Welcoming the Year of the Dragon with Lettuce Cups

Chinese food to celebrate a Chinese holiday. Nowhere near traditional but it made for a very nice meal - light, fresh and full of spice.

Lettuce Cups with a filling of rice noodles, carrots, peppers, scallions and cilantro. The dressing is peanut butter based.. peanut butter, lime juice, soy and sriracha.

To go with it, I made Baked Tofu (seen at the back) marinated in soy sauce, ginger, garlic, scallions and sriracha. Marinated for 3-4 hours. Baked at 400F for 30 minutes.

Scallion Pancakes

The story behind this experiment started last week when someone on the forum posted a recipe for a scallion cake because they got a ton of it in their CSA basket. I clicked on the recipe and instantly, just by looking at it, I was transported to more than 10 years ago to the little town of Lloydminster, AB where my parents used to live while I went to college. (Yay, UofS! ). Anyway, Lloyd had this one Chinese restaurant that used to provide "ethnic" food for the town. It was a very very popular place, I mean come on, one restaurant for an entire town to satisfy Asian cravings... the elderly man and his wife who ran it did a great job.  I remember ordering these scallion pancakes and eating them like I'd discovered some new food group.

So I went back to university and during one grocery trip shopping (which in itself was an experience back then :rolleyes: ) what do I find in the frozen section of Superstore? These amazing scallion pancakes! Not as yummy as the ones prepared by Chinese uncle in Lloyd but I was a student an hardly picky. I ate them.

Fast forward to last week when I was drooling over the picture on this website.....I won't even bother typing up the recipe. You can get it here. She does a much better job with explaining each stage of the process with really nice pictures.  I served mine with a veggie-tofu stirfry.

A little messiness is worth it...

Rollup...

Verdict-
-  YUMMY YUMMY!!! Must try!
-  It came out good but I could have added a bit more salt to the dough.
-  Rolling out the dough was the hardest part because it got super sticky super fast. Not sure what caused it but it wasn't as easy as rolling out chappati dough, probably because of the yeast.
-  I didn't use 1 cup of chopped scallions for 1 1/2 cups of dough as in the original recipe... just a little more than 1/2 cup.  I found the more scallions I added, the harder it was to roll out once in a ball.. the dough broke easy. :-(
-  I might try it next time with a whole wheat/multigrain/AP flour mix.

Happy Chinese New Year! Honouring the Humble Stirfry...

On the ocassion of the Chinese New Year I thought I'd post an entry on one of my all time favorites and easy go-to dish - a mixed vegetable asian style stirfry with tofu and lots of sesame. Each time I make it I change up either the vegetables or some other ingredient. The first time I made a stirfry, all I added were veggies and soy sauce. Then I started experimenting as I do so often, and ended up with something that looks like below.

Asian Vegetable Stirfry with Tofu and Sesame

Ingredients:

• Sliced veggies- peppers, onions, snow peas, baby corn, broccoli, celery, green onion, bok choy, mushrooms (any combination of these veggies works great).
  
• 1/2 block of tofu cut into little cubes
  
• 2 tbsp sesame seeds
• 2tsp Sriracha (chilli garlic sauce)
  
• 1 tsp chopped garlic
• Stirfry Sauce
• Low Sodium Soy Sauce
• 1-2 tbsp vegetable oil
  

Directions:

• Brown up the diced tofu in a pan over medium heat
• Toast up the sesame seeds and set aside. Be sure to watch these carefully as they burn very quickly! I speaketh from experience here.
  
• Heat the oil in a large wok or large sautee pan, until its near smoking.
• Throw in all the vegetables including the garlic.
• After sauteeing for about 5 minutes, add 2 tbsp of the stirfry sauce and a little bit of soy sauce.
• Continue sauteeing for another few minutes. The vegetables still need to have a good bite to it.

• Finally add in the tofu and top with chopped green onion and the sesame.
  
• Serve over bed of rice and dig in!!

Variations:

• You could add crushed peanuts for texture and a nutty flavour.
• Instead of the soy and stirfry sauce, you could add a peanutty sauce made with PB, lime juice and a touch of soy. Maybe I'll post this version later. It goes really well with pasta too. mmmm.