nothing like watching a Chinese home cook in action though and last night (Tuesday) it was back to basics and to Shan cooking in her tiny, dimly lit Beijing kitchen, rustling up a meal to rival any we have eaten so far on the trip, while I took notes and snapped amateur photos on my iPhone.
Here is what she cooked in the order she cooked it:
Duck soup made with the carcass of the duck we had in XiHeYaYuan on Saturday night, flavoured with dried bamboo, dried tea tree mushrooms and dried seaweed (kelp). Nothing ever gets wasted in a Chinese kitchen and the same is true of eating out in restaurants. It is quite normal and acceptable to take home any leftovers and put them to good use.
A thick asparagus-like vegetable called wo sun sliced and stir-fried with the same kind of smoked pork served at our Hunan meal at Pindian on Monday night. Wo sun also featured in the XiHeYaYuan menu. It has a lovely translucent colour and delicate texture when cooked and absorbs the flavours of other elements of the dish. Hunan specialities such as the smoked pork can be hard to find even in Beijing. Shan is great at tracking down regional ingredients on line and having them delivered by courier from distant parts of China.
Stir-fried broccoli with garlic. This is one of my favourite side dishes back home as Shan had shown me how to prepare it over Christmas. It is a simple dish that adds colour and texture to a meal.
Long green chillies – la jiao – fried with slow-cooked pork shoulder left over from a joint given to Shan by her friend Wei. These chillies look like green versions of sweet long red peppers but they have a mild chilli taste less fiery than their smaller green cousins.
Xinjiang stir-fried rice noodles with celery, red and yellow peppers, cooked egg and some of the same left over pork. This is a typical dish from Shan’s home province. You can make it with what ever vegetables and left over meat you have to hand and spice it up to taste with Sichuan pepper, chilli oil and other seasonings.
Boiled rice.
Shan cooked everything on just three gas rings with one stockpot for the soup, a saucepan to boil the noodles, blanch the broccoli and wo sun and one wok. I took note of everything she did because needless to say there were no written recipes involved. I will do my best to recreate them and post the recipes when I get back home.
While she worked and I watched she chatted about her approach. As all good Chinese cooks do, she prepared all of her ingredients in advance, lining them up so that she could cook fast at the end. Her soup was on the go from early in the day but she only added salt for the last half hour of cooking. She cooked the lightest stir-fried dishes first and the rice-noodle dish last so as to avoid the need to clean the wok. Her approach to seasoning was entirely intuitive – taste and correct, taste and correct judging the spiciness of the green chillies for instance which can vary with every batch.
Shan was at pains to point out that there was nothing special about this meal. It is typical of the number and variety of dishes any home cook would prepare for four people, working with what is is season and using up any leftovers to hand.
We served all the dishes at the table at the same time and we ate them in sequence in our rice bowls as is the Chinese way, finishing with the soup. We washed it all down with a cheeky little Tall Horse Shiraz, cheap, cheerful, robust enough to complement the spicy food and a nice reminder of our giraffe encounters at Beijing Zoo on Monday.
Take a bow Shan and thank you for being my teacher.