Chinatable in my kitchen

China is a whole world as wide as my knowledge of Chinese cuisine is narrow. The dishes are more or less authentic, but everything was good.

SOUP/SALAD :

Soup : Chinese beauty milk

Soup : Summer Chinese fragrant lake

Medusa salada (jellyfish)

Rice salad for a panda

RICE :

Happy rice (chahan fried rice)

Nira chahan

Eight treasure rice bowl

Peanut and carrot congee rice porridge

Genmai okayu, brown rice congee

NOODLES :

Today’s ramen, tan tan tan…

negi ramen (in soup with pork)

Banbanji, hiyamugi and fruit chu-hi. (Chinese chicken’n noodles)

Banbanji chicken noodles and young ginger

yakisoba

TOFU, SEAFOOD :

Shiso oyster omelet

Mabo fair : aubergine and tofu

Sesame sweet and sour tofu

Red and Sorghum with stinky tofu

Asari and douchi hot duet (black bean shellfish sauce)

Chinese crab dinner

recipe of mabo tofu

Mabo Tofu, azuki variation

Spicing up the Chuka standards, mabo tofu

dinner chuka

DIM SUM (dumplings…) :

Red daikon, red mochi.

you tiao donuts and tonyu soy milk.

panda-man (steamed meat bread)

nira mochi

satoimo mochi

gyoza

Gua Bao(steamed bread, quick) classic

Daikon mochi, the lucky white carrot cake

MEAT :

Cumin lamb chop and kujo negi, Chinese style

banbanji (chicken) and green soy

char-siu pork roast

Osmanthus pork (muxurou)

Lackered duck skin (Peking duck style)

Springtime bokchoi ring, oyster sauce stir-fry

“Sichuan huiguorou” styled chicken

SWEETS :

Sesame jewels. The Chinatown treat home-made.

Mango sherbet and litchees

mangomania pudding

A silky Chinese dessert, annin doufu

Chinese lampion apple

plum niangao (New Year sweets)

DRINKS :

yun-yeung cha (love duck tea)

Salty Gourmande, litchee cocktail

bubble tea (macha)

bubble milk (strawberry)

Yuzu puer cha

Gyoza miso nabe (relax hot pot). Step 2 : cook’n eat.

Let’s eat this miso hot pot with ginger chicken gyoza…

You have everything ready (details here).

1. fill 2/3 of the pot with hot water, add the kombu seaweed, let simmer a few minutes. You can put the lid if you want to speed up.
2. add a part of the miso, at your taste. It’s very salty. You want the water drizzle slightly, just enough to poach and cook the ingredients. The “don’t let boil” advice for miso soup can’t apply here.
3. when the level of broth goes down, complete with hot water. When you get near the end of the meal, you can let the broth thicken.
4. add small amounts of the ingredients and pick them out as soon as they are cooked. The cooking time differ slightly. Here, the kabocha is the longest, I put some in first, then gyoza, then mochi and I like my cabbage and sprouts very crunchy so they need only a quick dip.

While the kabocha cooks, you have the time to form a few gyoza dumplings :

Inside the gyoza : meat, ginger and a little miso. Wet the outer circle and fold in 2, try to push out all air from inside and shape in little bags. They cook in about 5 minutes. You can see the change of shape and color.

FINAL ROUND :

At the end, everything that is left, the rest of miso, of veggies, the unused dumpling skins and the big block of mochi. The kombu seaweed has become much softer and it can be eaten. I cut it in ribbon and let it in.
When the mochi melts, serve the soup.

Other nabe hotpots :

Japanese miso hot pot with Winter crab
Nikomi Udon, noodle nabe
Duck and veggie nabe
sukiyaki, beef , sake and soy sauce

Gyoza miso nabe (relax hot pot). Step 1 : display.

A cool… no hot nabe Japanese hotpot with ginger flavored chicken gyoza dumplings. A meal to cook directly on the table and relax longly, and enjoy season food. It’s very popular for parties and all gathering, but you can start at one. Preparing takes less time than reading this post.

gas + donabe

Material :
-a stove you can place on your table. They make convenient and cheap gas ones (in any Chinatown). I also have a small induction one. A brasero is too slow for a big pot, but for one or two, that works.
-a nabe (pot). That can be any thick bottom pot. There are beautiful ones in black cast iron (kuro tetsu), or in pottery (donabe). It’s better to use one that seems too small than too big for the number of guests. The goal is to cook progressively and eat immediately each bite, so you want to cook in many small batches.
-a pot with hot water not far away

A bit of dashi kombu, the seaweed. That’s the base for the broth.

