I didn't start out loving celery. As a kid, I knew it as that crunchy vegetable on raw vegi platter served with ranch or some other kind of dip. (I never eat it with peanut butter, as I didn't like peanut butter. I know. That makes me weird for an American.) Or it was that slimy veg in stir-fries at Americanized Chinese restaurants. Anyway, I wasn't all that fond of it, so celery was not something I kept stocked in the refrigerator. Then one day I decided to make Marcella Hazan's Bolognese Meat Sauce and it required celery. Well, I figured it was there for a reason, so I duly cooked my bolognese with celery. Cooked so many hours in milk and wine and all the other tasty good stuff in bolognese, the celery became soft. Not slimy. Not crunchy. Just right. Okay, celery, you win that one.
I started keeping chopped dried celery in my spice cabinet. That way I could rehydrate small amounts for dishes that needed a bit of the celery flavor.
Then my in-laws gave us Fuchsia Dunlop's Sichuan cookbook. She features quite a few stir-fries with celery. Is she for real? That was my thought at the time. Actually it was probably more like this: "For real? Celery? Is she actually for real? Is that authentic?" But I try to keep an open mind about food, and as far as making authentic Chinese food adapted to Western kitchens is concerned (or not, as she's studied in Chinese kitchens) Dunlop has excellent credentials.
Rehydrated celery was not going to cut it for Chinese stir-fries, which meant buying fresh celery.
From Dunlop I learned about de-stringing the celery, which vastly improves the texture in stir-fries. (A peeler makes de-stringing the celery a snap.) And I learned that I love stir-fried celery. Chicken with Vinegar, Dry Fried Chicken, Stir-Fried Chicken Hotchpotch, Dried-Fried Beef Slivers, Boiled Beef in Fiery Sauce, Fish Fragrant Pork Slivers. All these delicious dishes used celery. I came to like celery so much that I adapted her Sichuanese stir-fry potato slivers dish for celery. These days my vegi bin seems empty if I don't have a head of celery in there.
So I was delighted when paging through her newest cookbook, Every Grain of Rice, I saw this recipe and swooned. It was, of course, the first recipe I made. And it's amazingly simple and delicious.
Sichuanese "Send-The-Rice-Down" Chopped Celery with Ground Beef
Every Grain of Rice by Fuchsia Dunlop
11 oz celery (American or Chinese, but she says Chinese is better)
3 Tbs cooking oil
4 oz ground beef
1 1/2 Tbs Sichuan chilli bean paste
1 1/2 Tbs finely chopped ginger
light soy sauce to taste (optional)
1 tsp Chinkiang vinegar (brown rice vinegar)
Start your rice and set some water to boil for blanching the celery. This dish cooks quickly, so I would begin stir-frying when your rice cooker finishes.
De-string the celery. (I run my peeler down the outer convex side to take the string layer off. I don't worry about the concave side.) Dice into one cm pieces. (Cut lengthwise into 1cm (3/8) strips, then chop the strips into small square pieces.) Blanch celery in boiling water for about 30 seconds to "break its rawness." Drain.
Heat oil in seasoned wok over high flame. Add ground meat and stir-fry until cooked. Break up pieces as needed. If it is fatty beef, I like to spoon out some of the fat. Add chili bean paste and stir-fry a bit more until fragrant and the oil is red. Add ginger and stir-fry for a few seconds. Add celery.
Stir-fry until celery is hot but still crunchy. As you cook, season with a bit of soy sauce to taste. Stir in vinegar. Serve with rice.
Kitchen Chick's notes:
I often add a bit more beef. You can adjust the chili bean paste to taste and make it quite a spicy hot dish that really needs that rice to send it down!
I have never used ordinary white or clear rice wine vinegar in dishes calling for darker vinegars. Chinkiang vinegar, as well as the chili bean paste, is easy to find in well-stocked Chinese groceries.
Seasoning a wok: There's the "big" seasoning you do to prepare a new wok (or restore one that has lost its patina), and then there's the seasoning before cooking a dish. This second one helps with keeping food from sticking to the surface. Heat a bit of oil in a wok. Swirl it around to coat the wok until smoking. Pour out oil. Then add the oil you're going to cook with.
Tap tap tap... Is this thing on?
Oh, hello!
It's been a long sabbatical, but the past few month I've been getting the urge to post so I'm back. We'll see where this goes and for how long!
I was originally going to talk about one of my favorite vegetables: celery. Yes, you heard that right. I love celery, especially stir-fried celery. And talk about Fuschia Dunlop's newest cookbook Every Grain of Rice. If you're serious about Chinese food, you need this cookbook. In fact, why haven't you already ordered it? If you have her other cookbooks, you'll see a small number of repeated recipes, but they are greatly outnumbered by new ones. It's only January and I'm ready to declare it a top contender for cookbook of the year. There are eleven more months for publishers to come out with something to wow me, and I wish them luck because Dunlop has set a high bar with her third cookbook.
Okay... back to where I was going to go, even if not originally. See, I read this article about quinoa production in South America, and that got me thinking about food choices. I try to buy local and (mostly) in season. With refrigeration and global production and shipping making many seasonal produce items essentially available all year around, our expectations about what we should be able to find and eat year around are greatly changed from a few generations ago. When is that okay and when does it cause problems? I've read about water-guzzling asparagus crops, while making Peruvian farmers better off, are also draining away Peru's aquifers, all so we can have off-season asparagus. What happens when they run out of water for asparagus? What problems do I contribute to when I seek out imported Asian ingredients so I can cook Chinese and Thai dishes, my preferred cuisines at home.
