a photo blog - feb 2016

This post is mostly photos of the dishes that I made recently.

Thai basil pork with long beans with a side dish of cailan with Chinese sausage

soup noodle with thin pork slices

this is another kind of Chinese salted mustard stems

Sichuan "peppercorn" - it is not really peppercorn

yellow chives - it cost $10 a pound; the process of etiolation (by deprive the Asian chives of light) similar to white asparagus

 results in a steam minced pork dish

another  soup noodle with thin pork slices

preparing braised cuttlefish - 鹵水墨魚

 it is important to choose a pot with appropriate size

 grated ginger and garlic

this is a piece of aged tangerine skin 陳皮 used as herb/spice

there is salt, sugar, soy sauce, sake, and dashi

the secret of preparing braised cuttlefish is keeping the temperature very low

i had to offset the pot to prevent the temperature from getting too high

these are the tentacles and the head

these are the pieces of the body

if you are not familiar, this is really just my healthy recipe of the dyed-orange cuttlefish 鹵水墨魚 you see in Chinese barbecue (shi lap 燒臘) shops

preparing a steamed glutenous rice dish

 glutenous rice is pre-soaked an hour or more

there is no better cooking utensil than this bamboo basket and the aluminum pot

i hand roasted some peanuts to go with the glutenous rice

steamed minced pork with eggs

a pasta dish with lobster meat

Chinese roasted pig I buy from time to time from a Chinese barbecue (shi lap 燒臘) shop

more soup noodles - this one with shiitake mushroom and clams

still more soup noodles - this one with lobster, shiitake mushroom, and clams

i keep the noodles in another bowl to prevent it from getting soggy - an inspiration from Japanese tsukemen

this one with flat noodles

braised cuttlefish as snack

1/2 piece of New York steak with lobster

a Chinese clay pot rice

the other 1/2 of the New York steak

daikon radish braised in pork neck bone

steak with a side of watercress

Taiwanese style beef soup rice noodles

Taiwanese style braised beef made from beef shank

Louisiana inspired barbecue oysters

 still more Taiwanese style beef soup noodle with daikon radish

crab meat and cheese omelette

i recently came across a supply of duck legs; not knowing the quality i bought 6 pieces to test before buying more; duck confit is very easy to make if you plan well and maintain a supply of duck fat

My first taste of duck confit (confit de canard) occurred when I was in Paris visiting Pompidou. There were so much to see and I was hungry by lunch time. I went to a bistro/cafe nearby to grab a bite to eat. I order a serving of duct leg, which unbeknown to me at the time is duck confit which is serve in all French bistros/cafes. Years later I would taught myself how to make this dish.

i was a bit short of duck fat so i added some cow tallow that I rendered from bone marrow off a cow three years ago; this tallow is the most fragrant of any fat that i know and keeps in room temperature almost indefinitely

after the duck legs have been marinated for 24 hours they are ready to be slowly cooked in the fat

Some recipes tell you to put the pot of fat and the duck legs in an oven. It is dumb as you will waste so much energy using an oven - and heat up the house. Just cook them in a hob like I do and save a lot of fuel.

Cooking the duck legs in duck fat under low temperature is very similar to sous-vide.

maintaining a very low temperature is key - note that I have to offset the copper sauce pan on the hob to prevent the temperature from getting too high

after about 4 hours the duck legs are done - you can easily tell by the exposed bone; if you braise it too long you would have a hard time removing it in one piece as the leg can just fall into pieces when you lift it out of the oil

i put a leg in a stainless steel dish to brown the skin under a gas infra broiler (salamander) before serving

duck confit served with a side of Chinese choy sum 菜心; choy sum is a vegetable related to rapeseed plant in which Canola (rapeseed) oil is made from

The duck legs passed my taste test so I went back to the store and bought 10 more. You can store duck confit almost indefinitely in duck fat. A common misconception is duck is very fat. The fact is duck fat concentrate on the skin and the meat is much leaner than chicken. The key in preparing duck is to render out most of the fat in the skin.

If you do it right, you would end up with more duck fat than you start with each time.

duck confit should have the meat just falls off the bone, and almost melt in your mouth; i can eat 10 of this at a time if not exercise will power; one leg goes a long way unless you are Henry VIII

the shucked oysters with toppings ready for grilling with charcoals

bbq oysters and duck confit

more duck confit meal

still more duck confit meal - i made some semi-mashed potato; i dislike finely mashed potato with consistency of baby food

a very delicious meal

rarely one can find duck wings so I snapped up a pack too; to be made just like duck confit; in Chiu Chow 潮州 cuisine, duck wing is value more than any other parts of the duck