Pai Huanggua

I stood in the middle of my kitchen, smashing cucumbers with my knife as I would a poisonous insect that I needed to be sure was dead. Cucumber guts sprayed onto my apron and the floor. A satisfying thwapping rhythm rang through the kitchen. My friends watched with what I would like to think was admiration, but more likely was horror. The dish? Pai huanggua, or Chinese smashed cucumbers with garlic and vinegar.

Pai huanggua was one of the favorite appetizers of the Beijing expat set. The Chinese concept of a salad is fruits or vegetables drowning in sweet mayonnaise. Since Chinese restaurant food is quite oily, especially for a western palate, foreigners often ordered from a small selection of cold appetizers that were more similar to the Western salad ideal. Pai huanggua is the king of all these dishes. Cucumbers are smashed with a knife, marinated in garlic, vinegar, chili paste, and sesame oil, and then topped with a healthy sprinkling of msg.

At least that’s how I made them. Unfortunately, my pai huanggua did not taste like the dish I loved in Beijing. First, I used Chinese black rice vinegar, and I think the dish is traditionally made with white vinegar. I didn’t use msg. And, I’ve never seen a recipe for pai huanggua, so it is altogether possible that there are other mysterious ingredients that I neglected.

While my dish wasn’t exactly pai huanggua, it still was delicious. It was more of a Chinese-inspired refrigerator pickle, which I would definitely make again.

Buon Compleanno, Mio Fratello

Today is my brother’s 30th birthday. Josh has only cooked for me once. He made a spaghetti with arrabbiata sauce that I will remember forever. He had just returned from studying abroad in Florence, where he lived with a hateful Italian couple. Before he moved in, a friend told him that his host parents were fascists. My brother was young and naïve, and thought his friend was speaking figuratively. He didn’t realize that in Italy the word takes on literal meaning, and that his host parents were actual fascists. The couple was mean and ungenerous. They locked every room in the house except for his bedroom. There was even a lock on the refrigerator door. It was far from the nurturing cultural experience that he envisioned.

I, on the other hand, have fond memories of the couple, who cooked my family dinner when we visited Josh. The meal was unremarkable until after dessert, when they served a digestif of homebrewed limoncello. I usually avoid Italian liquors. Grappa’s gasoline flavor brings tears to my eyes. It is a drink so vile that the only way to sell it to trick consumers by putting it in artistic bottles. Likewise, limoncello usually is a highly undesirable beverage. Its neon yellow hue frightens me, and it breaks Alex’s rule of avoiding all flammable beverages. This limoncello, however, was delicious. The sweet lemon flavor balanced out the harsh alcohol. I left the meal happy and tipsy. Josh’s host parents may have been fascists, but they sure could make booze.

I believe that Josh’s arrabbiata recipe also came from his host mother. Arrabbiata is a spicy red sauce, literally called ‘angry’ sauce because of the inclusion of chilies. It is probably telling my two recollections of Josh’s host parents’ cooking are angry pasta and hard liquor. Regardless of the recipe’s source, Josh’s arrabbiata sauce was amazing. I don’t remember the precise recipe, but it definitely involved tomatoes, carrots, garlic, onions, red pepper and basil (olives and red wine also might have been included). The sweetness of the tomatoes and carrots combined with the pepper’s spiciness to create a deep flavor. I was impressed by my brother’s sophistication, and couldn’t wait to study abroad like he did.

I doubt Josh will ever cook for me again. I suspect that he was one of those bachelors who only excels at cooking one impressive dish. Now he is engaged, and his fiancée runs the kitchen. She is an accomplished cook, and is preparing a birthday feast for him as I write this. Happy birthday, Josh.

An Unfortunate Meal

Finding great Chinese food in Boston is no easy task. A few restaurants prepare dishes reminiscent of what I ate in China, but so far I have found none that can compete with even the most modest Beijing eatery. However, when my friend showed me a promising Boston Globe review of New Shanghai, an inexpensive restaurant in Chinatown, I forgot all about my many past disappointments and rushed to sample the dumplings that “burst with broth when you bite into their meaty center.”

Just the mention of Shanghai xiaolongbao (literally buns in a little basket) is enough to make me salivate. The secret to the dumplings is a gelatinous stuffing that melts into a broth when cooked, filling your mouth with a broth so luxurious that it rivals the finest consume. In China, xiaolongbao would often cause such rapture that I would forget my surroundings. I would close my eyes to focus fully on savoring the delicious dumplings, and then be shocked to find myself in a street-side shack rather than in an elegant restaurant.

