Shananigans Blog – Page 2 – Connecting Ireland, China and Australia Through a Love of Food

Chinese Chips – French (Bean) Fries with a Chinese Twist

The last time I visited China Sichuan Restaurant in Sandyford, Dublin the owner Kevin Hui gave me a book. Now it takes a special kind of restaurateur to know his clients so well that he can surprise them with something they will treasure. For this is no ordinary cookbook. It’s “Hunan – a lifetime of secrets from Mr Peng’s Kitchen”.
Mr Peng is the owner of a restaurant called Hunan in London that opened in 1982. Many regard it as the best Chinese restaurant in London or maybe even in the world. Little is known about Mr Peng who keeps the story of his own provenance close to his heart. He has his own unique take on Chinese food with influences of Taiwan, Hunan, Cantonese, Sichuan and Guangdong cuisine all coming through in his dishes.
At a time when most London Chinese restaurants were Cantonese, Mr Peng set out to show that there was more to Chinese food. He plied his customers with dishes they hadn’t ordered, taking a “leave it to us” approach to a whole new level, until eventually he abandoned a menu altogether. Now each guest is served a selection of small dishes, as many as 15 at a sitting, and encouraged to try out different tastes on every visit.
This is precisely the way I approach a visit to China Sichuan in Dublin. I never look at the menu any more. I just find Kevin, ask him plaintively to “feed me” and allow him and his chefs to do the rest, knowing each dish will be a feast for the eyes and the palate. Perhaps that’s why he knew I would enjoy the Hunan cookbook so much.
Mr Peng is nearly 70 now, his own life story remains untold. But food and travel journalist Qin Xie, who writes her own blog In Pursuit of Food, has captured his recipes and his kitchen wisdom in this lovely book. In it his son Michael Peng who works with him in the restaurant speaks lovingly of a man whose story is that of a stereotypical Chinese immigrant who has never lost the values of his homeland, who remains an enigma and a force of nature to be reckoned with, bolshy, maybe even arrogant and an extraordinarily hard worker and who doesn’t change his approach with the passing of the years.
I have already cooked many recipes from the book and but one in particular caught my eye. As a result of my last blog post on Sichuan Chilli Squid with Black Beans, I’ve struck up an email correspondence with Chinese American food writer Grace Young. Her books Stir-frying to the Sky’s Edge and The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen are also among my favourites with her tales of her own family and the Chinese diaspora interspersed with wonderful recipes. Grace was enquiring if it is true that the Irish have french fries with their Chinese meals and I explained the post-pub Chinese takeaway of “Chicken curry, half rice, half chips”. So when I came upon the Hunan recipe for “”French Chips”, I had to give it a try.
The recipe was an immediate hit in our house – a bit naughty and not as low in fat as my usual Chinese vegetable dishes but a great treat as a side dish or part of a multi-course meal. I am going to try a similar approach with cauliflower florets, courgettes, carrots and leeks.
As I grow more confident in my own Chinese cooking under the watchful eye of my friend and Chinese teacher Wei Wei, I’m getting more intuitive with the use of ingredients, learning the feel for texture and flavour. I’m going to start encouraging my faithful readers to do the same. So here goes with Mr. Peng’s Chinese Chips.
Meanwhile, the next time I get to London, I know where I will be heading for dinner.
Chinese Chips made with Green Beans

Serves 3 – 4 as part of a multi-course meal
The secret is in Mr Peng’s batter which uses self-raising flour and vinegar to give a stiff dough and a tempura like texture.
Ingredients
You will need:

300 to 400 green beans – about 100g per person
cooking oil for deep-frying (sunflower or groundnut oil)

For the batter

self-raising flour
water
Chinese white rice vinegar or white wine vinegar
salt

For the seasoning

red chilli
garlic
spring onion
crushed Sichuan peppercorns
salt

Preparation

First make your batter. For every 100g self-raising flour add about 200 ml water and 4 tsp vinegar (I used rice wine vinegar) and a good pinch of salt. Beat it well with an electric mixture and leave to stand for about 20 minutes until the bubbles rise to the surface. Chef Peng and Qin Xie say you need a batter that’s quite thick and gloopy. With those proportions I found my batter was a little runny but I liked the tempura like texture with the batter lightly clinging to the beans rather than giving them a heavy coat. You will need about 50g flour for every 100g beans.
Wash, dry and trim your green beans and, if necessary, break into lengths about the size of chips. Irish long green runner beans are great for this dish. Avoid the very skinny imported ones as they need too much batter.
Dry roast a handful of Sichuan peppercorns in a wok or frying pan and grind them in a pestle and mortar when cool (or if you’re lazy like me use a small coffee mill set to coarse grind which I only use for spices). They will keep for a few weeks in an airtight container.
Peel and finely chop a couple of cloves of garlic, the white part of a spring onion and a medium heat red chilli. You can dial up or down the chilli heat to taste.

