Sichuan Feast

Finally getting around to posting on my Sichuan feast from Mother's Day. After J and Little let me sleep in and presented me with flowers and breakfast treats, my only request was that we do a fun cooking project from a pretty cool cookbook that I checked out from the library (which is now almost overdue and I must renew, crap), Fuchsia Dunlop's Land of Plenty: A Treasury of Authentic Sichuan Cooking. Two things that I liked about this cookbook: it has a rather nice index in the front of cooking techniques, ingredients, and equipment to ensure success, and the recipes are all wonderfully simple (aside from the occasional hard to find ingredient).

One of our favorite Sichuan dishes is Dan Dan noodles (and the reason I checked out this book in the first place. We have a recipe from Cooks Illustrated that is good, but I always felt the recipe was pretty Americanized (like many of CI's Asian recipes). I read through Land of Plenty, educated myself on the staples of a Sichuan pantry, and made a rather detailed shopping list. We drove out to 82nd Avenue to Fubonn market to pick up the necessary ingredients. It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be, the "facing-heaven" dried chiles that are a staple in Sichuan dishes were nowhere to be found (a post-market internet search revealed that some import issues make them all but scarce in the US). We subbed dried chiles that we could find at the store and I think it turned out alright. Among the other staples that we purchased, rice vinegar, dark soy sauce, black vinegar, Shaohshing rice cooking wine, Sichuan peppercorns, preserved vegetables (mustard tubers), and sesame paste. Oh and I shouldn't forget the fresh noodles. Yum!

The first step was to make a chile oil with the crushed, dried chiles by getting the oil hot in a wok, letting it cool to a certain temperature, and pouring it over the dried chiles. It made a ton of oil, but apparently it keeps for a very long time in a cool dark place. The next step was to toast and grind the Sichuan peppercorns. The pepper has a wild smell and lends a distinct taste to the dish -- sort of citrus and spice. After the peppercorns started smoking, we put them in the coffee grinder and then sifted to weed out any large pieces of debris. Much of the flavor doesn't actually come from the peppercorn, but from the husk, so when you look at it closely there's a lot of little sticks and flakes that would make for an unappealing texture in the dish. 

Finally, we got down to cooking. We fried about 1tsp. of the Sichuan pepper in 1T of peanut oil until hot and added the 2T preserved veggies until fragrant. We then added about 1/4lb of beef, some soy sauce until the beef turned brown and crispy. Then stirred up a sauce of Sichuan pepper, sesame paste, soy, chili oil, vinegar and cooking wine. We put the fresh noodles and the sauce in the hot wok and tossed it around until warm. The finished noodle dish was pretty amazing, unlike anything I've ever tasted, and really quite easy. Garnished with some scallions, it was perfect. And my new camera captured the details perfectly -- I'm super excited about that too.

As a side dish, we stir fried veggies -- peas, bell pepper, carrots, tomato and cucumber. Next time we'll use significantly less oil than the recipe calls for on the veggies. They were swimming in it at the end. We added a little homemade chile oil on the noodles for some kick and washed it down with ice cold Sapporo. Couldn't have asked for better results with our first stab at authentic Sichuan cooking. I think next time, we'll tinker with the sauce just a bit, but otherwise, I wouldn't change a thing!

Webmaster (Not So) Extraordinaire

Wow, it's been a full nine eleven days since I posted last. I'll go ahead and blame my absence on preparing for/recovering from our four-day trip to Texas, but really, I should throw in a little laziness and chaos too. Work has been busy with two lectures in a row and we're still juggling our work schedules to watch Little (I know, I know, I need to find a nanny already). And to pile on top of the chaos of coming home, I think Little is teething again and turned into a Tazmanian devil. He literally destroys all sense of order in his path. But he does it with such a sweet smile, so how can I be mad?


I still haven't gotten around to writing that post about my Mother's Day Sichuan feast. That'll have to wait for another day because there's real work to be done. I have fundraising deadlines, mail merges to run (fun stuff), Tweets to post and a website to build (ha). I never thought when I took my part-time job at a non-profit last year that I'd be pushed into the deep end of databases, InDesign, Tweeting on a regular basis, and now, overseeing (and probably doing) a new website design. But something has to change, our website is pretty bad. We got an email on Wednesday night a couple of hours before our lecture that said:

"Hey, I love [Non-Profit Name], but your website is crap. I was going to say that your website needs a little fine tuning, but when I went to the staff page to try and contact someone, the person in charge of your information systems doesn't provide an EMAIL ADDRESS. Ha ha ha. AnyWho. Still love you and will see you tonight (I'll be the one with the bag over my head)."

