LinuxBBQ

ivan comes with a meat schlong and horse rimola, "Nabijem te na kurac!" and rapes our veggie talk :D

^ Haha. :D

ajvar is vegan :) I might try to make some when the peppers come in this summer.

Yes, it is. :) My grandmother makes the best of course.

Today, I made ragu and tagliatelle... it said.
I was supposed to take a pic, but it is all gone now.

Good simple food.

In the last days I had some vegan dishes I forgot to take photos of:

- tofu with green olives, desalted cappers, tomato sauce and soy sauce
- whole wheat fusilli with a nice sauce made with porro, soy cream and curry

I know I am not the expert chef around here, but we enjoyed these dishes. :)

^ Sounds good! I had to look up "porro" -- apparently they are called leeks here.

I went to the large Asian grocer here on Sunday -- I didn't find everything I was looking for, but I got some new sauces to try. And I found some interesting cookbooks at the library.

And thanks for posting, rust collector. It can be a challenge to take a pic before the food is gone...

Yesterday I had seitan roast, peas, mashed potatoes, and mushroom gravy. Today more gravy with mushrooms, tofu, and peas, on the bread I made last week. I took pictures, but they did not turn out well, and the food is gone. :)

Mustard greens in the garden:



Braised mustard greens, fried tofu with peanut sauce, velvet corn soup:

That's cool, I had mustard greens yesterday on top of rice, with potatoes and beef slices in soybean :D

Velvet corn soup, is this partly blended?

^ This recipe uses a can of "creamed corn" (which has no cream in it, but is partially blended), and then the broth is also thickened with cornstarch. I have seen some recipes that use fresh corn and then partially puree the broth, but I used the lazy way.

Mustard greens are growing furiously in my garden right now, so I am eating a lot of them. They freeze well, so I will probably put a bunch in the freezer soon.

Harvard students build the ultimate BBQ smoker:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/0 ... story.html

finally sun foo beef cantonese style, after establishing the youngster on the till didn't write chinese so good, got the wok master from the back - I asked, "if you were in china, what would you write to order this dish?"
although the guy probably wrote "this guy is a twat - take him round the back and rob him" What do you make of that Bacon? He kept going on about sun as wine.

^ lol'd

Dear wux,

^^ Japanese Wine Fried Beef, these are the letters, My baidu skills are not bad, but I didn't find a recipe for it. Asked two Chinese friends who just answered "???", then I asked them if it's possible that it's fried beef using Japenese 'spirit' wine, they said that's possible, though they only know it with brandy. Remember, I guessed 'red wine beef' and I was as close as ... well, I missed the Japanese part :D

So, my guesses are: this is actually a fried beef which was marinated in some kind of Japanese booze (if it's a fast food restaurant, they will probably not marinate, but add this wine into the dish when it's 80% finished), and then simply switch over to a "Szechuan Fried Beef with Onion". In this case, there are two variants: the very tender version (which needs the beef to be 'marinated' with a bit of soda/bicarbonate) or the dry fried "ganbian" version that would translate to "crispy beef". By all means, the procedure is:
1) slice beef against the grain to thin slices (tender version) or sticks (ganbian version)
2) marinate it with egg white or baking soda (tender) or corn starch (ganbian)
3) heat up a little oil (tender) or a huge amount of oil (ganbian) in a smokey wok or pan
4) add the beef and let it brown until 60%-70% done (beef needs a rest anyway)
5) remove the beef, remove excess oil from the pan and the beef, add fresh oil to the pan and stir-fry the veggies of choice (carrot julienne, onion wedges, bell pepper chunks)
6) usually, start with Sichuan pepper corns, chilli flakes, garlic, swirl this, add ginger, the onions, carrots and green peppers if wished, and let it fry for half a minute or so, then add the beef
7) add a squirt of soybean sauce, hoisin or oyster sauce (whichever you have at hand), and for the tender version a few spoonful of water mixed cornstarch, then let it thicken

There are as many variants as there are housewives and cooks. Youtube shows a bunch of good ideas, some omit one or the other ingredient, and my guess is that the restaurant's owners are southern Chinese ("sun foo"?), so they use Cantonese names for their dishes. Else, if they would be Sichuanese, they'd definitely use the real names of the dishes, like 'dry-fried spicy beef' or 'boiled chili beef', for example, because these are 'standard names' of regional dishes. Of course I might be totally wrong.