Cooking

Heat a few cms of oil in a wok or deep frying pan to about 180 degrees C. You want the oil to be deep enough and hot enough to deep-fry each bean. Chef Robert Jacob has taught me how to gauge this by holding my hand over the pan until I can feel the heat rising rather than by using a thermometer. Test by cooking one bean. It should take about a minute to cook.
Dip the beans in the batter to coat and drop them one by one into the hot oil being careful not to splash yourself. I did this using a tongs to move each bean from the batter to the wok and a mesh strainer to remove them from the oil when cooked. I cooked the beans in three to four batches, ensuring they didn’t touch each other and the oil had a chance to come back to temperature between batches. You want them to be golden but not burnt. Drain the beans on kitchen paper.
When all the beans are cooked, drain all the oil from the wok. Dry-fry the garlic, spring onion and chilli briefly to release the aromas. Toss in the green beans to heat through. Season with crushed Sichuan pepper and salt to taste and serve immediately.

Thank you Kevin Hui, Chef Peng and Xin Qie for opening up another new chapter of Chinese recipes for me.

Sichuan Chilli Squid with Black Beans

That little ray of sunshine who is my grandson has gone back to China leaving an 0.84m high void in my life and a host of fresh memories. Shane, Shan and Dermot returned to smoggy Beijing the Friday before last. Cue a few days of moping and feeling like a lost soul without my little sticking plaster, a few days of (secretly) relishing a quiet and tidy house and a few more of re-grouping and getting back into the thick of my normal working life.
This last visit was special for the time I got to spend alone with Dermot while his Mum and Dad took a brief and very belated honeymoon and for the chance to get to know his quirky sense of fun, his ability to mimic and, even at this early stage of his life, to poke fun at himself and us. So some of his expressions have already become catchphrases in our house – the way he says “no, no, no” shaking his head ruefully when confronted by something he wants to do but knows he is not allowed to, such as dismantling the contents of a shelf of DVDs, his particular take on “myum, myum” when relishing a new food, his perfect take-off of my niece Jodie’s “atchoo”, head flung back as if he too had hair nearly down to his waist, his hopeful “chu?” at the prospect of going out.
It took a few days of listlessness before I could get into the cooking vibe again. It’s somehow easier to motivate yourself to cook for a bigger gang. But as I leafed through my latest cookbook – Grace Young’s Stir-frying to the Sky’s Edge – I came upon a recipe for squid and remembered I had some in the freezer, purchased from Roberts of Dalkey which I had planned cooking for Shan but never got the chance.
Grace’s book is gorgeous. A professional food writer who grew up in a traditional Chinese household in San Francisco, she has always been fascinated by the alchemy of the wok. In this wonderful blend of stories and recipes she traces how Chinese emigrants have carried their recipes and their woks with them around the world and how stir-frying has evolved using the ingredients to hand, wherever the emigrants find themselves, so that their culture perseveres but subtle distinctions emerge in the cooking. She describes the book as being about the “universal longing for home” – a longing understood by everyone who leaves their homeland behind whether by choice or necessity, a longing felt by all of us who know that home is where our heart is, not necessarily where we live right now.
I understood that longing keenly when I talked late into the night recently with my lovely Chinese daughter-in-law about what it will mean to her to re-locate here to Ireland next year, believing that it is best for Dermot but knowing it will mean leaving behind her world, her family and her friends. It seems to be the lot of our generation and the next to always have pieces of our hearts scattered around the sky’s edge.
Anyway I don’t think Grace Young will mind that I took her recipe for squid with black bean sauce, which she in turn got from Chef Danny Chan who has lived in America since 1966, and adapted it to give it a spicier Sichuan kick. There seems to be something fitting about a recipe travelling from China to America and back to Ireland to be tweaked by an Irish nai nai to serve to her Chinese daughter-in-law when she finds her new home from home here.
Sichuan Chilli Squid with Black Beans

