Kitchen Garden Journal

1 Butterhead Lettuce

1 Red Butterhead Lettuce

1 Daikon Radish

1 head Broccoli

1 lb Sweet Peppers

1/2 lb Baby Bok Choy

1 bunch Baby Carrots

1 bunch Scallions

1 bunch Cilantro

Deluxe Items:

1/2 lb Fresh Young Ginger (Old Friends Farm, Amherst)

2 lbs Peaches (Apex Orchards, Shelburne)

This is the Asian share. Some recipe ideas include Asian Chicken Soup with Greens, Quick Vietnamese-style Carrot-Daikon Pickles, Glazed Baby Bok Choy. 

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3 Asian Eggplants (the long, skinny kind)

¼ cup canola or other frying oil

3 large cloves of garlic, chopped fine  

Two to five Thai chilies, cut in fairly large pieces

2 Tbsp natural sugar (Palm sugar or turbinado)

¼ cup soy sauce, or a 4:1 mixture of fish sauce and dark soy sauce

1 bunch thai basil, leaves stripped and left whole

Cut the eggplants diagonally into 1 inch segments. In a wide skillet or wok, heat the oil and fry the eggplant slices, turning occasionally, over medium-high heat until golden brown on the outside and creamy-molten on the inside. Add more oil if the eggplant soaks it all up. 

When done, remove pan from heat and transfer the eggplant to a paper-towel lined plate. Discard all but 2 Tbsp of the oil. Return pan to heat and fry garlic until sticky and not quite brown. Add sugar, soy sauce and chilies and stir quickly to dissolve sugar. (You may want to add a few drops of water to prevent sugar from burning.) Add eggplants pieces back to the pan along with the basil leaves. Stir to coat and wilt the basil, about 30 seconds. Serve hot with jasmine rice.

Note: this technique works well with chichen, pork, tofu, etc. either alone or in combination with the eggplant. A variation I find particularly tasty is to brown ½ lb of ground pork in the pan first, then use the rendered fat to fry the eggplant. Continue the recipe as above, adding back the pork and eggplant together in the final step. 

I will always remember this recipe because I cooked it the day we brought our daughter, Lily home from the hospital. It was the first of many meals I ate one handed, that little 5 pound lump clutched in my left forearm. 

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Photo by Candace Hope

In the first apartment I ever had, when I was 18 years old, a vegetarian, and new to cooking, I made this at least twice a week. The recipe has evolved somewhat since then, but the basic concept is the same: noodles, peanut sauce, fried tofu, and vegetables. It’s also my favorite thing to order at two of my favorite local restaurants: The People’s Pint and The Lady Killigrew. Always fills you up. Never lets you down. 

1 lb pasta: whole wheat spaghetti, buckwheat soba, or udon noodles

Peanut sauce: 2/3 cup natural peanut butter
¼ cup tahini sesame paste
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 hot chilies, minced, or 1 tsp cayenne
3 Tbsp soy sauce or 2 Tbsp soy and a heaping spoonful of miso paste
2 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp sesame oil 1/2 -1 cup water, to thin the sauce

Garnishes:
Fried tofu slices Blanched broccoli florets
Shredded cabbage
Shredded carrots
Sliced radishes
Sliced cucumber
Chopped scallions
Chopped cilantro 

Method:
Boil the pasta until al dente, drain and rinse in cold water to stop the cooking. Toss with a little  sesame oil and set aside.

Prepare the sauce by mixing together all the ingredients and diluting it with lukewarm water to the desired consistency. It should be moderately thick: thin enough to coat the pasta without clumping but not at all runny.

For the fried tofu, cut a block of firm or extra firm tofu into thin (3/16”) slices. Dip the slices in soy sauce and fry them in hot canola oil until crispy, turning once, like you would fry bacon. Drain on paper towels and chop coarsely into bite sized pieces. Put in a serving dish on the table.

Toss the sauce with the noodles and serve each person clump in a large bowl. Prepare the rest of the vegetables and herbs and arrange artfully on the table for the diners to serve themselves. 

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Bok choy is one of the most well known of the Asian greens, but we always get people asking what it is and how to use it.

Bok choy is a member of the cabbage family. It comes in lots of different shapes and sizes: from gigantic to diminutive, light green to dark green to red, with white or green stems. It has a very mild flavor and a delicate texture. It can be eaten raw or cooked, but don’t overcook it.

Raw, its refreshing crunch and watery flavor make it delicious with a simple dressing, such as an Asian flavored vinaigrette, maybe served with toasted almonds or peanuts. Cooked it is best stir fried whole or in lengthwise wedges, just enough to wilt it: you don’t want to lose its signature crunch. Simply toss it with a sauce of garlic, ginger, soy, sugar and sesame oil.

