recipe : chinese polenta

chinese polenta, locally called "midoufu"

When I was living in China in 2000-2002, I had the extraordinary experience of spending quite a lot of time in rural Sichuan. I came to know a bit about farming life in this small and isolated part of the world, and had the priveledge of having my life intertwine for nearly a decade with one family there. This week, a sudden burst of culinary inspiration took hold, and I was compelled to try my hand at one of the farm-style meals we often enjoyed while in the Sichuan countryside. I am by no means an expert in Chinese food, but in my many years living in both Northern and Southwest China, I never saw this dish, featuring polenta made from rice and corn flours, made elsewhere. Who knew that Chinese people even ate polenta?!? I was thrilled to find that I could make it successfully, and so by request, I share this rough recipe here. Let me know how it goes for you! farm-style chinese rice & corn polenta 1/2 c fine cornmeal 1 1/2 c rice flour, plus 1 c extra 1 1/2t sea salt 3 c boiling water* method 1. Bring water to a boil, and set next to stovetop work area. 2. Combine rice flour, corn meal, and salt in a deep skillet or sauce pan. Set heat to medium-high. 3. Add water to combine all ingredients. Mixture will be sticky and the consistency of thick oatmeal. If you add too much water, simply add some more cornmeal or rice flour. Cook, stirring constantly, for about 5 minutes, until well-combined and completely heated through. 4. At this time, and when mixture is thicker and forming a sticky ball, turn onto a wooden cutting board well-floured with rice flour. Divide into 3 or 4 balls, and work each ball with your hands, adding rice flour until you are able to form a log that is no longer sticky, but not dry. You just have to play with it. If it's too sticky, it will be too challenging to cut. turning your polenta into a farm-style meal, or... bring on the bacon Now it's time to try this dish Chinese-style. The simplicity of the flavors will probably come as a surprise, but like farm-style meals in the US, Chinese farm food is utterly simple and delicious. First, fry up some bacon... I'm thinking about a pound. When the bacon is crisp, drain on paper towels, and remove about half of the fat from the skillet, leaving enough to well-coat the bottom of the skillet (maybe 2T?). When the bacon is cool, chop roughly into bite-sized pieces. Next, wash and roughly chop about 1/2 c fresh cilantro (or spinach). Set aside. Then cut the polenta using a piece of string - see the video below. Simply wrap the string around the log of polenta, and pull the two tails, causing the string to slice the polenta. This is the easiest way to cut it and retain the circular shape of each slice. Using a knife will flatten the pieces, and you'll have to clean the knife every couple of slices. Each piece should be about 1/4" thick.

Then, simply fry the polenta in the bacon fat. When the pieces are crispy (about 3-minutes on each side, cooked on medium to medium-high heat), simply toss with the bacon and cilantro. Serve hot and watch it disappear.

chinese polenta with sausage & spinach

Folks around my table don't care for cilantro, so I used spinach instead, and the second time I made this, we used bulk Italian sausage instead of bacon, olive oil seasoned with about 1t salt (added to the hot oil), and included the spinach. I can imagine this dish served Italian-style, with a variety of herb seasoning styles (fresh basil? hello, wonderful!). If you diverge and try it differently, please do share!

*note: I didn't measure the water as I made the polenta. I boiled probably 2.5 or 3 cups and used most of what I boiled.

recipe : cider & five spice braised pork shoulder

If you've known me for a while, you'll no doubt remember that one of my favorite things to cook (and eat) is Shanghai Pork Shoulder (recipe here). Well, our household was pretty sad to discover a soy allergy that now prevents us from partaking in this wonderful, bold dish. A few weeks ago, I set out to reinvent the recipe, and I am pleased to tell you that the results are amazing! If you're looking for an Asian-style recipe that is super-easy, bursts with flavor, and works well for both pork and chicken, here's your girl:

Cider & Five Spice Braised Pork Shoulder

Ingredients
4 pound bone-in pork shoulder
2c apple cider
1t Chinese Five-Spice Powder
5 star anise
1/3c oyster sauce
1T salt
1/2c sugar
3 cloves garlic
2 slices fresh garlic

Bring a large stock pot of water to boil, and blanch the pork shoulder for 3-5 minutes - until the outside of the meat is whitened and sealed. Drain and rinse in cold water.