Serves 2 as a main dish or 4 as part of a multi-course meal
I’ve tried cooking squid before but have sometimes been disappointed that it has turned out tough. What I learned from Chef Danny via Grace is that marinating squid before cooking is not a good idea as it can make it chewy. It should also have only the briefest cooking time as it can easily become over-cooked and tough. The blanching technique in the recipe below means the squid needs only a minute or two in the wok. It also means you can have most of the preparation done in advance and stir-fry a reasonable quantity of squid in just minutes. The result when I tried this was tender and delicious and packed a heady Sichuan punch for good measure.
Ingredients

450g cleaned squid
2 tbs fermented black beans
2 cloves garlic
2 spring onions
1 red chilli
Small thumb of ginger
1 onion
1 red pepper
100g mangetout
Sichuan pepper oil or groundnut oil plus a teaspoon of Sichuan peppercorns
Salt and white pepper
1 tbs of Shaoxing rice wine
1 tsp sesame oil

For the sauce

2 tbs chicken stock
2 tsp oyster sauce
1 tbs light soy sauce
1 tsp dark soy sauce
½ tsp cornflour

Preparation

Soak the black beans in warm water for a few minutes, then rinse.
Peel and finely chop the garlic and ginger. Finely chop the spring onion – you want roughly the equivalent amount of each.
De-seed and thinly slice the chilli. Peel and thinly slice the onion. De-seed the red pepper and slice into julienne strips. Slice each mangetout in two at a steep angle.
Cut each squid tube in half lengthwise. Using your cleaver or a damascus chef knife. If you feel that your knife has lost its sharpness. I would recommend you check out the step-by-step guide on how to do this on the Choppychoppy website. Lightly score the inside of the squid in a criss-cross pattern at about 1 cm intervals. Cut the squid into 4 cm squares and the tentacles, if using, into 5 cm lengths.
Combine 1 tablespoon of the chicken stock, oyster sauce and soy sauces in a small bowl. Combine the cornflour and the remaining tablespoon of stock in another small bowl and set both to one side.

Cooking

Bring a large quantity of water to boil in a saucepan over high heat and, when the water is bubbling, add the squid pieces and blanch for about 10 seconds or until the squid turns opaque and curls. Drain immediately and set to one side on kitchen paper to blot out any excess moisture.
Heat your wok over a medium-high heat. Swirl in 2 tablespoons of Sichuan pepper oil (or ordinary cooking oil to which you add a teaspoon of Sichuan peppercorns, removing the peppercorns as soon as they release their aroma).
To the hot, flavoured oil add the black beans, spring onions and garlic, stir-fryng for a few moments to release their aroma. Then add the ginger, chilli and onion, stir-frying until they too release their fragrance.
After about a minute, when the onions begin to wilt, add the red pepper and a pinch of salt and pepper. Stir-fry for about 30 seconds until the red pepper just begins to soften.
Add the rice wine, swirling it around the sides of the wok. Then add in the squid and mangetout. Give them a quick stir-fry to combine with other ingredients then swirl in the soy sauce mixture and stir-fry for no more than a minute until the mangetout are bright green.
Give the cornflour mix a quick stir and add it to the wok, stir-frying for about 30 seconds until the squid is just cooked. Remove from the heat. Drizzle over a teaspoon of sesame oil and serve immediately.

Tips

Frozen squid tubes work very well in this recipe. Just make sure they are well thawed before use.
You can get preserved fermented black beans in any Asian market but a jar of black bean sauce would also work in this recipe. Or you could use a chilli black bean sauce such as Laoganma and leave out the chilli pepper.
For a less spicy dish you could leave out both the chilli and Sichuan pepper but you will be missing out on a umami kick.

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.

Sardinia – Living Like a Local in Alghero

When Shane was a teenager he had a t-shirt with the slogan “Be a traveller not a tourist” which neatly summed up his and my attitude to travelling. I’ve often pondered the distinction between the two.
A typical Italian sea-side holiday at a beach-front holiday apartment or hotel with days spent lounging on a lettino under an ombrellone is not for me although thousands upon thousands of Italian tourists love nothing more than to spend their time that way, returning year in year out to the same patch of sand, claiming their space early in the morning and barely moving until the last rays of sun disappear from the sky.
One significant difference between the Chinese and Italians is that the Italians love their tan. As the summer wears on not just i ragazzi but men and women of all ages, even the nonni and nonne, turn an ever deeper shade of mahogany. The Chinese on the other hand, who guard their paleness as a sign of wealth, will simply ask as Des Bishop put it “why you want to look poor?”.
I haven’t the patience for day long sun-bathing but I love Italian sea-side towns, especially if I can get under the skin of them and pretend to myself that I am living like a local – well like a local that eats out most nights at any rate. Each place has a character all of its own and some are surprisingly beautiful. Alghero is one such town. The old town is a warren of narrow cobble-stone streets lined with honey-coloured buildings, home to shops selling trinkets, coral and beachwear, and small piazzas, all shaded by old ramparts from the sun and the breeze off the sea. It retains a distinctive Catalan feel and is often described by residents of Barcelona and by locals as Barcellonetta ‘little Barcelona’.

