China Crumpet

It doesn’t happen often.

Every September or October however, for a few days at a time, Beijing transforms itself from a stinking, disgusting, huge, grimy, pile of dust to a gorgeous, urban wonderland. On Saturday, we had spent the sunny day sitting outside the glitzy Shin Kong Place discussing agriculture politics and the outfit of the girl sitting next to us. I was already in a good mood.

As we left, we wandered home next to the otherwise smelly river just south of the China world trade offices. The sky had turned a golden purple blue and bathed the skyscrapers in a pool of fairy dust. Next to the river, migrant workers had turned a rather unattractive group of ramshackle housing and un-hygenic restaurants into rubble and then into a park, complete with pagodas, sculptures and weeping willows. A cool breeze was stroking my skin.

Beijing had me once again.

Every so often, I get a mad craving for texmex. My mouth waters as i imagine bowls of salsa and guacamole, tacos and enchiladas - then I remember that I live in China and we do not have good avocados, the sour cream is expensive and the cheese even more so. Depressing.

Today though, we found 2 for 1 imported cheese and cheapish flour tortillas. No reason not to go all out. So, while munching on salsa and chips, we set out to make home made re-fried beans (super easy), a spicy and rich tomato sauce (super yummy), home made enchilada spice mix for the meat (which was also a bargain) et voila, we had a mouth watering, Mauritzon Mexican meal, which was uber-tasty and satisfied all my Mexico cravings. Though I am sure Rick Bayless would cringe at my lack of authenticity.

Our enchiladas were filled with toasted corn, chunks of tender, spicy beef and home made refried beans. They were then slathered with tomato sauce, topped with a layer of cheese and baked until golden and bubbling.

Salsa au Pekin:
3-4 ripe tomatoes (not the gross pink kind, splash out and get good ones or find cherry tomatoes!)
a quater to half an onion depending on onion size, chopped
2-3 cloves of garlic, finly chopped
juice of 1 lemon
Salt n Pepper
1 red chile
1 jalapeno
a bunch of cilantro

Chop, mix, squeeze in the lemon, season, enjoy with corn chips.

Refried beans:
2 cans beans, we used kidney (or use dried beans – soak over night and boil in salted water for an hour or until soft)
about 2 dl of stock or water
olive oil
Cumin
Salt
Pepper

Heat the oil in a large skillet, add the beans, stir and mash using the back of a wooden spoon or spatula, add the water slowly and look for a thick, mushy consistency. Cook until sufficiently mushy, musty and thick. Season with plenty of salt, pepper and cumin.

Mexican tomato sauce:
2 cans peeled tomatoes
1 onion, chopped
2 chiles, chopped
4 garlic cloves
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cummin
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp chile powder
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp cocoa powder
freshly ground black pepper
salt

Fry up the garlic, onion and chiles until soft, add the dry spices and stir until onion mix is coated and the mixture is fragrant, add the tomatoes, reduce until thick and fragrant.

Mexican spice mix:
This mix is to give whatever meat you have going on in your taco or enchilada a bit of a kick. We used beef this time – but it’s awesome on chicken too. Sprinkle the mixture over your meat as you cook it, making sure all the pieces are thoroghly coated.

2 tsp cocoa
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp cayenne
1 tsp chile powder
1 tsp salt or to taste
1 tsp black pepper

a lunchtime hit

Lunches are always so hard for me to come up with. Usually, I just have leftovers or a sandwich but sometimes, lunch too calls for a little original cooking. Thank goodness then for girls like Lotta Lundgren who are creative and interesting enough for me to love their simple, global and delicious cooking. This is one of hers. As long as you make it with lean pork (we are lucky enough to be able to mince from whole pieces at our local market so we know it’s lean) it is healthy and bursting with asian flavour. The fried rice gives crunch and an extra nuttiness. Topped with a fried egg, it feels like something you would eat in an asian hole in the wall – only a lot fresher.

