Asian is out

Soy sauce has wheat in it.

Wonton wrappers have wheat in them.

I just had both in a fantastic soup for lunch. It did not have sugar, alcohol or caffeine however. Really good soup.

Asian Wonton Soup

Half a large onion, chopped
One clove garlic, chopped
1 tsp sesame oil
2 C baby spinach leaves
One large can Swanson's chicken broth
1 tsp Chinese five spice
1 T soy sauce
2 T chili garlic sauce
16 Chicken cilantro mini wontons (frozen, found at Trader Joe's)

Saute the onion, garlic and oil for about two minutes. Add remaining ingredients except wontons. Bring to a boil. Add wontons, boil for two minutes. Adjust seasonings to taste.

I serve with a small drizzle of sesame oil.

Bits and Pieces

There is so much to write about, and some how I've managed to wait until it was tomorrow, again. It's too late to write anything properly. This past week has been a blur of food and visitors and my trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. I still don't have an answer for that, but I do know some new things about food.

1) Country-style ribs from Safeway are not ribs. They are pork shoulder cut into rib-shaped slabs. They are, however very tasty barbequed, and don't take nearly the same amount of long, slow cooking as regular ribs. I don't know why though. Maybe if they were cooked long and slow they'd be even better?

2) Cooking country-style ribs in the oven wrapped in foil with braising liquid for a long, slow period isn't nearly as good as grilling them outside, over hickory chips.

3) S'mores are just as good made in the microwave as over the 'que. And faster.

4) Dim sum is normally a brunch thing. Don't show up at 4pm in Chinatown expecting dim sum to be served...anywhere.

5) Duck is very tasty. Duck five ways is even better.

6) Babies like duck broth.

7) Husbands like a never-ending supply of chocolate-chip cookies.

8) Homemade vanilla ice cream is not appreciated by four-year olds.

9) Barilla Plus is a great pasta to feed to kids--fiber, protein and omega-3s.

10) The Bug knows that he likes calamari with tentacles. Seriously! I still won't touch the stuff.

Oh. I'm tired. Should that be the title of my blog? Seriously....

Cream Cheese Wontons

What to do when you find out your mother-in-law is coming three hours earlier than you thought--with her best friends who are visiting from overseas? You throw together a plate of quick-to-make food, like cheese & crackers and fruit. But what if you want to really impress them? Make cream cheese wontons with your leftover wonton skins!

The picture is all that was left of about 24 wontons.

Cream Cheese Wontons
Square egg roll wrappers--I used the large ones and cut them into four.
Water or egg substitute for sealing.
Cream cheese or neufchatel cheese, softened at room temperature if time allows.

Add ins. You can make plain cream cheese filling, or add in any of the following:
Crab meat
Chopped scallions or chives
1t to 1T curry powder or paprika

Place about a half teaspoon of filling in the center of the wrapper. Dampen two sides and of wrapper and fold to create a triangle, eliminating as much air as possible. Or, twist into a little "purse".
Use a small, heavy frying pan with about 1/2 an inch of corn oil, on medium high heat. Gently place wontons and cook until golden brown, turning over when done. Then, drain on paper towel.

Serve immediately--these don't taste as good later. (And you can plan for two or three per person. They are yummy, but fattening. What did you expect from deep-fried cheese?)

Beating the heck out of dim sum

My in-laws and their visiting friends were coming for cocktails tonight, and I needed something fast for dinner after. What to do with a fridge full of half-cooked dim sum? Add chicken broth!

Yes, this is my recipe for won ton soup.

Won Ton Soup

• Spray your favorite stock pot with Pam.
• Add one diced carrot, one diced stalk celery, about 1T chopped ginger, one chopped clove garlic.
• Cook till fragrant but not soft.
• Add one big huge can of Swanson's chicken broth (or the broth of your choice).
• Cook on low heat until steaming.
• Add leftovers from nights before, including: chopped cabbage, filled wontons, linguine, spinach wontons, pork/shrimp meatballs, and diced tofu.
• Simmer until meatballs are cooked through. Do not boil!
• If you made fresh wontons tonight from the leftovers, now's the time to add any beaten egg you have leftover.
• Stir in about a tablespoon of sesame oil and one tablespoon soy sauce.
• Top with fresh chopped scallions.

Serves Plenty

Dim Sum Aftermath

Hi, I’m Fleagirl, and I’m a food addict. I woke up this dreary, dark morning and thought, “Why did I do that?” I felt guilty and annoyed that I’d gone into a dim sum frenzy, spending my birthday money on food, most of which is in the fridge or the freezer. Of course, I could have spent that same money at Yank Sing, one of the best SF dim sum joints, and I wouldn’t have learned a thing about cooking from the experience.

My stomach feels wobbly today, as it did last night. Even though I only had two pan-fried (which is pretty much deep fried, but you turn it half way in the cooking process) spinach rolls, the grease deemed too much for my gentle constitution. Or was it something else? The Bug spent the night tossing and turning, talking in his sleep and even sleepwalking twice. (He’s an extremely active sleeper.) He only had one bite of the spinach roll.

Anyway. This post isn’t about my guilt. Well, it is. You see—Juiceboy and I made a bet to see who could lose more weight in three weeks. The winner gets half--$50—of the other one’s allowance. I was doing pretty well up until last week, and now I’m feeling bloated and gross and thick. I really want to win this challenge. But he’s able to hike and bike and swim during the day, when I’m flat on my ass in front of a computer.

I’m going to make some radical changes for the next ten days (because that’s all I have).

No alcohol.
Water water water
tons of veggies and fibrous fruits
Smaller portions
No butter, cheese, ice cream or other high-fat dairy item.
Walk every day—during lunch or at home in the dark if need be.

I have 10 days. Will I do it?

