Flashback Friday - Soy Sauce Noodles

This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on June 30, 2014.

One of my favorite places to shop is....an Asian grocery store. I love H Mart, but I really love the new Great Wall that opened on Rt 40 in Catonsville. While I dabble in Korean, Japanese, and Thai food at home, my real favorite (both to eat and to cook) is Chinese, and Great Wall (as in the Great Wall of China) stocks a nice selection of ingredients more familiar to Chinese cuisine. They also have a bar at which one can purchase hot foods, including whole roasted ducks, chickens, and roast pork. We've purchased the roast duck twice so far. For $20, one gets a whole duck, neatly chopped into pieces. Both times, I've frozen half the duck to enjoy another time. It reheats really well spread out on a foil-lined baking sheet and popped in a 350°F oven for 30 minutes or so.

The last time we bought a duck, I asked for it to be cut only in half. One half went into the freezer, and the other half was stripped of its meat. (While chopping a duck into umpteen pieces with a cleaver seems like a good idea, every damn piece has a bone in it, which gets annoying after a while.) I put the meat into the oven to crisp up the skin and served it with steamed baby bok choy and fried noodles, both also purchased at Great Wall.

I had never seen the pre-packaged, pre-fried, noodles before. The instructions on the bag say to put the noodles in a pan, add a little water, and cook until the desired crispness. Rather than adding plain water, I added soy, sugar, and sesame oil as well, to make a dish not unlike the soy sauce noodles we enjoy at dim sum. With the duck and the bok choy, dinner was tasty and pretty, too.

Soy Sauce Noodles

2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon dark soy
1 tablespoons light soy
1 teaspoon oyster sauce
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 pound pre-fried Chinese noodles (half a package - we found them in fresh noodle section at Great Wall)
3 scallions, chopped

Combine the first 6 ingredients in a bowl, stirring well to dissolve the sugar. Heat a large skillet over high heat and add the noodles. Pour over the sauce and mix into the noodles quickly (I used two forks). Turn down the heat to medium and continue stirring the noodles to coat with sauce. They should start to crisp up in a few minutes...and stick to the bottom of the pan. Give them a taste to make sure the noodles don't taste raw, then toss in the scallions. Turn off the heat and serve immediately.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Cauliflower "Bread Sticks"

You know all those recipes out there for cauliflower crust "pizza" and "bread sticks?" They're purported to be great for people on Paleo or low-carb diets, and they're also gluten free. I'm here to tell you that I tried it, and it actually works. However, don't be fooled that they taste anything remotely like a bread product. They are more like a quiche that's been run over by a steamroller.

That said, they are pretty tasty, especially if you already like cauliflower, as I do.

I'd say if you were going to make a pizza crust, aim for multiple small pizzas. The larger the crust, the more likely the middle will be soggy and break off. The outer edges of my crust were lovely and sturdy, but the center was floppy. Had I topped it with anything other than cheese, it would have slid off onto my plate.

Cauliflower Breadsticks or Pizza Crust

1 medium head cauliflower
4 eggs
3 cups shredded cheese of your choice (divided use) (I used cheddar, Parm, and feta)
Seasonings of your choice (I used a teaspoon of Old Bay, plus some fresh thyme and basil)

Preheat oven to 425°F.

Cut the cauliflower into small florets and whiz into bits in a food processor. There should be about 4 cups of cauliflower bits. Put them in a microwave safe bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and nuke for ten minutes. Remove from microwave and allow to cool 10 minutes. Take off the plastic and add the eggs and 2 cups of cheese, stirring well to combine. Add seasonings and stir again. Taste for salt and add a pinch if you think it needs it.

Prepare two baking sheets with a parchment liner. Pat half the mixture onto each sheet, shaping it into one or more rectangles or circles about the thickness of a pizza crust. Bake for 25 minutes. For a crispier product, flip the crust and bake for another 5 minutes. Remove from the oven, top with additional cheese, and bake again until cheese melts, about 5 more minutes.

Cut into sticks and serve with dipping sauce of your choice. Or top as if it were a pizza, with sauce, pepperoni, and more veg. Put back in the oven for a few more minutes to warm everything up and melt the cheese.

Serves 4-6



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Indian Ceviche

It's Fancy Food Show season again and food samples have been showing up on our doorstep. A box of popcorn products was eagerly anticipated particularly because it contained three bags of Masala Pop. I had tasted Masala Pop's Rose Caramel flavor at the show last year and was excited that not only did it taste delightfully (yet subtly) of rose, but it was also a kettle corn-style product that wasn't overly sweet. The package we received from the company also included Chai Caramel, with true sweet-spice chai flavors in a light caramel glaze, and Savory Coconut, which has a lovely turmeric/coconut thing going on.

I decided that the Savory Coconut would be smashing on ceviche. What? You've never had popcorn on your ceviche? It's a popular accompaniment to the dish in Ecuador. It gives the ceviche a nice crunch.

If you can get impeccably fresh shrimp, then you can probably make this dish the traditional way, by "cooking" the protein with the citrus juice alone. However, as most shrimp available are IQF (individually quick frozen) and who knows how many times they may have thawed and refrozen by the time they get to your house, I recommend lightly cooking the shrimp first with heat. I poached mine in salted water just until they were pink, iced them down immediately, and popped them in the fridge until I was ready to assemble the dish.

Because the popcorn had Indian flavors, I decided to do the same with the ceviche by adding pinches of cumin, garam masala, and ginger. Not a lot, just enough to be noticed. Coconut milk might have been a nice addition, but I didn't want to detract from the coconut flavor in the popcorn. Feel free to add a few dribbles if you are so inclined.

