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Most Chinese recipes can be cooked in a wok. My favorite cookbooks are Fuchsia Dunlop's (her recent The Food of Sichuan is very good, for instance). Another good one is All Under Heaven by Carolyn Phillips. There are also some good websites, like China Sichuan Food, The Woks of Life, and Omnivore's Cookbook. There are also some good YouTube channels like Chinese Cooking Demystified, Chef Wang, and these guys.
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Aug 31, 2021 10:13
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I'm telling on myself for having a gross fundamental misunderstanding of ingredients that I'm using and what they add to a dish, but I'm going to make an attempt at https://www.seriouseats.com/xo-mazemen-recipe without having prepared any rendered fat. Would it be fine to use Lao Gan Ma chili oil as a substitute, or does those flavors clash way too much and I should just do the peanut/sesame oil blend that the site recommends. Considering there's 0 relevant google results for recipes that have XO and chili oil, I'm guessing that it's not a thing to use them together, but just thought I'd ask.
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Sep 10, 2021 22:55
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staplegun posted:I'm telling on myself for having a gross fundamental misunderstanding of ingredients that I'm using and what they add to a dish, but I'm going to make an attempt at https://www.seriouseats.com/xo-mazemen-recipe without having prepared any rendered fat. Would it be fine to use Lao Gan Ma chili oil as a substitute, or does those flavors clash way too much and I should just do the peanut/sesame oil blend that the site recommends. Just use peanut oil or whatever oil you have. Chili oil will cover up the XO sauce and in ways change the dish entirely.
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Sep 10, 2021 23:01
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Jhet posted:Just use peanut oil or whatever oil you have. Chili oil will cover up the XO sauce and in ways change the dish entirely. thank you, that makes a lot of sense. Although, maybe it can be a new and exciting food crime to also throw in a tablespoon of cumin and just call it the noodle flavor thunderdome edit: for clarification the flavor would be bad
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Sep 10, 2021 23:04
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staplegun posted:thank you, that makes a lot of sense. Although, maybe it can be a new and exciting food crime to also throw in a tablespoon of cumin and just call it the noodle flavor thunderdome Chili oil on ramen is great. XO on noodles is great. But it’s not necessarily great together. Cumin, garlic, and chili oil is a good combo though. Goes great on lamb and beef in my book.
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Sep 10, 2021 23:32
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staplegun posted:thank you, that makes a lot of sense. Although, maybe it can be a new and exciting food crime to also throw in a tablespoon of cumin and just call it the noodle flavor thunderdome it would probably taste good
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Sep 12, 2021 08:51
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So did any of you guys who got seeds to grow those Sichuan peppers have any luck or what?
Human Tornada fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Sep 18, 2021 |
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Sep 18, 2021 02:26
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I have three healthy erjingtiao plants that made it to adulthood. They are the slowest loving peppers I have ever seen, I planted in like... March? And they just started producing peppers a few weeks ago. There's a decent number but none are fully grown and ripened yet, and it's about to start getting cold so no idea if I'll get anything usable from them. Trying to find someone with a warm house and window to see if I can get them through the winter.
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Sep 18, 2021 02:33
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Yeah, I have a plant going but honestly I can't recall which is which now & it hasn't really fruited much yet. I got a couple little peppers off it, but I haven't had a chance to try them. They were starting to dry & darken on the vine, so I picked them while they were still pretty small. There's a number of others now, but I was waiting to see how they ripened. I have 3 or 4 green peppers just coming in now on the other plant, but I forgot to label either of them or lost it transplanting. I've mostly had them indoors because it's been super hot & dry here all season, but I put the bigger one outside recently and it seems to be doing a lot better there despite the temperature swings & aridity.
Hauki fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Sep 18, 2021 |
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Sep 18, 2021 03:18
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Dang, I planted a couple of them from the batch of seeds I sent out and they’re doing fine. I had a cold June, but they’re about the same size as everything else (a bit small). They’re good to eat green, but they do take a while to turn red (20-30 days). I’ve gotten probably 50-60 of them eaten though and about as many left to leave to go red and dry out. I’ve seen a few from my family that grew them, and they did much better than mine, but they had much different weather and will get frost in October too. I’ll try to over winter a row of them, so who knows how they’ll be, but I’ll start more over winter. I’ll probably grow and isolate in a tent again next year, but I moved and wasn’t able to do it this one.