You described the dish as being spicy, so it can only be Hunan or Sichuan style (Hunan is more 'fresh' spicy, Sichuan is 'tongue-numbing'). I only know Sichuan SPicy Beef with the addition of ginger, carrot and onions, of course Sichuan pepper corns and chili flakes, so these ingredients are 100% there. The Sichuanese usually don't add much Hoisin sauce, because they have their own 'douban sauce' which is a broad bean paste in varying levels of spiciness.

Some good recipes on youtube, you'll see many similarities:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0510fOuZCw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US9u9LKufic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR0uplCvPpE

Probably what you enjoyed there was something in between :)

woah mega post! - As always - Immeasurable gratitude for your tireless inquisitiveness in all fields!
And I thought they just opened a packet and fried it up... ;)

I think the guy did go on about Japanese something, she didn't write chinese - but he didn't speak English so good, still better than my chinese though :)
Whilst disrupting the queue of eager dinner clients, noticed she had a bit of a lisp which brought to mind the "hidden tiger" film's original dialogue.

Exactly - looks like a mix of those vids, didn't have crispy and yes, totally forgot the heat could have been blackpepper - good excuse to go back and get some more :)
Crispy shredded beef is one of our go-to favs, thanks for opening my mind and palette again :)

Can definitely be black pepper in combo with chili and sichuan pepper powder.

By the way, this is an easy dish to DIY at home. If you don't have beef replace it with cooked pork belly (just cook the belly with a slice of ginger, green onion, some cooking wine, a few Sichuan pepper and black pepper corns, and water for around 20-30 minutes, then let it chill out in cool water): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg-rgHVdvUs
That's my go-to dish whenever I go to a Sichuanese restaurant - if they do this correctly, the other dishes must be good too. If you don't get fresh belly, you can also use 'elaborate bacon' (so, the pickled one). Important is to roast it twice, indeed. So I do it like this: roast it the first time in oil for a few minutes, actually until it's 90% done, then take it out, roast the veggies separately (ginger, chili flakes, onion wedges, peppers) on high heat, then add the bean paste, soybean sauce, then add back the ready-made meat and swirl it. The broad bean paste is a MUST, if you cannot get it, try to find "Lao Gan Ma" bean paste as alternative, it is a good contender, but broad bean paste from Sichuan would be the best. You can use it for any other 'fragrant & spicy' dishes, it doesn't go bad.

added to my must do list :) pids that garden looking lush.

Slightly bastardised version of Hungarian goulash (thanks Bacon).
1. Fry cubed onions and bacon in lard. (didn't have lard - used oil) until onions are golden
2. Add paprika (for the kids, so no hot and spicy paprika) enough to make it all coloured.
3. Add beef/meat in about inch cubes, 'til 'sealed' more like it's coloured.
4. cover meat with water just.
5. add veg, I just put cubed potatoes and some left over salsa in, can put bell peppers, whatev's
6. cook, I guess slowly, we were in a hurry so the beef wasn't too tender.

We ate with some bread and broccoli oh and some dill pickles/cucumbers - plates were scoured clean! kids too!

Congratulations wux, you're now half Hungarian (BBQ-brother side). I'd surely dig in this stew! And then use the bread to collect all the gravy.

Next time you can do the same thing with chicken parts (Hungarians and Austrians make a difference between chicken paprikash and paprika chicken -- the former has a milder sauce because of the addition of sour cream to the gravy). Or go for the real thing (IMO) which is a Chicken porkolt - no-nonsense dish that takes like 20 minutes all in all:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNnYzKhUdRs (he looks scary but he's an excellent cook, IMO)
He starts with lard (or oil) and onions, adds a bit of garlic, tomato and paprika (bell pepper), then let the onions and vegs turn golden, add the chicken, add salt and pepper, roast until the liquid comes out (few minutes), add paprika powder, stir, quickly add water, close the lid and let it simmer until the meat is soft.

^ nice - will do chef!