Dim Sum and Then Some

We made dim sum tonight, and it was pretty good. I'd planned to make about three or four different dim sum, with a quick veggie stir fry to go along with some sticky rice I'd made. Here's what I learned:

1. Allot an hour, at least, for each item. I started at 5pm and we ate at 9pm. And I was smart and prepped all the veggies, etc., first, since every dish was a variety of the others.


2. Willing little hands are great for the wrapping portion. The Bug wrapped up 16 packets of foil-wrapped chicken and countless pork & shrimp dumplings. Had I done it, it would have added an extra hour.


3. It's best to use the tools prescribed by recipes, but if all else fails, figure out what the cooking process is and mock it up. I do not have a steamer pot and basket for sticky rice, so I steamed the rice in a damp tea towel on a metal steamer basket. Probably not the best way of doing it, but it worked. Of course, The Bug got a funny look on his face halfway through the rice and asked, "Did you put wet towel in the rice? It tastes weird." What a clown.


4. If you're pan frying, for god's sake get a spatter screen!


5. You need a variety of dipping sauces. Sweet, mustardy, vinegary. At the very least.


6. There is absolutely no need to make all of the following at the same time for only three people:

Baked Foil-wrapped chicken
Steamed Shrimp & pork dumplings (kind of a sui mai)
Pan-fried Spinach & tofu egg rolls
Scallion Pancakes
Sticky rice
(I never made it to the stir fry)

Searching for Steamers

After my dim sum dream from this morning I went out to scour suburbia for my needs.

1. A decent Asian Market
2. A kitchen store where I could buy a decent steamer for under $30.

It didn't seem so hard. This is California, after all. I found a decent Asian Market on my first try, only 20 minutes from my house, in an extremely dubious looking strip mall. But it had the right smell and a tremendous variety in the store, including a small fish counter. Very Nice!

I found two kinds of dried, shredded pork there (Tung Yang Pork Fu is the kind I got, the mild type, as opposed to Tung Yang Pork Sung, which has the same ingredients but is redder). Lots of veggies that I could identify, and 100 types of rice-based wrappers. The Bug picked some sticky glutinous raspberry sweet, which he didn't like.

On the search for sticky rice I found an employee lounging on 40-pound bags of rice. Feeling quite silly, I asked for the smallest bag of sticky rice possible. I think it was five pounds of "Sweet Thai Riz" and cost $3.50. The man laughed and asked if I knew how to cook it.

"Oh, I have a recipe," I answered, and then asked,"What do you recommend?"

"Cook for a long time, about 30 minutes, with a lot of water," he laughed.

They were all really sweet. The cashier asked, "What are you making?" and I told her I wasn't quite sure, since I didn't know what they would have.

Then, armed with some items, I knew I needed a better steamer. I would have liked a big bamboo one, even though I know they harbor bacteria, etc., but would have settled for something metal, as long as it had stackable levels.

I went up to the Vacaville Factory Outlet Stores. There are four kitchen-ware stores there: Le Creuset, Corningware, The Kitchen Store, and Le Gourmet Chef.

Since I was just looking for a stupid bamboo steamer, I went into The Kitchen Store first. I soon found out it had no steamers whatsoever, and mostly sold gadgets made by "The Good Chef" which are the worst pieces of crap ever. So we went over to the stupidly-named "Le Gourmet Chef" (I should have known).

A mish-mosh of ticky-tacky joke stuff (pig-lighters with flames coming out of their noses, fake french chefs holding chalkboards, etc.), and extremely expensive boxed items with "The Professional Series" or something along that line printed on them. Whether they were nice or not, I don't know. $30 for a tiny steamer insert that I can't unbox is too steep for me.

Did I mention the pretzel and mustard dip bar? Wasabi Horseradish Mustard dip and crap like that. They had more salsas and hot sauces with stupid names like "Queen of Farts" than they did cookware.

I finally found a set of two tiny bamboo steamers made by Joyce Chen. They were called "Cocktail Steamers" I think and would have held no more than two potstickers a piece. At $8 for two they were ridiculous. When I asked the sales clerks they got snotty and said, "We had fold out metal steamers but we don't any more."

Mental eye roll.

The Bug and I will MacGyver something together tomorrow. Tonight we made linguine (see earlier post).

I'm armed with all my fixins though. Pretty excited. Maybe Juiceboy will be home to photograph the results.

Dreaming of Dim Sum

I've been dreaming again of dim sum. Really good dim sum, the kind you come across once in a lifetime. The kind that bursts in your mouth with freshness and lightness. Tender, gingery siu mai. Heavy, thin-skinned potstickers. Har gow that explode with cilantro and garlic. Lo mai gai 30 seconds from being cooked--completely fresh and flavorful. There's no grease, and all the carts delight you. And a hundred carts come by in the first 15 minutes you're seated. And you can have all you want for only $10.

It's only 9am and my mouth won't stop watering. Now, if it were a year and a half ago, I'd have The Bug prepped and we'd be flying out the door to Chinatown, ready to be the first ones in when the doors of our favorite dim sum place opened. But when you trade the city for the country (and four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a pool and room for a pony), you lose some things. I have no problem with the commute. I can handle not being able to roll down the street for a beer. Miss the 50 restaurants within walking distance? Not me. Never looked back.

Until today. Even in nearby Napa, there's no dim sum. Even if we headed north an hour to Sacto, no dim sum. And the Bay Bridge is closed this weekend, which would mean driving to BART, then getting on the train, then bussing to our favorite place...and by that time, we'd have hit crowds.

So instead I think I'll spend some of my birthday money on supplies for making dim sum. A steamer, certainly. The ingrediants, for sure. What else? Unfortunately Juiceboy took the digital camera camping with him, so any pictures will be day-old. Now...off to find a cooking supply store in suburbia. Sigh.