Steamed Chicken Rice bowls (Skinny lo mai gai)

Lo Mai Gai is one of my favorite dim sum selections. It's savory, packed with umami, and the texture is rich and decadent with the soft and silky sticky rice. Here's an equally yummy and satisfying, but healthier take on it.

Serves 4 at 526 cal per serving. 58g carbs/15g fat/46g protein

Ingredients: 

1.5 c brown rice (raw, soaked for at least 20 min)

1.5 lb chicken breast, thinly sliced

2 oz dried shitaki mushrooms (should be a little over 2 cups, before soaking) 

1/8 c Shaoxing wine (dark prefered)

1 tsp XO Sauce

3 tbls superior dark soy sauce

1 tbls oyster sauce

2 tbls sesame oil

Scallions (optional) 

Directions: 

1. Rinse, then soak mushrooms in a 3 to 4 cup container. The mushrooms will take about an hour to soak, so it's best to do this overnight. Once they are rehydrated and soft, remove from liquid (reserve the liquid). Remove the stems and slice the mushrooms into strips. 

2. Rinse and soak the brown rice with a mixture of the reserved mushroom water and water, preserving the rice: liquid ratio that's recommended*.

3. Combine the wine, soy sauce, oyster sauce, oil, and XO sauce in a bowl. Place sliced chicken in the marinade leave covered for at least 30 min. (The longer you leave the marinade on the chicken the more flavorful it'll be). 

4. Once the rice has soaked, start the rice cooker (or place soaked rice and liquid in pot over high heat, reducing to a simmer once it's boiling). Meanwhile, in a large pan, brown the chicken and mushrooms (3 - 5 min), then remove from heat. Once the rice has reached a boil and simmered for about 2 min (liquid reduced to the same level as the rice and bubbly), add the chicken mushroom mixture and any remaining marinade to the rice pot. Cover and simmer until done (about10 - 15 min). 

5. Serve in a bowl, scooping some of the rice from the bottom first, then topping it with the chicken and mushrooms. Add steamed veggies of your choice and garnish w/ scallions. 

Optional: Mix the chicken and mushrooms which are on top with the rice, then serve. 

Notes: 

* I use a very Chinese eye-balling method that isn't always accurate. I also use a very forgiving rice cooker. Generally, rice is pretty forgiving if you're using a rice cooker. If you add a smidge too much water, the rice is softer and/or fluffier. If it's WAY too much water, you have porridge. If you use a little less water, or didn't pre-soak it for long enough, the rice will be chewier in texture. Also, cooking times will vary between stove top and rice cooker. 

**If you are watching your carbs, omit the rice or use riced cauliflower. Make a little extra marinade to season the cauliflower or any other extra veggies. 

Ginger Scallion Rockfish

This isn't the first ginger scallion fish recipe I've posted, and it won't be the last. Steaming the fish, or cooking en papillote (which essentially steams the fish within a pouch), gives you something super moist, tender, and flavorful.  The ginger cuts out the "fishy" aroma that some people don't like so that even a picky normally non-fish person would eat it again.

(For the en papillote directions, see my recipe for Ginger Scallion Salmon.)

Served with jasmine rice over riced broccoli and cauliflower. Collard greens with Chinese Bacon on the side.

Serves 2

Ingredients

1/2 lb of Rockfish fillet
ginger, sliced (about 3 slices per fillet)
2 stalks of scallion (finely chop the green portion, set aside. Slice lengthwise the whites).
3 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp oyster sauce
4 tbsp oil (olive, canola, any cooking oil)
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp grated ginger (if you want a milder ginger flavor, just cut this strips instead)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325°
2. Line an 8" square pan with foil. Apply a thin layer of sesame oil to the bottom. 
3. Take fillets out of the packaging and blot dry. Place in the pan, side by side. 
4. place three slices of the ginger and scallion whties on each fillet. 
5. Drizzle each fillet with about 1/2 tsp of soy sauce
6. Cover pan tightly with another piece of foil, then place in oven 15 - 20 min. Fish is done when flesh easily flakes apart and is opaque. 
7. While the fish is cooking, place grated ginger, scallion greens, soy sauce and oyster sauce in a small heat-safe bowl. 
8. Heat the oils together in a small pan. When it gets to the smoking point, pour the hot oil into the small bowl w/ the other sauce ingredients. 
9. Plate the fish and spoon the sauce over it right when you're about to serve. 

Salted Eggs (Chinese Preserved Eggs)

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about the stuff my mom used to make when I was a kid. Because of the myriad of foods I was introduced to as a kid, I grew up experiencing flavors and foods that I took for granted as much as American kids take PB&J for granted. One such item is the salted (preserved) egg. The luscious, golden yolk was the coveted prize and can be found within many Asian dishes - Lotus leaf wrapped sticky rice, glutinous rice and chicken, bamboo leaf wrapped sticky rice dumplings, moon cakes, silken (steamed) eggs, clay pot rice - just to name a few.

