Braised Chinese leaves (Peking cabbage) in chicken stock

This was originally posted in November 2012. I'm reposting this as it seems like a perfect recipe to share to celebrate the Chinese New Year :)

What do you usually do with a Peking cabbage/Chinese leaves/Chinese celery cabbage/Napa cabbage (Brassica rapa subsp. pekinensis)?

In Estonia you'll most likely to encounter it chopped into small dice or thin ribbons and mixed with chopped peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, perhaps some feta cheese, and served as a side salad. Not particularly interesting, but cheap and filling.

I hosted/instructed couple of Chinese cookery events earlier this year, and while preparing for the events, I spent hours browsing my favourite Chinese cookbooks, looking for recipes and inspiration. Fuchsia Dunlop and Ken Hom are my favourites for inspiration (currently in love with Dunlop's most recent book, Every Grain of Rice,  the US version is due in February), but Yan-kit So's Classic Chinese Cookbook, as well as Sasha Gong and Scott Seligman's The Cultural Revolution Cookbook provided a number of excellent dishes for the final menu.

One of the dishes that I included in the final menu, was this humble braised Chinese cabbage, served hot. This particular recipe is from Ken Hom's wonderfully approachable tome, Complete Chinese Cookbook (hardcover, published in August 2011), with tiniest of modifications (you'll find the original recipe for Braised Beijing (Peking) Cabbage in Cream Sauce on p 264); there are rather similar recipes for braised Chinese leaves in Sasha Gong's book (p 21), and in Yan-kit's book (p 205)).



I was rather sceptical to start with - I had never had these leaves in a hot dish before (and don't care much for the raw version myself). However, this dish was a true revelation - the leaves become almost silky after braising, and the final dish was much bigger that the sum of its parts. As we were enjoying our meal at the end of the 2-hour cooking marathon, most of the participants were expressing their surprise regarding how much they enjoyed this dish, having not had very high expectations about cooking and eating a hot dish using Chinese leaves (and that happened three times, actually, as I hosted three Chinese cooking sessions, all sold out, and all having 15 participants).

Note the dish is gluten-free, and also vegetarian, if you use plain water instead of Chinese chicken stock. Not as flavoursome, but still tasty.

NB! There are few more Chinese recipes here on Nami-Nami.

Braised Peking cabbage in chicken stock
(Hautatud Hiina kapsas leeme sees)
Serves four to six



500 g Chinese leaves
1 Tbsp groundnut oil
3 large garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced
300 ml chicken stock (ideally Chinese-style chicken stock)* or water
1 tsp salt
0.5 tsp ground white pepper

To thicken:
2 tsp cornflour + 2 Tbsp water (optional)

Cut the Chinese leaves into 5 cm (2 inch) wide strips.
Heat the wok. Add oil and heat until hot and slightly smokey. Add the garlic, stir-fry for 15 seconds.
Add the cabbage leaves, stir-fry for 2 minutes.
Add the stock or water to the wok, season with salt and pepper. 
Reduce heat, cover the pan and simmer on a low heat for 15 minutes, until the cabbage leaves are softened.
Using a slotted spoon, remove the cabbage leaves from the pan and place into a serving dish.
Reduce the remaining liquid by half. Add the cornflour water, heat through to thicken*.
Pour the thickened stock over the cabbage leaves and serve at once.

* To be really honest, I've usually skipped the final thickening phase with cornflour and simply reduced the liquid.

Thank you, Marju, for helping me style this simple dish for the photo shoot.

Saucy Asian Meatballs recipe

There was a day in early December last year that involved a small round turning table, a batch of beautifully styled Saucy Asian Meatballs from Ali's Gimme Some Oven blog, one of my favourite white serving plates, our beautiful white and heavy cotton living room curtains, and our almost-two-year-old son Aksel. I don't want to go into details, but let me assure you that when you immediately remove those curtains and tuck them immediately into your washing machine, the sticky sauce consisting of hoisin sauce and dark soy sauce does wash off. Eventually.

