Mapo Tofu

Another one of my favorite comfort dishes is Mapo Tofu. This Szechuan dish is supposed to be "ma-la" or numb-hot because of the szechuan peppercorns and red chillies, though I wish I could find some szechuan peppercorns. It has many variations and has become popular in Japan. One of my favorites at Shinjuku Ramen House is their ramen with Mapo Tofu.

The following recipe is my own adaptation to my own taste. I do not claim it to be authentic at all. I use some shitake mushrooms (which is apparently absent from the original recipe) to add to the savory taste of the dish. Many of the ingredients in this dish has umami or the savory taste or what is considered the fifth taste. The soft tofu, the soy sauce and the bean paste are all rich in glutamatic acid, so no need to add MSG or bouillon cubes. This dish is great with fluffy Japanese rice. You could use it as toppings to rice or, as I prefer, served separately with the rice.

There was one time wherein my sister, who also loves to eat, bought some ready mix of Mapo Tofu. There is nothing more that irritates me in cooking than shortcuts to something that is already short. Why do you need to buy a ready mix sauce that is basically bean paste and soy sauce?

600 grams Soft Tofu

200 grams ground pork (lean around 10 to 15% fat. If not lean, dish may become too oily)

8 pieces Shitake Mushrooms, stemmed and sliced

8 cloves garlic

80 grams spring onions, whites and green separated, finely chopped

2 to 3 pieces of Taiwan red chili

2 tbsp hot bean paste

3 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp rice wine

1/2 tsp ground white pepper

1 tsp salted black beans, rinsed

1/2 cup chicken stock

2 tsp cornstarch mixed with some water

1 to 2 tsp sesame oil

1. In a wok, sauteé white part of spring onions and garlic in the oil on medium high heat for about a minute just to bring out the flavor. Do not overcook, the garlic becomes bitter. Many authentic recipes add the onions and garlic after the pork is cooked, I like to add them first to lessen the strength of these two ingredients.

2. Add the mushrooms and cook for another minute.

3. Add the pork and cook until it changes color. Add the chopped chillies.

4. Add the bean paste, soy sauce, rice wine, salted black beans and white pepper and cook for 3 minutes. Add the chicken stock.

5. Cook to desired consistency and then add the cornstarch mixed with water. Add the Tofu and carefully mix together.

6. Remove from heat, pour the sesame oil and then serve. Garnish with the green part of spring onions.

7. Enjoy and eat with nice fluffy Japanese rice.

Twice Cooked Pork

This is a comfort dish that is one of my favorites. It is one of the more widely known Szechuan dishes worldwide but is not very popular in this country. I love the tangy bold flavors with a big punch of spice that must be eaten with lots of white rice. It is relatively easy to prepare too, except that it takes some time, around an hour to stew the pork. The first step is to find a pork belly that has lots of meat. Sometimes, its a bit annoying when we eat in restaurants and the pork belly they serve is majority fat. This recipe serves two:

250 grams pork belly, skin on

3 cloves garlic

1 piece anise seed

1 bay leaf

1 to 2 pieces of taiwan chili

25 grams onion leeks, white part only

25 grams cabbage

1 tbsp hot bean paste

1 tbsp hoisin sauce

1 tbsp soy sauce

2 tsp salted black beans soaked in water for ten minutes and drained

2 tsp rice wine

1 tsp sesame oil

3 tbsp chicken stock

Cornstarch mixed with water

1. Place pork in a saucepan and cover with water, add garlic, bay leaf and anise seed. Bring to boil then simmer for an hour or so. The pork should be fork tender and sometimes, depending on the quality of your pork this can take an hour and a half. Sometimes this can take 45 minutes. The solution is to see for yourself if the pork is soft enough by using a fork.

2. Lift out the pork and drain well in a colander, cool down.

3. While the pork is cooling down, combine bean paste, hoisin sauce, soy sauce, black beans and wine.

4. Slice the pork very thinly, as thin as matchsticks if possible. A meat slicer will come in handy here.

5. Heat some oil in a wok and fry the slices of pork. Be careful, the pork will shoot out some oil. You can cover the wok slightly to avoid the spewing oil. Fry until golden brown. You will get a slight crunchy texture. Place the pork over paper towels to dry up the oil.

6. Take out the oil and leave around one tablespoon, Stir fry the chili and cabbage and then the leeks.

7. Add the bean paste soy sauce mixture, reduce for a minute and then add the chicken stock

8. Add some cornstarch mixed with water and cook until desired consistency, and then add the pork slices. Mix well.

9. Enjoy and eat with lots of white rice.

Ultimate Burger Part 3: Truffled stuffed with bone marrow

The feedback for the marrowed hand chopped burger has been pretty good so far with only a few who obviously didn't like it too much but were ashamed to say so. How can some people not like a juicy hand-chopped burger from aged tenderloin and stuffed with bone marrow? Because they are used to eating a well-done burger. So now, I have to discriminate who to offer it to and inform them in advanced that the burger cannot (and will not) be cooked above medium. It would be pointless to cook the Chef's Burger (thats what its called in the restaurant) above medium because it will melt the bone marrow into oblivion.

The truffle sauce with the marrow in the burger was an excellent combination but when served with tomatoes, gruyere and bernaise as such in the first burger post, the flavor of the truffle gets lost. Thats the reason why the previous truffled version (see post) was not served on a bun as the mushroom sauce will make the nice bread too soggy and it can't be eaten with the hands (the proper way of eating a burger).