Or do them blanched and served with oyster sauce, Chinese restaurant-style. (Follow the links to get these recipes.) Or perhaps stir-fried with mushrooms, shrimp (pictured here, via Rasa Malaysia) or other meats. Or as a bed for a grilled steak. You can’t really go wrong with this versatile little vegetable.

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Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been on an Asian kick all year. Since going to restaurants became impossible to do with two babies, and the takeout options in Sunderland are nonexistent, my only way to get Asian food these days has been to make it myself. And I’ve been extremely happy with the results. As with any cuisine, it just doesn’t get better than homemade once you get the basic concepts and ingredients. And, of course, the internet is the best thing that has happened to home cooking since the invention of the cookbook.

Korean food has always been dear to me. Caroline and I went out on our first date to a restaurant in Koreatown in New York. And since moving to the valley, we’ve had countless reliable meals at Gohyang Korean Restaurant in Hadley. We used to live within walking distance and we would always take out of town visitors there.

Over the years I’ve dabbled in Korean cuisine at home. But my kimchi would always turn out kind of weird and I would be the only one who would eat it. So I pretty much stuck to my Korean scallion pancakes and the sesame spinach.

My relationship to Korean food changed when I discovered Maangchi on You Tube. Maangchi is a no-nonsense, knife wielding Korean chick with an exhaustive repertoire of traditional Korean recipes. These recipes are explained in short 5-10 minute videos and are in written form on her website. She is like the Julia Child of Korean food and just as entertaining to watch (and just as impactful on society, I hope). A true culinary ambassador with a global reach.

I have come to understand that Korean cooking is probably the simplest and most reliably delicious of the Asian cuisines. Like Italian food, my benchmark for simplicity, it rests on high quality fresh ingredients and simple seasonings. These seasonings are fewer in number and less varying from one dish to the next than in Thai or Chinese cuisine. And it has none of the fussiness of Japanese cuisine: think rustic Italian versus French haute cuisine.

Plus, obviously, there’s the banchan, the countless and ever-present side dishes that make Korean food so fun and interesting to eat.

If you keep plenty of garlic and scallions around and have soy sauce and sesame oil in your cabinet, you’re pretty much all set to cook Korean. There are, however, a few indispensible items that you should pick up from a Korean grocery. The first is roasted sesame seeds. These tasty, crunchy seeds are sprinkled on just about everything. They come pre-roasted in large plastic shakers for 2 or 3 bucks.

There are two types of pastes that you want to have around as well. There is gochujang, or hot pepper paste. You may know it as the sauce for bibimbop. And then there’s denjang, or bean paste—essentially Korean miso. These two pastes come in attractive red and brown plastic containers, respectively, and last for years in your fridge. A solid investment, for sure.

The last item on this short list of Korean pantry items is the hot pepper powder. This is coarsely ground, mildly spicy chili powder used for kimchi and any Korean dish you’ve ever eaten that is red in color. It is sold in intimidatingly large packages of a pound or more. But never fear, it’s cheap and you will end up using it by the cupful.     

Other than that all you need is fresh vegetables, tofu, and cheap cuts of meat. (And don't forget to pick up some short grain rice.)

So go down to your local Korean Market (on Rte 9 in Hadley, next to the Korean Restaurant, open during restaurant hours), stock up, and tune into Maangchi. You will have a lot of fun and eat some wonderfully delicious and simple food.

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My recent batch: daikon radish with its greens, napa with carrots and pears

From watching Maangchi I’ve come to understand that kimchi is comprised of essentially two elements: a salted vegetable and a “sauce” of salt, sugar, hot pepper powder and aromatics like garlic, ginger, and scallions. It takes a little thinking ahead to salt the vegetables but it comes together very quickly and you can eat it for months.

For the salted cabbage:
1 head napa cabbage
Kosher salt or sea salt
For the kimchi sauce:
1 ½ cups water
¼ cup rice flour or AP flour
¼ cup sugar
½ cup fish sauce or 1 ½ Tbsp salt
½ daikon radish, cut into julienne strips
1 head garlic, minced
½ inch piece of ginger, minced
½ cup Korean hot pepper powder
3 scallions cut into 2” pieces

Method:
Wash the head of cabbage, carefully rinsing any dirt away from the base of the outer leaves. Pat dry and cut cabbage into 4 quarters. The leaves should be attached at the core. In a large bowl or wash basin sprinkle the cabbage quarters all over and between the leaves with the salt, massaging gently. Leave for approximately 1 hour. Turn the cabbage over and leave for another hour. You will see that the leaves have wilted considerably and a lot of liquid has accumulated. Rinse the cabbage in three changes of water, squeeze them gently to expel the water and set aside.

