The last six months have been life-changing for me in terms access to Asian groceries.

It all started with my company's move to Fan Pier in Boston.

Up until January, my entire adult working life has been in the city of Cambridge. I lived in Cambridge; I worked in Cambridge. Heck before that, I went to school in Cambridge.

For those of you who know Cambridge, you'll know how frustrating it is to get Asian groceries. As far as I know, we don't have a Chinese grocery store (though there is a wholesale tofu maker, but we'll leave that for another post). We had a few decent Japanese grocery stores in the past (Kotobukiya, Miso Mart), but they've all left now. There's a small Korean market (Lotte) near MIT, and then there's Reliable, another Korean market in Somerville not that close to where I live.

So I would go into Chinatown or Hong Kong Market in Allston on occasional weekends. Sometimes I would resort to the paltry Asian offerings at my neighborhood supermarkets.

My life changed when my company moved to Fan Pier. All of a sudden, I virtually passed by Chinatown on my way home everyday. Better yet, there was a C-Mart right at South Station. It was all-too-convenient to pick up hard-to-get items like Chinese BBQ "Sacha" sauce, my favorite "Old Lady" chili sauce, Chinese vegetables galore, and unusual cuts of meat.

My life changed AGAIN when H-Mart opened in Central Square in May. Now I could make a super quick stop at Central Square and pick up my favorite Japanese snacks, many Chinese items, and (naturally) tons of Korean specialties.

I was thrilled to find that both C-Mart and H-Mart carry beef shank cut lengthwise (not through the bone), which is the exact cut used for many favorite Taiwanese dishes, such as my mom's soy braised beef shank and Taiwan's national dish: Beef Noodle Soup.

I've been making this dish a lot more, especially this past winter because it was so cold. More recently, I tried using the pressure cooker to make it, which worked out great and saved tons of time.

Now, instead of spending 3-4 hours on a weekend slowly simmering this time-intensive dish, I can "crank out" a delicious beef noodle soup with fall-apart soft meat in just about an hour. Perfect for a weeknight meal.

Beef shank is the traditional meat used to make this dish, although I've seen recipes that substitute it with beef stew meat. I've personally never done that before, and my guess is that it won't be nearly as good. What makes shank so delicious in beef noodle soup is the presence of a lot of tendon / connective tissue, which contributes to rich, collagen-filled broth that results. The bone-in version that you get in normal western-style grocery stores works fine too. In fact, that's the version I used in my hand-pulled noodle video tutorial.

Begin by prepping all your ingredients. Chop your ginger and scallions. Mince the garlic. Cut up the shank into 1-2 inch pieces.

Bring a pot of water to boil and briefly boil the beef chunks for about 5 minutes. The main purpose for doing this is to "clean" the meat of its blood bits, etc. It will result in a clearer, cleaner-looking, and prettier broth, though if you're in a bind and you don't care about the look, it's a step that can be skipped.

Within a minute or two you'll start to see this ugly pinkish foam float to the top.

After about 5-7 minutes it'll get pretty thick and stop getting thicker (which means you're pretty much done).

Dump out the dirty water in the sink and rinse the beef pieces. Set them aside.

In a pressure cooker, stir-fry ginger, garlic, scallions, and star anise with vegetable oil over medium heat until fragrant.

Add beef shank pieces and chili bean sauce (or "broad bean paste with chili) "豆瓣酱" and saute for a few minutes until the beef is slightly browned.

This is the brand of chili bean sauce I like to use. I actually buy the spicy version, and they call it "broad bean paste with chili" in English. Most importantly you want to see the Chinese characters豆瓣酱, or "dobanjiang." I like the above brand because it's from Taiwan.

Add tomatoes, rice wine, and rock sugar (can substitute with brown sugar if necessary).

If you don't have fresh tomatoes, you can totally used canned whole tomatoes. In the above photo, I cut up several canned whole San Marzano tomatoes (they are tiny so I used 2-3), which worked out great.