Naked springrolls:
1 dl raw jasmin rice + ½ dl oil for frying
400 g minced pork
5 garlic cloves
1 large piece fresh ginger
3 tbs dark Chinese soy sauce
1 tbs sugar
2 carrots
½ head cabbage
1 tsp sichuan pepper, whole
1 – 2 dried red chiles
1 – 2 limes

Heat the oil in a pan. When it is hot, carefully pour in the rice, making sure the rice is completely covered in oil. Remove from heat when the rice starts to pop and turnes golden brown. Drain on a napkin or a piece of kitchen towel.

Fry up your minced pork.

Chop garlic and ginger and saute until fragrant. Add the mince, soy sauce and the sugar. Peel and grate the carrots, julienne the cabbage. Crush the sichuan pepper and chile in a pestel and mortar, press the juice out of the lime and add to taste.

Mix in the fried rice and serve with toasted cashew- or peanuts, limewedges and steamed broccoli. If you like, top with a fried egg.

nuggets of heaven - ready in ten

It has truly been a gorgeous day in Beijing. The skies have been blue, there has been an ever so pleasant September breeze and the sun has been blazing in the sky. In the distance, the new China World tower has been gleaming and the birds have actually been singing with pure joy.

We, however, have been hunkered down inside working our little fingers to the bone in order to meet our mid-September launch deadline. No sun for us. Actually, not true, we sped down to the local supermarket to buy chicken. Needless to say, I would have loved to prepare a basket of fabulous sandwiches, grilled chicken drumsticks and a bottle of home made lemonade and gone to the park for a picnic dinner but, alas, fate had not thought it so.

Instead, we made dinner in a hurry and hurried back to our computers. It took ten minutes. It was delicious. I was enormously pleased.

Caramelized black pepper chicken
adapted from Food & Wine Magazine

1 dl dark brown sugar
About 1/2 dl fish sauce (nam pla)
1/2 dl cup water
3 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon finely grated fresh ginger
1 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper
2 fresh Thai chiles, chopped with seeds
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 scallion, diagonally and thinly sliced
1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch pieces
cilantro to taste

4 servings fragrant, jasmine rice

Pop the rice (and water and salt of course) in a rice cooker. When there is about 10 minutes left on the rice mix the sugar, fish sauce, water, rice vinegar, garlic, ginger, pepper and chile in a bowl. Heat the oil and fry the scallion until fragrant and soft, add the sugar/fish sauce/vinegar mixture and chicken and cook until done. Serve the chicken atop the rice with a nice handful of fresh cilantro. Easy peasy.

Enjoy.

Mouthful of yumminess

Hubby and I are busy. Not only are we busy procrastinating the thank you cards for the wedding, we are also in the middle of a very exciting project which I can’t talk about yet. It is extremely fun, very exciting and absolutely exhausting, not to mention time consuming (and before you ask, no, we are not trying to have a baby). Add to that a sweltering Beijing summer and you have a perfect recipe for not wanting to hang out in a hot kitchen for too long. But there was a problem today. There was a delicious looking sea bass in the fridge which would go bad unless we did something wonderful with it. Unfortunately, both hubby and I were craving greasy junk, not delicate, flaky fish.

We decided to compromise and cook the fish, make a simple lime aioli, fry up some fries and serve the fish on toast on a bed of rocket and a with a thick slice of ripe, fragrant tomato. Like an upscale version of fish and chips. Writing this is making me drool, it was perfection on a plate.

For 2 largeish sandwiches you will need:

For the fish

350g white flaky fish (we got 2 biggish filés out of our fish so we just used one of them and fried it whole)
2 tbs flour
1 tsp Cayenne pepper
Salt and white pepper to taste (a large pinch or so)
a lug of olive oil or (even better) knob of butter for frying

For the lime aioli

2-3 tbs mayonnaise (home made, if you have it or feel ambitious!)
1 tbs Lime juice
1 large garlic clove
salt and black pepper

2 slices of whole wheat toast, toasted until golden

Fresh spicy rocket

A couple of thick slices juicy, ripe tomato

Mix up the flour with the cayenne and salt/pepper, put the fish in a freezer bag or ziplock along with the flour mixture and shake until the fish is completely coated. Heat a pan with the oil or butter and fry the fish until done. It should be lightly golden and cooked through. Crush the garlic and mix up the ingredients for the aioli. Toast your bread and assemble as you choose. We started with toast and then went on to add rocket, tomato, fish and drizzled aioli over the whole thing.