In a medium stock pot, combine all ingredients. Add pork shoulder and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer, turning meat every 30-45 minutes. Cook for 2-3 hours - until meat is completely tender and falling off bone.

Uncover, increase heat to bring liquid to boil, and cook until the sauce reduces to approx 1-2 cups or until sauce caramelizes, basting top of pork with the sauce throughout reduction time.

I find this best served with stick white jasmine rice and lightly steamed vegetables. Use the extra sauce (skim fat after it cools) on scrambled eggs, or to toss with noodles.


I hope you'll let me know if you try it - we used the same recipe this week to make chicken in the crock pot, and it was great. If you have a soy allergy, be sure to read the ingredients on the oyster sauce - some brands do contain soy.

Bon appetit, or as the say in China - gan bei!

Memere's Oatmeal Bread

The theme for February's NaBloPoMo is "ties." I'm not sure if 1) I'll manage to post every day, or 2) make every post reflect this theme, but I'm going to give it a try again. It seems fitting that just yesterday I made my great-grandmother's oatmeal bread recipe for the first time. You know how I love to bake family bread recipes!

This generation has brought about major changes in the way our family connects. For several generations before, family on my mother's side lived in tight community - my mother grew up with her paternal grandparents living upstairs in a typical Massachusetts "double decker," her maternal grandparents only a few blocks away. While some of her siblings have moved out of state (to New Mexico and New York), three of the five have kept their families close by.

We grew up living just two hours away from all of our grandparents and most of our relatives. We saw them fairly often, and got to know our uncles and aunts and to some extent our cousins. We spent our childhood with four living grandparents and three living great-grandparents. What a blessing!

Memere was my mother's maternal grandmother. Thinking about her now, I realize I don't actually know a lot about her life. Named Edna, I know she was part Irish, but she was French-Canadian through-and-through, preferring to speak French. She lived to be well over 100 years old, though I didn't see her after she fell ill in her late 90s. I remember her to knit for us every Christmas, and recall her always in the kitchen - a petite elderly woman chattering away with my grandma in French. Was it Mem who made the poutins that became the stuff of family legend? Was it her mince meat pie that always appeared at holiday meals? Was this bread recipe passed down to her? I just don't remember. The next time I visit Grandma, I'll have to learn more about her mother.

my grandma (Mem's daughter) with Shoghi last summer

I got this recipe from my mom ages ago, and it was very easy to put together. When it came out of the oven, I actually didn't like the molasses fragrance, but I cut into the hearty bread this morning, toasted it, and ate it with butter and my raspberry jam, and wow... I think I have a new favorite bread. Earthy, mildly sweet, a smooth, dense texture - this oatmeal bread is fabulous. I hope Mem feels the love from a couple generations down today, and knows she's missed and loved. Five generations so far have been nourished by this yummy bread.


Memere's Oatmeal Bread

1c quick-cooking oats
2c scalded milk
1 pkg active dry yeast
4-6c flour
1/2c molasses
2t salt
1/4t ginger

Place oats in large bowl, cover with scalded milk and allow to cool to lukewarm. Soften yeast in 1/2c warm water and 1t sugar. Stir in molasses, salt and ginger to yeast mixture, and add to oat mix. Stir in 4 1/2 cups of flour and knead for five minutes, adding more flour as necessary to make a firm, slightly sticky dough.

Place in oiled bowl and cover with a warm, damp towel. Allow to rise to double (I preheat the oven to 170* and then turn it off. This decreases the rise time if your house is cool). Punch down and divide into two. Bake in a greased bread pan at 350* for 40-50 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Cool on a wire rack and serve warm with salted butter and homemade jam!

Finnish Pulla

I love baking bread. Activating the yeast, preparing the warm dough, and kneading it until it's just the right sort of springy, firm consistency... it's an act that grounds me in food-making as I engage muscles and grit to put it together. I don't think there's any cooking I do that I enjoy so much.