Meanwhile, assemble the ingredients for the sauce. Mix the water and flour in a small pan and bring to a boil, stirring constantly.  When the mixture thickens and begins to bubble, turn off the heat and allow to cool. Add the sugar and fish sauce or salt. Add the other ingredients and mix well. It should be a gravy-like texture and sticky, not watery. Taste it. It should taste like kimchi but sweeter. It should not be overly salty tasting. If it’s not spicy enough for your taste you can add more hot pepper. Same goes for the garlic, etc. In addition to the daikon, you can add other vegetables if you like, such as carrots.

Spread the sauce all over the cabbages and between the leaves and put them into a plastic container with any of the remaining sauce. Leave it out at room temperature for 1 day, then refrigerate. You can eat it right away or wait a while. The flavor will gradually go from sweet to sour as it ferments. It will keep indefinitely, but it is best if eaten within 2-3 months. To serve, cut cabbage with scissors into bite sized pieces.
Watch Maangchi make it here.

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Napa Cabbage is great in stir fries of any kind. I love to make these curry flavored stir-fried rice noodles at home almost as much as I like ordering them in Chinese restaurants.

Recipe adapted from Rasa Malaysia

Ingredients:
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon minced ginger
8 dried or fresh shiitake mushrooms
12 ounces of fine dry rice vermicelli (Wai Wai brand recommended)
2 stalks celery, sliced thin
2 cups napa cabbage, cut into fine ribbons
1 medium yellow onion, sliced thin
1 cup bean sprouts, rinsed and drained
8 green onions, root end trimmed, cut into 2-inch pieces
1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined, or
1 pound char siu (Chinese barbecued pork), cut into matchsticks
4 tablespoons vegetable oil

For sauce:
3 tablespoons Madras (hot) curry powder
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon minced ginger
1 cup chicken broth
4 tablespoons soy sauce
4 teaspoons granulated sugar
2 teaspoons hot chili paste
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Method:
1) If using dried shiitake mushrooms, soak them in hot water for half an hour. Drain, then cut off the stems. Slice the mushrooms thinly.
2) Put the rice vermicelli in a large bowl and soak in enough hot water to cover, until the noodles are soft (about 8 to 10 minutes). Drain noodles and set aside.
3) Start by heating up 2 tablespoons of oil in a small pan over medium heat. Add the curry powder, the ginger, and the minced garlic, and saute until fragrant. Add the chicken broth, soy sauce, sugar, and chili paste. Stir to combine and then cover and cook for 5 minutes. Remove pan from heat and set aside.
4) Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a large wok over high heat. Add in the remaining garlic and ginger, and stir-fry until the garlic starts to become golden. Add in the celery, onion, pepper, cabbage, sprouts, green onions, and mushrooms. Stir-fry for 3 minutes, until the vegetables start to soften. Set the vegetables aside in a bowl.
5) Heat the last 2 tablespoons of oil in the wok over high heat. Add in the shrimp and stir-fry until they start to turn pink on both sides. Or simply add the char siu and toss to combine.
6) Add in the noodles and the vegetables. Mix the ingredients thoroughly to coat all the noodles and incorporate all the vegetables.
7) Serve hot.

Note: you can buy an acceptable pre-cooked version of the Chinese pork at Trader Joe’s.

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This is my favorite thing to do with daikon radish. You may have eaten a similar steamed radish cake at your favorite dim sum joint. This recipe is from Rasa Malaysia. Follow the link for beautiful photos of the entire process.

Part 1 – Making the Radish Cake
1 medium radish (about 700g when grated) + 50ml water
200g rice flour
250ml water
1/4 tsp salt

Method: 1. Over a very low flame, steam grated radish + 50ml water in a thick stainless steel pot (or non-stick pot). About 30 mins, or until radish turns translucent. Remove cover and allow to cool.
2. Combine rice flour, salt and water. Mix well to combine.
3. Add rice flour solution to cooled grated radish. Stir and mix before pouring into a metal cake tin for steaming. The final mixture should resemble a somewhat watery coleslaw.
4. Steam on high for 40 mins. Leave it until completely cool (best overnight in the refrigerator), so that the radish cake firms up. It will be easier to handle too, as it will not stick to the knife when you’re cutting. (You will have to rig up a steamer if you don’t own a bamboo steamer. I use a small bowl upside down in my pasta boiling pot. You can rest the cake pan on top of the bowl. A broccoli steamer won’t work because of the center stem thing).