However, it's been a fairly elusive ingredient to obtain. If you're lucky enough to live close to an asian market, you'll have to shell out about twice as much as a regular egg for the preserved egg. So, I decided to make my own following my mom's instructions. :D

My first attempt came out better than I'd hoped and I'll soon use them to make some of my childhood favorites.

Ingredients: 

2 to 4 oz of strong alcohol (I used whiskey).
1/2 c kosher salt.
6 Large chicken eggs

Directions: 

Rinse and dry the eggs
Dip egg in the alcohol
Coat egg with salt
Wrap egg w/ plastic wrap
Add a few drops of the whiskey and more salt before closing up the plastic wrap
Repeat for all eggs
Place wrapped eggs back into the bottom half of the egg carton
Place carton of eggs in a ziplock baggie big enough to hold the carton
Leave for 20-30 days on the counter.
Remove from wrap and rinse salt off.
You can crack one open at day 20 to check.

They are done when the yolk holds its perfectly spherical shape and is a deep orange color, and the whites would be fairly watery.

Ginger Scallion Salmon

I think one of the easiest ways to cook salmon is to wrap it up in foil and stick it in the oven. You get a tender fish that's moist and flavorful. I like using light soy sauce as the poaching liquid and then finishing it with some ginger scallion oil. 

Ingredients: 

The fish:
6 oz filets
Fresh ginger root, peeled and sliced
Scallions; 1 stalk trimmed and halved per salmon fillet.
kosher salt
pepper

The sauce:
1/2 cup fancy dark soy sauce
freshly grated ginger
1/2 bunch chopped scallions (reserve 1/3 for topping)
1/2 c canola oil
2 tbsp oyster sauce

Directions: 

1. Place a filet in the center of a piece of foil. 
2. Sprinkle some kosher salt on the fish and top with pieces of ginger and lengths of scallion. 
3. Drizzle about 1 tbsp of soy sauce over the fish, then wrap the foil into a loose pouch. There should be room in the pouch for the liquid to steam the fish.  
4. Place in a 325° oven for 20 min. Meanwhile, make the sauce
5. In bowl, place grated ginger, oyster sauce, soy sauce and chopped scallions. Mix ingredients together until the sauce is one consistency. 
6. Heat oil in small pan until it's right above the smoking point, then quickly pour hot oil into bowl with the other sauce ingredients. Stir.
7. Remove from oven and let stand 5 min. Remove fish from packets and plate over rice or beds of greens. 
8. Spoon sauce over fish and top with scallions right before serving. 

Sweet Potato Greens with Chinese bacon

Sweet potato greens were one of those veggies that I took for granted as a kid. Since I've become an adult, I've noticed that I very rarely come across these veggies in a super market - mainstream OR the local Asian variety. Some Farmer's Markets may have them when they're in season. Or, if you are inclined to garden and are growing sweet potatoes, don't waste the greens! These, along with the lap yuk (chinese bacon), were supplied courtesy of my mom. The recipes itself is amazingly simple. When preparing the leaves from a garden (and maybe even if you bought it at the farmer's market), it's important to remove edible tender leaves and stalks from the main vine, peeling away some of the tougher bits the same way you'd de-vein pea pods.

The cooked leaves of the greens should be silky, similar to cooked spinach while the stalks gives you something substantial to chew on. I really like it with rice or as part of a dry noodle dish.

Ingredients: 

1 - 2 lb sweet potato greens,
1 portion of lap-yuk, diced
1 tsp sesame oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tbsp oyster sauce

Directions: 

1. Blanch the greens, then set aside.
2. Heat a large fry or saute pan
3. Place sesame oil and bacon in the pan, rendering out some of the bacon fat. Add garlic. 
4. Once the garlic has a golden brown color, add the blanched greens. 
5. Mix and saute until ingredients are combined. Cover for 1 min. 
6. Remove from heat and lightly toss with oyster sauce.  

Potstickers, Gyoza, Shui-Gow. Anyway you you say it, it's a dumpling

I love potstickers. It's one of the plethora of items I grew up with as a kid and didn't realize how good I had it until I couldn't find anything that was as good as my mom's. I have memories of my mom doing all of the chopping, grinding, mixing, etc by hand. She didn't own a food processor, or a meat grinder, or an electric mixer. Thankfully, we have the convenience of these small kitchen appliances.

She would usually start the process in the afternoon one day and the next day have the filling made. She'd make huge batches of the stuff and freeze it. There really wasn't a way to make just one serving for a family of 4 (let alone for 1).

