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Adventures With Sauerkraut in Shanghai

March 5, 2012 by MaryAnne

You know what we have a lot of in Shanghai in mid-winter (aside from rain, rain, zero visibility, unheated buildings and, er, rain)? Cabbages. We have a lot of cabbages. All sorts of cabbages.

Aside from the usual assortment of sturdy greens, turnips, radishes, leeks and potatoes (both sweet and regular), our sidewalk veggie vendors have stacks of huge cabbages filling up their tiny little shops.

Until now, I had pretty much just stuck to using the elegant, pale savoy-esque cabbage in our soups, where it melts down to nearly nothing and doesn’t make the house smell like death. You can stuff most of a cabbage the size of a small baby into a crock pot full of chicken soup and a few hours later no one will ever know it was there. It’s that subtle. It’s like a Brassicaceae ninja.

After a few months of covert cabbage action, I decided I wanted to do something with a little more flair, a little more (dare I say it, for such a flatus-friendly vegetable?) oomph.

I decided to go on a fermentation bender. I decided to make sauerkraut. After all, the possibilities are endless with a reliable choucroute stash!

Reuben sandwiches, possibly improvised with Hunan smoked beef and some toaster oven focaccia!

Faux’rogies, the bastardized Polish/Ukrainian staple, made with Xinjiang noodle dough and stuffed with wok paneer, mashed potatoes, minced sauerkraut!

Sauteed sauerkraut with bacon and onions on the side of absolutely everything!

This enthusiasm is the reason why my lovely crock pot has been out of commission for about two weeks now, stuffed as it is with a vast quantity of sliced cabbage, fermenting in its own brine. (more…)

Category Improbable Things, Uncategorized | Tags: Cabbage,frying,garlic,OMFG Yum,pierogies,wok | 11 Comments
The Lazy Laowai’s Guide to Toaster Oven Focaccia

March 4, 2012 by MaryAnne

As you’ve probably noticed by now, I have a thing for unleavened bread, especially unleavened bread made in the wok using a highly unlikely Uyghur noodle dough recipe. I’ve turned that into chapatis, tortillas, pierogies, spaghetti, medieval dumplings and ravioli. I keep a ball of it in the fridge at all times, just as others might keep, say, a tube of Pillsbury Crescent Roll dough or a jar of Velveeta.

Now, although I still have my softball sized lump of Uyghur dough in the fridge (made lovelier by using the leftover whey from last week’s foray into cheese making), I wanted to celebrate the fact that neither I nor Doug is working this weekend. You have no idea how rare an occurrence this is. Usually I’m away, and sometimes if I’m not, he is.

This weekend, we are both at home and we’re honouring this by barely leaving the house, drinking a ton of coffee, watching Ancient Aliens (Mayan Prophesy! The Greys! Giorgio and his enormous hair!) and generally being immobile sloths. I made tacos for lunch yesterday (noodle dough tortillas!) and we ordered pizza for dinner.

And that pizza got me thinking.

Pizza here, the edible kind, doesn’t come cheap. I think we paid about 120rmb for ours from a place in Taikang Lu, from a joint that has access to proper jalepenos, ricotta, artichoke hearts, salami and all. I think that’s approximately the monthly salary of a goat herder in Yunnan.

I thought, hm, I wonder if I could make pizza? I mean, if not in my wok with Uyghur noodle dough, then maybe in our oversized counter-top toaster oven? (more…)

Category Baked Things, Improbable Things, Uncategorized | Tags: Flatbread,garlic,OMFG Yum,Toaster Oven,Yeast Bread | 8 Comments
Soft Cheese; Hard Wok: Experimenting with Fromage

March 1, 2012 by MaryAnne

I’ve made cheese here before. You may recall my happy forays into mascarpone and ricotta a few months back. As well, over on my other blog, the non-foodie one, I delved briefly into goat milk paneer when I went home last summer. It was creamy and gorgeous and fantastically goaty.

Alas, I have no access to goats here. Also, one of the key ingredients that I had been using for all my previous soft cheeses- lemon juice- seems to be out of season right now in Shanghai. There are a few over priced limes in a few shops but no lemons. I wanted to make paneer again, just to see if it could be done in a wok with irradiated, non-organic, non-goaty Chinese milk and rice wine vinegar.

It can.

I’m starting to wonder if there’s anything that can’t be done with a wok and rice wine vinegar. Seriously. I think I may need to include them in my Take Over The World tool kit. And maybe a goat, too. To make a nice wheel of herbed chèvre to spread on crackers when I’m taking a break from ruling said world.

Help! Help! I'm being kidnapped! Geddit? KID napped! I'm a goat! Hahaha!

Anyway. (more…)

Category Improbable Things, Milky Cheesy Things, Uncategorized | Tags: Cheese,Indian,Toaster Oven,wok | 11 Comments
Xinjiang Noodle Dough Enchiladas. Really.