The amount of rock sugar is really personal taste. Bryan hates sweet foods (e.g., he's not a fan of most Americanized Thai food), and thus I only add a tiny bit (we're talking like "dime sized rock") of rock sugar. Other people will add up to ¼ cup, which will make the soup definitely a bit sweet. You can always adjust the flavor at the end.

Finally, add just enough water so that everything is covered.

Cook under high pressure for about 30 minutes. Then slowly release the pressure. Because I was not in a hurry, I just turned off the heat and let it naturally release pressure. You can also release pressure more quickly using the method recommended by the manufacturer. In the case of my Kuhn Rikon I just press down on the little lever on top and it released steam until the pressure is back down.

Once the lid is off, you can use this opportunity to quickly cook some vegetables. I usually just cook some baby bok choy, though recently I saw a version made my blogger friend Joy Huang from The Cooking of Joy where she used napa cabbage. That was delicious as well.

The choice is totally yours. Every region, every family, and everyone's mom makes beef noodle soup just a bit differently, so go ahead and start your own tradition.

If you're really ambitious, you could even try hand-pulling your own noodles. Here's a fun video I made back in 2010 showing how to make both the hand-pulled noodles and this beef noodle soup! Warning - hand pulling noodles is really tricky and noodle dough is super finicky. Consider yourself warned!

These days it's much too easy just to pick up a package of fresh homemade noodles from either C-Mart or H-Mart. Ah, I am so spoiled now.

Enjoy!


Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup

Serves 4
2 lbs beef shank (cut up into chunks)
1 T vegetable oil
5 cloves of garlic, minced
1 inch chunk of ginger, chopped
2 star anise
2 scallion stalks, chopped
2 T chili bean sauce (or broad bean paste with chili / 辣豆瓣酱)
½ cup soy sauce
1 tomato, sliced
¼ cup rice wine
1 teaspoon to ¼ cup rock sugar (optional)
chili sauce (optional)
5 cups water (or enough to cover the beef)

Optional vegetables
blanched bok choy
napa cabbage
fresh cilantro as garnish

Preboiling
Bring a pot of water to boil and briefly boil the beef chunks for about 5 minutes, or until a white foam forms at the top of the water. Drain dirty water, rinse beef shanks, and set aside.

Stir-frying
1. In the pressure cooker over medium high heat, saute garlic, ginger, scallions, and star anise in vegetable oil until fragrant.

2. Add beef shank pieces and chili bean sauce and saute for a few minutes, until the beef is slightly browned.

3. Add soy sauce and cook for 2 minutes.

4. Add tomatoes, rice wine, and rock sugar.

5. Add water until everything is just covered.

6. Bring up to high pressure and cook under pressure for 30 minutes. Slowly release pressure and serve.
ALTERNATE: If you don't have a pressure cooker
Bring pot to medium high heat until boiling and then reduce to a simmer for 2-4 hours, or until the beef is fall-apart tender.

7. Adjust taste to preference (e.g., add chili sauce to make it spicier; add more soy sauce, salt, or rock sugar)

8. Serve with blanched bok choy and noodles

9. Optionally garnish with cilantro (Bryan's favorite!)

Yum!

And they are just as good if not better as leftovers the next day!

The post Quick & Easy Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup (in a pressure cooker!) appeared first on Tiny Urban Kitchen.

I am so excited to announce that I am featured on the front page of the Food section of the Boston Globe today (!).

I was thrilled and in utter disbelief when they contacted me about two weeks ago asking if I was interested in being featured. They said they were especially interested in my Taiwanese background and wanted to feature Taiwanese cuisine, which is a bit more unusual.

The writer Brooke came over to my home and we cooked Taiwanese food together. A Globe photographer, Lane, also came and took tons of photos. It was surreal. And yes, that's why I was working so hard to clean up my kitchen a couple weeks ago.