Serve with hot fries and a cold drink.

Since I am unable to access facebook to change my relationship status (the horror!) I shall have to announce it here. I am now happily married. The wedding was lovely and although Sweden showed it’s pretty summer side, I am now enjoying being back in quiet Beijing again with my husband.

Pictures will follow as soon as we have some kind of reasonable internet access at the same place as we have all of our wedding pictures.

What do you do if you have a baguette that needs to be eaten, some mince, an onion and a bunch of eggs? Roti John for breakfast of course!

The perfect food!

Roti John is a Singaporean/Malay hawker food that I fell in love with when I was living there. It is quite simply a perfect sandwich and an example of brilliant fusion food. Apparently it was concocted in Singapore by a local hawker dude who had a foreign customer that would come in each day and ask for an onion omelet with a side of French bread. The inventive hawker dude decided it would be cool to try and combine the two and hence the roti john – John being the name all foreigners were given in Singapore by the locals at time – as we know it was born.

To make this delectable treat you will need:

100g of minced meat of choice (you can use pork, chicken, beef, lamb, seafood or even take the casing off a good sausage and use that! The most “authentic” meat to use is beef.)
3 eggs
1 small onion
Salt to taste
Black pepper to taste
1 loaf of french bread, cut lengthwise in half
oil for frying
Sweet chili sauce and mayo to serve

Chop the onion and mix up the eggs, meat, onion, salt and pepper to a batter, spoon the mixture on to the cut side of the bread, and then quickly flip the bread, batter side down, on to a hot griddle pan with plenty of (olive) oil. Flatten the bread a little with your frying device of choice to make a crisp and browned, eggy surface. When cooked to sufficient goody goodness, turn the bread and fry on the other side as well to crisp the bread up a little. To serve, slice up the bread, plate it and dish up plenty of chili sauce and, if you want to go all out, mayo.

Enjoy!

I will indeed be yummy on breakfast toast...

At the market a while ago, I picked up a kilo or so of fresh, fragrant, sweet apricots from the western part of China. They are slightly smaller than normal ones but they are truly juicy and delicious. Unfortunately, a nasty summer stomach bug hit the household before we could eat a single one and in the fridge they stayed, untouched and unloved.

As I was cleaning out my fridge yesterday, I came across these little golden lumps of goodness and thought, I must do something with them before they go bad. Perhaps a juicy, warm, golden sauce to pour over a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a tangy, sweet condiment to an anise flavoured duck leg. But you can only eat so many duck legs and we had already saturated our ice cream quota for this month by scoops. So I thought, “what would grandma do?”…

My grandma is an extreme over achiever with way way too much energy. She sews her own curtains, gardens, makes her own clothes (very cute and fashionable ones at that), keeps her house impeccable and bakes, jams, pickles and even makes her own blackcurrant cordial at the end of summer. It all seems to go at lightning speed when she does it too, as if a domestic wizard just blew through her house in a whirlwind of kitchen cleaner and embroidery.

Anyway, looking at my apricots and thinking of grandma, inspiration came and I decided that they would make a fabulous, sticky, golden jam to have with crisp waffles and lightly whipped cream. Well, actually, the waffle part Jonas thought of… I was too concentrated on the jammy side of things. That way, I could cook up the whole lot and the jam would keep even if we didn’t manage to eat the lot at our feast of waffles. Perhaps I could even give some away and show off my kitchen prowess!

I have always thought making jam was a painful and long process of boiling and stirring, measuring and pouring, but it turns out that it is dead easy. China has made me think that about lots of things I thought were difficult as a matter of fact. Store bought jam no more! Or mayonnaise, or brioche or pickles. Oh my… I am turning into my grandmother… But let’s get back on topic.

The jam was dead easy to make and it turned out just as I had imagined, a golden, lumpy, sticky goo of goodness. A little looser than the store bought variety but still stiff enough to enjoy on waffles, ice cream, scones or in the Swedish tradition, on top of a sharp cheese sandwich. Yum.

