chinese food

Cantonese Roast Duck

This is it: my last post before the limited edition hardcover version of The Heritage Cookbook is no longer available for purchase. This special edition shop will only be open until midnight Sunday, June 30th, because after that I must submit my order to the printer in time for an October delivery. We’ve sold a little over 500 copies at this point, which means I’ve reached my target goal and won’t be losing money off this endeavor. It’s a huge weight off my shoulders! Thank you to everyone who has purchased a copy for yourself or a loved one — your support means a lot to me, and I think you’re going to love the finished product.

So to celebrate this milestone, I’m sharing one of my crowning achievements from this book’s recipe development: a recipe for Cantonese roast duck that rivals the versions you’ll find in restaurants. I found that the trick to getting that crispy-all-over texture comes from lots of exposure to air: air out the chicken in the fridge, then brush on the glaze while airing it out with a fan, and propping the duck upright using a bottle so that the air hits every part of it.

Be warned that there are a few unconventional ingredients in this dish, but a) most Chinese markets will carry them at a fair price, b) you can find on them online for a little bit more (links below), and c) because they are all shelf stable, you won’t need to reinvest in these ingredients for some time. While you’re there at the market, pick up an extra Chinese rice wine bottle, the ones with a squared base — they’re the best bottles for keeping the duck solidly upright (see the picture above).

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Singapore Rice Noodles

Hi everyone, today’s recipe will be short and sweet – I’m currently feeling under the weather, but wanted to make sure I got a recipe out to you this week. Rather than entice you with a recipe from my upcoming cookbook, let’s check out one of my favorite recipes from Paleo Takeout: Singapore Rice Noodles (新洲米粉). It comes together in 20 minutes, and doesn’t need any exotic ingredients; if your pantry is stocked with curry powder, white pepper, and ground ginger, you’re halfway there.

I prefer to use rice vermicelli for an authentic texture, but feel free to use spiralized vegetables (like zucchini or yellow squash), or sweet potato noodles, depending on your preference.

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Moo Goo Gai Pan

I’m out of town for work this week and next, slumming it in Spain, Sicily, and Italy! If you’re interested, you can follow some of my adventures via Instagram. In order to keep my “new recipes every Tuesday” theme going (something I’ve proudly maintained since 2011), I’m sharing a favorite from my second cookbook, Paleo Takeout.

Here’s what I wrote in the book about this dish:

Moo Goo Gai Pan (蘑菇雞片) is an Americanized version of a Cantonese stir-fried chicken and mushroom dish, which translates literally (“Moo Goo” = button mushrooms, “Gai” = chicken, and “Pan” = slices). I like this recipe because it’s a cinch to put together and has a light, refreshing body to it. Feel free to experiment with adding more vegetables. How about a bit of cabbage or some bamboo shoots?

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Twice-Cooked Pork

Things are really moving with my next cookbook, Paleo Takeout: Restaurant Favorites without the Junk. For starters, the book finished printing last week, and my publisher overnighted a copy to me so I could be one of the first to check it out. I’m very happy with the finished product, and I think you’ll love it too! I’m in the middle of scheduling a summer book tour, and I’ll be sure to share the dates as soon as I have everything arranged – if you haven’t already, be sure to sign up for my brand new newsletter, where I’ll be sharing news and recipes in one convenient little email package.

For this week’s recipe, I wanted to highlight some of the techniques and ingredients that you’ll find in the book, to set the stage for when it releases on June 23rd. This Twice-Cooked Pork dish uses a technique common to Chinese-American takeout restaurants called velveting, where lean meat is thinly sliced, marinated in a starch mixture, then blanched and drained before being added to a stir-fry. Have you ever had some Beef & Broccoli with steak pieces that are super soft and tender? That’s velveting at work.

While this method isn’t absolutely required for any of the recipes for the book, it’s a fun technique that really adds a tasty dynamic to your Asian-inspired dishes. I also tend to start my velveted meat as the first part of the cooking process, so that I can chop my veggies and prepare my stir-fry sauce while the meat is tenderizing – the timing tends to flow naturally that way.

In terms of ingredients, I used this recipe in particular to highlight rice cooking wine (sometimes labeled as Chinese cooking wine or just rice wine) and Sichuan chili peppers (those are the whole dried peppers you’ll find in dishes like General Tso’s Chicken), since both are commonly used in Chinese-American dishes. Similarly, arrowroot starch is commonly used in Paleo Takeout to create a thickening slurry; both potato starch and tapioca starch can be used in a pinch, but I’ve found that arrowroot best mimics the thickening properties of cornstarch.