February 27, 2012 by MaryAnne

With my crock pot full of fermenting cabbage this month, I’ve had to start re-thinking my usual culinary fall-back techniques of, well, throwing everything in the fridge into the crock pot and hoping for the best. Since I went a bit overboard on tacos and spaghetti bolognese last week, I thought I’d veer out into a whole new direction.

Enchiladas!

Now, when we were parked down in Oaxaca about three years ago, en route to wherever our money ran out, I ate a lot of enchiladas. I even ate zucchini blossom enchiladas on the Day of the Dead. I’ve had mole enchiladas of all hues, and have delved into both the roja and the verde. I’ve also had some lovely, bastardized, gringa’fied ones since- even some surprisingly good ones here in Shanghai.

I haven’t, however, made enchiladas in Shanghai. I have no idea why, as I’m pretty much the Queen of Tacos and Quesadillas in this household (mainly because Doug can’t exactly be crowned Queen).

However, with the crock pot being used elsewhere and my desire to delve into unexplored realms at a reasonable high, I started researching chicken enchiladas. (more…)

Category Baked Things, Improbable Things, Milky Cheesy Things, Spicy Things, Uncategorized | Tags: Chicken,garlic,Mexican,OMFG Yum,Toaster Oven,tortilla,wok | 17 Comments
Dragon-Baiting Roasted Chili-Garlic Wonton Crisps

February 17, 2012 by MaryAnne

I spent most of last month under water in Thailand, thinking about what I’d do differently when back in Shanghai. Like Chinese New Year resolutions. I tend to have a lot of these big thinks when I’m in places where they can’t be implemented, then when I get back to where they could be implemented, I’ve either forgotten about my ideas or I’ve given up already.

My under water thoughts were mostly about my sanity, my health, my creativity. I had plans to write more, to start running again, to eat more veggies. I was going to drink more herbal tea and drink less alcohol. I was going to go without sugar for a month. I was going to experiment with making my own sauerkraut, my own sour dough starter for bread. Did I mention the running?

Yeah.

No.

So we got back about a week ago and I’ve barely left the flat. I bought a box of wine and have been living on cheddar and crackers for most of the week, lying in bed catching up on three weeks’ worth of internet reading. I haven’t seen the inside of my gym since, er, November?

As a Tiger, I seem to not be able to take the year of the Dragon seriously, giving it the middle paw-pad with great insolence, refusing to participate.

This really needs to stop. (more…)

Category Baked Things, Improbable Things, Uncategorized | Tags: chips,garlic,OMFG Yum,Toaster Oven,Vegan | 13 Comments
Awesome Slow-Cooker Spicy Shredded Beef Tacos

January 2, 2012 by MaryAnne

I’ve been meaning to do a taco post for ages. It’s one of our dinner staples here these days. I’ve made beef tacos that were browned in the wok, then marinated in the jus from the de-glazing, sliced thinly and sauteed in garlic, onion and chilies. I’ve also done pulled pork ones and ground beef ones. All have been awesome and utterly Sino-friendly.

About 3 years ago, we spent some time in Mexico before moving to Shanghai. It was there that I discovered the glories of piping hot soft tacos with spicy shredded beef and fresh salsa. These were tiny little flour tortillas the size of your palm, not the hard shells and certainly not those gargantuan wraps that you find in the supermarkets. They weren’t drowned in sour cream or fake cheddar. They were very simple and very good.

Each little tortilla we found at street stalls had a dollop of something meaty (or beany) on it- maybe sauteed chorizo or shredded chicken or grilled beef or pork or some crispy body part hacked up into bite sized pieces- and was served with a few fresh salsas (verde, roja, fresca), cilantro, lime, maybe some onion. I was partial to the salsa verde but you can’t get fresh tomatillos here. They were magnificent.

What we do here is very similar, or at least as similar as you can get when living in China.

For the tortilla, I tend to use my Xinjiang noodle dough (3 cups flour, 1 cup water, 2 teaspoons salt, mix, knead, rest, roll-out) and roll it out very, very thinly. You could also try this one or this one. The thinness lets it puff up like a chapati in the wok and gives it a soft airiness that is delicious and chewy.

I make my own salsa fresca with cherry tomatoes, cilantro, onion and chilies, marinated a few hours with lime juice (when limes are available) and a bit of crunchy kosher salt. If you can’t get fresh limes, then lemons will do, as will Chinese rice wine vinegar.

Those are the basics.

Today I want to show you how to make spicy shredded beef in the crock pot to go in the tacos. The recip e said it’d take 10 hours but mine was done in barely 5 hours. Go figure. (more…)

Category Improbable Things, Spicy Things, Uncategorized | Tags: Beef,crock pot,Flatbread,Mexican,OMFG Yum,spicy,tortilla | 10 Comments
Brown Sugar Toaster Oven Christmas Cookies

December 24, 2011 by MaryAnne

It’s Christmas Eve and I am sick again. This time I have a cold and managed to set a world record for most consecutive sneezes in a single morning. We attempted to remedy this at lunch by going out for a Christmas themed Hunanese meal, with everything red and green, garlicky and heavy with all shades of fiery vitamin-C rich chillies. I’m still sick but at least my immune system has something to work with.