The modern part of the town stretches back into the plain beyond, bustling with local commerce.Past the pretty port and marina, a lido is strung out along the bay connecting stretches of beach with their serried rows of umbrellas and beach bars, while on the other side of the coast road hotels and holiday apartments unravel their guests, billowing across the pedestrian crossings with towels, beach chairs and their picnics for the day.

If you walk far enough along the lido the character changes. Here pine woods line the sea-front and you have to clamber up and over dunes to little coves. Eventually, after about 6 km, you come to Fertilia, a little port village with a sleepy atmosphere and some nice restaurants on the street leading down to the harbour.

Where to stay
In August accommodation is at a premium in Alghero but through Niamh Shield’s blog Eat Like a Girl I came across House Trip who specialise in short-term lettings, many of them in residential areas. This was my first time to use the website and I was impressed with the quality of the service and the range of accommodation options on offer from whole houses to studio apartments. Through their site I found Apartment Dhalia in a small residential apartment block in Via Cellini, about 8 minutes walk from the beach and 10 minutes walk from the old town.
When we arrived from our three days of hill-walking on the east coast of the island (see the last blog post) I knew what to expect – a basic one bed-room apartment with a small balcony overlooking the common courtyard, not luxurious but adequate for a four night stay. What I did not expect was the amount of effort Fabio the owner would put in to making us feel at home. All the little things that you need for a short stay were provided – washing liquid for the washing machine; olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper in the kitchen; kitchen roll, refusacks, washing up liquid, soap; tea towels, beach towels, hairdryer – you name it, he had thought of it. There were even a few cold beers in the fridge along with bottles of water. He pointed out the location of the large supermarket three minutes walk away, the places where we could find free parking on the street outside and the direction to the beach and town. And that was it. I was ready for small town italian life.
What to do
For the next four days we pottered happily around the town, our hire car never moving from its original parking spot. The little alimentari two doors from our apartment stocked everything we needed for an impromptu breakfast or lunch – prosciutto crudo, salami di sardo, ricotta, local breads and fresh fruit. In the mornings we wandered down to the old town or out along the lido, enjoying a cappuccino e corneto in a cafe in one of the sunny piazzas, paying a visit to the local mercato to admire the scary swordfish and the array of mediterranean vegetables or walking out of town in either direction as far as the footpaths would allow.
One day we arrived at Fertilia around lunch time and had an excellent lunch in Ristorante Acquario.

This was my first taste of fregola a local pasta like large couscous, dotted with prawns, courgettes and speck. Sautè frutti di mare of mussels and clams tasted straight from the sea.
The afternoons were for relaxing at the apartment or along the seafront where you could commandeer a sea-facing iron bench on the lido if you didn’t want to get sand in your book. I finished one afternoon with a mojito at a beach-side bar as the sun began to drop in the sky and waited for il tramonto.

A mojito at sunset — Il tramonto – a mojito at sunset

There’s a grittiness about the back streets as you return home in the evening, litter blowing in the sea breeze and cluttering the gutters with flyers and wrapping papers. That’s something that the local authorities need to tackle but meanwhile it adds to the realism of the place.
Where to eat
Evenings were for dinner out in one of the many local restaurants. Like all holiday towns Alghero has its fair share of tourist traps and I had been warned off the more touristy restaurants on the Ramparts by a waiter in Dublin whose father hails from the town. But with careful research I found four places that I visited and can recommend. As often happens in Italy the menus are very similar from restaurant to restaurant – I nearly turned into a sea bream – orato – by the end of the week. The difference lies in the care the chef gives to the preparation of simple ingredients, the friendliness of the owner and waiting staff and the ambience of the place.
The four places we tried for dinner were:
La Lepanto – a stylish restaurant with an array of fresh sea-food and live lobster on display. It is pricier than some of the more casual places in town but worth it for the quality and presentation of the fish. Sashimi grade tuna was excellent and the platter of local affettati was first class.