Then, while looking for that UK Guardian article so I could link to it, I came across this personal account of someone filming a documentary about quinoa production in Bolivia. Daily Kos summarizes a mix of sources reporting/claiming both good and bad outcomes from quinoa's popularity.
I love buying local. I support local farmers and local non-chain stores (and, I admit, I go to a chain or two for some items I can't get elsewhere). And not only do I want to support local farmers, but I also want to reduce the number of miles my food has traveled. But there are items I can't get locally, and I'm not an extreme locavore. So while things aren't as dire as the Guardian article makes it out to be, at least for quinoa, I am still thinking about what this means for my own food choices.
P.S. 2013 is the International Year of Quinoa.
I have been killing cabbage worms for several weeks now, dealing death twice a day — morning and evening — to the munching green worms of cabbage destruction. I had been crushing the green worms under my thumb. Okay, just the tiny ones. I'm too squeamish to crush the big ones. They get tossed far away or ground under foot.
Today, however, I saw the summer's first Japanese beetles in my garden, and that required a new plan.
I had half-hearted-ly tried to control them in previous years, but this year, with my renewed beautiful veggie garden in their new raised beds and my mom's phlox and other flowers from her garden transplanted to my garden.
It was time to get serious, and preferably without chemicals.
Later I will apply nematodes and milky spore to go after the next generation when in their grub stage, but for now I have opted for the bucket of death, which I am pleased to say looks an awful lot like this bucket. I put a few inches of water and some dish soap into my trusty blue bucket, gloved up, and went off to wage war, up close and personal.
Before, the death I dealt to my insect foes was quick, but now I deal in drowning, and it is surprisingly satisfying, yet also a little disturbing. I try not to look too closely as my captured foes go to their watery graves. I dropped cabbage worms into soapy suds, shook beetles from flower petals, and even knocked one right out of the air and into the bucket as it was flying. I stood vigilant and quiet, surveyed the battle field for the enemy, learned to identify the flight style and patterns of the beetle versus bees and wasps. Even scolded a bee for getting annoyed at my presence. Listen, bee, I'm defending your food source. Get out of my way.
The Japanese beetles are not getting my mom's phlox.
That's really all I have to say about it.
The mostly flower side of my garden, including the echinacea and phlox that Japanese beetles do love.
The Bacon Dinner sold out within days, but the other events are still open. If you're not sure whether you want to spend a lot of money on this, you can check it out FOR FREE at the Artisan Market on Sunday!
We'll be at the Artisan Market. Last year, Joe went to the equivalent event and they had a lot of amazing samples -- different kinds of artisan bacon, pork belly courtesy of San Street, the list goes on. Last year, they also had some Ojibwe dishes using bacon; those won't be there this year, but we're excited to see what they come up with instead...
During the weekdays, my breakfasts are simple and fast, and often eaten in snatched bites as I finish getting ready for work. Oatmeal or a bowl of cold cereal, sometimes topped with fresh fruit, and water. On the weekends, however, I get to cook something fun.
One of my favorite easy savory weekend breakfasts is chopped hard chorizo pan fried, diced potatoes pan fried in the flavorful oil left behind by the chorizo, and a fried egg. But I don't always have chorizo on hand. Fortunately, this very flexible dish can be made with sausage, diced ham, or ground pork. This morning, I used ground pork seasoned with chorizo sausage seasoning, ancho chili powder, and whole coriander and a touch of cayenne to add more heat, but you can use any number of different seasonings such as regular chili powder or for a smoky flavor chipotle chilie powder. Don't want a Southwest theme? What about diced ham with sage and garlic? The possibilities are endless.
I don't have amounts or even exact spice suggestions. This is one of those dishes I throw together, and season according to how I want them that day.
Fried Egg Over Spicy Potatoes and Meat
Peel and chop potatoes in about 1/2 inch size. Soak potatoes in a bowl of cold water to remove excess starch.
Chop the chorizo or sausage or ham. If using ground pork, mix with salt and spices. Possible spices are chorizo sausage seasoning, chili powder, coriander seeds. Heat a bit of oil in a saute pan large enough to accommodate your potatoes and meat. Cook your meat but not dry. Remove from pan and leave any flavored oil behind.
While the meat is cooking you can drain the potatoes. I like to put the drained potatoes in a clean kitchen towel and shake out excess water.
Cook potatoes and crushed garlic in same pan. Add extra oil if necessary. Season with salt and add a bit of extra spices, especially if there wasn't enough spicy oil to flavor them. I like to use ancho chili powder. Cover and cook until done. Periodically press the garlic into and turn potatoes periodically to keep them from sticking to the pan too much, and to get the other sides to crisp up a bit. Want them crispier, then don't cover as that traps moisture. When potatoes are just about done, add meat, stir to mix, taste and correct for seasonings, and set to low to keep warm.
Heat pan, preferably non-stick, with a touch of oil. Cook eggs until desired done-ness. I like sunny-side up, but you can cook until set or even flip them to get both sides. I don't usually cook with non-stick pans, but they are fabulous for frying eggs.
Serve an egg over a serving of potatoes and meat along with some tabasco or your favorite hot sauce.