Pork with Chinese Yellow Chives

Chives - let's talk about them. How many kinds of chives can you name? Is it one - the tiny ones that you buy in little plastic packs and put on baked potatoes? If so, then congratulations - you are officially an ignorant American, like me! As it turns out, there are multiple varieties of chives, and while surfing the internet I came across this recipe that looked like it would help me further unravel the Mystery of the Unnamed Produce that I usually encounter at the asian grocery store. My journey into madness learning about garlic chives spanned multiple weeks and was very informative, so I'd like to share, in the hopes that you, the hungry reader, can better jump into the world of proper produce selection.

These are the correct chives - gau choy (right), and gau wong (left)

First of all, I had to make this recipe twice. I was so excited about the prospect of buying "asian chives" (which isn't really a thing, they're actually called "garlic chives": Allium tuberosum) instead of American chives (which I will refer to as baked potato chives, or BP for short: Allium schoenoprasum), that I grabbed the first thing that looked like chives at the asian store and got the heck out of there. This led to a disappointing, bland dish, which gave me pause to do a bit of digging and discover that there are actually 3 kinds of Chinese / garlic chives you can get from the asian grocery store, all of which are from the same plant, and all are about 12 - 18" long packs of thin-stemmed green (or yellow) things:

1. Flowering chives (gau choy fa). These have a rounded base and the purple / green buds at the top, and look like a larger version of BP chives. Apparently they have much less flavor than the others.
2. Standard garlic chives (gau choy, kow choi, jiu cai, nira) are broad, flat leaves that are much more delicate than the flowering variety, and are much more edible as a plant when stir-fried quickly. Both of these have a very pronounced garlic flavor, though these are almost similar to ramps in their consistency.
3. Yellow chives (gau wong, jiu huang, kow won, "albino chives") are like white asparagus - grown without sunlight by heaping dirt on them, they don't develop chlorophyll, so they never turn green. They also are milder in flavor, and taste more like onions than potent garlic. They're also significantly more expensive - $15 / pound near me!

Let's look the other way about how I completely ignored the recipe the first time I made this, purchasing gau choy fa and hoping for magic, when all I ended up with was a plate of pork and tree stems. Instead, we'll focus on the second version of this dish, which ended up being a culinary rockstar - packed with garlic flavor and vibrant colors, yet inherently simple in its construction and very authentic in its rustic components.

These are flowering garlic chives. Not at all the correct chives, these were woody and bland

The incorrect version looks decent, but it's not what the recipe intended

Cumin Lamb Stir-Fry

My favorite Chinese restaurant in the area is owned by people from Chengdu, in the Szechuan province. It has opened my eyes to the variety in Chinese food, bringing in ingredients like homemade pickled bamboo, the increasingly present and always numbing Szechuan peppercorn, and the use of lamb, often with cumin. The first time I had lamb in a stir-fry was at P.F. Chang's, which shouldn't even really count, but it at least helped me realize that Chinese food shouldn't always just be about what sauce you want your chicken or beef swimming in. Savory, wild, and bursting with a rustic flavor that had nothing to do with General Tso or his counterparts, Pork Lo Mein and Wonton Soup, Chinese lamb dishes point out that there's something familiar and "country" about this part of China. So when I saw this cumin lamb stir-fry recipe on the NYT website, I was immediately ready to make it, and went out in search of lamb that same day.  

Naturally, this was a disaster. Somehow, despite watching Melissa Clark's video and following it verbatim, her magic did not translate into my kitchen. The resultant dish tasted almost right, but lacked body, and was a choking hazard when I just threw in a bunch of cilantro because it didn't call for chopping anything. So I had to modify the process to suit the average cook's home stove, which by no means can handle cooking a full pound of meat properly in one go. The second attempt was notably different, with properly seared and juicy lamb, and no choking hazards. It was every bit as good as food from the Szechuan restaurant, and if metering one's oil usage carefully, I would say it's probably more healthy as well. A definite win against the evils of professional recipes made in professional kitchens by people who can be snobby on a professional level.