Ingela’s apricot jam:

makes about 1 liter of jam

800g washed and pitted apricots, 4-5 pits reserved
1 dl water
400g caster sugar

1. When you have pitted the apricots, smash about 4 or 5 of the pits with a pestle and mortar (or a heavy rolling pin, pot, hammer… whatever you have) and remove the almond looking thing from inside. Finly chop the almondy thing discarding the hard outside of the pits and add to the apricots. This will add a little bitter zing to your jam and make it a little more adult.

2. Bring the apricots chopped pits and water to a steady boil and cook down for about 15-20 minutes until the fruit pulp is completely soft.

(If you want to check for pectin, the stuff that makes the jam thick, drop a very small amount of the mixture into strong alcohol, like vodka or something similar, if it turns into a firm lump after about a minute it’s done. I skipped the pectin test and had no problems. If it isn’t pectin-y enough for you, keep boiling.)

3. When you are satisfied that it has boiled for long enough, turn the heat off and slowly mix in the sugar while stirring.

4. When the sugar is completely dissolved, bring to the boil again and boil for another 15 minutes. Make sure you stir the bottom of the pan so it doesn’t burn! Skim the foam off the top.

5. When the jam is done, fill a couple of jars with the piping hot mixture and seal.

Let stand in room temperature over night. Done! Enjoy!

Ok so it’s been a while. I have been up to my neck in starting my business, managing my busy hospital day job and arranging my wedding. Now that everything is pretty much ready to go, I can relax a little and write again.

But what to write about? Today, the answer came in the form of an umbrella hat.

I have long been chuckling at the thought of someone actually thinking of this, as my Chinese compatriots are deathly scared of the sun and avoid it at all costs. There have been Darth Vader welding masks, ball gloves, caps, hats, newspapers and many other innovative sun blockers, however, somehow I never thought an umbrella hat would appear in real life… But, the Chinese being the safety minded individuals they are, have of course thought of a way to stick an umbrella to their heads to leave hands free for steering.

I have nothing more to say, except, enjoy the pictures.

Pretty Bad-A**

so clever!

I have just come back from a fabulous two day stint in Korea. Not only was the air clean, the surroundings gorgeous and the people stylish and friendly, but the food was FABULOUS.

We started our trip in the small-ish city of Suwon, home to 14 universities and a UNESCO world heritage site. Unfortunately, we were there for work so alas many hours were spent preparing for presentations rather than seeing the sights. However, we did pop out for a meal or two while we were there, the highlight being a seafood bonanza, consisting of a coal grill in the middle of the table, a LOT of small pickles and a mountain of assorted shellfish (including a huge SNAIL!) which were subsequently grilled and eaten. We were also served a pot of Korean style moules in a fiery broth and a kind of spicy seafood salad, which was also grilled. There was almost not a carb in sight, except for a delectable tiny cast iron bowl of rice, topped with fresh seaweed and caviar.

Yum. And all this for an affordable 170 CNY for two (or about 25 USD or about 206 SEK).

When our work was done and our presentation presented, we moved on to spend a day in the capital. It was not altogether as un-stressful an experience as Suwon, mainly because there was no English or Chinese to be seen, not a soul spoke anything but Korean and we had a few practical things like airport buses and storage lockers to figure out. But people tried their best and finally it turned in to a great day.

What we had discovered from day 1 is that Koreans know their meat. We had experienced a meat fest in Suwon on our first night and when we popped in to a local hole in the wall for lunch in Seoul, we were hoping for a repeat (but with a new twist, of course). Unfortunately, we sat like two question marks while the waitress tried to tell us what was on the menu. Finally I just nodded to something she said and hoped for the best. We were served two sizzling cast iron plates of spicy pork, which we wrapped in lettuce and had with rice and another assortment of pickles and a bowl of steaming soup that looked and tasted like miso. It was amazing. And it cost the equivalent of 50 CNY (about 7 dollars or 60 SEK). For two. Not kidding.

Needless to say my dear Koreans, I will be back. If not for the meat, then for the pickles.

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