cook: dan dan mian my way

I’d been craving a Szechuan spiced noodles street dish called Dan Dan Mian and deliberately defrosted ground beef—burgers for dinner a deux one night and multiple bowls of Dan Dan Mian for me after early evenings at the gym. 

This was my third time making this "instant" mixture to top ramen noodles from Lady and Pups, and I'm noticing that she's tweaked the recipe since I saw it on a Food 52 blog because she's allergic to sesame. And she's also added douban chili bean paste--a couple tablespoons! Okay I didn't do that this time around, but next time I will and will have to alter how much soy and fish sauce I add because of the saltiness of that black bean paste (and hey I've got it for when I make mapo tofu, which is another dish I need to be cooking as I've got a couple packages of tofu in my fridge). However, I'm not omitting the tahini or sesame seeds from my version because I'm not allergic to the nut though I've been using 3 instead of 5 tablespoons of Szechuan chili flakes because I'm a lightweight like that. 

Let's begin. Into my bowl of a half pound of ground beef, I put fish sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, ginger, cornstarch, ground white pepper, and crushed Sichuan peppercorns. Set the meat aside and then chop jarred jalapenos finely. I fried those chopped jalapenos in grapeseed (I didn't have any canola) oil and drained them from the oil. Don't toss that oil!

 

In that oil, I fried scallions and crushed garlic on a low heat. While those aromatics were slowly frying, I crushed the star anise in my mortar with my pestle and then added ground coriander, the little remainder of ground cumin, some garam masala because I didn't have the whole teaspoon of cumin, Madras curry powder, sesame seeds, and this time for good measure, 4 tablespoons of Szechuan chili flakes instead of 3 as well as more Sichuan peppercorns. My tolerance for spice is leveling up.

  

I removed the green onion and garlic and discarded. WhY? I wonder, are they too bitter? Have they imparted all their flavor into the oil? Anyway I then moved the contents from my mortar into that flavored oil and then let it deepen in color before removing it into my mixing bowl. With the chili oil done, I then started to brown the spiced ground beef. I was going to try to let it brown to crispy bits to get some texture into my meat sauce.

While the meat was slowly browning, I mixed the sauce: tamari (oh yeah, I used that earlier in the ground beef because I ran out of soy sauce), tahini (couldn't find my jar of Asian sesame sauce), brown sugar, chicken powder, balsamic glaze (ran out of balsamic vinegar), and peanut butter. My ground beef was as brown as I could get it, and so I mixed it with the sauce and the chili oil, which all then went into a large Mason jar and into the fridge.

 

That was one hot and sweaty endeavor, but I tasted the mixture and knew it would be worth the effort.

After hip hop dance and swimming last night, I was starving. I took out the Dan Dan mixture and sliced a zucchini on the bias which I then simmered in my tiny cast iron fry pan in homemade bone broth for a couple minutes before moving zucchini in its bone broth into my noodle bowl. If it was winter, I'd be adding bok choy or other Chinese greens, but our summer garden is producing squashes. By the way, I add no salt to my homemade stocks or broths. I chopped scallions--gotta have green onions as a garnish on EVERYTHING. I spooned a couple tablespoons of my Dan Dan mixture with the broth and zucchini and zapped that for a couple minutes in the microwave.

In the meantime, I was boiling a couple eggs and in its last minutes of cooking, I slid the Asian noodles into the pot for exactly 3 minutes minus 20 seconds for that al dente texture--the noodles then sop up enough of that soupy meaty mixture to get sauce and glossy but are not mushy.

 

I then peeled and sliced my hard- and soft-boiled eggs, topped them with chili sauce, and scattered the scallions all over the noodles.

Oh my Goddess! So delicious. And this time, there was enough heat and spice and tingle to make my nose run. Two Kleenexes worth. Glorious.

clay: butter dish

The lid was stuck in the dish when I fitted this butter dish together after it came out of the kiln at Central Park. 

And so I pried the butter dish apart and brought it to the Capuchino ceramics classroom to grind. I think I spent an hour, grinding the lid to finally nestle in the dish without getting stuck. The lid is bowed and there are cracks at the bottom corner seams, but it's functional and is what I'm gonna use at home. The speckled buff European- and Costco-sized butter dish is going into my shop.

clay: test kiln decal firing

Capuchino got a new small test kiln for melting glass and firing decals. I made Zan inaugurate it with my Frida Kahlo plate which has been waiting a couple years for more pots to join it in a decal firing. I went to the ceramics room after sewing, and oh looky! Firing complete.                

Drum roll please...

This plate is finally done!

cloth: liberty quilt

Yesterday the natural light streaming into my bedroom impulsively impelled me to photograph the quilt I had finished hand stitching before my Kentucky trip.                          

 

I had brought this quilt with me on my spring break to Palm Springs last year to hand stitch though it didn't come with me on my spring break to Cayucos.

I zoomed in with my phone to show both the machine and hand stitching as well as the quilt label. 

I thought I was gonna bring this quilt with me on my summer break to Owensboro, but changed my mind. I wished I'd had because the air conditioning was too cold in the evening.

However, in this unusual Northern California heat wave, the quilt is the perfect weight to sleep under while sleeping atop of my duvet. I do love these Liberty lawn fabrics. I've been watching a lot of (Re)Motel on Max and enjoy how new motel owners have renovated and re-designed rooms at their motor lodges. If I were ever to design a room, I think I would theme it around a quilt or bedding. And oh what fun to choose wallpaper and paint and furniture to color coordinate with a quilt.

cook: thai green curry

I had the beginnings for a Thai green curry with defrosted chicken and a jar of green curry paste, but I only vaguely remembered how to use these ingredients. 