Baby Kale Salad with Roasted Squash

This recipe is from the delicious New York City restaurant, Northern Spy.  I ate there a few years ago, and happened to notice that this random kale salad recipe pilfered from the internet was one of theirs. The salad did not disappoint, and made me miss spending time sampling the dishes of the excellent farm-to-table chefs in New York.  Crispy, crunchy, with a healthy dose of nuttiness from the roasted squash and toasted almonds, and tangy from the aged cheeses, this complex, filling salad was a huge hit at the dinner table, and could have held its own against the best made caesars or any of the roasted beet with goat cheese permutations.

I recommend you seek out baby kale for this salad, but if you can't find that try for one of the nicer kales mentioned in the recipe.  In a pinch, use regular kale, but blanch it for 60 seconds and then shock it in ice water to make it more palatable and bright.

Thai Bamboo Rice Salad

Strolling through a Whole Foods last year, I found a curious jar of green rice that I had never seen before.  Smelling faintly of jasmine rice but more earthy and perfumed, this curious infusion was known as bamboo rice.  This rice is apparently infused with the juice from young bamboo plants, giving it the vegetal notes as well as the green color.  We would have strolled on had we not found this recipe accompanying the rice, as we fortunately picked some up to try this out.

I highly recommend this rice salad, which was amazing as a side but could almost stand on its own if you were really avoiding protein for some reason.  Interestingly, I couldn't find this recipe on the Whole Foods website - it's some kind of mystery recipe that never appeared after I found the small card, so I'd like to post it here for all to see.

Thai Bamboo Rice Salad
Whole Foods

• 1 cup bamboo rice
• 1.5 cups coconut water
• Sea salt, to taste
• ¼ cup toasted unsweetened coconut
• 2 tbsp lime juice
• 2 tbsp seasoned rice vinegar
• ¼ cup peanut oil
• 4 green onions, sliced
• ¼ cup freshly torn mint
• ¼ cup freshly torn basil
• 1-2 tsp serrano chile, small dice
• Freshly ground black pepper
• ¼ cup chopped roasted peanuts
• 1 large cucumber, sliced into thin rounds

Combine rice with coconut water and a pinch of salt in a heavy-bottomed saucepan.  Bring to a boil over high heat, cover, reduce to a simmer and cook for 11-12 minutes.  Remove from heat and let stand, covered, for 5 minutes.  Fluff with a fork.  Transfer to a bowl and refrigerate to cool.

Preheat oven to 350 F.  Spread coconut on a baking sheet and bake for 4-5 minutes, stirring after 2 minutes, making sure it doesn’t burn.  Combine lime juice and vinegar in a bowl.  Whish in peanut oil.  When rice has cooled, combine with green onions, mint, basil and chile pepper.  Top with coconut and peanuts.  Serve on cucumber rounds, with a piece of fish if desired.

Oven-Roasted Mojito Chicken

This is an easy chicken dish that's full of vibrant but mild flavors.  I found it in the Dinosaur BBQ cookbook, and even though I had never seen had it at their restaurant in many dozens of visits there, I could tell that it had potential.  Some combination of the garlic, the slowly sauteed onions bathed in drippings, and the citrus-tenderized chicken made this dish hard to beat, and able to stand on its own as a centerpiece or complement a latin feast, as I did last night.

The name of the dish refers to the sauce that is used as a marinade for the dish.  There are a couple of kinds of mojo sauce, much like the words "curry" or "salsa" can be confusing, but we're focused on the Cuban variant here.  Searching for some backstory has led me to others that will be featured in future recipes.  Traditionally served over pork and/or yuca when referring to the Cuban mojo sauce, this is most commonly defined by a mixture of bitter orange juice, garlic, olive oil, and oregano.  Omit the oregano and you get mojito marinade, not to be confused with the minty rum drink.  This recipe does contain oregano, it's not enough to dominate the flavor, so I won't change the title to indicate the parent sauce.  Also, since I have never seen bitter oranges for sale, I stick to a ratio of 8 parts regular OJ to 1 part lime juice, and freshly squeezed for both whenever possible.