Thyme Roasted Potatoes

Duck fat is culinary liquid gold; it's savory flavor and rich fragrance can transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. The average French fry becomes the ethereal pomme frites ala canard, bland roasted potatoes are elevated to best-potatoes-ever status, and sauteed vegetables get a little extra oomph. After roasting my first duck last April, I had saved every last drop. It only rendered about a third of a cup, which unfortunately was not enough for the classic confit de canard, but its uses are endless. A spoonful here and there is perfect for frying eggs, fried rice, mashed into potatoes, roasting root vegetables, swirling into risotto, polenta, and grits, searing gnocchi, and cutting into savory pastries. After coming home from the store with two pounds of red potatoes and with my potted thyme flourishing happily, I knew it was time to dig out the precious lipid from the freezer.

Notes:
- Duck fat makes the absolute best roasted potatoes. You can also use butter or olive oil but once you try duck fat, you'll never go back. As an added plus, duck fat is "healthier" than butter.
- Duck fat can be purchased online.
- Store duck fat in the freezer; there is a chance of it molding if kept in the fridge and it would be a shame to throw it away.

Thyme Roasted Potatoes
2 lbs red potatoes, scrubbed and cut into quarters (or in half for smaller potatoes)
2 - 3 Tbsp duck fat, butter, or olive oil
1 tsp coarse salt (kosher or sea salt)
Plenty of freshly ground pepper
1 Tbsp fresh thyme leaves, roughly chopped
2 cloves of garlic, pressed or minced then mashed into a paste

Preheat the oven to 400F, adjust a rack to the middle position, and line a baking tray with a sheet of foil.

In a large bowl, toss the potatoes with the melted fat or oil (whichever you are using), salt, and pepper.

Scatter the potatoes on a baking tray and arrange all the pieces cut side down. Cover the tray with foil and bake for 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes, take out the tray and remove the foil. Flip all the potatoes to cut side up. Turn the broiler on and broil for about 20 minutes, or until the potatoes are easily pierced with a fork or knife. Depending on the strength of your broiler you may need to adjust the potatoes up a rack if they are not browning enough. After about 20 minutes, turn the oven off and remove the potatoes. Sprinkle the thyme over the potatoes and gently toss. Return back to the still warm oven for another 2 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a heatproof serving bowl, add the pressed or mashed garlic. Add the hot potatoes on top as soon as they come out of the oven. Gently toss to coat the potatoes evenly with the garlic.

Cai Fan - Vegetable Rice with Chinese Sausage

Ever since I was little, I have always been captivated by infomercials boasting of ridiculous products that can perform almost impossible feats that defy the laws of science. Plastic Pringle-tube esque pasta doodads that "cook" pasta in just 2 minutes. Knives sharp enough to cut through a brick and stay sharp enough to slice through a tomato or a pineapple in midair! Or what about those indoor rotisseries - just set it and forget it! As-Seen-On-TV products amazed me when I was a gullible youngster, but now that I'm older, practicality always wins out over curiosity and I stick with my tried and true kitchen gadgets and appliances. The only thing that comes to my mind that you can set and forget is a rice cooker. That's not to say I don't believe in any shiny bells or whistles. Oh no, when it comes to rice cookers, I've been eyeing the Bentley of all rice cookers, the Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy Logic. When you eat rice at least once a day, perfectly cooked rice is important, downright crucial! Bad rice can ruin a meal. I mean c'mon, who doesn't want a machine that serenades you with "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" when it's finished cooking each grain of rice to fluffy perfection with its Fuzzy Logic "electronic brain." Ah alas, the catch? The $180 price tag. Oh well, practicality wins out over extravagance (but here's something that's definitely going on the wedding registry some day).

In Chinese, the word cai has two meanings. It can mean vegetable or any type of dish or entree (veggie, meat, or both) that you normally eat with rice (fan). Cai fan translates into vegetable rice. Traditionally cai fan is made with just veggies and rice, but when my mom made this she would add baby bok choy along with Chinese sausage because I loved these sausages and the fat from the Chinese sausage melts and cooks into the rice (mmm...). So now this cai fan, has taken on a second meaning. Now it is almost like "your entree" with rice, or entree in your rice (this is just my interpretation of my mom's recipe, not the traditional cai fan that is strictly rice and veggies). She cooked it on the stovetop and there would be a layer of golden brown, toasty, very fragrant rice crust, the guo ba, on the bottom of the pot. That crust is the best part so we would dig deep into the bottom of the pot to scrape up the yummy crusty bottom. Unfortunately, I never learned how to make rice on the stovetop so I'm forever reliant on my rice cooker (and no yummy guo ba using the rice cooker). On that bright side, that means this recipe can't get any simpler, toss the ingredients into the rice cooker, set it and forget it!


The caveat of this method is that the bok choy becomes very soft and the leaves do not stay a bright green. If you prefer the bok choy to stay crunchy, you can lightly stir fry the bok choy and then mix it into the rice later. But this is an extra step, dirties another pan, and to me it defeats the "toss everything into the pot" method of cooking. The Chinese sausage and bok choy only lightly stud the rice so we can eat this accompanied by other Chinese dishes in place of plain white rice.

Cai Fan - Chinese Vegetable Rice with Chinese Sausage

Note:
- A rice cup is a plastic cup that comes with the rice cooker. It is 180 mls, which is the equivalent of about 3/4 standard US cup. I use a 1:1 rice to water ratio in my rice cooker.
- Instead of baby bok choy you can also used some Chinese mustard greens, xue li hong.