In spite of my fevered, sneezy, dopey countenance, I inexplicably felt determined to bake Christmas cookies this morning. This recipe for sugar cookies came to me from the lovely Beijing Dou (Mr Bean?) who got it from Big Oven. Another recipe, this one for toaster-oven friendly meringues, made its way through and may turn up here later in the week. I love crowd sourcing cookie ideas.

As I’m feeling stupidly ill (still), I’m going to copy and paste the instructions from the website and let my photos do most of the talking. Any photos involving close ups of my hands doing stuff are courtesy of my talented father.

These are marvellous cookies. We baked half this morning and will bake the other half of the batch later today. Very festive.

Dashing through the smog

(more…)

Category Baked Things, Sweet Things, Uncategorized | Tags: Christmas,cookies,OMFG Yum,Toaster Oven | 13 Comments
The Infamous Mega-Carrot Cake

December 22, 2011 by MaryAnne

As you may have noticed, I haven’t exactly written anything here for, um, a while. Which isn’t to say that I haven’t been cooking- oh no. No. I’ve been Little Miss Cooks-A-Lot this month as my parental units are in town for the holidays and everyone needs to be fed and fed well. Their lips and digestive systems are slowly adjusting to the fact that I tend to use dozens of firecracker chillies in pretty much everything I make, except cake and cookies. Though that may change with time. Brutally hot cake could be interesting.

One of the un-chillied things I’ve made a number of times during my bloggy absence is a carrot cake recipe I found on Epicurious.com. It was originally done on a whim, as I had a bag full of carrots in the fridge, bought from the veggie seller across the street. His carrots are enormous, plump and juicy.

I’d insert a rude joke here but that just seems gratuitous. I’ll let you titter as you see fit. (more…)

Category Baked Things, Sweet Things, Uncategorized | Tags: Autumn,Cake,Carrot Cake,OMFG Yum,Toaster Oven | 1 Comment
Not Your Grandma’s Bazlama: Turkish Wok Bread!

December 5, 2011 by MaryAnne

As you probably already know (or don’t care), I lived in Turkey for 6 years before moving to China. For the first 2 years before I moved to Istanbul, I lived in a small city called Kayseri, on the edge of Kapadokya (aka Cappadocia to the tourism brochures). For a single foreign woman moving to Turkey, it was probably an odd choice of first destinations. It’s isolated, traditional, religious and quite conservative. I was one of maybe 4 foreigners in a city of 800,000 people.

My friends there were big on, well, fresh local food.

Most of the women there who were my age were busy at home being housewives and a huge percentage of those (if I ever saw them) wore headscarves and those ubiquitous raincoats outdoors. I was pretty much alone in my uncovered pixie cut bright red hair and, um, unique fashion sense, a glaringly bright foreign beacon amongst the sea of dark mustached men in the streets. Genders were segregated, marriages were often arranged ones and unspoken social rules were complex and frequently, embarrassingly broken by me. (more…)

Category Baked Things, Improbable Things, Uncategorized | Tags: Autumn,Flatbread,OMFG Yum,Turkish,wok,Yeast Bread,Yogurt | 14 Comments
Chicken Soup Cure for Sino Black Lung

November 30, 2011 by MaryAnne

This was originally going to be my ode to caldo xochitl, the soup I first had in a tiny little cafe in San Cristobal de las Casas about 3 years ago. I should note that thereafter, I had it again in a few dozen more cafes in Mexico and then again in Nicaragua. It revolutionized the concept of chicken noodle soup for me.

Some versions of it had vermicelli in them, others had pieces of leftover boiled potato. Some were spicier, with wrinkly chipotle peppers to be found floating lopsidedly in the broth. Some were very delicately flavoured. Some had shredded chicken while others sliced it. Some were vegetarian, focusing on starchy squares of orange and yellow gourds. The thing that remained constant was that you added fresh, raw ingredients at the end: minced chilies, pieces of avocado, freshly squeezed lime juice, salsa fresca, vinegared onion, cilantro. It made for a wonderful contrast.

We have been making this at home here in Shanghai since we arrived- it’s super fast to throw together after a long day in the educational salt mines and it’s great for using up leftovers: a bit of spud here, some chicken there, a quarter of an onion, a fistful of cilantro, etc.

Unfortunately, that’s not what this post turned into. (more…)

Category Soupy Stewy Things, Spicy Things, Uncategorized | Tags: Autumn,crock pot,OMFG Yum,Pasta,soup | 6 Comments

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