Cooking Chinese for the Olympics! This is Recipe 2 in the series and another home-style Chinese dish for you to try.

(Recipe 1: Ground Beef with Beijing Sauce Over Noodles)

Oh…and there’s a contest in the middle of this post!!!

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Last fall, my parents treated Scott and I to a 10 day group tour around China. Our first stop was Beijing, and first thing I noticed was how clean the city was. I literally could eat off the streets, as there was an entire team of sanitation engineers whose sole job was to scrape gum off the streets and sidewalk. I’m so not kidding - they wore white gloves and could scrape even crusty, 2 week old Bubbalicious in one quick motion.

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As promised, I’m doing a series of simple Chinese dishes as we lead up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. I’m hoping to post a new recipe at least 4 times a week, though that might be a little ambitious and make my family very hungry for something like spaghetti or meatloaf.

This dish, Ground Beef with Beijing Sauce over Noodles is so flexible - you can use ground turkey, chicken or even pork. If you don’t have Chinese noodles, serve over rice or any type of pasta. The greatest thing about this recipe is that the entire thing comes together in 15 minutes (if using noodles) and costs around $5 to feed a family of 4. How can you beat that?!

Normally, I’d serve this over rice, but I had some of these wonton noodles leftover from my

Crab and Pork Wonton Noodle Soup recipe that we’re currently testing for my Steamy Kitchen cookbook. (Come take a look and join the testing group if you’re interested!)

So, as thrifty as I am, I’ve served this over noodles instead of rice. You can do either.

There are certain dishes that my Mom always says in Chinese, “goes very good with rice,” meaning, You’re gonna eat A LOT of it and won’t be able to stop. This is one of those dishes where before you even know it, you’ve eaten the entire pot with rice or noodles!

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My editor, Jeff Houck, sent over a picture of pan-fried Scrapple slice and my heart fluttered like crazy. “Scrapple? Scrapple! What’s Scrapple? I asked him,” and within 30 minutes was off to the supermarket to find Scrapple, a distant cousin to Spam.

Yes, I have an odd fascination with meat that comes in it’s own coffin.

“hmmm…I wonder if I could showcase the otherwise disgusting “meat” in a edgy, fashion-y, Bon Appetit-esque yet appetizinng way. I mean, when was the last time you saw a photo of canned ham and said, “DAMN…that’s a mighty fine piece of ass?!”

While I was there, I went bezerk and ended up with a basketful of “meat” products along with a variety of ingredients to concoct four different recipes. And really. That’s how my “meat” adventure began.

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from Steamy Kitchen food column in Tampa Tribune

Writing and editing more than 100 recipes for a cookbook that I’m doing is no easy task. In fact, it’s quite a bit more intense than I had ever imagined. The more-than-occasional brain farts and writer’s block are tough, and usually I can deal with those moments by distracting myself with a massive, industrial-sized roll of bubble wrap. It’s uniquely satisfying, covering three out of five senses in less than two seconds.

pop! pip! pop!

Sometimes, when the stress of writing turns into a gnarly tumbleweed, the giant roll of bubble wrap finds its place under the desk, propped between my feet. I unroll a nice, perfect, clean sheet onto my lap, I take a deep breath and let my hands wring the shit out of those air pockets.

POPOPOPOPOPOPOPOPOP!!!!

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I just read an article about a man in India who created a tree that grows 300 varieties of mangoes.

Although the original tree is more than 80 years old, this man has grafted different mango saplings onto it. It’s kind of neat and strange at the same time.

But, it got me thinking: If I could have one tree in my backyard that could grow 300 varieties of something, what would I want? Three hundred is a big number, and I’d probably get tired of that one thing - even if it were chocolate: dark, milk, semisweet, truffle, bittersweet, cordial-filled, pistachio-topped, caramel-injected, syrup, frosting, nibs, bacon-flavored, powdered, and on and on.

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from Steamy Kitchen food column in Tampa Tribune

If I had to just choose one thing, “my killer app” in the kitchen, it would be salt. It doesn’t matter what cuisine I’m cooking, salt is the basis of flavor in a savory dish. Call me a salt snob, but I stay away from the regular table salt, mainly because it tastes like crap! The granules are way too fine, the anti-caking agent just sounds gross and added iodine is sooooo 1920’s. The taste reminds me of…um…getting smacked in the face with a salt lick dipped in a vat of bitters?

Normally, I use kosher salt in the kitchen, mainly because of the texture and cheap price. I really like the feel of kosher salt in my fingers as I’m seasoning, and I’ve learned to season by sight, feel and taste. I’m just too lazy to bust out the measuring spoons, because each time, I have to wash and wipe dry the set of awkward, clanging, dangling spoons for fear of tainting the oregano with chili powder or powdered sugar with vanilla extract. How inefficient! Wouldn’t it be cool if spice jars came with twist lids that doled out the spice in teaspoon increments? What a great product idea. And if you steal my idea, at least take me out to dinner. But I digress. Read the full story

from my column in Tampa Tribune

Tat-tat-taaaat-tat-tat-taaaat-tat! That, my friends, is the beautiful sing-song sound of Chef Martin Yan’s cleaver as he chops bok choy. In fact, everything about Martin is musical, from the lyrical harmony of his Chinese accent (yes, it’s real - I asked) to the way he rhythmically pulses the food processor. Brrrrrr…brr.brr…brrrrr.

