Dec 13

Nam xao dau hao: mushrooms in oyster sauce

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Aka nấm xào dầu hào, mushrooms pan-fried in oyster sauce. This was basically my lazy dish for yesterday night, taken from Irene Kuo’s Key to Chinese Cooking and slightly adapted to what I had on hand (the original recipe mixed straw and button mushrooms, and also undercooked a little more than this, but I was peeling a grapefruit at the time and forgot to take the mixture off the heat…)

Mushrooms in oyster sauce

 

 

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Mushrooms in oyster sauce
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Recipe type: Side dish
Cuisine: Vietnamese
Serves: 4
 

A tasty side dish for autumn
Ingredients
  • 500g button mushrooms
  • 2 tablespoons oyster sauce
  • 1 teaspoon light soy sauce
  • 4 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1 teaspoon cornstarch
  • 2 teaspoons sesame oil
  • 2 tablespoons water

Instructions
  1. Julienne the mushrooms.
  2. In a frying pan on high heat, put some oil, the garlic, and fry until fragrant (30s).
  3. Add the mushrooms, leave on high heat for a few minutes until they start to reduce. Add the oyster sauce plus soy sauce, mix well. Stir for a minute.
  4. Add the sesame oil, cornstarch and water; boil until cornstarch thickens. Mix gently to coat mushrooms in glistening sauce. Wait a minute.
  5. Serve hot.

 

Mar 27

The best stir-fry broccoli recipe EVER

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OK, so this is the single best recipe for stir-fried broccoli I have seen anywhere. It’s simple, it’s fresh, and it brings out the taste of the vegetables wonderfully. It’s also the one recipe that makes the H crave broccoli (he hated broccoli when I steamed them, but now he’s practically begging me for some). I got it from Irene Kuo’s Key to Chinese Cooking, and made a few modifications (which basically amounted to varying the broth because Asian-style chicken broth can be freaking hard to find in France, and adding the stems into the recipe).

Stir-Fried Broccoli

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The best stir-fry broccoli recipe EVER
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Recipe type: Side
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 

Serves: 2-4
 

Says it all in the title…
Ingredients
  • 1 bunch broccoli (about 2 pounds)
  • 3 tblsp oil
  • 2 quarter-sized ginger pieces
  • ¼ tsp sugar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tblsp toasted sesame oil
  • ½ cup chicken stock, vegetable stock, or water (well worth getting some stock, it enhances the flavour)

Instructions
  1. Prepare the broccoli: break off the flowerets, and get them down to manageable size (ie, cut them up in bits you can grasp with chopsticks, but no more. You don’t want broccoli purée, and this is very much a recipe that benefits from having whole flowerets inasmuch as it’s feasible). Take the big stem, peel the hard skin off, and cut it into thin coin slices.
  2. In a wok on high heat, put the oil, and wait until hot. Add the ginger, press it down, and wait a few moments, until it becomes fragrant. Add the broccoli, stir very rapidly for 5 seconds, then turn the heat down to medium-high, and stir until the flowerets are a bright, shiny green.
  3. Add the salt and the sugar, stir rapidly, then add the stock.
  4. Cover, and cook on medium-high heat for 2:30 minutes.
  5. Uncover, and cook, stirring rapidly, until all the liquid is gone. Then dribble the sesame oil on top of the broccoli, give them a few tumbles with the spatula to distribute the oil equally across the broccoli.
  6. Serve hot, at room temperature, or cold (we like ours hot, usually with dishes that are heavy or with strong tastes, which covers pretty much 90% of Vietnamese dishes :D ).

Notes
Remember to fish out the ginger before you serve it! (grated ginger is OK, but an entire nub of ginger can be a bit of a surprise to find down one’s throat, as the H can attest).