Part 2 – Frying the Radish Cake
Use half of the steamed radish cake above (enough for 1 or 2 persons)
1 to 2 tbsp chai poh (preserved radish/turnip), optional
2 to 3 eggs, lightly beaten
3 cloves minced garlic
About 2 tsp fish sauce (or slightly more, if you like)
3 tbsp vegetable oil
Dash of white pepper
Chilli sauce (optional, as much as you like)
About 1 tbsp Rose Brand Thick Sweet Sauce (substitute 1 tbsp soy sauce + 1 tbsp sugar)
3 stalks chopped spring onion
Coriander leaves for garnishing

Method: 1. Cut up steamed radish cake into small chunks. Smaller chunks will crisp better, and the result is a more delicious plate of Chai Tow Kway. You want a contrast in texture – a crisp exterior and a soft interior. And those really small, charred, crispy crumbs? Heaven.
2. In a non-stick skillet, heat oil and fry radish cake chunks till lightly browned and slightly crisp. Heat should be medium high.
3. Add minced garlic and chai poh. Fry till aromatic. Drizzle a little more oil if it is too dry.
4. Add fish sauce, pepper (and lashings of chilli sauce, if you like it spicy). Fry to coat evenly with seasoning.
5. Pour beaten eggs all over radish cake. Allow the eggs to set slightly before flipping over in sections. It’s OK if it starts breaking up when you flip over; you don’t need to have a perfect whole. At this stage, you can dish up and serve with spring onions if you are making the white version.
6. Drizzle Rose Brand Thick Sweet Sauce and stir fry to mix well. Dish up and sprinkle liberally with spring onions. Garnish with coriander leaves.

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• 1 lb eggplant, cut into ½-inch slices
• 4-5 cloves garlic
• 1-2 medium sized fresh red or green chilies (or sweet bell pepper for the meek)
• 1 Tbsp light soy sauce or tamari
• 2 Tbsp dark soy sauce
• 2 Tbsp palm sugar or dark brown sugar
• 1 bunch Thai basil

Coat a large fry pan with about ¼ inch of oil and carefully fry the eggplant in batches until golden brown and melting.  Meanwhile, cut the garlic into slices and the chilies into diagonal rings.  When the eggplant is ready, remove it and add 2 Tbsp of fresh oil to the pan, add the garlic and half the chilies, and stir-fry until the garlic is golden.  Add the soy sauces and sugar, stir for about 30 seconds until the sugar starts to bubble, and return the eggplant to the pan.  Add torn basil leaves, stir and serve, garnished with the rest of the chilies (if you dare!)

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This season has been a great one for cucumbers. Last year the cucumbers didn’t exactly thrive in the wet conditions, and we hardly picked any. But this year’s harvest has been extremely abundant and it’s gotten me inspired to use them in some creative ways.

Continuing with my Asian streak that I’ve been on since last winter, I was trolling the internet for cucumber kimchi recipes when I stumbled on a couple of amazing Korean cooking channels starring some endearing and informative no-nonsense knife-wielding Korean ladies.

Anything Korean you ever wanted to know how to make is all right there in a series of crisply edited 5-10 minute videos. I followed the recipe for cucumber kimchi from Aeri’s Kitchen, and spent about an hour or so watching Maangchi to get some ideas for things to serve with it. So for crew lunch I served the kimchi along side barbecued beef (Whole Foods has been offering some very nicely marbled sirloin tips recently, as well as the amazing boneless short ribs—if cows made bacon these would be it!) marinated in soy, sugar, sesame oil and garlic. We ate the beef with rice and kimchi rolled into little packets of shiso leaves that I’m growing in a little garden of Asian herbs. I also served scallion pancakes and one of my favorite Korean side dished (banchan) of blanched zucchini strips marinated (again) in soy, sugar, sesame oil and garlic and sprinkled with sesame seeds.   

(Note: if you are seriously interested in making kimchi at home, it's very easy. But one thing you absolutely need to do is get yourself to a Korean market, like on rt. 9 in Hadley, to buy the right kind of chili powder. I would not recommend any substitutions.)

The other fabulous meal that I’ve made recently where the cucumbers played a central role in the inspiration—if only a supporting role on the plate—was satay, Southeast Asian grilled meat on stick served with savory-rich peanut sauce and blisteringly spicy cucumber salad. In the car on the way to Block Island we were able to catch, for once, “The Splendid Table” on NPR, and they were talking to grillmaster Steve Raichlen about his new book Planet Barbeque and this recipe came up. So I hunted it down online a few weeks later and actually followed the recipe note for note. I’ve made satay before but I have to say, this recipe is a keeper.

Satay is mainly eaten as a snack on the street in its native Indonesia-Malaysia-Singapore, but this dish has the entire pantheon of Southeast Asian flavors deconstructed into three parts that layer and build on one another to the eater’s taste: the meat laced with aromatic spices like cumin, coriander and black pepper; the peanut sauce enhanced with coconut milk, lemongrass, and the fishy-je-ne-sais-quoi of salted shrimp; and the cucumber salad bringing the crunch of raw vegetables and the punch of fresh chilies in a very sweet and very sour dressing.

In other words, it’s one hell of a snack. I encourage you to stock your larder with Asian goodies and try this one out.

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