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Sep 18, 2021 05:20
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I've never tried a green one, they're always red in Sichuan. When do the seeds become viable? My cousin knows someone with a greenhouse so I'm going to see if I can stick them in there for the winter. But I'd like to save some seeds. I have a cayenne too so they may have crossbred, not sure. Erjingtiaos are a type of cayenne so it shouldn't be a big deal if they did. The first peppers that sprouted are certainly starting to look like erjingtiaos, getting pretty long.
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Sep 18, 2021 05:41
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Grand Fromage posted:I've never tried a green one, they're always red in Sichuan. When do the seeds become viable? My cousin knows someone with a greenhouse so I'm going to see if I can stick them in there for the winter. But I'd like to save some seeds. You should leave the fruit on the plant until it turns red, and then for a while longer. The goal is to have the ripest fruit to take seeds from as they'll have had the longest time to work on making good seeds. If the weather turns and you don't have another option, there's no harm in picking one and letting it ripen on the counter. If you have a freeze then you'll just want to remove the seeds and let them dry out on a paper towel or something that will help with getting the moisture to leave. I store in a cool place in just a piece of paper folded and taped, but any envelope would do. I wouldn't store them in plastic, you wouldn't want a chance of mold. They would cross with a cayenne, but you may or may not run into it. Luck of the randomness of pollination. I've seen Chef Wang Gang use them green a number of times, but I'd expect that's because he's getting them a garden or something. The flavor is good green or red, but a little different. Green is more vegetal and red is punchier and fruitier. Heat is about the same either way at fairly mild. Around a good jalepeno in heat. I should say, that if you have any seeds left, they'll probably be good still next year, but I'd not expect them to be great unless you store them really well after 4+ years.
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Sep 18, 2021 06:40
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 The erjingtiaos. I forgot one pot actually has two peppers in it so I have four plants.  Longboi here is the first pepper that grew. Still not full size but getting there.  Bonus yard visitor.
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Sep 18, 2021 18:28
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They don't look too bad, but maybe a little starved for sun/nutrition. I find they like heavy fertilizing at the beginning, but they don't get bushy unless you top them. Then again, they also don't mind getting planted 8" apart. I hope they taste as good as they look, because the fruit you do have looks pretty good. The fruit don't get too much longer and I could never find the seeds for the 12" long variety, though I did try to order seeds from a few places without luck. These are the shorter 6-8" ones that came from Mala Market's dried erjingtiao, but they came up with the right habit and shape from a lot of the pictures I could find. I came to realize there's about a half dozen shapes that I would see in pictures, depending on what part of the province the picture is even from. At some point I may just travel there and accidentally drop some seeds in a shoe or something (which technically isn't even illegal to bring in as just dry capsicum seeds, but it's a funny picture).
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Sep 18, 2021 22:11
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Jhet posted:They don't look too bad, but maybe a little starved for sun/nutrition. I find they like heavy fertilizing at the beginning, but they don't get bushy unless you top them. Then again, they also don't mind getting planted 8" apart. I hope they taste as good as they look, because the fruit you do have looks pretty good. Yeah, I haven't done any kind of pruning out of terror of killing my irreplaceable plants. They're in the sunniest spot I have, which is still not all that sunny but what can you do. Peppers seem to be pretty resilient overall, I've never had trouble growing them. Jhet posted:The fruit don't get too much longer and I could never find the seeds for the 12" long variety, though I did try to order seeds from a few places without luck. These are the shorter 6-8" ones that came from Mala Market's dried erjingtiao, but they came up with the right habit and shape from a lot of the pictures I could find. I came to realize there's about a half dozen shapes that I would see in pictures, depending on what part of the province the picture is even from. At some point I may just travel there and accidentally drop some seeds in a shoe or something (which technically isn't even illegal to bring in as just dry capsicum seeds, but it's a funny picture). Okay. I'm used to the super long ones so I won't wait for them to turn into that, but am going to wait until they get red. At least we don't have fall anymore, when I was younger it would be getting chilly by now but we might have another month of warm. Do you know what the lowest temperature they can tolerate is? If I can't find a greenhouse I'll try bringing them inside. The house is not warm but the little planter area we have by the window is probably in the 50 F range throughout the winter.
