Peking Thigh

My mother-in-law, Joan, made Peking duck while my mom was visiting. She had done it years ago and wanted to try again. It was delicious. We ate it too quickly for me to have taken a picture.

Then she got an idea to try it with turkey thigh. The dark meat of the turkey thigh was surprisingly similar in taste and texture to duck except that it was much leaner.

Peking duck traditionalists will miss the fowl lipids but the skin held all the goodness from the sauce. Also, the meat to skin ratio skewed in the opposite direction (if you've ever eaten duck, you know what I mean) so maybe this ends up being healthier.

Anyway, I don't know how to make this, I just wanted to tempt your tummies. She made the Mandarin pancakes too. Very handy lady. I stir fried the bok choy. Hey, I had to do something.

I do know that making the duck involved boiling it in a sweet, gingery sauce, then hanging it dry and drip, then roasting it. Apparently, turkey thighs are less messy and intense since Joan could dry it on a rack in the refrigerator instead of hanging it from the curtain rod in the shower.

The only problem was that the thigh is so much thicker than any part of a duck that the meat closest to the bone just tasted like moist turkey.

I'm sure she'll try it again. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Closing Out the Year...

with food, of course.

As many of my Los Angeles friends know, I love Chinese New Year's Eve.

I used to gather folks for a sit down dinner at my old apartment and feast on the foods of my childhood.

Unfortunately, last year I was very preoccupied with wedding stuff. This year, I haven't figured out where to go for all my lovely ingredients yet.

So Danno and I closed out the year with a "small" feast. The only thing I made this year was the stir-fried Chinese cabbage. I opted out of making the Oyster Delight that requires an intriguing amount of prep time, the soup with sea veggies, and the mysterious bulbous root vegetable who name in English I have never known but always sparks a debate at the table.

But we did have the steamed chicken with ginger/scallion sauce, roast duck, and roast pork--and Jasmine tea. It was nice.

So the house is clean..well, as clean as one can get it with three furry creatures who shed running around.

Good bye, Year of the Earth Rat. Hello, Year of the Earth Ox.

The Minute You Settle...

Dan and I went to Gold Garden Seafood Restaurant on 82nd Ave (just north of Powell) the other day. It's been snowing so we rode the bus to a tire shop to get the "required" chains for our Prius whose front end slides around when braking in snow. It was mere blocks from one our fave Chinese restaurants.

There are two places "in town" that are well known to serve tasty Chinese food. One is Wongs King which I've already written about and the other is Gold Garden. Both get high marks for deliciousness. GG is more affordable and reminds me of some of those places I used to go in downtown Stockton when I was a kid.

There's always this hint of cigarette smoke from the attached bar, I think. The food is always served promptly and we always have a good time. GG seems like it's seen it's hey-day a decade or so before. It's dining room is large and it's menu is substantial.

This time D and I munched down on "Triple Delight in Tangy Sauce" and "Pork Mustard Green with Salted Egg Soup". Yeah, you won't find that at Panda Express. The delightful pork, beef, and shrimp were smothered in a spicy, sweet, sour sauce that blended well with the rice. The soup, well, reminded me of home. My mom used to salt her own eggs back in the day.

What does that mean, you ask? Well, she'd mix a salt water brine, place a bunch of eggs in a large jar, then pour in the brine until full and cap. Anyway, it would sit for months and the yolk would firm and darken. It was delicious then as was that soup.

What I love best is they always have roast duck and a side of roast pork hanging in the case for take out. Memories...

At the end of the meal, we get our fortune cookies, of course. Mine reads:

"The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get less than you settled for."

This stupid fortune almost made me cry in the restaurant. Well, I guess it wasn't so stupid. So, don't settle, people. Live it.

If you get a chance and you like authentic Chinese food try:

Gold Garden Seafood Restaurant
3016 SE 82nd Ave
Portland, OR 97266
(503) 777-3399

They have $6.50 weekday specials and they give large portions. A good place to dine out during a recession.

My Comfort Food

Everyone has a comfort food. It's a sense memory thing, I think. For some it's pizza. Others it could be mashed potatoes or chicken soup. For me, it's my mom's cooking, or anything that gets darn near close to it.

Mmmm. Clams in black bean sauce with sweet peppers and onions. I love fresh black bean sauce. It's so savory and pungent. My mom used to cook with it all the time...and I'm not talking about the stuff that comes mashed up in the jar. In my opinion, that lacks the vitality and freshness (if one can use that word with a fermented food) of the whole fermented bean.

She would take some fermented black beans from a jar put them in a rice bowl, fill the bowl halfway with water, pick up and drop the beans a number of times then remove them (into her palm) and pour out the water. Once I asked her why she didn't just leave the beans in the bowl and pour out the water. It's because some of the pebbles (there are sometimes little stones masquerading as beans in the mix) and grit would get held back by all the beans and it wouldn't be clean. Ok. Gotcha. So she'd rinse them a couple more times in that same manner until the water was pretty clear except for the bean skins floating around. Using the back of a Chinese soup spoon, she'd s/mash the beans into a paste. Tah dah, fresh black bean paste--must be cooked with fresh garlic (and sometime ginger) for the right flavor.

Anyway, this is not my recipe for clams so I won't go into that right now. Stay tuned though because I may include that in the future...and it's good.

Instead, Danno and I scouted out this place in "outer" Portland called Wong's King on SE Division St just east of 82nd St. It's fabulously big and located next to some sort of fur revitalizing store (I didn't know the fur business was still so big).

Chef Fu Lai Wong has won a prestigious cooking award in China (there are plaques everywhere) and the restaurant was rated in the top 100 Chinese restaurants in the country according to Chinese Restaurant News (which is written in Chinese so I'll have to wait for my mother to translate before letting you guys in on the other 99).

We also got this steaming plate of King mushrooms with sauteed greens. The King mushroom is a large oyster (or trumpet) mushroom that is tender and also meaty. The green was spinach and the sauce was light and savory.

We went on a week night so the place was pretty empty but the service was excellent. After we paid the bill, our server came by to give us dessert, because we are super nice. Actually, I don't know why they did it but it was a nice touch.

Tapioca soup with taro and coconut milk. It was also piping hot and delicious. That hint of coconut milk really put it over the top. Oh, Wong's King, we'll be back for more...maybe dim sum. And at some point Mama Lee will be the judge of that.