Char siu (蜜汁叉烧, literally “fork burn/roast”) is a famous Chinese roast pork dish. Not only is it served on its own, but it is commonly found in fried rice, noodle soups, and steamed buns (char siu bao/manapua).
Today this dish is often made with maltose, which is a malt sugar made from barley. Honey is a suitable substitute, and still used by many chefs as well. Also, many restaurants will use red dye to simulate that signature red roasted look – we’re going for the real deal in this recipe.
NOTE: An updated version of this recipe appears in my cookbook, The Ancestral Table.
If you’ve eaten at a Thai restaurant, you’ve probably had sticky rice. In many parts of Southeast Asia (Laos and Northern Thailand, for example) eating with your hands is still totally cool, and sticky rice is how they get the job done.
Sticky rice is also referred to as “glutinous rice” but that doesn’t mean it has gluten – it simply refers to its glue-like texture. It can also be labeled as sweet rice or mochi rice. It also comes in short or long grain varieties – the rice I used is short grain.
To celebrate my first year of Paleo/Gluten-Free eating, I’ve decided to do a giveaway. In the giveaway you’ll find some staples of our family’s diet – coconut oil, coconut milk, and Thai curry pastes. I’m also including a copy of the Easy Paleo: 21 Practical Ways to Simplify Your Paleo Life e-Book, graciously donated by Jennie at Easy Paleo.
In addition to getting real stuff, I’m also giving away something a little more personal: I’ll create a recipe especially for you, and post it on this site. My only stipulation is that it has to be a dish that’s traditional in nature (as in something that has existed for a while, no made-up meals like “turkey asparagus surprise”). Other than that, I have no limitations on what you choose – it can be from wherever in the world you want, as difficult as you can imagine, and tailored to whatever dietary restrictions you may have. If you don’t have any restrictions in particular, it will be made with the same guidelines I use to cook every day – meaning that it will be made with natural ingredients and without grains (except white rice) or legumes. Give me about a month to research and test your dish before I publish it.
Here’s the loot:
1. A copy of Easy Paleo: 21 Practical Ways to Simplify Your Paleo Life e-Book ($5 value)
2. One 16oz container of Whole Foods expeller pressed virgin coconut oil ($10 value)
3. Three 4oz Maesri curry pastes (green, red, and panang)* ($9 value)
4. One 14oz can of Orchids coconut milk ($2 value)
5. A personalized recipe created at your request (priceless)
* Note that the curry pastes have sugar listed in their ingredients (although it’s pretty far down in the list). If you are completely avoiding sugar altogether, let me know and I’ll send a second container of coconut oil instead.
Here’s how to enter the giveaway:
1. “Like” The Domestic Man facebook page and leave a comment letting me know you did it.
2. Follow me on Twitter and leave a comment letting me know you did it.
3. Subscribe to this site’s RSS feed and leave a comment letting me know you did it.
4. Tweet about this giveaway and leave a comment letting me know you did it.
5. Share this giveaway on Facebook and leave a comment letting me know you did it.
Your options for entering the giveaway are stackable, so you could potentially enter five times. You don’t need to leave five comments, just let me know everything you did in one comment. The giveaway ends midnight Sunday, December 18th, and I will select a winner using a random number generator sometime thereafter. Good luck!
Update: Congratulations to brunson71799 who is the big winner of The Domestic Man’s Great Giveaway of 2011! Thanks to everyone who participated.
NOTE: An updated version of this recipe appears in my cookbook, The Ancestral Table.
Chowders get their name from the French word “chaudière” (kettle, pot), which in turn is derived from the Latin “caldāria” (cauldron). There’s quite a rivalry regarding the white, creamy New England Clam Chowder and the clear, tomato-based Manhattan Clam Chowder – in fact, a bill was introduced into the Maine legislature in 1939 attempting to make it illegal to add tomatoes to clam chowder.
Here’s another interesting fact – it wasn’t until the Second Vatican Council during the 1960s that Catholics were permitted to eat meat on Fridays (the abstinence period has been reduced to Lent now). To provide a seafood option to Catholics, restaurants across the country served clam chowder on Fridays, and the tradition remains today.
Creating a hearty, traditional wheat-free chowder is quite a challenge, since they are usually thickened with flour or soup crackers. Using starchy russet potatoes would naturally thicken the chowder, but also leave you with disintegrated potatoes. And then it struck me: I can cook the chowder using sturdier red potatoes, and thicken it with potato starch – leaving us with the best of both worlds.
It’s probably pretty hard to track all of the food-related recommendations I make on my site, so I set up an Amazon.com store that you can use to easily peruse my favorite cookware, gadgets, ingredients, and cookbooks. I’ll be updating it as time goes on, so be sure to check back often – I made a handy little link to the store on the right-hand side of the site.
Keep in mind that while I totally recommend all of the products in my store, you may find better prices for many of the items locally (especially the food items). The cookware, gadgets, and books are priced pretty competitively though.
Good luck and happy shopping!
Creating a turkey gravy is pretty easy. Essentially, you just use all the stuff that comes from cooking a turkey. The only real trick is get the taste right. Luckily, you’ve got me to figure that part out for you.
Note: I’ve tweaked this recipe over the years, and HERE is my definitive method/recipe.
For Thanksgiving this year I tried my hand at roasting a turkey on the grill. The resulting bird was crispy on the outside and juicy and tender on the inside, and only took a few minutes longer than roasting it in the oven. Also, adding woods chips imparts an authentic smokey flavor that really made the turkey stand out on the Thanksgiving table. Lastly, it frees up the oven for other endeavors!
Also, when grilling a turkey (or roasting it in the oven, for that matter), you want to use a v-rack (often called a roasting rack). We just started using one recently and it’s amazing how evenly it cooks the bird, since it allows air to circulate around the entire turkey. Depending on how your grill plates run, though, the v-rack may fall through the plates; to prevent this, put the v-rack on a grill pan.
Here in the United States, mussels have a bad reputation as being a “lesser” shellfish. I happen to disagree. True, they may have a less intense flavor than clams or oysters, and they sure like to turn into a rubbery / chewy mess with a quickness, but with the right amount of care you can make something remarkable. And to top it all off, mussels can be found for relatively cheap compared to their more popular cousins.
This preparation is a Provençal (SE coast of France) dish. The “à la marinière” part of this dish translates to “mariner’s style”, which is when shellfish is prepared with white wine and herbs. Although the white wine really enhances the mussels’ taste, I like to think that it’s the butter and cream that really do the trick. Either way, you’re in for a treat.
For me (and probably many others), smothered pork chops remind me of being a kid. It is a generally easy way to make sure pork chops are both cooked thoroughly and not too tough or chewy, and many houses across America have their own variation. Unfortunately, too many of those recipes rely heavily on instant soup packets and/or cans, which are loaded with sodium, unhealthy oils, and wheat. In response, I set out to make a healthy alternative without compromising on taste. Here’s how it turned out.
The Domestic Man 