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Sep 18, 2021 22:25
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Grand Fromage posted:Do you know what the lowest temperature they can tolerate is? If I can't find a greenhouse I'll try bringing them inside. The house is not warm but the little planter area we have by the window is probably in the 50 F range throughout the winter. I don't honestly know how cold, but iirc you have snow and freezes, so at the very least you'd want to find a south wall outside and then prune them down and cover them really well. They may still freeze though. A better route would be to wait until you're getting frosts and all the leaves drop and then just pruning down to about 6" tall. You can then pull the whole thing out, wash out the dirt from the root ball, trim back the roots a little, and repot in potting soil and move inside. Then you can just stick it in a warm window and it'll hang out until spring. If it's a good spot inside it'll start putting out leaves and branches sooner than you'd expect. You can treat them like a house plant this way until it's time to repot and put them back outside in May or whenever your last frost date is. Indoors and 50F is plenty warm for them, you just don't want water filled soil freezing the roots.
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Sep 18, 2021 22:37
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 My first child has awoken. Two more are turning red now. It being summer weather here apparently forever is helping.
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Oct 14, 2021 22:51
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Are there any other cooking books the thread would recommend like Dunlop's The Food of Sichuan, but for other regions like Hunan and Guizhou?Grand Fromage posted:The erjingtiaos. I've been looking for seeds! If you are in the US I have dozens of superhot and other varieties I would happily trade for a pack. goodness fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Oct 19, 2021 |
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Oct 19, 2021 14:45
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goodness posted:Are there any other cooking books the thread would recommend like Dunlop's The Food of Sichuan, but for other regions like Hunan and Guizhou? I know Dunlop has other books, but people don't seem to talk about them and there might be a reason. I've made a few good things from Georgia Freedman's Cooking South of the Clouds, but I'm not really familiar with Yunnan food, so I can't tell how good her recipes are compared to the general idea of "put a ton of cao guo in it".
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Oct 19, 2021 15:41
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Huge uncle news. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX8oQSrF4AE
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Oct 22, 2021 23:24
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^ A full set of teeth is something that too many people take for granted.goodness posted:I've been looking for seeds! If you are in the US I have dozens of superhot and other varieties I would happily trade for a pack. I kept forgetting that I saw this, but this is what I posted in the gardening thread about them a week or two ago. Jhet posted:I pulled them from dried peppers from Mala Market and then isolated them in my basement last year. Then sent them around to a bunch of goons and family. I'll have more to send out after next growing season as I wasn't able to isolate myself this summer. You could just as well order a package from Mala Market and start them yourself. The ones they sell go in and out of stock, but they're sun dried and have all grown true. https://themalamarket.com/collections/sichuan-spices-dry-goods/products/er-jing-tiao-chili
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Oct 22, 2021 23:40
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Yeah, I'd be happy to send seeds but mine were in a yard with a regular cayenne, so they may have crossbred. Not a disaster since erjingtiaos are a variety of cayenne, but if you want to grow purestrain peppers you'll have to do the Jhet method. Got new children today. It's finally getting chilly, so this may be it for the red ones... still a bunch of greens on the plants but we'll see what happens. That fucker on the left was the very first one that grew, it probably took a solid two months to ripen.
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Oct 23, 2021 00:59
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Yeah, they do not turn quickly. I pulled a bowl of red ones off this week myself, but I still have a few dozen green that won’t have time to ripen. It’s not a loss though, they taste great green too. I ended up with six plants this summer, 4 were from my trials that were cut back and 2 were I kept from the batch of seeds to test germination. All in, I easily have pulled 150 peppers off mostly the first four plants. Two dozen maybe from the other two. So with a cold growing season ruining the month of June, it turned out okay. Next year I’ll run a plant in a net and isolated to harvest seeds again. This year they were planted right next to my Trinidad Moruga Scorpions though, Hot Portugal, and Chi-Chien in that bed. So I’m not saving those seeds, because who knows what crossed with what.
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Oct 23, 2021 01:29
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Whenever I make ramen I always want more noodles to finish my broth. I'm talking about ramen in the packets, mind. What sort of noodle am I looking for if I want plain ones for a second helping to finish the broth? My grocer has a couple of options but I'm not sure if any of them are synonymous with "ramen noodle".
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Nov 10, 2021 19:43
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The asian markets around here all sell big multi-packs of plain oil fried ramen noodle cakes. Like 10 cakes in a bag, no seasonings. Can be dropped in hotpots, or added to your broth etc. Ramen is a wheat noodle.
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Nov 10, 2021 20:05
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droll posted:The asian markets around here all sell big multi-packs of plain oil fried ramen noodle cakes. Like 10 cakes in a bag, no seasonings. Can be dropped in hotpots, or added to your broth etc. Ramen is a wheat noodle. Pardon my ignorance, not heard noodle cakes referred to as having been oil fried before - is this what is done to instant ramen?
