BLD Tweet A Dish

When I found out that one of my favorite restaurants, BLD, has an on-going Twitter contest for free food, I knew I had to enter.  I really like BLD.  It's just one of those great neighborhood places where you can go for good food and good wine, where the staff is knowledgeable and friendly, the atmosphere both fashionable and relaxed, where you're perfectly free to dress up or dress down — you can even bring your kids.  Unfortunately, it's not the sort of place I can go to too often because most of the entrees are in the $15-$27 range, and when you're pinching pennies, even a $6 hamburger can seem formidable.

So how does the contest work?  You go on Twitter and suggest a dish that BLD might want to make for its Thursday night special.  Past winning dishes have included chicken and dumplings and Moroccan tajine.  I suggested that yummy Portuguese dish of pork and clams.  Well, much to my surprise, I actually won.  I mean, I never win anything, and I'm one of those poor suckers who enters everything.  I can't tell you how many stupid hoops I've jumped through, from writing slogans for lawn mowers (we really needed one) to designing t-shirts with eco themes for a hopeless chance at a Smart car.  Well, finally!  Who knew all those hours of reading cookbooks would pay off!

The prize for Tweet A Dish is a complimentary 3-course meal for two!  And that includes wine!  I was in heaven...!  Originally, I thought part of the deal was that you had to have the special you suggested, but, no, the staff said we could both order anything we wanted!  BLD is just so generous.  Absolutely no fine print involved.  As our waiter Peter said, "We just want you and your guest to have a good time."  And boy did we.  The featured wine for the night was this incredibly fun, delicious white from Slovenia called "Jarenincan" (Crnko winery), an interesting blend of riesling, sauvignon blanc, and chardonnay which made for a slightly sweet flavor with the most floral, fruity aftertaste — starting off with that how can anything go wrong?

Of course I couldn't wait to try my special.  I'd noticed that on the menu, the dish had become "Portuguese sausage and clams".  I hadn't realized that there were two similar Portuguese dishes, one with pork and clams done in an Alentejo style, and another with sausage and clams called cataplana, which is a specialty of the Argave region and is more like a bouillabaisse with lots of seafood.  BLD did the cataplana version, only with their own spin, making it more like a risotto, or, paella, I suppose.  The dish was very delicious, full of flavor from the shrimp stock, and with plenty of nice heat.

It was such a wonderful evening, with all my thanks going to BLD.  They really go all out to make the Tweet A Dish winner feel special, and it's that kind of graciousness which makes L.A. a fantastic town.

Chinese Steamed Buns

Our family is crazy about Chinese stuffed buns, the ones called baos.  Usually, we'll make a special trip to a restaurant to get some, but every once in awhile, I actually feel like making them at home.  And they're not as hard as you'd think they'd be to make.  For the bun part, I like to use a recipe by Ken Hom which is extremely easy.  For the stuffing part, I just put in whatever is around.  Like ground pork, garlic, ginger, frozen peas, cellophane noodles, carrots, etc.  The only trick, if you're using nonfatty pork loin, is to add some cold water or else the stuffing could get very dry.

Baos can be baked or fried, but mostly, they're steamed.  The ones I cook at home are the steamed version.

Recipe for the Chinese steamed buns
(adapted from Ken Hom's Illustrated Chinese Cookery):

6 fl oz warm water
1 packet of yeast
1 tablespoon of sugar
2 tablespoons of oil (something without much flavor like peanut)
13 oz plain flour

Mix the water, yeast and sugar in a large bowl.  Leave for about 10 minutes, at which point the mixture should be foaming.  (If it isn't, you've got dead yeast and will have to go and get some live ones.)  Add the flour and mix until you have a nice, smooth dough (if it's too sticky, add more flour).  At this point, you can just make steamed buns.  Just roll out the dough into a large snake and evenly divide the snake into as many pieces as you'd like.  Put a little piece of parchment paper on the bottom of each piece and let rise for 30 minutes.  The parchment paper keeps the buns from sticking to whatever tray you've put them on.  And then steam for about 10.  (Uh — you should know to use a steamer of some kind, right?  I have a two-tiered one I got at a Korean store.)

Recipe for stuffing

About 3 - 4 pork loin cutlets, ground
half a carrot, chopped into tiny squares
garlic, minced
a teaspoon of minced ginger
1/4 cup of defrosted frozen peas
3 tablespoons of cold water
1/2 teaspoon of salt
lots of pepper
cooked cellophane noodles, finely chopped

Now the secret here is to make sure the pork loins are ground to a paste.  I do it in a small food processor.  Add all the ingredients and mix extremely well with your hands.  You MUST use your hands.  It will be gooey, but that's what you need to have a moist stuffing.

Now to assemble the baos, take a small chunk of dough and swirl it around both palms until you have a rough ball.  And then flatten it, again with your palms.  Unto the little pancakes, add enough stuffing to fill about 85% of the pancake.  Now, very gently, pull the dough up and around the stuffing, going around and around.  You should get little rough points meeting up at the center.  Pinch together the points and twist.  Now you have a bao!

Grease the bottom of your steamer (I find Pan pretty good).  Fill the steamer with the baos, not crowding them too much, as the baos will rise.  Let rise for about 20 minutes. And then steam for about 10 minutes.

What I Just Cooked: Japanese-style Braised Pork

I wanted to make a pork stew, but with a Japanese twist, so I went to one of my favorite books, Japanese Cooking A Simple Art by Shizuo Tsuji. There aren't a lot of pork recipes in the book, but I did find something called Nagasaki-style Braised Pork. The recipe called for all sorts of things like bean curd lees and bacon and required two days of cooking. Not going to happen. So I just simplified it by using the basic simmering stock and throwing in whatever vegetables I had.

Braised Pork

About a pound of cut up chunks of pork shoulder (or butt as it's sometimes called)
About 4 small red potatoes cut into chunks
2-3 carrots peeled and cut into chunks
24 pearl onions, peeled

simmering liquid

3 1/2 cups dashi (I just put half a small packet of powdered dashi with 3 1/2 cups of water)
1 cup sake (I used the mei kuei lu chiew because I didn't have sake)
2 tablespoons of mirin (can be skipped)
6 tablespoons of soy sauce
5 tablespoons of sugar

Put the pork into a casserole pot and add the simmering liquid. Let it come to a boil. Skim impurities. Then add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for about 45 minutes.

Recipe adapted from Japanese Cooking A Simple Art.

What I Just Cooked: Schweinshaxen

Schweinshaxen. I bought a small piece of pork leg, mainly because it was so cheap. Usually I steam-roast it, smearing it in fresh ginger and garlic. But I decided to go German this time. In a roasting pan (which at the moment is my old Cuisinart skillet), I made a bed of leeks, mainly using the tough green parts that aren't good for anything but flavoring soups. There, on the bed of verdant green, I gently rested my pork leg. This one had a nice layer of skin. In order for the flavors to seep in, I slashed the skin in several places. Then I gave the pork a rub down of coarse salt and pepper and garlic. It was now ready to go into the oven, which I turned up to 450 degrees. I also put a layer of foil over the roast to let it steam a little. After fifteen minutes, I turned the oven down to 300 degrees and removed the foil. I also poured some Paulaner Salvator beer over the top. From then on, every thirty minutes, I continued to shower the pork with Salvator. This is why I'm calling this Schweinshaxen. The overall cooking time was about five hours.

How did it turn out? I'd give my faux Schweinshaxen an A. Because the next day, the leftover pork had the most amazing aroma of beer. I love boozy meat. Absolutely amazing to eat cold!