Al Vecchio Mulino – this place was recommended to me by my Italian waiter friend. It is a lovely setting in two parallel dining rooms hewn like barrels from the rock. The staff are warm and most of the clientele were locals eating huge pizzas. We had a prawn cocktail and gnocchi al sardo as a first course and shared a whole sea bream, accompanied by perfect chips and grilled mediterranean vegetables. There are many good reason to return here, not least the great value pizzas.
Osteria Barcellonetta – you can’t reserve tables at this little place so we got there at 7 pm to avoid the queues that were forming outside by the time we left. Yet another example of simple cucina tipica, my fish of the day turned out to be sea bream again but cooked in wine and olives this time. This was also where I tasted seadas for the first time – a light, filo-like pastry filled with ricotta and drenched in honey.

Bar Ristorante Dietro il Caracere – this was a real find. Just five minutes down the road from our apartment, on a quiet street away from the old town, I noticed tables sprawling onto the footpath from a small cafe bar and the owner Gianni chatting with diners who seemed to be mostly locals. We went there for dinner on our last night and tried two pasta dishes – a perfect spaghetti carbonara and trofie – a twisted pasta – with swordfish followed by a platter of exquisitely flavoured, grilled local fish and the perfect Creme Catalana. The cost was about €60 for two including wine, making it one of the best value meals we had. Don’t expect luxury here and be tolerant of the local traffic but you can be sure of a warm welcome from Gianni. This unpretentious little spot will be top of my list for the next visit.

Four days in Alghero can seem like a lot longer as you lose yourself in the pace of italian sea-side life. And yet it is barely a 3 hour direct flight from Dublin to an airport that you can clear through in less than 30 minutes and then just a 20 minute bus ride to the town. With a “summer” season that runs from April through to October, it is a perfect destination for a short italian break, no car hire needed and lots of hotels and apartment options to choose from.
By the end of the week in Sardinia I had slipped into my “I could live in Italy” mood. As I watched the excitement of young children enjoying the Ferragosta fireworks, I was dreaming of coming back to Alghero but this time with Shane, Shan and Dermot in tow.

Sardinia – From the Mountains to the Sea

The ability to use long haul travel to visit family in China and Australia is a privilege but it is also tiring and takes its toll. At least once a year I get the urge to do something closer to home, to hop on a plane that will get me to my destination in a few hours, no jet-lag to contend with, no lost days of recovering from exhaustion, just a week to unwind, away from it all, to while away the days with long walks, good books, great food and local wines. And when I get into that frame of mind there is one country that lures me like no other – Italy.
Ah Italy, so much variety of culture and food and landscape in such a concentrated land mass; not so much a country as a series of distinctive regions, rather like a China in microcosm the notion of “Italy” and “Italian” being almost as hard to grasp as “China” and “Chinese”.
So as the dog days of August approached and a free week opened up in the schedule it was time to get out the maps and start googling to find where in Italy to explore this year, somewhere we could combine walking in the hills, an Italian sea side resort and living like locals, all in just seven days without a lot of driving in between – Sardinia.
Sardinia – Sardegna – an island with a character all of its own; Italian but remote from the mainland with its own history, personality, landscape and culture. My daughter Claire and I had spent a week there about 10 years ago lounging on the beach at Alghero but the rest of the island was a mystery to me. This time I was drawn towards the Golfo di Orosei in the east where it is possible to book organised walking holidays in the Spring and Autumn but not in the middle of August. It takes a certain kind of Irish daftness to want to hill walk in 35 degree heat.
And so a plan took shape – three nights near the east coast of the island where physical exertion would surely clear our heads, four back in Alghero to relax.
We left behind torrential rain in Dublin early on a Sunday morning, our glorious Irish summer beginning to show the first hints of autumnal chill. Less than three hours later we descended to the island over sea of the deepest cobalt blue to land at Aeroporto di Fertilia, also known as Alghero Airport, just 15 minutes drive away from the city of Alghero in the north west of the island. It is a tiny and efficient airport and, within 30 minutes, we had picked up our rental car and were on the road. Our destination was Hotel Su Gologone, nestled in the foothills of the Supramonte about 25 km from the sea at Cala Gonone.
When I saw the number of cars in the hotel car park on our arrival on Sunday afternoon, I worried for a moment that it wouldn’t be the peaceful hideaway I had hoped for. I needn’t have fretted. It is truly beautiful place with buildings backed into the rock face over several levels linked in a manner that resembles a small Sardinian village. The design creates an atmosphere of quiet intimacy despite the fact that there are 99 rooms in all. Ours was up at the very top and, by luck, was a mini-suite with a separate sitting area and a balcony looking out over the mountains. There are no lifts and walking from the reception area up to our room involved well over 100 steps of stairs – I know. I counted them.
There is a little bar at the main entrance and, from the cosy reception area, steps lead down to the brightly coloured main restaurant which has views out over the swimming pool to the hills beyond. A narrow street passes through a courtyard by an open fireplace where meats are barbecued at all times of the day, whole sides of pork lined up on spits, whole chickens and rabbits. Around the corner under a gazebo, tables are clustered on a wooden deck and, on a buffet table, cold dishes are protected with netted covers that remind me of my granny’s kitchen. The billowing veils of the gazebo are misted with water to keep the space cool while lunch is served during the day.
Steps and pathways, way-marked by hand-painted rocks, wind up to the bedrooms and to other hidden nooks and crannies – the Focacceria where bread is made in the traditional way and the Terrazzo dei Sogni (terrace of dreams) where you can watch the sun set over the hills. There’s a wine cellar – both a cantina and a vineria where you can taste wine – an art and craft shop, an orto (kitchen garden) and la bottega dell’olio where local olive oil can be purchased.
All the more usual hotel facilities such as a gym, Jacuzzi, mini-golf, tennis with tennis racquets and spa are available but hidden from view so as not to disturb the village like atmosphere. You could easily come here and not leave the complex for the duration of your stay and I noticed a number of families with young children who seemed to do just that. Around every corner, inside the buildings and out, there are little spaces where you can curl up with a book in a lazy arm chair or on a balcony bench to while away an hour or two with a good book or simply take in the view.
The most striking thing of all about Su Gologone is that it is a living art gallery and museum of Sardinian artefacts. Every corridor and outdoor space is used to reveal some aspect of Sardinian history or art. As a result it is a riot of vibrant Mediterranean colours and feast for the eyes against the backdrop of the brooding Supramonte and the deep blue sky.
The food is very good too featuring one of the best buffet breakfasts I’ve come across in Italy and a simple but tasty menu at night with the emphasis on local affettati, pastas and roasted meats. On most nights there is also an alternative meal in one of the other locations on site – a dinner cooked over the fireplace at the l’angolo dell’arrosto or a selection of local focacce.