The article focuses on my Taiwanese roots and includes a recipe for the comforting Taiwanese meat sauce that Brooke and I made together.

In honor of the publication of the article, I thought it would be fun to make one of the most famous, iconic, and classic Taiwanese street dishes around: the Taiwanese Oyster Omelet.

Known as "ô-á-chian" [SAY "uh-ah jen"] (蚵仔煎), which literally means oyster pan-fry, this small dish is especially popular in the night markets of Taiwan. You'll see people frying these up in open air stalls using fresh, local Taiwanese oysters (which are much, much smaller than the ones we're used to seeing in the U.S.).

They key ingredient (aside from oysters, of course) is sweet potato starch, which you can easily find in Asian grocery stores. I have seen them in both Chinese and Korean grocery stores.  Of course, there's also Amazon (affiliate link). The sweet potato starch gives the omelet its characteristic gelatinous, slight chewy "QQ" (as Taiwanese like to call it) texture. It's my favorite part of the oyster omelet.

I like this recipe because it's super easy, tasty, and came from Taiwanese moms in America who wrote the book Homestyle Cooking of Taiwan, my favorite source for Taiwanese recipes (updated version of the book available here).

There are two ways you can make the pancake. You can either mix together the egg with the sweet potato starch at the beginning (resulting in a more consistent looking omelet), or cook the two parts separately, resulting in more interesting textural contrast between "eggy" bits and gelatinous sweet potato starch bits. After trying both ways, I decided I preferred cooking them separately, but I'll show you both (since they're both still really tasty).

Mix together sweet potato starch with water. The ratio is essentially ½ cup sweet potato starch for every 1 cup of water and 2 eggs. Multiply according to how many pancakes/omelets you want to make (rule of thumb: approximately one egg per omelet). Add salt, white pepper, and optionally garlic powder.

I decided to make two omelets, so I whisked together ½ cup sweet potato starch with 1 cup of water. If you're not confident about the freshness of your oysters, you may want to quickly stir fry them first. If you don't mind them being slightly raw-ish, feel free to cook everything together. I just threw my oysters right into the starch batter.

Because Taiwanese oysters tend to be much smaller than U.S. oysters, this recipe works better with smaller oyster pieces. If your oysters are too big, cut them into bite-sized pieces, about 1 to 1.5 inches wide.

Make your omelets one at a time.

Heat up your wok really hot (on high!) and then add the oil. Make sure to be reasonably generous, since you don't want it to stick. High temperature cooking oil like grapeseed oil is preferable, but canola oil worked fine for me. Add one serving of the batter (in my case, half of the bowl) and let it sizzle for 10-15 seconds. Lower the heat to medium. After about 5 minutes (or when the batter looks cooked and is gelatinous/clear), add the green leafy vegetables. I used spinach, but you can use Taiwanese lettuce (A-choy), chrysanthemum greens (tong hao), or other quick cooking greens.

Add one egg and mix it around a bit if you want. You can leave the yolk whole too, if you prefer a slightly runnier yolk.

Flipping is challenging! A real pro would be able to flip it effortlessly probably with just some slick wrist action on the wok. I resorted to using a spatula, and still sort of made a mess, albeit a beautiful, glorious, tasty-looking mess.

Frankly, it almost doesn't matter how ugly it looks underneath, because you'll slather it with sweet chili sauce and fresh cilantro anyway.

Yum . . . .

And if you are really short on time and just feel like mixing the eggs and the sweet potato starch batter all together at once, that works too.

It's neater and easier to deal with, but the end result tastes more uniform. It still has a super soft, slightly springy gelatinous texture from the sweet potato starch, but it's not quite the same.
Honestly, both omelets were delicious. I do prefer the version that separates the eggs and sweet potato starch, mostly because of the interesting textural differences.