We had a good chuckle and my boss emailed back that the website is the same vintage as our computers (2005) and that while the website may suck, it has done so reliably for the last six years. He assured her that we're trying hard to to change that by updating the website over the summer. The only thing stopping us from doing it sooner is funding. Hence, the fundraising drive.


And hence, my new role as web designer/IT lady.

First Mother's Day

Little and J worked together to make my first Mother's Day a special one. J woke up early with the little guy so I could sleep in as late as I wanted. Getting up at 9:30am to the sounds of Little babbling in the kitchen was pretty amazing. When I finally decided to roll out of bed, I found the breakfast room tidy with flowers and sweet treats from Ken's. My guys made it very easy to be a mom this weekend.

After breakfast, we lounged around the apartment, marveling at how great it feels to be parents while Little entertained with giggles, feats of strength (trying to do pullups on the dining room table), and cheesing the camera with his two bottom teeth. He also reminded me of those teeth this morning when I wasn't paying him enough attention by gently nibbling on my big toe. Those things are sharp. He'll appreciate them in not too long when he can enjoy a greater variety of his parents' culinary adventures. We made a Sichuan meal last night that was pretty out of this world. More on that tomorrow.

As an extended Mother's Day gift, Little was a delightful baby this morning (allowing me to finish a long overdue blog post for work). While I was typing away, he did a few chores around the house.  I guess he was embarrassed that I never polish the brass knobs on his changing table, so he took on the task himself. Such a helpful lad. I'll have to talk to him though about being more gentle in the future, don't want teeth marks on the hardware.

Our Best Pizza Yet

Saturday night, J and I decided to whip up some cocktails with the leftover grapefruit from my Easter tart. We also decided that since we couldn't go to the Timbers game against Real Salt Lake, we would make a fun dinner and watch it at home. We hadn't made pizza in a while, mostly because we've never gotten the crust quite right and while tasty, is always disappointing in some way. I'm pretty sure we prepared ourselves for this time not being any different, because pizza is a lot of fun to make -- and eat. While I prepped the toppings, J juiced the grapefruit and concocted our version of a traditional Greyhound (recipe below) and we brought the laptop into the kitchen to stream the soccer game. 

I must admit, we did not make our own dough this time. It's a day-long (or with some recipes, two-day-long) process and we have an Italian market up the street that sells frozen dough for less than $3 and it is quite tasty. We let the dough thaw and rise for about 4 hours and I flattened it out on the counter. We let it rest for about 10 minutes and transferred it to the pan. J made up a sauce of tomato paste, fresh garlic, some dried basil, and a little water. I thinly sliced mushrooms, bell pepper, and onion in addition to the paper thin slices of pepperoni J had cut at the deli. We brushed the dough with olive oil, spread the sauce, topped it with mozzarella and a bit of Parmesan, layered the mushrooms, pepper, onions, and then pepperoni. We sprinkled just a bit more of the two cheeses and salted the outer crust, and threw it in the oven for 10 minutes. As we peered in the oven window I was shocked at the beauty that we created. Seriously, look at that pizza!

Now, two things that made this pizza outstanding: heat and thinly sliced toppings. While we prepped everything for the pizza, we cranked the oven up to 550º (highest temp) and let it heat up for at least 30 minutes. As I mentioned, J had the pepperoni sliced paper thin and I did the same with the mushrooms, bell pepper, and onions. This ensures that the toppings don't get soggy, and even crisp a little with the high heat. And look! We got bubbles. That never happens at home. I was so excited about how this pizza turned out that we're going to try it all over again sometime this week. 

The cocktails were not exactly a perfectly paired beverage for pepperoni pizza, but they were delicious and tasted like summer. They were also necessary for the numerous toasts we made on our perfect Saturday night. The baby is in bed! Cheers! The Timbers beat Salt Lake! Cheers! We rock at making pizza! Cheers! And Cheers!


Awmercy's Greyhound Recipe

2oz. Gin (not your best gin here -- we like Seagram's)
4oz. Fresh squeezed grapefruit juice (with pulp)
~1 tsp. Honey

Pour room temperature ingredients into a cocktail shaker, stir to dissolve honey, throw in a few ice cubes and shake to chill. This drink is very simple, so needless to say, it's the ingredients that make it spectacular. Our grapefruits were particularly tasty and the honey was fresh from Salt Spring island in Canada.