It would have been tempting not to venture out for the three days we spent there but I had come with hill-walking on my mind so on Monday we headed for the coast twenty five minutes drive away past the beautiful man-made Lago Del Cedrino, via switchback roads, the hill-top town of Dorgali and a tunnel bored through the mountain to Cala Gonone. We parked up the hill at the southern end of Cala Gonone and walked a few kilometres up the road to Cala Fuili to pick up the walking trail that took us up and down steep paths, clambering over rocks at times, high into the hills above the crystalline waters of Golfo di Orosei and eventually down to Cala Luna, a crescent shaped beach of the whitest sand that is otherwise only accessible by sea.

A word of warning – this walk is described in the guide at the hotel as “percorso facile” – an easy walk. If you have wonky knees like me it is not all that easy! You need to set out in walking boots and, on a hot day, bring at least two litres of water. I was glad I had brought my trekking sticks but still managed to acquire a few scratches and bruises en route. It took us a good bit longer than the two hours suggested but the effort is worth it for the views, the exhilaration and the bliss of arriving to a cold drink at the little bar down on the beach at Cala Luna. We took a ferry back to Cala Gonone in the late afternoon sunshine to get a different perspective on the coast line and retraced our steps along the beach to pick up our car.
On our third day we decided to stay closer to the hotel and take a break from driving. Just 400m down the road from the hotel there is a lovely, peaceful spot, “La Sorgente” – the source of the river Su Gologone which has been dammed to form the lake at Cedrino. It is a mystical place of deep, crystal clear waters the depth of which is not yet known although it has been explored to 138 metres. From there, trekking trails lead off into the hills around and a guide to these is available from the little bar and souvenir shop at the source. We took a fairly easy but steep stretch up hill to get views over the river and the lake before returning to laze by the pool.