And luckily, the recipe makes loads. So even if you have to throw half of the saucy meatballs away, as the tiny shards of your favourite serving plate and white sesame seeds are almost indistinguishable from each other, and we're not really encouraging eating stuff off the floor in our household anyway, then you still have enough to eat - and photograph - as well.

These have a pretty strong flavour, so they're more for nibbling than consuming in huge quantities.

Saucy Asian Meatballs* 
(Aasia lihapallid) 
Source: Gimme Some Oven
Serves about 8



Meatballs:
1 kg mince (I used a mixture of beef and pork)
2 tsp sesame oil
250 ml (1 cup) panko breadcrumbs
1 tsp ground ginger
2 eggs
1 Tbsp grated garlic
100 ml / 7 Tbsp finely chopped scallions/spring onions
0.5 tsp salt

Sauce:
175 ml hoisin sauce
4 Tbsp rice vinegar
2 Tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp grated garlic
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp sesame oil

Garnish:
white sesame seeds
finely chopped scallions/spring onions

Preheat oven to 200C/400F.

Mix together the meatball ingredients in a big bowl. Shape into balls about 3 cm (just over 1 inch). Place onto a greased baking sheet. Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until meatballs are golden brown and cooked through.

Meanwhile, whisk together all the sauce ingredients in a small bowl until well blended.

Once the meatballs are cooked, dip them into the sauce until covered.

Sprinkle with sesame seeds and scallions/spring onions and serve warm.

* I have to thank Estonian food blogger Juta, who reminded me about these meatballs earlier today :)

Chinese Lemon Chicken Recipe

Now that I'm a young mum with three kids, I am looking for and cooking more and more quick and universally appealing dishes. Luckily it doesn't just mean macaroni with fried pork or pasta with pesto - the "older" kids are happy to try different foods (like mussels), and I can still cook my old favourites from across the world. Last week (when I was still a mum to just two :)) I made this quick and easy Chinese chicken dish, which they all loved. It's a lighter and healthier version of the popular Cantonese dish.

The recipe is adapted from Wynnie Chan's 2007 cookbook "Fresh Chinese". Wynnie Chan is a nutritional consultant for the Chinese National Healty Living Centre in the United Kingdom, so she's dedicated to adjusting popular Chinese dishes to modern healthy palates. That isn't always easy, but seems to work for this lemon chicken recipe.

I usually serve it with rice, but egg noodles work just as well, especially if doused with a little sesame oil and sprinkled with some sesame seeds.

Chinese Lemon Chicken
(Hiina sidrunikana)
Serves four

400-500 g chicken breast filets
1 egg
2 garlic cloves, finely crushed or grated
2 small lemons
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
4 Tbsp cornflour
1 Tbsp groundnut oil or other mild vegetable oil
2 spring onions, sliced at an angle

Whisk the egg, garlic, finely grated zest of 1 lemon, soy sauce, sesame oil and cornflour until combined. Cut the chicken breasts into 2 cm cubes or strips, put into the lemony cornflour mixture. Leave to marinate for at least 15 minutes, preferably an hour.

Heat the wok or a large frying pan until very hot, then add the oil and heat until almost smoking. Add the chicken pieces in batches and fry until golden brown on all sides (reduce the heat, if necessary). Transfer the golden chicken nuggets onto a plate and fry the rest in a similar manner.

When all the chicken pieces are cooked, then return them all to the pan. Add the juice of one lemon, give the dish a quick stir. Taste for seasoning - add more soy sauce or juice of another lemon, if you wish.

Garnish with spring onions and serve at once.

Recipe for honey-soy glazed oven-baked quails

Every now and then I come across some young fresh quails, and cannot resist buying them. They're sold oven-ready here, so it's just the matter of seasoning the birds and popping into the oven for half an hour. A weekend night dinner that looks pretty elegant and is a little bit more exciting than your average roast chicken - is ready in less than an hour (and that includes the marinating time). Here's a lovely recipe I discovered a while ago from Jill Dupleix's excellent Simple Food. Jill uses honey to sweeten the glaze. Although it's lovely with honey, it's even lovelier with a good maple syrup, and that's what I've been using recently.

PS Our kids - both the one-year old and the three-year old - love this dish, especially the drumsticks!

