It has been a lovely Christmas and fantastic to have Shane home from Beijing for a few days. He came bearing gifts from Shan’s MaMa who is enjoying my attempts to learn how to cook Chinese food. She took herself off to the local market with Shan and Shane and asked Shane to make himself scare so that she would be able to strike a hard bargain, without a lao wai (foreigner) present, for some of the ingredients I might need.
The haul she sent me includes Sichuan pepper (hua jiao), star anise (ba jiao), cassia bark (gui pi), wood ear fungus (hei muer), facing heaven chillies (gan la jiao), toban dijan bean paste from Pixian (dou ban jiang), sesame paste (zhi ma jiang), black fermented soy beans (dou chi), lots of Chinese garlic (da suan) and other items I haven’t quite identified yet.
I will have so much fun cooking with these ingredients over coming months and meanwhile my kitchen smells just like an Asian food market. Thank you MaMa.
Shane and Shan added some lovely Chinese serving dishes and bowls and a USB key encased in a fragment of Ming Dynasty China, a wonderful example of old meets new in today’s China.
I love the laziness of St. Stephen’s Day with lots of left overs to be used up and not too much cooking to be done. With the year that’s in it I wanted to try out a Chinese take on the left over turkey so, to start with, here are a few variations on Bang Bang Turkey salad which you might enjoy.
The name “bang bang” comes from the Mandarin word for ‘stick’ bang a wooden stick used to beat the cooked chicken traditionally used in this dish to tenderise it so that it shreds easily. If you wish you can use a rolling pin to flatten your cooked turkey so that it shreds easily when you tear it with your hands. Chinese cooks will often serve this simple cold dish alongside other hot and more complicated dishes.
This is a very versatile cold turkey salad which you can make with whatever ingredients you have to hand. You can serve it on a simple bed of cucumber or toss some salad leaves into the mix. Or you can create a more colourful platter by using a bed of vermicelli noodles, carrots, cucumber and even radish. If your turkey is a bit dry, moisten it with a little stock. And of course you can also use steamed chicken or left over roast chicken.
You can make up the dressing to suit taste and mood on a given day much as you would play around with a vinaigrette for salad. The ingredients for the dressing usually include soy sauce, chilli oil, ground roasted Sichuan pepper, vinegar, garlic and sesame oil. I’ve suggested a few variations below, based on recipes by Ching-He Huang, FuchsiaDunlop and The Food of China but please enjoy experimenting.
To make your ground Sichuan pepper, roast some peppercorns over a medium heat for a few minutes, stirring occasionally, until golden and very fragrant, then grind down in a pestle and mortar. Any left over will keep for a week or so in an airtight jar.
Bang Bang Turkey – Liang Ban Huoji
Continue reading Bang Bang Turkey Salad
Tag: Turkey left overs
Shopping List for Turkey Leftovers Shananigans Style
Ah Christmas. Bittersweet. Shane home from Beijing for a few days. Wonderful to have him around. Shan and MaMa in Beijing as Shan is too advanced in pregnancy to travel. Claire and Mike visiting friends in Melbourne. I would love to bundle them all together under one roof here in Ireland, even just for Christmas Day.
From the time Claire first moved to London over 10 years ago, part of our Christmas ritual is that she makes Jamie Oliver’s Italian meatballs on Christmas Eve whenever she is here. It doesn’t feel the same to have them without her but Shane had a longing for a western style supper as a change from Chinese food so I cooked them last night. We use the recipe in our battered copy of The Naked Chef but you will find a variation of the recipe here.
I also baked a batch of ginger biscuits as Shane had a yearning for this memory of his childhood when I posted the recipe for them a few months back. Now I’m sure that when he comes back from meeting his friends in the pub he will enjoy both…
I’ve spent the evening sorting out how I will do the Christmas dinner this year – what stuffing recipes for the turkey, what vegetables, what starter, what dessert. As there will only be 3 of us I was tempted to have a crown of turkey but Christmas just wouldn’t seem the same without a whole bird roasting in the oven. So I ordered the smallest turkey I could find and now I’m thinking about the perennial problem of what to do with the leftovers.
Usually I start looking up recipes on Stephen’s Day when the shops are mostly closed and stocks of fresh vegetables have run out. This year I’m trying to get ahead of myself and be prepared so I’ve dug out some recipes for some simple salads that give a Chinese twist to turkey leftovers. I’m posting the ingredients you will need now in case you also want to pick up any of them as part of your final Christmas grocery shopping and I will post the full recipes the day after Stephen’s Day.
1. Bang Bang Turkey
Continue reading Shopping List for Turkey Leftovers Shananigans Style