On that, our third and last night, we had dinner in Agriturismo Guttidhai a few kilometers down the road – a simple, rustic set menu of tasty local “cucina tipica” which offers a good value alternative to dining at the hotel every evening.
One word of advice on getting to that part of the island from the airport at Alghero – I allowed Google Maps to choose a route and it got us there in two hours and twenty minutes by climbing high into the mountains and descending, via hairpin bends, through the little towns of Bottida and Esporlatu and on via Nuoro and Oliena to our destination. This gave us a great sense of the rugged and sparsely populated highlands of northern Sardina but it was not the most relaxing start to the holiday. On the return journey to Alghero we took the SS129 across to Macomer and then headed north on the SS131. This route, which hugs the valleys and follows one of the European “E” routes used by road hauliers was less scenic but made for an easier drive while taking about the same length of time.
Although I am sure there are great Agriturismo options in the area of Golfo di Orosei, Hotel Su Gologone is a real find. The staff are welcoming, friendly and very helpful. The only minor downside is that wi-fi is limited to the reception area and requires a (free) code from reception that lasts for a maximum of two hours on a single device. The fact that wifi only works near reception adds to the feeling of getting away from it all but the need to get a code each time is a minor irritant which could probably be avoided with the installation of a few good routers. The mobile phone signal in this mountainous area is also weak.
The area around the hotel is a hill-walker’s dream. The hotel management have organised nine different excursions in the area, some by jeep, some on foot, which can be arranged once at least four guests are interested. But experienced trekkers will have no problem making their own plans from options of varying levels of difficulty and duration. The locals boast that “summer” lasts for seven months in Sardinia, from April to October. It would be lovely to go there for a long weekend in late Spring or early Autumn and use it as a base for several long walks in the area.
Post Script and a heartfelt thank you
On the day of our tough walk from Cala Gonone to Cala Luna we had one of those panicky moments that can sometimes happen if you head out into the hills not properly prepared for the terrain and weather. After two hours of walking, we had descended a steep track in the forest only to find we were climbing again, away from the coast with the sea diminishing in the distance. For a few minutes we thought we had missed markers on the path and gone astray. We were too far into the walk to go all the way back to the start and we were nearly out of water. Calling mountain rescue began to seem like a good if embarrassing option. We began to re-trace our steps to see if we could get our bearings.
As luck would have it, within a few minutes, we encountered a cheerful young French couple, fit as fiddles who were bouncing along the path in sneakers and confident that it was correct because they had spotted a marker that we had missed. We communicated through my very rusty French and their almost non-existent Italian. As we let them go on ahead of us, Derry called after them to ask if they had any spare water. The girl insisted on giving us a nearly full ¼ litre bottle of water and, with a friendly gallic shrug indicating that she could share her partner’s half empty bottle, bounded on her way. Thus spared from dehydration and more confident of our direction we resumed our walk to discover that the next hill we crested would bring us within sight of Cala Luna and a final scramble down to the sea.
We never did find the couple, on the beach or ferry at Cala Luna, to thank them properly. So if they or a friend should ever stumble on this blog post I want them to know that their random act of kindness made the day of two weary walkers and we won’t forget them. Merci beaucoups.