NB For other Chinese recipes here on Nami-Nami, click here.


Honey-Soy Quails

(Mesine ja sojane vutt)
Serves 4



4 quails about 200-250 g each
2 Tbsp runny honey or 4 Tbsp maple syrup
3 Tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil

Flavouring salt:
1 tsp Chinese five-spice powder
1 Tbsp sea salt flakes

To serve:
2 Tbsp sweet Thai chilli sauce

Rinse the birds, pat dry with a kitchen paper. Tuck the wing tips behind the back, tie the legs with a cotton string.
Combine honey/maple syrup and soy sauce in a large bowl. Add the quails and turn them in the marinade. Leave to marinade for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 200 C/400 F.
Remove the quails from the marinade and place into an oven dish where they fit snugly. Drizzle with sesame oil.
Bake in the middle of the preheated oven for about 30 minutes, turning them once or twice, until the meat is cooked and the skin is crispy and golden.
Sprinkle some five-spice salt on top and serve with sweet chilli sauce.

For a side dish, Jill suggests some stir-fried spinach and mangetout/sugar snap peas and spring onions. Something green and quick and simple.

Sesame Honey Chicken

I've been cooking - and eating - a lot of Chinese food recently, say, since early November. Why, you're wondering? You see, I had to choose the recipes for the Chinese cooking workshops I was organising, and test and fine-tune the ones that made the cut. Now, three workshops (and some 45 happy Nami-Nami readers later), I feel confident that I have a pretty good Chinese recipe repertoire to work with and feed my friends and family. While I was trying to use pretty authentic Chinese recipes for those workshops - mainly from Sichuan and Cantonese cuisine - then here's a delicious American-Chinese classic, sesame honey chicken.

NB For other Chinese recipes here on Nami-Nami, click here.

Sesame Honey Chicken
(Seesami-meekana)
Serves four



400 to 500 g chicken breast fillets or boneless thigh fillets
1 Tbsp light soy sauce
1 Tbsp Shaoxing rice wine or (medium) dry sherry
2 tsp sesame oil

For the batter:
4 Tbsp cornflour/cornstarch

For deep-frying:
groundnut oil or rapeseed oil

Honey sauce:
3 Tbsp sweet chilli sauce
2 Tbsp good-quality ketchup
2 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp oyster sauce
2 Tbsp light soy sauce
3 Tbsp water

To garnish:
toasted white sesame seeds

Cut the chicken into 2 cm pieces.
Mix soy sauce, Shaoxing rice wine or sherry, sesame oil in a bowl. Add the chicken, stir and leave to marinate in the fridge for at least an hour.
Sprinkle cornflour over the chicken pieces to cover on all sides, shake off excess flour.
Heat couple of cm of oil in a small saucepan until slightly sizzling. Deep-fry chicken pieces, couple at a time, until golden brown on all sides and fully cooked. Put fried chicken pieces aside.
Combine the sauce ingredients in a small saucepan and bring into a boil. Simmer for a few minutes, until the sauce thickens slightly.
Add the cooked chicken pieces into the honey sauce, heat thoroughly through.
Sprinkle sesame seeds on top.
Serve with steamed rice or cooked noodles.

Crispy Chicken in Sweet and Sour Sauce

My Estonian Nami-Nami site is currently hosting a Chinese food Cook-Off, and this crispy chicken in sweet and sour sauce has proved immensely popular. I won't give you a recipe here, but send you to my dear friend, the very passionate Johanna, who blogged about Crispy chicken balls with home-made sweet & sour sauce exactly three years ago.

The only changes I made to Johanna's recipe was to use 2 large chicken breasts (about 500 g) instead of four to feed four people, and I doubled the amount of sauce. Excellent - K. had a whopping three helpings and our daughter loved the sauce-covered crispy chicken pieces a lot as well.

Thank you, dear Johanna! Who knows, perhaps we can cook some Chinese food in your Singapore kitchen together one day ;)

Eestikeelne retsept: Krõbe kana magushapus kastmes

  NB For other Chinese recipes here on Nami-Nami, click here.