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Nov 10, 2021 20:09
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I always assumed the hard crunchy noodles are deep fried?
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Nov 10, 2021 20:10
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droll posted:I always assumed the hard crunchy noodles are deep fried?
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Nov 10, 2021 20:11
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mystes posted:Aren't they just parboiled and dehydrated? Yes, they are. There are fried noodles, but they rehydrate differently. Edit: To answer the question, I do see big bags of dehydrated wheat noodles at the Asian Family Food mart, so Ranch99 probably has them too.
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Nov 10, 2021 20:12
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mystes posted:Aren't they just parboiled and dehydrated? frying in oil is a dehydration method.
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Nov 10, 2021 20:12
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Yeah it was my understanding that ramen noodles were fried to get them dry like that. but I have no idea if that's true.
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Nov 10, 2021 20:24
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8XVrQZegEw&t=82s At least these cup noodles appear to be dehydrated and not only fried? My understanding is that they give them a quick fry after dehydrating so that they separate when rehydrated, but they're also put through a big dehydrator first.
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Nov 10, 2021 21:13
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Most brands deep fry their noodles to preserve them, however some are not. Nongshim and probably a few others uses that as a marketing point on some of their ramen products:
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Nov 10, 2021 22:17
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Jhet posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8XVrQZegEw&t=82s I like how this video could be 10x longer if it showed how the mushrooms arrived or how the spice packets were put together. Very cool video.
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Nov 10, 2021 22:37
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Mister Facetious posted:Most brands deep fry their noodles to preserve them, however some are not. Nongshim and probably a few others uses that as a marketing point on some of their ramen products: Yeah air-dried noodles are a lot tastier. Wilfred Chan wrote a good article on how to make your entire life an instant noodles journey here
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Nov 10, 2021 23:33
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Jeoh posted:Yeah air-dried noodles are a lot tastier. Wilfred Chan wrote a good article on how to make your entire life an instant noodles journey here The real answer is to make your own noodles, but all the manual pasta roller/cutters are garbage that break quickly. A decent machine will set you back $100-200+ quickly. I like to add about a tablespoon of soy flour to them and a teaspoon of gluten to help with the spring. Sodium carbonate (baked baking soda) is also useful for it. They're really not hard to make and if you're spending time making broth, you can be spending time making the noodles too. Granted, if you're buying instant packs it's about saving that time, so onwards with the journey. There are some really awesome instant noodles out there even before you start modifying stuff.
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Nov 11, 2021 01:01
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Ya the "high end" instant noodles coming out of China and Korea are amazing. I can never go back to the 50cent stuff, even if I'm tarting it up with my own ingredients. I'd be very interested in a goon database or if someone knows of a good existing one, documenting all the instant noodles that have made their way over to US markets. There are so many, too many to try alone.
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Nov 11, 2021 03:21
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Jhet posted:The real answer is to make your own noodles, but all the manual pasta roller/cutters are garbage that break quickly. It's definitely not a 100% "authentic" or whatever, but a ~35% hydration, ~1% sodium carbonate noodle made with a long autolyse then rolled out and cut to be symmetrical (that is "square" instead of "flat") is a pretty good/pretty easy homemade ramen noodle.
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Nov 11, 2021 03:45
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droll posted:Ya the "high end" instant noodles coming out of China and Korea are amazing. I can never go back to the 50cent stuff, even if I'm tarting it up with my own ingredients. Not a goon database, but one dude has made it their calling to try every instant ramen there is, and to post about it: https://www.theramenrater.com/ Mister Facetious fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Nov 11, 2021 |
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Nov 11, 2021 04:08
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SubG posted:I don't know if their quality has recently taken a nosedive, but I have a couple year old Marcato Atlas that I've used to make ramen noodles maybe fifty, sixty times since the start of the pandemic and I have no complaints about its reliability or durability. Yeah, if I'm hand cutting noodles I'll just call them noodles. They don't have the same texture as ramen, but they're still very tasty. My recipe is very similar, but I swap out that little bit for part of the wheat flour with the soy and gluten. Taste is far superior at the cost of the time. I've broken two machines that were gifted to me, but I'll take that name down as it looks to be a good option. They were probably just cheap machines, but the bearings went in both of them.
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Nov 11, 2021 07:09
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