Two days ago, I baked some Finnish Pulla for the first time since I was pregnant. This is my favorite bread recipe - it brings my grandma into my kitchen with me every time I make it, and it's always a crowd pleaser. When I got a text message on Tuesday announcing the homebirth of my Finnish friend's baby (and the boys' nanny for over a year), I immediately opened to my hand-written recipe and started in on the dough. It took about 12 hours for me to finish the whole process - the reality of making it with two toddlers under foot was pretty much as chaotic as I expected, but with three of my friends giving birth to babies in the past month, and two of them Finnish, I was determined to get it done. Sadly, one of these friends is in China right now, but the other two families got fresh sweet cardamom bread yesterday. It was a joy to put it into their hands! Here's the recipe:

Cardamom Bread - Finnish Pulla

1 package dry active yeast
1/4 cup warm water
1 cup scalded milk
1/2 cup sugar
2 beaten eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon mace or nutmeg
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup soft butter
5 1/2 - 6 cups of flour (use white, spelt, or a combination of whole wheat and white)

Soften yeast in water with a teaspoon of sugar.

Combine milk, salt, sugar, and butter in a large mixing bowl. Cool to lukewarm and stir in 2c flour. Add eggs and beat well. Stir in yeast, mace, cardamom, and remaining flour until dough forms. Turn onto a floured surface and knead for 8-10 minutes, until a springy, firm dough forms. It will still be slightly sticky - this will lessen as the dough rises.

Clean out and oil bowl, then set dough in bowl. Oil or butter the top of the dough if desired, and cover with a damp towel. Allow dough to double in size, then punch down. Divide dough into two balls, cover and rest for 10 minutes. Divide one ball into thirds, and roll each into a strand about 12-15" long. Pinch top ends together and braid, pinching bottom ends and folding under loaf. Allow to rise to double size, then bake 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees, until top is golden brown. Brush butter on hot bread and allow to cool before slicing.

Perfect with hot coffee or toasted with butter and jam.

Some people like to frost this bread with a confectioner's sugar glaze, while others brush on an egg wash before baking. I prefer it without these, myself.

My next bread is going to be challah, I think. I would really love to be baking bread weekly, but we'll see how that goes. Do you have a favorite bread recipe you'd like to share?

Enjoy, and Happy Holidasys!

dish

Toddler eating is getting to be a little crazy-making in our home. No, the throwing hasn't really begun (and please, Lord let it not!), but picky eaters? Spitting out food? Dropping loads of painstakingly-prepared food onto the floor? Oh, my yes.

The favorite food group by far is fruit. These boys would eat only fruit all day long if I let them. The canned peaches I put up are going fast, and the 20 pounds of blueberries we picked and froze are eaten up already. Next spring I am seriously going to have to invest in a chest freezer to put up many times more than what I did this year. Max signs peach, apple, pear, and grape with glee, squeals for berries and apricots, and tucks into whatever fruit I set before him with great enthusiasm.

Last week, zucchini sauteed in garlic was the only veggie I could get them to eat; this week, they won't have anything to do with it.  Last night I made a seriously fabulous sweet potato dish that they wouldn't touch. The most frustrating part is the whining and clingyness that descends upon our home after 4pm -- prime time for dinner making. Shoghi wants only to be in my arms - he has a great fascination with chopping, cooking, and the stove. When I put him down he cries bitter tears and bites my legs. I had to stop wearing him in the ergo last week when he bit my shoulder so hard I wondered if he was going to come away with a mouthful of flesh. That wasn't one of my prettiest mama moments, lemme tell ya.

So, after practicing mindfulness, patience, and measured breathing for the better part of an hour (or more) at the end of a long day, when we sit down to eat and they won't take more than 2 bites of whatever I have cooked, I find myself feeling rather grumpy. I crack open another jar of pears; I spoon out yet another bowl of yogurt. Goldfish, anyone? I remember reading recently that toddlers have gotten most of their calories already during the day, so dinner doesn't need to be too big, and I remind myself that dinner can actually be the smallest meal of the day... but then I put them to bed with anxieties of them waking up in the middle of the night, and so I beg them to take one bite more.

So, in the spirit of leaving these exploring, blossoming little beings who are developing opinions and preferences to their little devices, I thought we'd take a moment to share some yummies that the grown-ups will certainly enjoy. Let toddler have yogurt and fruit only... we have other things to eat!

First, I give you this cookbook: Feeding the Whole Family: Cooking with Whole Foods which I read about over the summer. I adore this book, from its lovely cover art, to its explanations of cooking whole grains, to its pages of inspiring recipes that I can't wait to try. I've made the maple nut granola so many times already - it's becoming a weekly activity. It is so good, it's worth getting the book just for that.