1 head of baby bok choy, 1 link of Chinese sausage, and 1/4 tsp of salt for every rice cup (or standard cup) of rice (I like medium grain)

Wash and roughly chop your bok choy and chop the Chinese sausage into small bite-size pieces.









Add your ingredients to the rice cooker. I normally add 3 rice cups of rice, wash, then filling with water to the line, then toss in the Chinese sausage, then put the bok choy on top, and let the rice cooker do all the work.

For the second version, more stand-alone rice, simply double the amount of Chinese sausage and bok choy (2 links of sausage, 2 heads of bok choy for every cup of rice) then salt to taste and you have a very quick one-pot meal and you won't need any more dishes.

Sun-dried Tomato and Olive Pesto Pasta Salad

(10pm)
"Oh, can you make me something to bring to a potluck?"
"Sure! When is it?"
"Tomorrow"
"..."

Luckily pasta salad is one of my go-to dishes in these situations (ahem Steven, give me a little more warning next time mmkay?). It's quick to make and I can toss in whatever I have in my fridge and pantry. Bettina, Steven's sister, loves pasta salad and was my official guinea pig taste tester for this one and she said it was very good (whew!). I made this a few weeks ago and I swore I wrote down the recipe. A lot of times I just guesstimate quantities but I even made sure I measured everything this time and whatdoya know now I can't find it. So here are the quantities off the top of my head but if anything looks out of the ordinary go ahead and adjust it.

Sun-dried Tomato and Olive Pesto Pasta Salad

1 lb of pasta like farfalle or rotini
1/4 C lightly packed sundried tomatoes, rinsed of excess oil
1/2 C kalamata olives
1/2 C coarsely grated parmesan
1/4 C slivered almonds, toasted
a few sprigs of parsley
1/4 C olive oil
2 - 3 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 - 2 tsp lemon zest, from half or whole lemon
additional lemon juice to taste
salt and pepper to taste

Boil the pasta in salted water until al dente. Set aside to cool.

Toast the almond slivers in a skillet over medium to medium high heat. Shake the pan frequently until the nuts are golden brown and set aside to cool.

In a food processor, pulse everything except for the lemon juice until it is a fine to coarse chop. When the pasta has cooled a bit, mix in the pesto. Add salt, pepper, and lemon juice to taste.

Serve cold or at room temp.

Green Bean Stir Fry

I pulled this recipe out of the archives because there was no photo to go with it (well there was but it was so awful I was too embarrassed to show it). Now I have an updated photo but I still can't think of a better name for the dish. Steven calls them "squeaky beans" because they're cooked so that they are still crisp and squeak when you eat them. With additions like garlic, spicy sauce, and dried shrimp, these beans are really flavorful, definitely not your average bland and blanched green bean.

(From the recipe archives)

Green Beans Stir Fry
1 lb green beans, ends trimmed
2 Tbsp finely diced Chinese dried radish or zha cai
2 - 3 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
2 tsp small dried shrimp, chopped
1 tsp of Asian spicy red pepper sauce (I use the brand Lao Gan Ma) or substitute with some red pepper flakes or other hot sauce, adjust to your tastes or omit entirely
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp rice vinegar
1 tsp packed brown sugar
2 tsp vegetable oil
salt and pepper

Heat 2 tsp of vegetable oil in a wok or skillet over medium high heat. Add dried shrimp and dried radish and fry in oil for 30 seconds to a minute.

Add green beans, garlic, and red pepper sauce (if using) and stir fry for a minute.

Add soy sauce, brown sugar, and vinegar and cook covered until the beans are to your liking.

I like my beans crunchy but if you prefer beans to be more tender, cook them covered for longer and if the pan gets too dry add a scant tablespoon of water.

Serves 3 - 4

Bok Choy

Sometimes when I cook vegetables, I like to keep it simple, just a quick stir fry with a bit of salt. Nothing else, no garlic, ginger, soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, etc. etc. Just oil and salt. This way it keeps the flavors clean and refreshing. There are so many varieties of bok choy it's sometimes hard to keep them straight. The kind of bok choy I most often use is baby bok choy, the variety with light green instead of white stalks. When it comes to most Chinese vegetables, bigger isn’t always better, the smaller ones are sweeter and more tender. Even in the same plant, I find that the inner leaves are much sweeter and tastier than the outer ones.

There are also many ways to cut bok choy. Some prefer to chop the leaves and separate the greens from the stalks since the leaves cook faster. Others like to cut the entire bok choy in half lengthwise or in quarters and cook it in large segments. What I like to do is take each leaf and slice down lengthwise to get about 1/2 in strips, leaf intact. I think it’s prettier this way and it’s more manageable to eat than a huge quarter segment.




Stir fried Bok Choy
Bok choy (1 head per person)
Salt
1 tsp vegetable oil per 2 bunches bok choy

Wash each leaf to get rid of the dirt, especially in the spoon-like area in the bottom. Slice 2 or 3 times lengthwise down the leaf for strips.

Heat oil in a wok or nonstick skillet over medium high heat. Add the bok choy and salt; cook stirring frequently. Cook until all the leaves are wilted then for another 1 minute and serve.

Links:
Check out Elise's Baby Bok Choy with Sherry and Prosciutto recipe.