Cooking The Books

Braised Pork Ribs and Beancurd Sticks

Keeping up the theme of finishing half opened packs of food before my travels the next item to make its move from cupboard to pan was beancurd sticks.  These fine items aren't too popular over here but they're easy enough to get from Chinatown and if you like tofu and a bit of texture then you should like these. 

When soy milk is simmered a skin starts to form on the surface and this skin can be removed, bunched up and dried into these sticks.  These sticks are then rehydrated and used in dishes, both stir fries and braised dishes.  They can have a leathery texture, a little bite before giving, and a tofu taste.  I read about soup using them alongside ribs, and was going to make that, but then googling turned up a brief outline of a braised dish involving the two and so I decided to go down that path instead.

I wanted to up the umami so I stuck a cube of red fermented beancurd and some dried shittaki in too, add to this the black beans and you've got a deeply savoury dish full of different textures: the soft chew of the mushrooms, melt in the mouth pork and the leathery bite of the beancurd strips. 

Braised Pork Ribs and Beancurd Sticks

750gr pork ribs
75gr bean curd sticks (4 sticks from my pack)
6 dried shittaki mushrooms
1 TB dark soy
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 cube red fermented beancurd
1 TB black beans, finely chopped
5cm ginger, peeled and finely chopped
400ml water
1/2 ts sugar
1 TB cornflour in a little cold water

Method

Soak the beancurd sticks and dried mushrooms in cold water for a couple of hours.  Cut the beancurd sticks into quarters and take them stems off the mushrooms before cutting the heads into quarters or halves depending on size.

Using a cleaver chop the ribs into short sections, maybe 8cm long each.  For the ribs I had that just involved cutting them in half.  Cover them in the dark soy, rubbing well to coat and leave to marinade for an hour.

Heat some oil in a frying pan and brown the ribs well, I did this in a couple of batches.

Drain the oil until you've just a tablsepoon left then fry the garlic, ginger and black beans till fragrant then add the fermented beancurd and fry for 30 seconds more, breaking it up as you go.

Add the pork, beancurd, mushrooms, water and sugar then bring to the boil, cover, reduce the heat and simmer until the ribs are tender, it took me about an hour.

Take off the lid, bring to the boil again and then add the cornflour, boiling to thicken.

Check the seasoning and serve with some boiled rice and something green.

Prawn Patia and Tarka Dal

Sweet and sour is such a fine flavour combination, Whether it's a Thai soup balancing sugar and lime, an English pancake with lemon and sugar or, and I'm not ashamed to admit this, the dayglo orange English Chinese sauce poured over thick batter covered chicken or king prawns we're on to a winner.

There's a time and place for dayglo sweet and sour chicken though and it's not now, it's when you're tired and hungover on a Sunday and fancy some trash.  Here we deal with far more classy dishes and today's offering is the sweet sour curry called prawn patia.  I'm a fan of Mamta's website and one recipe from there I've heard many a person rave about is the prawn patia and this weekend it made the rare journey from to do list to belly.  For its sweet and sour element the patia balances palm sugar or jaggary against tamarind and depth is added with cumin, coriander, chili and turmeric.  It was amazing, tart and complex - the compliments I'd heard previously well deserved. 

I had some toor dal that needed using up so went with a tarka dal recipe from her site too, tempered with some onions fried crisp (they're not burnt, honest) and poured over, oil and all.  It was tasty, although I've had nicer dals - I prefer a bit more texture - so whilst the patia will definitely be made again I'll move onto another dal.

Split Green Pea Vadas

With the trip planned and the lease on the flat cancelled there remains the small task of packing the contents of the flat into boxes and getting everything into storage.  Being a big fan of procrastination, and not remotely fanatical about packing, I set about using up food rather then putting things into boxes.

