Char Siu/Xa Xiu Bao

You say char siu (Cantonese), I say xá xíu (Vietnamese).  You say baozi, I say bánh bao.  You say awesome pork buns, I say...well, awesome pork buns.

There's a general class of yeast-leavened, no-butter, no-egg, steamed dough that is prevalent in a lot of Asian cultures; their common ancestor is likely mantou, a simple steamed dough made from flour, water, and yeast.  Though the dough is not new in any way, I would argue that David Chang's famous Momofuku pork buns have played a huge role in shepherding Asian steamed buns into today's hip food scene.

Another popular dish is char siu, which is basically marinated roast pork (some might call the marinade a form of Asian barbecue sauce) with a caramelized honey (or maltose) glaze.  Char siu and its variants are used in a bunch of dishes, including char siu rice, bánh mì xá xíu, chāshū ramen, and many others.

So today, we're going to combine the two and make char siu bao from scratch.  Let's go!

Ingredients:

The Mother Sauces: Velouté/Suprême, Sous Vide Chicken

Next in our series on the five mother sauces is velouté sauce.  Velouté is similar to béchamel sauce in that it's a single liquid thickened with roux. Also like béchamel, you'll see that's it's pretty darn easy to make.

For this post, we'll be making the mother sauce, velouté, a child sauce called sauce suprême, and some awesome sous vide chicken and vegetables.

Part I: Sauce Suprême
Ingredients:
Velouté Sauce
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour
1 cup chicken stock

Sauce Suprême
1 cup velouté sauce
¼ cup heavy cream
1 tbsp cold butter for mounting

Inspiration for the chicken and vegetables comes from the ChefSteps recipes for chicken roulade and whole poached chicken. The sauce suprême recipe is from a combination of a few recipes + personal experience.

The Mother Sauces: Béchamel/Mornay, Orecchiette

This is the first in a series on the five mother sauces in French cuisine.  Without delving into a long history lesson, the five mother sauces as we know them today were defined by Auguste Escoffier in the early 1900s.  Escoffier, commonly regarded as the father of modern French cuisine, did a lot of work toward organizing, standardizing, and simplifying the zillions of recipes and techniques of his day.  For more details, here's a great BBC article that outlines some of his contributions to modern cooking and dining.

Most french sauces can be seen as a derivation of one of the five mother sauces (hence the name); if you've ever eaten eggs benedict, mac and cheese, or biscuits and gravy, chances are you've already encountered a mother sauce or one of its derivatives!

In this post, we're going to make a mother sauce as well as one of its derivative sauces, and some food to go along with it.

Part I: Béchamel Sauce

Ingredients:

2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour
1 cup milk
pinch of nutmeg (optional)
salt and white pepper, to taste

Country Fried Steak

I'm alive! more or less

I actually have been cooking, I've just been a bit lazy on the photo editing. And from looking through these photos, I guess I've been lazy on the shooting too...well, I'll try harder next time cough.

I don't know why, but I have somewhat of an obsession with southern food. Most likely due to being in the south for 3 weeks and eating a lot.

Ingredients:

Chicken Cordon Bleu...kind of

I need some toothpicks. Or kitchen twine. And breadcrumbs.

Anyways, chicken cordon bleu is fairly simple--get some chicken breasts, cover one side with breadcrumbs (using the flour/eggwash/breadcrumb method), butterfly and pound to a uniform thin length, add ham and swiss, and roll it all up. Oh, and tie it up, or stick toothpicks through the seam so that it doesn't unroll on you.

Fettucine alfredo with chicken

As if that wasn't cliché enough.

I've always wanted to make some kind of pasta dish with alfredo sauce, because I've always heard that homemade alfredo sauce is easy to make, and much better than the jarred stuff.

Well, a lot of homemade things are better than their jarred equivalents, but that's not the point.

Wait, that is the point! Go make your own alfredo sauce after reading this, and you won't regret it (nor will you buy the jarred crap again).

Ingredients:
1 lb Fettucine noodles
~1 lb chicken after skinning/deboning (preferably white meat, but I don't see why dark meat like thighs wouldn't work)
~1.5 cups heavy cream
1 stick of butter (I never said it was healthy, did I?)
Parmesan cheese (don't use the Kraft sawdust--I mean parmesan "cheese")

Smothered Pork Chops...again

Hey, the last time I made this was like 3 months ago.

This time, I'm going to try something a bit different--I like reading through recipes with step-by-step pictures, because it's a lot more interesting than just looking at a bunch of text. (see: goons with spoons) Also, I think it'd be more interesting to follow someone through the cooking process than to just look at a picture of the finished dish. So I'm going to try that!

Anyways, this is from an Emeril cookbook (I said it last time, and I'll say it again...save your breath). It's nothing fancy, all the ingredients used are common, it's fairly simple to make, and it's somewhat cheap (except for the pork, maybe), which makes this a good choice for college students! Especially since you can use those thin cut pork chops that are sold at the supermarket.

The full recipe can be viewed online here.

Bang a gong, we are on!