Chinese cooking revisited

In an effort to revive the Sarah/Fuchsia project, I planned a Chinese meal for last night. I brought back two Fuchsia Dunlop cookbooks in September, complete with chapters on ingredients and cooking technique and history. Too bad I don't have time to read all those chapters. The best I could do was find two recipes and try to find those ingredients at the market on Monday.

For the vegetable, I wanted to cook water spinach, 空心菜 kōng xīn cài, but after searching the entire market without any trace of this dark leafy green, I concluded it is not in season. Fuchsia doesn't mention that in the cookbooks, or if she does, I haven't read that chapter. I even asked some of the vegetable ladies and they said, no, not now. So I bought some of this:

I have no idea what is is, but it cooked up nicely in the wok with a little garlic and some oil. It was a little watery, I had to pour off a puddle of water in the wok after cooking. But pretty tasty.

The main dish was Dry Fried Beef Slivers from her Sichuan book Land of Plenty. Here is the recipe on-line. Unfortunately mine looked nothing like the steps photographed in that link. Mine involved fire. Big huge grease-fire flames. The result was not at all "succulent" but, as Tim described it, stir-fried beef jerky.

At least the vegetable wasn't a disaster. I will try again. Stay tuned for more.

I posted a bunch of new pictures on Flickr today: a trip to the zoo, a school field trip, and our recent bike ride.