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Note: this was written for the lovely wedding issue for the Tampa Tribune

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The Chinese culture is filled with food traditions and symbolisms, so much in fact that I could never keep up and remember them all. During the entire 6 days surrounding my wedding, I deferred to my mother to tell me what to eat to please the Gods of good fortune and fertility. Oh, did I want to have some grapes? I had to eat five of them, not one less because that number that I must not utter, one less than five, means something bad in Chinese. In fact, I am choosing each and every word very carefully in this column so that in case YOU are the one getting married, I do not want to be blamed for any misfortune!

My wedding with Scott was a nice blend of his culture (Scottish-German) and mine. We exchanged vows at Pebble Beach’s legendary 18th hole (ok, Scott just corrected me and said “fairway” not “hole” because I don’t think they’d let 10 pairs of three-inch stilettos aerate the baby-soft skinny grass at the hole), but included Chinese customs throughout the entire week

One custom that we opted out of was serving a whole roast suckling pig at the wedding banquet. According to the Chinese, the pig symbolizes the virginity of the bride, and um, you know where I’m going with that. I say, no sense in pretending or misrepping what is not true, because that would be a lousy way to begin a marriage! Plus, where the heck would we find a whole suckling pig in the middle of a gucci golf resort? Can you even imagine the chef struggling to fit the fat pig on his fancy rotisserie grill?

There is one tradition that I would like to share with you, eating noodles. For birthdays, new year and weddings, noodles are served to represent long life. Don’t be tempted to cut the noodles, or you’ll be “cutting your life short.” You may not be Chinese, but really, there’s no harm in covering all your bases. I mean, who knows what deity drew the short straw and was appointed to be in charge something so boring like “lifespan?”

So, I created one easy dish that covered all your important bases – sort of cramming in as much good fortune as possible on one plate. The sesame seeds and pea pods in the noodles symbolize fertility (remember, if you don’t want children, substitute with any greens, bean sprouts or sliced bamboo shoots.) Shrimp, in Chinese, is pronounced “haa” which sounds like laughter, and may your marriage be full of happiness.

And of course, this column has 688 words, my way of wishing you a smooth path to double prosperity.

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from my Tampa Tribune column

I’m sure that a vow to eat healthfully was at the top of most New Year’s resolutions lists. Sigh. It certainly was on mine, but I’ve been doing a lousy job of fulfilling my goal of losing 15 pounds.

I even made it super-easy by limiting myself to just ONE resolution. I typed in my journal that if I could get there by the end of the year, I would pamper myself with a spa day at The Met in Sarasota.

It’s May, and I’m so not there yet. Maybe I need to re-evaluate my prize because, as we all know, a change in behavior is only sustainable with a promise of good loot at the end. The words “losing 15 pounds,” even the thought of a haircut and four-hour massage, is not enticement enough to turn away that decadent swirl of chocolate frosting or the irresistibly curious bacon toffee. Sugar? Butter? Bacon? Cannot resist.

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Today is Saturday, May whatever. This morning I woke up and FINALLY gave myself permission to be sick. After uttering those words to my bedside lamp, the already straining cork that had been clinging on for dear life where head meets nose the past 4 days, holding back the gush of mucus (gross), finally popped.

I am sick.

Which, in all honesty, just being sick actually feels better than my mind knowing that my body is sick but demanding, “Man up, soldier! YOU ARE NOT SICK.” Yesterday was a big day, when Holly, my editor, flew all the way down from Vermont (brrr) to Florida (aaaahhh) and spent the day with me in the kitchen. It just would have sucked to be snottin’ and sneezing all over the food. It was an absolute must that I was healthy - er- at least functioning fairly well for that day.

Our plan was to spend the day cooking, testing/writing recipes, photographing, eating and editing. Ok, really, my agenda was to distract her as much as possible in the kitchen, get her drunk so that we could forget about editing. Cuz me no likey editing. You could threaten to take a hammer to my cherished kiwi Le Creuset baby dutch oven and I still would choose THAT over picking apart words and trying to come up with a suitable phrases to replace my babbling, wandering musings and cussing. <– that sentence was a run-on and probably didn’t make much sense.

But, I’m totally stoned on Nyquil right now. So back the hell off.

I wanted to show Holly what a “day in the life of a deranged, disorganized food blogger, cookbook-author wannabe” would be like. And boy, did I work her ass off. We created 4 new recipes, photographed them for the book and fed the dinner party for that evening. I had scribbled down recipes for 4 dishes that I had created in my SICK BUT NOT SICK head and when she arrived, I thrusted my notes to Holly and said, “here are my recipe notes!”

They really shouldn’t be classified as “recipes,” because they looked like this:

hoisin, honey, ginger but maybe garlic or maybe just omit both, how about orange marmalade? could use palm sugar too, 5sp, S+P, ribs, slow+low and glaze.

Holly looked at me with the “this is a recipe? are you fucking serious, lady?” look and then muffled into her sleeve, “bluejay calling mother hen…red alert..I REPEAT…red alert…operation steamykitchen is a no go….requesting permission to abort mission.”

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