If you don't want to deal with oysters, you can easily make this dish vegetarian by omitting the oysters (it will taste different, but will still be good). I can imagine it tasting pretty good with cooked mushrooms! You can experiment and substitute other seafood as well. Ideally, from a textural perspective, oysters work the best because they have a similar texture - that slight gelatinous, gooeyness - that works well with the rest of the omelet.

Enjoy!

Stay tuned for a few more posts with some really simple, everyday home cooking recipes, courtesy of my mom. 🙂

The post Taiwanese Oyster Omelet recipe (or Taiwanese Oyster Pancake) appeared first on Tiny Urban Kitchen.

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During this pandemic as I have been cooking more, I began supporting a local organic farm in Hong Kong. It reminds me of my old days in Boston when I used to receive gorgeous bounties of produce every week from Siena Farms, a local farm that practiced sustainable and organic methods. This Hong Kong farm is located in one of Hong Kong's land areas preserved for farming. It's been a joy to receive weekly deliveries of local, organic produce again.

Bitter melon was heavily featured in the early summer. Although green bitter melon is pretty easy to find in Hong Kong, I was excited that this Hong Kong farm also had white bitter melon, which we usually import from Taiwan.

White bitter melon is sweeter and less bitter than the green bitter melon. Bitter melon in general is very healthy and has been known in traditional Chinese medicine to lower blood sugar. More recent scientific studies have demonstrated anti-diabetic, anti-inflammatory, and anti-cancer effects in various in vitro and in vivo models.

I actually love both types of bitter melon, so I ate a lot of it during this seasonal time.

One of my favorite dishes to make was this Taiwanese pork-stuffed bitter melon. Because bitter melon and pork cook at pretty different rates, it's best to pre-steam the bitter melon before stuffing it with the pork (and then pan-frying the whole thing).

Prepare the Bitter Melon

Remove the seeds and pulp in the middle and slice into equally thick slices (I usually went for about 2.5cm, or half an inch thick). Steam the empty rings for about 5-10 min until they are fully cooked.

Make the Pork Mixture

Meanwhile, mix together ground pork with some scallions, soy sauce, corn starch, and white pepper. There's some flexibility here. For example, you could use minced shallots instead of scallions, a bit of other seasonings if you desire (e.g., oyster sauce, chili sauce, etc) according to what you prefer.

I usually keep it pretty simple and just use the ingredients I mentioned above. I've tried adding a bit of tofu to the mixture, which works OK as well.

Assemble

Stuff the steamed rings with raw pork mixture.

Pan fry on high heat with oil for about 5 minutes on each side, until the pork is browned and fully cooked throughout.

Serve!

Simple, and tasty. If you don't like super bitter vegetables, try the white bitter melon, which is sweeter and generally "juicier." All in all, this dish was in my regular rotation throughout most of the summer until bitter melon finally went out of seasons.

Taiwanese Stuffed Bitter Melon

Ingredients
2-3 bitter melons (either green or white is OK)
½ -¾ lb ground pork (can substitute half pork half tofu)
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon corn starch
½ teaspoon white pepper
½ teaspoon salt
1 stalk scallions, minced

Steps
Slice the bitter melon into 2 cm (½ inch) slices. Remove the seeds on the inside. Steam for about 5-10 minutes until they are soft.

Mix together ground pork with soy sauce, corn starch, white pepper, salt, and scallions in a separate bowl.

Stuffed the steamed bitter melon rings with the raw meat mixture.

Pan fry on high heat with a high heat oil (e.g., grapeseed or avocado oil) for 5 min on each side, or until done.

Serve optionally with cilantro.

The post Taiwanese Pork Stuffed Bitter Melon appeared first on Tiny Urban Kitchen.

We lived in a serviced apartment attached to Harbour City for the first six months we were in Hong Kong. In some ways, it made for a comfortable transition. We lived above a western supermarket, had walking access to a number of familiar restaurants (hello Din Tai Fung!), and found plenty of other excellent restaurants within walking distance.