While New Shanghai had an authentic Chinese restaurant’s shabby décor, the xiaolongbao were a mere shadow of what the dish can be. Sometimes, modest Chinese food reminds me of the great things I ate in China. While objectively these dishes leave much to be desired, the memories of what they could be are enough to leave me satisfied and happy. New Shanghai’s xiaolongbao, on the other hand, left me depressed and hungry.

The one good thing about the restaurant is that the fortune cookies were some of the most amusing I’ve encountered:

You are important enough to ask and you are blessed enough to receive back. (my fortune)

You may attend a party where strange customs prevail.

There are only 3 colors, 10 digits, and 7 notes; its [sic] what we do with them that’s important.

You are the crispy noodle in the vegetarian salad of life.

Fool Me Once…

What is going on with Boston’s fishmongers? Maybe I should have learned my lesson after the incident at Alive and Kicking Lobsters, where I waited thirty minutes for the shopkeeper to return before giving up and buying a trout from Whole Foods. In the post about the incident, I explained that the trout made me sick; however, I neglected to mention that the dish was absolutely disgusting, and that my preparation was probably to blame. I thought that if I showed a picture of the trout’s preparation, I would lose all credibility as a cook.

The problem is that I have a fear of cooking fish. I understand how to cook meat and vegetables, but I have almost no experience with seafood. While I have read many fish recipes, I don’t have the expertise to tell when a fish is done. I end up being very timid with the fish, which never results in successful cooking. Once, when making red snapper, I was too shy to examine the fish and neglected to realize that it hadn’t been scaled. It was inedible. Another time, I was too afraid to filet my grilled trout, and instead cut the fish in half. The results were not pretty, as you can see in the picture above.

Still, I want to tackle my fish phobia (sorry, I couldn’t resist). Today was bright and sunny — perfect fish weather — so I gathered my courage and headed over to The Fishmonger in Huron Village, hoping that I would achieve better results with fresher ingredients. Even if the fish didn’t taste good, I figured that the chances of poisoning myself would be lower at a specialty shop. However, when I arrived at the store, no one was there. A sign hanging in the window read, “Gone Fishing.”

I looked at the store’s hours, which said that the shop was supposed to be open. Is this normal behavior for fishmongers, or is this a Boston thing? Maybe I am just really unlucky. They say fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. I guess I should have called The Fishmonger ahead to confirm that they would be open. In the end, this mishap might be a good thing. I’m going to grill veal chops tonight, which almost definitely will be both nonpoisonous and delicious.

Frying Fun

Costco can be a dangerous place for the indulgent. I have a tendency to leave the mega-store with sucker purchases such as a massage chair (which I never use), an ice cream maker (which I love, but never use), and a heated blanket (which I use, but fear will give me cancer or burn my house down). Yesterday, I outdid myself. In addition to two dozen bottles of wine and beer that I am hiding in my secret chametz closet until after Passover, I also bought two xbox games, paper products to last a year, and best of all, a deep fryer.

Alex and I have been coveting a deep fryer ever since we read a New York Times article by Mark Bitman extolling the virtues of the cooking method. Not only is fried food delicious, he argued, but it can be deceptively healthful when the food is fried at the right temperature. In fact, properly deep fried food is a great diet food. At least that is what I believe.

We decided to break in the fryer with french fries, the dish that epitomizes the glory of frying. First, we cut russet potatoes into small rectangles and soaked them in ice water for half an hour to remove the excess starch. While we were waiting, we filled up the fryer with peanut oil, and quickly realized that the two bottles of oil we had just bought only filled about an inch of the frying basin. We sped to the grocery store to buy some more peanut oil, and then while we were out picked up our friend. An hour later, we were back on track and ready to fry.

After drying the potatoes, we fried them until they were golden brown, then let them rest for ten minutes, and then fried them for another minute. The results were adequate, although they were far from the Platonic fries I had envisioned. Possibly the oil wasn’t hot enough. Or maybe we fried too many potatoes at once. Another theory is that the fries sat in water for too long. Or maybe we didn’t dry them enough. Still the fries were quite delicious, and will definitely be a fun dish to master.