乾炒牛河 Cantonese Stir-fry Beef Rice Noodles

還滿愛乾炒牛河的! 在中式餐廳看到都會想點. 感覺是非常"老廣"的親民小食, 又容易飽肚子.
沒想到自己可以複製出跟在餐廳吃差不多的味道. 以後在家就可以大快朵頤了! 關鍵是老抽和新鮮的河粉~

Ingredients:

1/2 onion, sliced.
some green bean sprouts
A little of green part of green onion
500g ~ 1lb Fresh rice noodles 河粉 ( I bought 2 bags from 德昌). No need to cook in water.
150g ~ 5.3 oz beef
Vegetable oil
Dark (Aged) soy sauce 老抽
Light soy sauce 生抽

Marinade for beef:
Dark soy sauce and light soy sauce 2:1
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp black pepper
1 tbsp potato starch 太白粉
A little water to balance the taste

- Mix the sauce in a bowl according to taste so it's salty enough but not overly salty.

Directions:

- Unfold the fresh rice noodles and cut in 1/2" width. Running fingers into the noodles to loosen them so they don't stick together. Set aside.

- Slice the beef against the direction of grain. (not too thin) Marinate in the sauce for 10 minutes.

-  Heat up some oil in the wok and cook the rice noodle till you can smell the aroma of rice. 米香味   Then remove from  the pan. (This step is optional)

- Heat up some oil the pan again and pan fry the beef slices on both sides till medium (70%) done.
  Repeat till all beef slices are cooked. Set aside.

- Again heat up some oil to stir fry the onion and green bean sprouts. Season with some dark and light soy sauce.

- Put the beef and rice noodle in and stir fry till beef is done. Season with some dark and light soy sauce to taste. Cook till all rice noodles are evenly colored, no whites showing. Add green onion segments right before turning off heat.

It's hard to say how much of each soy sauces I used. I just add a little by little to get the taste and color closest to the kind I like the most in restaurants. Light soy sauce adds saltiness and dark soy sauce adds color and a little bitterness of soy ( which is what I like!) to the dish.

老抽在這裡很重要, 不但給了河粉漂亮的醬色, 也賦予河粉獨特微微的焦香味!

Yummy dinner: Stir-fry Beef Rice Noodles  + Squid with Celery + Veggie
                          乾炒牛河 + 西芹鮮魷 + 青菜

中芹鮮魷 Sautee Squid with Chinese Celery

Ingredients:

5 stalks of Chinese Celery (中芹)
1 Squid
1 red hot pepper ( I didn't have this time), sliced.
~ 1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp water
Potato Starch water 太白粉水 (mix potato starch with some water)
Vegetable cooking oil

Directions:

- Clean and peel the back of the celery stalks. Cut into segments.

- Clean the squid and remove the bones and the membrane. Score diagonally the inner surface of the squid with a knife and make cross pattern. Cut the squid into pieces.

- Bring a pot of water to boil then cook the squid pieces for a few seconds till they curl up. Remove from water then set aside.

-  Heat up some oil in the pan. Stir fry the celery then add 2 tbsp water. 

- Add the red hot pepper and squid. Season with salt.  

- Add potato starch water and see it thickens. Keep on cooking to coat the ingredients with the liquid to create shinny effect. 

Braised Baby Back Ribs with Dates and Red Wine 紅酒蜜棗燉肋排

Here I'd like to recommend a Chinese food blog that inspires me a lot: 慵懶生活‧好好生活 by 貓兒. 
I learned many dishes, including this one I'm gonna write about, from her blog and her book. 她的部落格很溫馨, 她的文字輕快易懂, 平實 舒服~ I started following her blog before she became famous, had a cookbook published and began giving occasional lessons and demo.

A lot of bloggers become very commercialized and fake after gaining fame. 貓兒 (Lazy Cat) remains the same. She is as friendly and down to earth as ever. Her blog style is still heartwarming and unpretentious~ :)

Now back to this Braised Baby Back Ribs with Dates. The picture I took really doesn't do its justice. This is a delightful meat dish of which I have been missing the flavor ever since I first made it last month. It is adapted from French bistro cuisine, so bread such as baguette would be a great compliment to this main dish. I actually served it with brown rice the first night and with bread the next day. I enjoyed the dish both ways, but maybe because I am Asian. If you're used to having Western/ European dishes with bread, then you'd better stick to that option.

