Quote:
Originally Posted by Stitchawl
Absolutely WITH rice. I like to go heavy on the spicy bean paste to really heat it up, so the rice makes a perfect foil for that. Actually, rice is served with EVERY meal, regardless. With noodle dishes, with potato dishes. For Asians, it replaces the 'bread' found on American tables. We always have warm rice in the rice cooker. We usually make enough for 2-3 days at a time. The cooker keeps it fresh.
Most large supermarkets now have Asian sections, so you can find spicy bean paste sold as 'Tobanjan' or 'Kochijan' Each has a slightly different tastes with the Tobanjan being more authentic (Kochijan is Korean rather than Chinese).
The Fermented Black beans are a staple in my kitchen as they are an very important ingredient in many Chinese dishes. You only use one or two tablespoons of them in a dish as the flavor is very intense.
Chinese soy soy sauce has a VERY different flavor from Japanese, and using one instead of the other will have a dramatic effect on the flavor in a dish.
Stitchawl
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I received a truly excellent Chinese cookbook as a wedding present the second time I got married. I was thouroughly engrossed in it when I got to Germany, ironically enough, the second time. for whatever reason, there was an over the top oriental shopping section in Bad Nauheim. I found stuff there that I have not seen since even with the large oriental shopping districts here. I learned my way around the fermented black beans (including how to store them without stinking your kitchen out!
) back then!
Quote:
Originally Posted by montsnmags
A lot of the dishes we make a fairly simple. A well known chef over here, Kylie Kwong, says that so many of the dishes she cooks take half-an-hour to prepare and then five minutes to cook. I find a lot of SE Asian cooking to be like that, and I like that (because I'm no chef, and I find it meditative to take a good hour-long "half-an-hour" chopping things up and putting them in our little stainless steel bowls, ready to add as necessary  ).
It took me a while to enjoy eggplant. Previously I only ever saw it as the squidgy vegetable in some salads. But The Loved One makes a couple of different "eggplant parmigiana"s, and seeing and cooking it almost as the "meat" in a dish - giving it some strong flavours and a decent, starring role - seemed to turn that squidginess into a lovely plus. Now it's a favourite - if I was vegetarian, I'd be eating a lot of eggplant.
Cheers,
Marc |
I normally avoid pre-prepared frozen foods like the plague, but there is one company that used to make eggplant parmesean that was VERY good! I can't find it anymore
probably someone figured out it was actually decent