Chunky koji miso. How much ? I’d say a good spoonful per person for a full meal. Then that depends if you like your food salty.
Some mochi. It’s the full season as we are so close to New Year. I had square kiri-mochi. We can buy any size here. They sell thinly cuts ready for hot pots, but slicing yours is not difficult. I slice some, I keep some whole for the final.
Dumpling skins that you can make yourself. I bought them this time. Well, some buy the gyoza ready, but that’s not funny.
DIY gyoza

For the filling : ground chicken meat and diced fresh ginger. That’s all. The ground meat could go bad if it stayed too long unrefrigerated, so take it from the fridge at the last minute. If you are many, bring one a bowl and refill later as you go.

Season veggies that you like.
The greens of hakusai (napa cabbage). Bean sprouts. And yukikesho kabocha, sliced finely, if possible. The rind of kabocha is edible.

That’s ready. Jump to step 2 (here).

Dinner chuka

Chuka is an old word for Chinese. A short for chuka-ryori (Chinese cuisine in Japan). Well localised Chinese cuisine. Pass it at the sauce gourmande and add season produce, you have this simple dinner.

You can see a few colored leaves, but the trees are still very green, only a few fell. The cold air has been around for 2 in evenings only. So the dramatic color change of Autumn should start this week-end.

Stir-fry. Flavored with oyster sauce, tomato paste and ginger. It contains chicken liver, red onions, dried carrots, chili pepper, chrysanthemum leaves (added after).

Satoimo mochi. (see recipe here) It is served coated with Thai sweet chili sauce.

Gyoza dumplings (bought ready to stir-fry). I eat them dipped in Chinese black vinegar.

Yes, I cheat, I buy ready sometimes. Why not ? But making gyoza is possible. The thing is you need days of 25 hours to make the gyoza + the 2 other dishes. I’ll “gyoze” another day.

home-made Osaka gyoza (click here)

Gyoz-atelier

Mizu-gyoza and sauce.

Both sides of a “ichi nin mae” (litterally “in front of 1 person”, it’s a line of pan-fried gyoza) of yaki-gyoza. Actually, many people eat several ranks.

YAKI-GYOZA
This type is the typical gyoza you find every where in town, in gyoza booth, or as a side in ramen restaurants or others. They can be bought already made, but the quality is not assured.
I am not very good at shaping them… sorry. I need to train for that. They were good, that’s the most important.

Osaka gyoza

Gyoza with cabbage filling

Dough :
25 g bread flour
25 g cake flour
1/2 cs oil or lard
about 25 ml hot water

Filling Base :

For 2 dozens unflavored, 3 dozens flavored
(that depends on size/type of dumpling)

(to mix together and let a while in the fridge)
100 g ground pork (actually I used ground chicken)
1/2 onion, minced
1/2 ts pasted garlic
1/2 ts pasted ginger
2 cs soy sauce
4 cs sake
pepper, chili flakes

Flavor (to add to the base, just before filling the dumplings)
1 tbs starch + 2 tbs water
2 cups shredded cabbage
salt

Mix or sieve the flours together. Add in progressively hot water to form a ball of paste. Add a little fat. Kneed until you get the texture of your earlobe.
Cut in 3, form 3 sticks. Cut each stick in 5 balls. With a thin pin, spread the dough in turning it to obtain (ideally) round skins. [I couldn’t find my gyoza pin and used a big one… they would have been rounder]

Don’t put too much filling. Form the gyoza. The small “bags” contain very little, it’s to finish…

Heat a pan, oil or lard it and place a rank of gyoza to “fry” the bottom. When it’s golden, pour 1/2 glass of water, cover and steam on middle heat. I count 3 minutes for chicken, 5 for pork. Take off the lid and cook slowly till all water is gone.
In shops, they use lard I think (well I’m sure the wholesale store sells those 30 liter containers of lard to someone) and yeah, that works better.

Serve with small plates and elements of sauce (fragrant sesame oil, vinegar, soy sauce, shichimi 7 spices mix) that each person mixes at his/her tastes.

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Mini (pan-fried)
Steam them in the oiled pan with the big ones (no pre-frying), then add a little oil and stri-fry them. Cut the heat, add a few drops of sesame oil, mix and serve.