This makes a lovely appetizer, lunch, or even a light summer supper with a green salad and some bread.

Shrimp Ceviche with Indian Flavors

3 tablespoons finely chopped red onion
Juice of 2 limes (divided use)
Salt
1/2 lb 31-40 shrimp
3 tablespoons finely chopped bell pepper
3 tablespoons finely chopped tomato
1 tablespoon finely minced tender cilantro stems
Pinch ground cumin
Pinch garam masala
Pinch ground ginger
Tabasco or hot sauce to taste
Cilantro leaves
Masala Pop popcorn

Combine the red onion and the juice of half a lime in a small bowl with a pinch of salt. Cover and set aside for at least an hour.

Poach shrimp until just pink in simmering salted water. Chill shrimp in an ice bath and refrigerate until ready to use.

Remove shells and chop shrimp into dime-sized pieces. Combine with the peppers, tomatoes, cilantro stems, and spices. Drain the onion and add to the shrimp, along with the juice from the remaining 1 and 1/2 limes. Taste for seasoning and add salt, a few shakes of hot sauce, and additional pinches of the spices if you feel it needs them. Refrigerate until cold, about an hour.

Serve garnished with cilantro and Masala Pop popcorn.

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Posted on Minxeats.com.

Waterfront Kitchen Mixes Old and New

We 've written about Waterfront Kitchen on numerous occasions, both on this blog and in our books. The incredible view from their airy dining room, the emphasis on fresh, seasonal ingredients in their cuisine, and the friendly atmosphere have always been a constant. The menu itself has changed over the years as each new chef has brought his own personal spin on the restaurant's traditions. Chef Cyrus Keefer, who's become well known in Baltimore for his inventive cuisine, is the current chef at Waterfront Kitchen and he brings a whole hosts of new ideas to the menu. We were eager to check it out. 

The Minx started off with the Strawberry & Basil cocktail made with basil vodka and muddled strawberries. I've finally come around to drinking gin in the summertime so I ordered the gin-based Cucumber & Lavender. Both drinks were light and refreshing for a warm day.

While our plan was to focus on some of the more popular dinner menu options, Chef Keefer had put together a special tasting menu for a group coming to the restaurant that night and he wanted us to sample some of the items. The pork belly pizzette was served on a soft crust topped with romanesco cauliflower, two kinds of cherries, and edible flowers from the BUGS greenhouse down the street. As we've mentioned in other posts, Waterfront Kitchen gets a great deal of their fresh fruits, herbs, and vegetables from the Baltimore Urban Gardening with Students (BUGS) Greenhouse, which is on the Living Classrooms campus on Caroline Street. Kids from low-income neighborhoods develop social, academic, and creative skills by learning how to grow food. They also sell some of the produce at an annual farmers’ market event.

We fell in love with Chef Keefer's calamari when he was working at Birroteca, and it's still amazingly tender in this latest incarnation, served with baba ganoush made black by squid ink and a green olive insalada. The delicious house-marinated green olives are also available as a separate dish with some hummus, greens, and flatbread. Also on the dish are some of the edible flowers from the BUGS Greenhouse which bring a floral dimension to the dish I've never experienced before.

These shumai-style dumplings held a mixture of confit chicken and housemade 'nduja, a spicy, spreadable, pork salami. N'duja has become a new favorite thing of mine and this combination, nestled in a tender dumpling wrapper, took me to my happy place. At first glance, I thought the flecks in the sauce were grains of rice, but it turned out to be chopped up pieces of that tender calamari we love so much, Chef Keefer never stops inventing.

Okay, so now we're moving on to the regular dinner menu. We wanted to focus on the tried-and-true sorts of dishes that summer tourists might order, so we started with the clam chowder. This version of the New England staple has a bisque-like miso-enriched broth. The clams are served in their shells, and chunks of sunchoke, also called Jerusalem artichoke, stand in for the potatoes.

We had to try the crab cakes because - Baltimore - and we were intrigued by Chef Keefer's pronouncement that the cakes have no filler in them whatsoever. What they do have is plenty of lump crab and just the right amount of seasoning and another element that we won't give away. The result is a meaty yet light crab cake that's quite flavorful. The cakes were served with deviled asparagus, a subtle chorizo vin blanc, and a romesco sauce made with shishito peppers.

Our final entree was another New England classic, the lobster roll. The roll itself was the classic toasted split-top hot dog bun. From there, things take an eclectic turn as green curry and avocado sauce redolent of kaffir lime are tossed into the hefty pile of lobster meat and delicate pea shoots are sprinkled on top. Served with a side of French fries, this is a lobster roll that is a cut above.

Waterfront Kitchen's pastry chef, Kelsey Willis, is only 21 years old but she shows a finesse with desserts that belies her youth. Our dessert had squares of moist chocolate cake filled with a beer-flavored custard all enrobed in a classic chocolate ganache. Housemade Old Bay-seasoned caramel corn is sprinkled on top and the plate is decorated with white chocolate tinted in yellow and red, making the dessert resemble an abstracted Maryland flag. On top of all that, it tasted great.

We're happy that Chef Keefer is working at Waterfront Kitchen these days, giving us an excuse to eat there more often. Not that we need an excuse, it's just that we don't get to Fells Point as often as we should.

Waterfront Kitchen
1417 Thames St.
Baltimore, MD 21231
(443) 681-5310


Posted on Minxeats.com.