Two years on… a blog post about Blogging

Chillin' in Alghero, Sardina — Chillin’ in Alghero, Sardina

As I write I am sitting on the balcony of a little apartment in a residential part of Alghero in Sardinia. The sounds of families at their evening meals echo around the courtyard below, the clatter of cutlery and tables being set, towels being beaten off balconies and hung out to dry, the bells of several churches pealing the Angelus in a strange kind of harmony, the more distant sound of mopeds and traffic and children playing football in a playground. The tantalising smell of pork sizzling on a grill wafts through an open window.
It is August down time. I’ve just spent several days without access to wifi or a mobile phone signal and I’ve been reflecting on how I accidentally became a blogger and why I might continue.
It’s just over two years since I started writing this blog. The inspiration, apart from a growing fascination with Chinese food and culture, was the news that my son Shane and his wife Shan were expecting a baby in Beijing who was bound to cement our Irish and Chinese families together. At the same time my daughter Claire and her Welsh husband Mike were settling in Australia. Our lives were set to get that bit more interesting, complicated and global.
Since then the blog and life has evolved in ways I hadn’t expected. The gleam of a dream that was #BabyShananigans is now our 18 month old grandson Dermot, a cheeky, cheerful, engaging life force all of his own who has managed to captivate all of our hearts. Shane and Shan held their Irish wedding and Dermot’s Christening in Wexford last December attended by our own and Shan’s extended family, most of whom who had not ventured outside China before. Meanwhile Claire and Mike have got Australian citizenship and found a beautiful home near Sydney.
We have all become citizens of the world with long-haul travel now part of our life blood, some part of us always looking forward to the next trip and recalling longingly the last, getting used to communicating by FaceTime, marvelling at each improvement in signal quality and broadband speed and how, despite my fears, you really can build a relationship with a toddler over thousands of miles of distance.
And my “encore” career with a variety of projects that keeps growing, now includes an attempt to set up an Ireland China Institute within the Institute for International and European Affairs. China and its people have crept under my skin alongside a growing admiration for its food, culture and language.
My project to learn from Shan how to cook authentic Chinese dishes has gradually morphed into a broader, haphazard exploration of Chinese cuisine, occasional cookery demonstrations with my friend Robert Jacob and baby steps towards learning the language. Shan’s friend and bridesmaid Wei Wei, who writes her own blog My Chinese Kitchen is now my teacher of both the language and Chinese cooking here in Dublin.
Just over a year ago I acquired a Big Green Egg because it resembled a traditional Chinese clay oven and might solve my dilemma of how to cater for Christmas dinner and Twelve Days of Christmas for Shan’s extended Chinese family. This “not just a barbecue” smoker, roaster, grill, pizza oven, kamado oven all in one unleashed a creative surge and I’ve discovered even more about the joy of experimenting with recipes and preparing ingredients – long slow cooking and pizzas on my Egg, fast stir-fries in my wok and sometimes a combination of both. I’ve even tried a Chinese take on pizzas.
I continue to write about travel in Italy, China and Australia, often wishing that I could write mid-experience but knowing I must put such thoughts to one side so that I can live the moment and not just be an observer. Sometimes that means I’ve a series of half drafted blog posts and little time to complete them. But the very act of recalling the experience later to write about it helps cement the memories in my mind.
Italy was my first love long before China snuck under my skin but I’ve got used to the idea that I have no hope of Italian relatives now that I have Chinese and Welsh ones. Instead I have surreptitiously “adopted” my friend and Italian teacher Solange and her Irish twin sons who have a gorgeous mix of Argentinian and Romanian blood in them too. They are my Italian “family” in more ways than one and the resonance between Chinese, Irish and Italian families are strong.
Once in a while I will review a restaurant. I could happily spend a lot of my time reviewing the fruits of my favourite hobby – finding interesting places to eat out – but there are others who do that much better than me and I rapidly run out of superlatives. Still, when I find a gem or a local treasure, I cant resist writing about it.
And from time to time I write about family or rather what it is like to be a long distance granny and the mother to two children that live on the opposite side of the world. Sometimes those pieces feel like the best bits of writing I do, straight from the heart, written in one sitting, effortlessly. There is always a risk that writing like that will paint an artificial picture of an idyllic family life. That’s not the case of course. Every family has it’s share of tragedies, traumas and day to day tensions. But for me these pieces are a release valve for the overwhelming experience of becoming a grandparent, a love for which nothing – not even being a parent – quite prepares you, and also for the realisation that your relationship with your children can deepen and strengthen as they become adults, even when they live on the other side of the world.
So to mark the second anniversary of the blog I did a bit of reorganising of its contents to make the posts you are interested in easier to find. Most of the feedback I get on the comes via Twitter and I know, for instance, that some of you who follow Shananigans never cook any of the recipes but enjoy the underlying stories, the glimpses of Chinese family life and the tales of travel to exotic places. Blog posts that are mainly about family, travel or food reviews now have their own categories.
Other readers have their favourite Chinese recipes that they cook again and again. These are now grouped, by main ingredient, in the “Recipes” section of the blog which is sub-divided into Chinese recipes, those for the Big Green Egg and Irish or fusion recipes that don’t fit neatly into either of the other categories. I’ve put in a “Menu Plans” section too because I’m always looking for ideas for how to put various recipes together into a manageable meal.
There is a growing band of BBQ enthusiasts here in Ireland and abroad who go straight for the latest Big Green Egg recipe which is why I have grouped those together. Indeed those of us who purchased our Eggs from A Room Outside in Limerick are rapidly forming our own little support group sharing tips and recipes and fun. Barbecuing is not just for the boys!
Recently I added a list of my favourite blogs to the home page, blogs that I follow and return to again and again because I love the way they are written and they suck me into the writer’s world. I will add to this slowly over time.
I have sometimes thought of taking a hiatus in blogging, a pause to regroup as life gets so busy. But then a germ of an idea pops into my head and I feel the need to write there and then. So my posts have become a little more sporadic but still emerge, as if with a mind of their own, about three or four times each month. Right now I have half written posts about Hong Kong, Sardinia, Big Green Egg essentials, some new recipes from Wei Wei and a few new recipes of my own. Any day now I will finish some of them off.
Over the last two years I have made many new friends through the blog, friends who I feel I know very well through their reaction to what I write even though in some cases we haven’t even met. Thank you for your responses and encouragement that meet the need of every writer, even us amateurs, to be heard and to feel that sometimes a small something of what we write has a ripple effect out into the lives of others and an echoing resonance that connects us all around the world.
Julie
JulieOneill@me.com

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.