Looking through my cupboards there's always loads of near full bags, boxes and tubs of ingredients.  I never shy away from trying a recipe due to having to buy 500gr of an ingredient which the recipe uses only 50gr of and this is reflected in my ingredient reserves.  One thing I'd bought and used less than 10% of was dried split peas.  I couldn't think of any recipes that used them except soup, and whilst I love the bland pea and rich meatiness of pea and ham soup there's been rather a lot of soups on the blog recently and so I wanted something different.  A post on a food forum asking for advice resulted in the following recipe - split green pea vadas.

They sounded falafel like, far from a bad thing, and so I cracked on.  The recipe said to deep fry but I didn't have much oil and the mixture was wet enough that I had no confidence in balls of it holding together if dropped into hot oil.  The shallow frying worked well though leaving crisp outside and soft, well spiced middle, definitely falafel like but with an obvious pea, rather than chickpea, taste.  The chili powder I have is fairly fiery stuff and the raita (yoghurt, mint, paprika, cumin, S&P) was a welcome foil to it.  Well worth a go if you have some split peas leftover from a scotch broth, or just because they're damn tasty.

Split Green Pea Vadas

225gr split peas
1 small onion
3 cloves garlic
Small handful of fresh coriander
1/2 TB ground cumin
1 ts chili powder
1 ts garam masala
1 ts salt

Method

Soak the peas overnight then drain and add to a food processor with everything else, chopping the garlic, onion and coriander before it goes in.

Pulse well till smooth enough to hold together.

Heat oil to a depth of a centimetre in a frying pan over a medium heat and then add patties of the mixture, making them maybe 2cm thick and whatever diameter takes your fancy.

Cook for 3 minutes a side until golden and cooked through.

Serve with a raita or any other sauce/chutney that takes your fancy.

I'm Off

Faced with possibly the worse financial crisis since the Great Depression, with unemployment rising and hundreds of thousands worried about keeping their jobs I have taken the slightly strange step of quitting my perfectly good job and sodding off travelling for 6 months.  Come March 31st I will hop on a plane to Hong Kong (I can't wait for the dim sum) where my South East Asia adventure begins.  It will be a brief 4 days there catching up with a friend before heading to our new home for the next 3 months, Malaysia.  Once that bit is out the way I have to pop back to England quickly for a wedding before heading back to Asia, this time Thailand, where the more mobile part of the trip begins.  Over the 3 months following I will make my way around Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and into China, heading back to Thailand for September 25th where the trip will end and I'll have to try and find gainful employment again, assuming the trip hasn't permanently altered my outlook.  If things are really bad when I return then some more travelling may occur but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

All is not lost though, I've bought a laptop and a new camera (any excuse) and so will be blogging as I go.  I imagine the blog will be rather restaurant focused, as my hotel and hostel living will minimise the cooking (not sure how I'm going to handle so long away from a stove), but I'm pretty sure I can find some interesting food to photograph and write about. I may stick some pure travel related posts up too, although not sure if I want to taint the blog with non-food related chatter.  We'll see.  Either way I hope to put some interesting stuff up for anyone that cares to read it.

If you think there's any must-dos, must-sees or, most importantly, must-eats in any of those countries please let me know what they are.

Evin Cafe

I think Dalston is amazing for food.  There's nothing flashy, I doubt there's too much organic, fairtrade or rare breed, but if when it comes to multiculturalism few places can beat it.  You can eat food from so many different countries and it's nearly always cheap.

One little gem is Evin Cafe, not too far up from Dalston Kingsland train station.  I've never eaten there in the evening but for breakfast it really stands out.  Every Saturday and Sunday morning two ladies sit in the front window preparing the most delectable filled flatbreads called gözleme.  One lady fills and stuffs and the other cooks them on a domed griddled, which Google has just told me is called a sac.

 There's two filling choices, a slightly spiced and minty mashed potato and a quite fiery spinach.  Both a delight, the bread itself getting towards wood fired pizza in its taste, charred in spots and soft in texture.  All this for £1.50 each.  If you ever pass by I recommend you pop in and get one.

Evin Cafe

115 Kingsland High St
Dalston
E8