It wasn't until I left that I realized what a unique dining destination Harbour City really was. Imagine a single (massive) mall that houses an insanely high concentration of many of Asia's best and most popular restaurants. That's what Harbour City feels like sometimes. This massive complex megaplex houses Japanese favorites such as Tsuta (truffle ramen!) and Sushi Tokami; European big names such as Joel Robuchon and Gordon Ramsey; Singapore darling Crystal Jade La Mian Xiao Long Bao, and much, much more.

For me, I'm always particularly excited when a restaurant from Taiwan comes and open up a branch in Hong Kong. I love Du Hsiao Yueh (also in Harbour City), and of course Din Tai Fung is accessible via a connected indoor bridge.

So it wasn't a surprise that I was excited to try Quan Alley, a very popular hot pot restaurant from Taiwan that's famous for its gorgeous presentation of hot pot ingredients, high quality ingredients, and excellent broths.

Lunch

Quan Alley has multiple locations worldwide, including Taiwan (where it started), Singapore, and more. Although it's most known for its hot pots (which I'll talk about below), I was actually very impressed with their fantastic Wagyu Beef Noodle Soup which we had for lunch the first time we came.

The unusual noodle soup comes with blocks of insanely melt-in-your-mouth soft Wagyu beef, cuttlefish cakes, a perfectly soft boiled egg, and a mala spicy flavorful broth. It was fantastic and easily one of my favorite beef noodle soups in the city.

Hot Pot

Of course, the hot pot is the star of the show and it's what everyone photographs and writes about. Quan Alley is known for its artfully plated hot pot ingredients as well as its beautiful side dishes.

We didn't order side dishes this time, but we saw people around us order them, and they are indeed beautiful. Especially unique is the almond daisy, made from a shrimp or lobster ball core and petals made of sliced almonds. Each flower takes 5 minutes to assemble by hand. This particular dish was taken off the menu in Taiwan because it took too long to make, though it re-appeared on the opening Hong Kong location's menu.

For the hot pot, you can try their signature dish, a pork neck "rose". The minimum order is three roses, which is actually quite a lot of meat. It comes with a raw white onion "cup" filled with egg white.

The idea is that you coat the pork rose with egg white before placing the entire rose into the boiling water. The egg white was quite "slippery" and hard to handle, but the server was kind enough to help us and did most of the egg white coating for us.

Place entire rose into the pot!

It's easy to order two different broths, which is what we did. The spicy broth is delicious and full of mala numbling spiciness, but it's nice to have a more neutral broth to balance things out! We though the middle circular third section, which flows into the spicy section, was a unique addition. It houses most of the chili seeds and seems to hold some of the chili oil as well.

Everything is fresh and presented with art and class. It was touch coming with just two people. Their a la carte vegetable portions are not small, and we felt it was harder to enjoy a wider variety of ingredients.

Their "vegetable bouquet", a gorgeous assortment of leafy greens, mushrooms, corn, and other vegetables, was way to large of a portion for just two people. If I ever go back again with a larger crowd, I would definitely order that.

Quan Alley Hong Kong - General Thoughts

I have really enjoyed Quan Alley Hong Kong the few times I have visited. As a casual spot for lunch, I think it's excellent. I loved the flavorful Wagyu beef noodle soup. Do note that noodle slurpers won't get to sit at the tables facing Victoria Harbour, since that section of the restaurant is reserved for hot pot eaters. If you're just enjoying noodles, you'll sit at the inner portion of the restaurant.

I really enjoyed our hot pot too, despite the fact that the two of us couldn't order a huge variety of ingredients. The quality of the ingredients is great, the presentation is at another level of artistry, and the ambiance is pleasant. I can't wait to come back with a larger group!

Quan Alley Hong Kong 寬巷子
Shop OT G57, Ground Floor Ocean Terminal
Harbour City, Tsim Sha Tsui

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