Second, I thought that you might appreciate the wonderfully delicious sweet potato dish I concocted last night, so here you have it:

Carmelized Sweet Potatoes with Pine Nuts

2 medium sweet potatoes, cubed
1 small onion, chopped
1T minced or grated ginger
dry rosemary
butter
olive oil
2T honey
1/4c pine nuts
salt and pepper to taste
parsley

Steam sweet potatoes in a basket steamer for approximately 10 minutes, or until fork tender, set aside.

While the sweet potatoes are steaming, carmelize the chopped or sliced onion in 1T of butter and 1T olive oil and a dash of salt. Cook over medium heat to slowly soften, then brown the onion. When onion is almost done, add a pinch of crushed, dry rosemary and ginger, continuing to sautee until onion is nicely done.

In a separate dry pan, roast pine nuts until light brown and fragrant. Set aside when done. 

Increase heat to medium-high, adding more oil if necessary to ensure that the sweet potatoes will be well-coated after adding. When the pan it hot, add sweet potatoes and then honey, turning to cover with oil/onion. Allow to cook slowly and brown, stirring every few minutes, adjusting heat as necessary.Salt and pepper to taste.

When there's a nice brown crust on the potatoes, add the pine nuts. Garnish with parsley if desired.

***
Let me know if you try it - I'd love to hear what you think! And if you have any toddler favorite recipes or tips, bring em on - I beg of you!

Bon apetit!

baby fave foods

At 11 months old (gasp! their 11-mo bday was yesterday!), the twinnies are eating a ton of foods! Admittedly, I've been leaning a little too heavily on fruits, so their enthusiasm for veggies is a little less than I'd like it to be, but all-in-all, eating is progressing quickly and with lots of fun and smiles. In just another month, I'll be making two huge changes by adding egg whites and switching the boys to cow's milk from formula. I have to say, I'm very glad our time of using formula is coming to a close; it just is too weighty emotionally for me. Not only does it serve as a constant reminder that I never could breastfeed them exclusively, it's also a sadness in that I just couldn't afford to continue giving them Earth's Best (or as we call it, Earth's Most Expensive). I hate to think of the garbage that's in the formula we use, what with all the corn, soy, and GMOs. It will be nice to serve them something as simple as a little organic milk.

The boys love to eat off our plates, so if we eat with them, it's inevitably one bite for mama, a bite for the twins!

The first meal we all shared as a family continues to be a staple. Split pea soup with yam and ginger is a favorite, especially when Laurie makes us some fresh bread to go along with it. She's even been making it with flax meal to replace the egg so the boys can eat it! Here's the recipe, in case you're looking for a savory, delicious soup that can also serve as one of your baby's early foods:

Yam & Split Pea Soup with Ginger

2c dried split peas (green is my preference)
3 medium yams or sweet potatoes, diced
3 leeks, diced
2T fresh grated or minced ginger
4 celery stalks, diced
3 carrots, diced
1t salt
3T Bragg's Aminos or soy sauce
1/8t cayenne pepper

Place all ingredients except cayenne pepper in large pot or crock pot, and cover to 2" above veggies with water or stock. Cover and bring to a boil. Turn down heat and simmer for 2 hours or until all the ingredients are soft. Serve as-is or blend to create a smoother soup.

***

Since Laurie went back to work, managing the household needs has become a big challenge for both of us. We all need to have easy, delicious foods prepped and ready, and finding the time to do that has been hard. A couple of weeks ago, I used the time with my sitter to grocery shop and cook several meals, and that's what I have on tap for today, too. Last time, I made a crock pot chicken, riboletta soup, the split pea soup above, Rachel Ray's mac & cheese with butternut squash, and since it was Laurie's birthday, I also made the delicious Shanghai Ham she loves so much - all in just 4 hours. I doubt I'll be quite that accomplished today, but I do hope to make at least 3 dishes, including the mac and cheese. I'm not sure what the other two will be yet, but I'm thinking dalh, some kind of casserole with whole grains and lots of veggies, and maybe a big pot of oatmeal cooked with fruits and a little cinnamon. Better make room in the freezer!

Shoghi taking a first bite of rice pasta.

What are your favorite whole foods recipes that both your babies and the rest of your family loves?