For a full list of uncommon pantry ingredients that are found in Paleo Takeout, be sure to check out my online shopping guide that lists the ingredients plus how often they appear in the book. Additionally, I’ve set up a similar guide for tools that I used in writing the book.

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Sweet and Sour Chicken

Let’s talk about Sweet and Sour Chicken for a second. It is probably not surprising to read that while this dish is served in Chinese restaurants in many Western countries, it doesn’t really exist in China. There are several sauces in China that incorporate both sweet and sour tastes, the most common being from the Hunan province, but they’re still a far cry from what you can get at your local Chinese-American restaurant. The reality is that this dish is now nearly more of an American dish than Chinese. On the flip side, the Chinese have their own interpretation of Western tastes – like flying fish roe and salmon cream cheese stuffed crust pizza (Hong Kong Pizza Hut).

But at the end of the day, it’s still a unique and comforting meal, and I thought it would be fun to try and replicate it using Paleo-friendly ingredients. My first order of business was figuring out how to make the sauce without resorting to ketchup as a base; instead, I used a combination of chicken stock, tomato paste, apple cider vinegar, tamari, honey, and spices. For the chicken, I used my new breading technique highlighted in Tuesday’s chicken nugget recipe. Lastly, I found that gently simmering the sauce while I cooked the chicken helped the sauce ingredients to perfectly marry, resulting in a balanced, delicious flavor.

For this recipe in particular, I teamed up with the folks at Vitacost; they offered to have me experiment with their online store and see what I could come up with. I had been thinking of trying out this Sweet and Sour Chicken recipe for a while now so it seemed like a good fit. I was surprised at how easy and cost-effective it was to use their shop; many of the items in their store were comparable or even cheaper than what I can find locally. Not only that, they had many of the brands we already buy. It was a lot of fun to conceive an entire meal using only their store items (minus the produce and meat). I think Vitacost would be a great resource for three types of people: (1) those who don’t live near a gourmet or international market, (2) those who have a high cost of living (big cities, for example), and (3) those who don’t have time to rummage through the aisles of several stores to find the right ingredients.

Okay, let’s get cooking.

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Salt and Pepper Fried Duck Tongues

WAIT!! Don’t turn away just yet. If the idea of duck tongues is too much for you, know that you can make this exact recipe with shrimp instead and it’s equally tasty; in fact, this recipe is based on Salt and Pepper Shrimp (椒盐虾), a common Chinese dish that’s one of our favorites. I’ll probably do up the shrimp version of the recipe in the future.

Okay, now that I’ve coaxed you into staying, let’s talk about duck tongues. They’re very different from what you may be expecting from tongue – usually considered dense, muscled, and tough – and are instead tender and succulent. They carry an inherent richness which reminds me of escargot. They have a tender bone in the center of the tongue, that’s mostly cartilage; many people come to relish the slight crunch of eating the whole tongue, bone and all. They’re also very affordable considering their status as a delicacy: US Wellness Meats offers a pack of 50-60 tongues (which I used in making this recipe) for well under $10.

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Char Siu (Roasted Chinese BBQ Pork)

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.

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Roasted Pork Belly (Siu Yuk, 燒肉)

NOTE: An updated version of this recipe appears in my cookbook, The Ancestral Table.

What’s there not to love about pork belly? It’s basically just super thick slices of uncured bacon. I’ve seen this cut at our local Asian market for years but didn’t know how to prepare it until I stumbled upon this recipe at Rasa Malaysia, and decided to give it a shot. What resulted was an impressive-looking dish with a crispy, flavorful outside layer and a tender and delicious center.

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Steamed Bok Choy

NOTE: An updated version of this recipe appears in my cookbook, The Ancestral Table.

There are several types of chinese cabbage out there in the wide wide world (or your local supermarket), so let’s learn them real quick. Won bok (“napa” cabbage) is the large, football-shaped heads of cabbage that are used in making kimchee. Bok choy resembles celery but with large green leaves (as seen above). Lastly, choy sum is the inner core of bok choy, with narrow, green stalks. Now that the hard stuff is out of the way, here’s how to steam bok choy for an interesting and nutritious side dish.

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