I turned to an Asian Australian blogger's site called Recipe Tin Eats, who conveniently had this pictorial guide.

Then I remembered! Also remembered the lemongrass paste in my fridge and the kaffir lime leaves and Thai peppers in my freezer as well as the basil plant on my kitchen counter to amp up flavors. Per the blog's recommendation, I added fresh garlic and ginger. I sliced up a zucchini, a 1/3 of a red bell pepper, and snipped the ends of what sugar snap peas I had left. I also found cilantro to add to my curry and plunged all the vegetables into ice cold water to crisp up the vegetables.

I "fried" the green curry paste (note to self: use the whole jar) in a little grapeseed oil. I then added the remnants of a container of vegetable broth as well as what was left in a jar of homemade chicken bone broth.

I tasted the need for more seasoning and added a spoonful of fish sauce. I added lots of kaffir lime leaves and boiled a lot of that broth down to lessen the volume of liquid. After adding the coconut milk, the base was still too soupy for my liking, and so I continued boiling the sauce down.

I also removed the bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs I had added to the boiling sauce. After 20 minutes, the chicken was done, but the skin was unappealingly flabby. And so I put the chicken thighs under a low broiler to brown and get as crisp as possible. In the meantime, I added the vegetables and chopped the cilantro. And after 10 minutes, the curry was done and ready to spoon over chicken and leftover brown and jasmine rice.

 

I should have left the Thai pepper for longer in the sauce because I could have taken more heat.

But when one is even too lazy to go to Charm Thai Eatery just a short drive away, then homemade will do. Also I needed to use up the vegetables in my refrigerator bin. The pandemic has definitely made me conscious to not discard food that can still be eaten. The Thai green curry was my lunch yesterday and Patrick’s dinner last night, and now all that remains are vegetables and sauce for another leftover meal.

clay: glaze testing

Two Saturdays ago, I decided to test the new celadon glazes I bought at Clay Planet on the 2 bisque BMix mugs I had made. 

 

I love the results of the Sky celadon...

...the Ice celadon was not the very light turquoise I thought it might be, but that's because I layered it over a navy blue underglaze.

And so I'll layer the Ice celadon by itself on the exterior and perhaps use our studio's new light turquoise in the interior of the mug for another greenware cup I made last Saturday. I didn't photograph it, but I also sanded the bone dry lamp I had made and loaded it into the kiln. Fingers crossed that it won't crack (too much as it's very thin).

cook: summer grilling

Without fail, we eat the bounty from the garden in the summer, which invariably includes tomatoes and summer squash.  And I always serve corn with these vegetables even if we don't grow it. Frozen corn is just as sweet and delicious.

Patrick had removed a couple of ribeye steaks from the freezer to defrost, and so great! You're grilling! I sliced a large zucchini into four planks for him to also put into the Weber.

 

I also prepared Korean corn (combine mayonnaise, both Kewpie and Hellman's, Sriracha, sugar, sliced scallions, salt and pepper into a baking vessel sprayed with canola), buttered corn (for the hubs).

I decided to serve the tomatoes simply with just sprinkles of sea salt and julienned basil.

 

While Patrick grilled the steaks, I put the Korean corn into a 400 F degree oven to brown for 14 minutes and the buttered corn into the microwave for 4 minutes.

The husband grilled the steak to medium rare--7 minutes on each side with the zucchini on either side of the steaks in indirect heat or where there were fewer coals.

Instead of my usual lemon horseradish sour cream, I spooned chimichurri sauce from Trader Joe's on my steak.

We declared our home cooked meal better than any restaurant could have prepared. We used to have a neighboring family with a 3-year-old over for dinner to our home, and I miss them because it would've been lovely to have shared this meal with them.

cook: vietnamese american garlic butter noodles

I cooked this dish last night from photos of a J. Kenji Lopez Alt recipe I saved on my phone.                    

 

The smashing of the garlic cloves (a whole head and almost a half)in my mortar and pestle was fun, which I then transferred to another little bowl. I then poured approximations of the oyster sauce, fish sauce and tamari (instead of the soy I didn't have) into my mortar. I didn't want to cook my pasta in a large frying pan per the recipe and instead boiled as usual in my stockpot and sautéed the garlic in butter in my large nonstick skillet.

 

I had not quite a pound of Barilla spaghetti and used up the rest of that instead of opening the new package of Italian spaghetti I bought at Trader Joe's. I tasted my garlic butter sauce and thought it a bit too salty but hoped the pasta would offset the saltiness.

I also wished that I'd used the whole bunch of scallions, but was too lazy to continue chopping the scallions on the bias. Also I don't yet have the technique of emulsifying the cheese into the sauce. I needed to use a ladle instead of a wooden spoon for adding more pasta water into the pasta. I can see the cheese clinging to my utensils rather than to the noodles. I think I added the cheese atop the noodles rather than first to the sauce, and that was my huge misstep. 

Oh well. I topped the pasta with crab, and we ate the butter garlic noodles along with broiled zucchini. Patrick thanked me for dinner. 

I gave the rest of the pasta to Cecilia, who declared it delicious. All's well, end's well. I aim to make this dish again but better.