After eating Lusso's foie gras burger with slices of white truffle (see post), I simply got inspired again to do this version: a truffled marrow burger with caramelized onions and sauteed mushrooms with a blue cheese sauce. Cheese and truffle always work well and this combination was magical. After the second try, I believe i have come up with the final version of the ultimate burger. The first try lacked something which I could not figure out, the second try, i took out the mushrooms and used a better cheese for the sauce, a Fourme d' ambert, which was the only blue cheese I could find at Santi's. The result: Wow! The rolling of the eyes from the orgasmic mouth watering umami sensation of the combination of truffle and bone marrow and now with the blue cheese sauce happened again. I also realized the mushrooms intruded a bit with the texture of the burger, because its softness took away from the crustiness of the outer part of the pattie and it became confusing with the softness of the inner part of the medium rare cooked burger. The sweetness of the caramelized onion also played a part in the overall flavor of the burger.

Is this really the final version of the ultimate burger? I've got some foie gras in the freezer.

Arroz Con Pollo Picante

Arroz Con Pollo (Chicken with Rice) is a traditional Spanish dish which is very popular in Latin America where most countries were colonized by Spain. I still wonder why this very simple and comforting dish never took off in the Philippines. The Spanish version is very simple and consists of basically just chicken and rice cooked in chicken stock and usually flavored with saffron. Most Latin American versions consist of other ingredients such as chorizo, cheese and chili and other spices and in some caribbean versions, fried plantains.

The following recipe was adapted from the cookbook The Border Cookbook by Cheryl Alters Jamison and Bill Jamison.

4 chicken legs and thighs or 1 whole chicken cut into pieces

1 tsp cumin (toasted and ground)

1 tbsp ground ancho chili or chili powder

1/2 tbsp spanish paprika

cayenne pepper

dried oregano

2 pieces good chorizo (i get mine from Alba's)

3 cups white rice (calrose or japanese) washed and drained

4 to 5 cups of chicken stock (some people prefer the rice to be very soft and sticky)

1 large red onion, minced

3 cloves garlic, minced

3 small tomatoes, chopped

sliced black olives

frozen peas

a few threads of saffron

chopped flat leaf parsley

olive oil

salt

Marinate the chicken pieces in the cumin, chili, paprika, cayenne pepper, oregano and olive oil for at least an hour. Add some saffron threads to 1/4 cup hot stock.

Right before you Sauteé the chicken pieces, add some salt and then sauteé in a large pan or wok till lightly brown and set aside.

In a dutch oven or any oven proof pot, sauteé the onions and garlic until soft and translucent.

Add the uncooked rice and stir until the rice absorbs the oil.

Arrange the chicken pieces on top and then add the chopped tomatoes.

Add the stock (it is better to add a little bit more salt as the rice will absorb much of the saltiness of the stock) and saffron.Bake in the oven at F350 degrees for one hour. While the pot is baking, slice the chorizo and fry til cooked. After one hour, remove from the oven and add the chorizo, peas and olives into the rice. Make sure the chorizo is equally distributed because its flavor will give a wonderful kick to the rice. Cover and leave out of the oven for 30 minutes.

Arrange the chicken places on a serving plate or you could also individually plate. Garnish with chopped flat leaf parsley.

Truffled Bone Marrow Quenelles

From Wikipedia: A quenelle is mixture of creamed fish, chicken, or meat, sometimes combined with breadcrumbs, with a light egg binding It is usually poached.

I’ve had a recipe for bone marrow dumplings in a cookbook, The Beef Edition of Time/Life's the good cook series, which are added as a garnish on top of fresh corned beef. I’ve had this cookbook for years and when I finally decided to do the recipe, the dumplings had trouble keeping its shape when poached. Further research on the Internet, I found a recipe and several attempts and adjustments, I finally came up with my own version.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I discovered the heavenly combination of truffle and bone marrow at Pepato where the whole bone is served with garnish on the side sea salt and truffle sauce. I also found this post by Market Manila very useful wherein the sliced bone marrow is soaked in a brine solution (water and sea salt) for 24 hours. In my past usage of bone marrow, I had a few instances wherein the blood would give a slight ‘langsa’ and a bit of an aftertaste. This brine solution process removes the blood and the impurities of the bone marrow giving it a cleaner taste.

This quenelle is added to beef consommé giving an added dimension to an otherwise plain clear soup. I then garnish the consommé with some fine chives. One time, I had some leftover quenelles and coated them with egg white and breadcrumbs then deep-fried them. The result: crunchy texture on the outside and divine soft fatty orgasmic goodness inside.

100 grams beef bone marrow

1 tbsp unsalted butter

½ cup dry white bread crumbs

1 tbsp cornstarch

½ tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley

2 egg yolks

1 tsp truffle sauce (salsa tartufata)

sea salt and pepper

In a mixing bowl, crumble and break apart the marrow and butter.

Mix in all the other ingredients until it becomes a dough.

Using two spoons, shape them into oval balls around an inch in width. Place the quenelles in the refrigerator for 15 to 20 minutes.

Poach the quenelles in lightly salted boiling water. As the quenelles rise up to the surface, continue poaching for 2 more minutes.

Drain and set aside.