In Chinese, there seems to be a different name for every dough-filling-cooking method combination you can think of. Even then, you have variations from family to family, generation to generation. While growing up, my mom would put in different combinations of filling in an attempt to make it healthier or to stretch out the meat.

Beef Potstickers

This recipe uses the leanest ground meat I could find - 95 - 97% lean beef or turkey and is cut with silken tofu. The tofu acts as a texturizing ingredient, giving the filling the moisture, "juiciness," and smoothness that it would normally lose when using meat as lean as we are (most "juicy" burger recipes call for an 80/20 mix of meat and fat). Both of the vegetarian and beef ones here are 2pp for a 3-piece serving.

Ingredients

Filling: 
16 oz 95% or better lean beef
16 oz of silken tofu, drained (usually one package)
9 medium stalks of scallion, chopped (reserve about 2tbsp of the green parts for the dipping sauce)
1/8 c oyster sauce
1/8 c soy sauce, dark prefered
2 tbsp corn starch
2 tbsp dry bouillon
3 cloves garlic, finely minced
2 tsp ground ginger (fresh is better)
2 pkg Gyoza/Dumpling/Potsticker wrappers, the round kind (you can find them at any asian market. If the round ones are not readily available, the 3-inch square ones are fine too).




Directions: 

In a large bowl, mix the ingredients together. Its usually easier to mix the meat and tofu together first, then add the scallions, veggies, and seasonings.

The best way to get everything throughly incorporated is to use your hands, just like you would for a meatloaf or burger.

Once you have your filling made, give it a taste test. Take about 1 tbsp of the filling, shape it into a mini patty, and fry it up in the smallest fry pan you have, about 2 minutes on each side. Let it cool for about 30 seconds and taste. The texture should be firm and moist, even a little juicy, and should hold up well after cooking. If it's too crumbly, you need to add more of a binding agent -- corn starch for the meat, egg and corn starch for the vegetarian. The cornstarch should also give the meat a "velvety" texture.

If it is a little too salty, don't worry, the potsticker skin will balance it out. If you think it needs more flavor, add a little more ginger or soy sauce. Or, you can make a dipping sauce.

Take one wrapper and fill it with about 1 tbsp of filling. Then, wet the edged and fold it in half, pressing tightly to seal it.  Here, I've done a half-moon shape with one side pleated. You can find more shapes and methods of folding the potsticker here - http://youtu.be/Xvl4Ymxnwrg.

I'm OK with the thickness of the wrappers I get from the market, and a thicker wrapper is easier to work with. If you can only get the square ones, you can use a cookie cutter or kitchen shears to cut it into a round shape.

To freeze: Arrange them on a plate (or pan) dusted with flour (or lined with parchment paper). Make sure they are not touching one another. Place in freezer for a couple of hours until they are frozen. Then, transfer them into a gallon-sized Ziploc. They should keep for 6 months and you can cook them in batches. 

Cooking Method: 

You can cook the dumplings in a multitude of ways - boil, pan fry, deep fry, steam, even microwave. I find that pan-frying is the easiest since it doesn't need and special equipment and is the most forgiving method. 

Pan-Fry

Heat a 12 or 14 inch skillet that has a lid, spray some PAM on it. 

Then, place 8 - 10 of the dumplings into the pan and return it to the heat. Let it fry lightly for about a minute. Add just a little over 1/4 cup of water into the pan and cover with the lid. The water will begin to boil and it with the steam will cook the dumplings. Let the dumplings cook in the pan until the water has boiled off. You'll start to hear the sizzle and pop from the frying (about 5 - 8 minutes). Uncover and remove from heat. Optional: Spray the potstickers with a blast of PAM and flip them to crisp up the skin on the other side. 

Cook them a little longer or with a little more oil for crispier skin, a little less if you want the skin to be smooth and silky.  If you are cooking them from frozen, use 1/3 cup water in the cooking process. This will keep the potstickers cooking for a little longer and ensure that the meat will be cooked through. One batch as noted in this recipe makes about 100 potstickers, depending on how full you fill them. You can 1/2 or 1/4 the recipe, but I thought a good benchmark was a full pound of meat and a whole package of tofu.

Dipping Sauce: 

There are a lot of pre-made dumpling sauces out there and a lot of them are delicious. However, I like making my own sauce to compliment the seasons I have in the filling. Sometimes, I just dip in a chili sauce. 

2 tbsp Soy Sauce (light or low-sodium is better for dipping)

1 1/2 tbsp vinegar (rice wine preferred, red or white wine is good. Regular white vinegar is OK) or vinegar

4-5 drops of sesame oil

1/4 tsp of minced garlic

1/4 tsp of ground ginger

the greens from the chopped scallions

Add some heat: 4-5 drops chili oil, a pinch of red chili flakes, and/or 1 tsp of chili sauce (like Sirracha)

Add some sweet: 1/2 tsp of honey or sugar