Braised Baby Back Ribs with Dates and Red Wine 紅酒蜜棗燉肋排
(Serves 2- 3 people)
adapted from Lazy Cat's 法式蜜棗燉肋排


Ingredients:

8-10 pieces of Baby Back Ribs (long strips of the meaty pork short ribs)
22 pitted dates, julienned, then soaked in red wine till just submerged for 30 minutes. Reserve the red wine for cooking.
60g bacon, julienned
1 onion, sliced
salt and pepper
vegetable oil

Sauce:

1 1/2 Cups red wine
1 Cup water
4- 6 Tbsp tomato paste
3 tsp Dijion mustard
1 1/2 Tbsp sugar
salt and pepper

Directions:

- Heat up some vegetable oil in a pan over medium heat. Pan fry the pork ribs on both sides to brown them. Remove from the pan and set aside.
- Cook bacon in the pan til some oil comes out, and add sliced onion. Stir fry until onion softens and turns translucent. Transfer into a deeper soup pot.
- Place the pork ribs in the pot with cooked bacon and onion. Add dates, red wine and water. Bring to boil, then simmer over low heat with lid covering 80% of the pot.
- Cook for about an hour til liquid dries out a bit and meat becomes tender.
- Stir in the rest of the sauce ingredients. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
- Simmer for another 20 minutes or so til the sauce thickens.
- Serve on plate with some fresh herbs as garnishment.

 Enjoy!! It's so Good that you won't get enough of it~

Mitarashi Dango 日式醬油丸子

When I have dinner at home, I like having desserts at the end of a meal. This dessert can vary from a a piece of cake, cookies, to a cup of steamed milk with coffee, or lemon honey drink. And it doesn't have to be sweet sweet, sometimes savory sweets or a totally salty snack are just as satisfying and perfect for finishing a meal~

The savory sweet I made this time is Mitarashi Dango 日式醬油丸子~~
忽然很想念日式帶甜的醬油味!

So this sweet is a type of 'Dango' (sweet dumpling) made of both rice flour  (上新粉 or 台灣的在來米粉) and glutinous sweet rice flour (白玉粉 or 糯米粉). It is different from mochi (麻糬) or rice cake 年糕, which is purely sweet rice flour.

The ratio of rice flour to sweet rice flour can vary depends on individual's taste. Some people just make it 1 : 1. If you want dango to be more chewy, add more rice flour; if you'd like it softer and more sticky, use more sweet rice flour.

I used more rice flour this time, so the dango hardens when I put the leftovers in the fridge for the next day. I needed to microwave them to make it soft when eating. Next time I'll experiment with using more sweet rice flour.


Mitarashi Dango

Ingredients:

180g Joshinko (Rice Flour)
100g Shiratamako/mochiko (Sweet/Glutinous Rice Flour
2 tsp. sugar
1 cup (250ml) warm water
Bamboo skewers

Directions:

- Combine rice flour, sweet rice flour and sugar in a bowl.
- Pour in warm water at little at a time. Knead slowly until the dough becomes smooth.
- Knead and roll out small rice balls from the dough. I just kinda eyeball the sizes and made 28 rice balls in total. If you really care about having all rice balls to weight the same. Feel free to use the scale and divide the dough up many times to get the result.
- Bring water to boil in a pot. Cook all the rice balls in boiling water till they float on the surface, keep boiling for another minute or two.
- Remove rice balls from the pot and place them in to cold (ice) water. (I didn't use ice water)
- Drain the water. At the point you can start putting rice balls into bamboo skewers then grill them on stove top. However, I didn't have bamboo skewers on hand so I just pan fried them with a little oil in a skillet till they dried out and you can smell the fragrance of roasted rice.

Sweet Soy Sauce

1 cup water
1/4 cup soy sauce
2-3 Tbsp mirin
4 Tbsp sugar ( or to your own likeness)
1 Tbsp cornstarch (dissolved in 2 Tbsp cold water)

- Combine water, soy sauce, mirin and sugar in a sauce pan and bring to boil.
- Add cornstarch liquid and stir as it dissolves well and the sauce thickens over medium heat.
- Turn the heat of and let cool for a few minutes, it will thicken more when temperature drops.
- Spoon the sweet sauce sauce over the dango rice balls and enjoy!

I actually put the rice balls on the metal chopsticks to assimilate skewer effect for the picture purpose.

The dangos can just be served in a plate or a bowl with sauce drizzle over it~
I like it this way because I can keep adding more sauce as I go~ :P