Weekend copycatting: Chinese chicken stir-fry, Roasted peaches with basil, Tuna & chickpea salad

No, I'm not writing about Weekend Cat Blogging, hosted by Clare at Eat Stuff, where foodbloggers show off their adorable cuties. I managed to do quite a lot of cooking this weekend, including 2 dishes I've spotted at various foodblogs. I feel much better for it - both for cooking something nice and for finally managing to cook something other foodbloggers have suggested. There are so many tempting recipes around, and I'm keen to try them all, but there's just not enough time and energy always available.

I hosted a small casual dinner on Friday night, attended by two Edinburgh based Estonian friends and two visiting Estonian friends. We skipped the starters bit and headed straight for the chicken&greens stir-fry that I also cooked for my family in June, then with an addition of garlic scapes.

The recipe comes from February 2001 issue of BBC Good Food magazine, where it is called Chinese chicken stir fry. I guess all 5 of us thought it was a Chinese dinner enough (cooked in a wok, seasoned with soy sauce and eaten with chopsticks:) but again, am not sure whether anyone more familiar with the versatile Chinese cooking would agree, as it didn't seem to be very Chinese to me. But it's tasty and easy, very bright and colourful, and I also suspect it's reasonably light and healthy, and I have cooked it many a time since I saw the recipe few years ago.

Chinese chicken stir-fry
(Kanawok)
Serves 4 or so, depending on the amount of noodles/rice.



25 grams butter
450 grams sliced chicken fillets
3 tbsp dark soy sauce (I used Kikkoman's)
350 grams broccoli, cut into small florets
200 grams green beans, cut into 1-inch pieces
a bunch of sliced spring onions
2 tsp corn flour (Maizena/corn starch)
freshly squeezed juice of 2 oranges
a handful of fresh basil

Heat a large wok, melt the butter.
Add chicken fillet strips and a dash of soy sauce. Fry for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently, until chicken starts to brown.
Add broccoli florets, green beans and about half of spring onions (the whiter parts). Fry for about 3 minutes, stirring frequently.
Mix corn flour, orange juice and rest of the soy sauce. Add to the wok and heat for another 1 minute, until the sauce thickens a little.
Add the rest of the spring onions and basil.

I served it with some egg noodles tossed with a dash of sesame oil.

Peaches Roasted With Brown Sugar and Basil
(Basiilikuvõiga küpsetatud virsikud)

There have been lots of lovely recipes using peaches recently (check out the fabulous creations at Kuidaore and another lovely peach dish on The Flying Apple blog). I then came across a very tempting and oh-so-simple peach recipe at Gluten-free Girl (originally from NY Times (25.8.2005)) and decided to go for it. This is my first copycat dish of the weekend.



A dessert simply cannot be any simpler - you halve the peaches and remove the stones, fit the peach halves snugly into a baking dish. You fill the peaches with some fresh chopped basil (I'm happily using the crops of my herb 'garden'), some brown sugar, a tiny piece of butter and sprinkle the whole lot with cinnamon:

I was even so lazy as to skip the bit where you're supposed to mix sugar, mint and butter into a paste - it worked perfectly well without that preparatory step as well.

Then you bake the whole lot in a pre-heated 225˚C oven for about 15 minutes, until the peaches have softened, the butter has melted and sugar caramelised.

I served it with my favourite ice-cream - the sticky toffee one from a Scottish organic dairy Cream O'Galloway.

Pertelote's tuna and chickpea salad
(Kikerherne-tuunikalasalat)

On Saturday morning I had another nice and hearty fry-up at Native State (well, I must introduce my visitors to the local food culture!), and thus skipped the lunch. I later attended a lovely BBQ at my friend Helen's place (another local Estonian), where I brought along Pertelote's fantastic tuna and chickpea salad. I should probably say that I made this salad again (photo above) - and this my second copycat dish of the weekend (and a recurrent one).

These lovely dishes and plenty of entertainment made me happy and kept me busy and retained me from missing people who are not around at the moment too much. As for the weekend entertainment - you can't go wrong with some salsa dancing, BBQ, shopping and a highly entertaining La Clique show. PS Aussie bloggers - I thoroughly recommend the latter show, coming to Melbourne in October!