Weekend Cooking and Leftovers for Lunches

My friend, Meral asked me Saturday what were the ingredients in the bottle of Szechuan sauce I made for her and Felice, which I gave along with a harvesting of Japanese eggplant and Anaheim peppers. The Szechuan sauce is so elaborate and I know not everyone has these ingredients in their pantry if they're not Chinese, and so I was happy to share while making it for me and the hubs. I would say the last five ingredients are de rigueuer for making it semi-authentic. I mix soy sauce(both light and dark are called for, but I only had my Filipino sauce), Chinkiang vinegar (can sub it out for rice wine vinegar), Shiaoxing cooking wine (can sub it out for mirin), fermented black bean chili paste (there were a myriad of these jars at the Asian supermarket and I went with the jar that had English as well as Chinese and was made in California), chili oil (I had 2 kinds and used both),

Sichuan peppercorns (and I find them floral rather than mouth-numbing and love 'em, love 'em) and Sichuan salt (because I didn't have Chinese 5-spice and the amounts in this brand are perfectly proportionate without an inordinate amount of the 5-spice)--all of which gets stored in its own bin in my pantry to be used every 2 weeks for my foray in Asian cuisine.

Saturday was slow on the handbuilding because I decided I wanted a breakfast of longsilog.

And then I decided to make shrimp and surimi salad rice noodle rolls for lunch and thereafter. It started with a perusal of my Canyon Ranch cook book for the Thai peanut sauce recipe: peanut butter, soy sauce, fish sauce, Sriracha, coconut milk, garlic, ginger, lemon and lime. But it needed more heat, and I found a Serrano pepper which I de-seeded and chopped finely. And then more tasting and more adding of some more acid, more citrus and spicy coconut vinegar and more peanut butter until it was delicious.

The seafood salad and rice noodle rolls are also a good way to use up the bounty of veggies in the refrigerator bin and the rest of a package of rice noodles in the pantry: cucumber, red bell pepper, lettuce, cilantro (and mint gathered yesterday)

It is fun to make these roll even if I'm still not that proficient at rolling a decent-looking roll which will remain unpictured until then. 

And really all I could do in the clay studio was glaze a bisque mug and re-make a handle for my butter dish. And so home after walking Sadie and harvesting even more peppers and eggplant, it was time to cook my own Szechuan eggplant and pepper Mapo Tofu. I decided to grill the eggplant outside on a single electric burner because it was so smoky last time inside my kitchen. And then have at the ready: minced garlic, grated ginger, chopped peppers.

And also have the canola oil, ground pork and 5-spice tofu nuggets and Szechuan sauce on hand. And then I mixed up some bone broth and corn starch for thickening the sauce.

I can't not have chopped scallions and cilantro to top the finished stir fry.

I didn't smell up my kitchen, but I did have lots of dirty dishes and ingredients to return to their place, which made me then take stock of all the leftovers I need to bring to work.

And I'm eating that leftover Mapo tofu now and am grateful for a relaxing and nourishing weekend.