the petite pig

a cantonese classic: pork jook with two kinds of eggs

anyone that has spent any time in hong kong knows that jook (also known as congee) is a cantonese classic for breakfast and brunch.  like i said, i never grew up eating oatmeal, but you'd often find a steaming hot bowl of jook cooked by grandma or my mom at the breakfast table.  jook is served all over china, because it's essentially peasant food.  it stretches a cup of rice to a substantial meal for a family of four.  at it's plainest, jook is just rice porridge, watered down rice.  it can be dressed up a little with some soy sauce or black vinegar or a lot with some braised meats.  my favorite version of jook (and perhaps the most classic) is made with lean pork loin and two kinds of eggs: thousand year old preserved and salted.  and i can't have jook without it's most important accompaniment, dough sticks - deep fried goodness at it's tastiest.

pork jook with thousand year old preserved eggs & salted eggs
serves 4 to 6

1 lb. lean pork loin
lots of salt
12 cups of water
1 cup of rice
3 thousand year old preserved eggs (pictured below and found in any asian grocers)
2 salted eggs
1 handful of cilantro or 2 stalks of green onion, chopped
1 dough stick, toasted and sliced into 1/2 inch thick pieces (can also be found at any asian grocers)
red or black vinegar, soy sauce, freshly ground pepper for seasoning

heavily salt 1 lb. of lean pork loin, and when i say heavily, i mean heavily.  give the pork plenty of time to absorb the seasoning, anywhere from two hours to overnight.  when pork has been marinated, place salted pork loin into a stockpot or a dutch oven and cover with twelve cups of water.  bring to a boil and then lower heat keeping the water at a simmer.  cook pork slowly at a simmer for forty-five minutes and then remove from water.  set aside and let cool.

pour in one cup of rice and bring water back to a boil.  lower heat to keep water at a heavy simmer.  cook rice for two to two and a half hours.  when it's ready the rice will start to break up and become incredibly soft and creamy. 

while the rice is cooking, slice up pork and eggs.  for the pork, use a fork to break up cooled piece of pork.  the pork should fall apart, like a piece of braised meat. 

once the rice is the right consistency, add shredded pork and eggs.  garnish with cilantro, dough stick pieces and then season to your liking with soy sauce, vinegar and/or freshly grounded pepper.

eat piping hot!

   

and the winner is . . .

nags from "for the cook in me" with her beautiful curd rice with pomegranates served with chow chow sambhar - a south indian delicacy.  congrats!!!

veggie mu-shu presents

a few weeks ago, i posted a recipe for vietnamese summer rolls, which i made for a fundraising event.  also on the menu were my veggie mu-shu presents.  the filling consists of four simple ingredients that can be found at any asian grocery store: bean curd, napa cabbage, shitake mushrooms and eggs.  the filling is then dressed with a savory sauce and wrapped in a delicate mu-shu wrapper. the "present" part of the dish comes from the little scallion ribbon that finishes the wraps.  now you just have to decide who is deserving of your tasty little presents?

veggie mu-shu presents

serves 6

2 eggs + a dash of salt & pepper

8 leaves of napa cabbage, sliced thinly

2 tbs. olive oil

½ lb. of shitake mushrooms, destemmed and sliced thinly

2 pieces of bean curd, julienned (photo of bean curd below)

1/3 cup of hoisin sauce

1 tbs. rice vinegar

1 tsp. sweet rice wine (mirin)

1 tsp. sesame oil

12-15 mu-shu wrappers (can be found in the frozen section of an asian grocer)

freshly ground pepper

3 scallions, green part sliced thinly lengthwise

the eggs are the first component to prepare for the mu-shu filling.  basically, we’re making an omelet without the filling.  start by whisking the two eggs with a dash of salt and pepper.  heat a 10” non-stick frying pan over medium-high heat and pour the eggs into the pan.  when the bottom side of the omelet is browned (about 1 and a half minutes), flip it over and cook the other side for another 30 seconds.  remove from the pan and let cool on a plate or on a cutting board.  once the plain egg omelet has cooled, cut into 2 inch matchsticks, so they’re about the same length as the bean curd.

the next components of the mu-shu are the cabbage and the shitakes, which need to be lightly sautéed.  they can be cooked in the same pan as the egg was cooked in.  reheat the frying pan again over medium-high heat.  drizzle ½ tablespoon of olive into pan and then add the sliced napa cabbage.  cook the cabbage for about a minute and a half.  it’s ready when the cabbage has started to soften but still has a crunch to it.  set the cooked cabbage aside and bring the pan back up to medium-high heat.  add the remaining olive oil with the shitake mushroom.s  cook for about 2 to 3 minutes, allowing the mushrooms to soften. 

once all four filling ingredients are prepared and ready, mix together the hoisin sauce, the rice vinegar, mirin and seasame oil.  pour over the filling mixture and toss together. 

once the filling is ready, prepare the mu-shu wrappers for wrapping.  separate each mu-shu wrapper carefully, as they are incredibly thin and delicate.  place a damp paper towel over the stack of wrappers and heat for 45 seconds in a microwave. 

place a heaping spoonful of filling on a wrapper.

 

fold over the left and right sides. 

then fold over the top and the bottom.

secure the presents by double knotting the scallion ribbon around the wrap.

     

       

food porn fight: the fight to win has begun!

voting has begun.

you have until monday, march 31st to cast your votes for your favorite photo.  remember, the winner gets a check for $200. 

good luck!

food porn fight:one day left

one more day left.  you have until end of day friday, march 21st to get your last punch in.

food porn fight!!! 

food porn fight: recap of the weekend

although the fight slowed down over the weekend, there was no shortage of delectable food porn added to the contest.  rasa malaysia spiced up the competition with her pan-fried fresh water prawns and her favorite persian food.  i was excited to discover several new food blogs, many with an asian focus.  wandering chopsticks' blood orange granita looked divine (not to mention seasonal) and thip (who also lives in sf!) of thai4real gave us a taste of some thai-style curry over farro (my grain of the moment).  and you defintely can't have a food porn fight without the queen of food porn, jaden of steamy kitchen, who gave us a taste of her vietnamese pulled pork "sliders" with hoisin bbq sauce over the weekend.

cake on the brain offered us some sweets with her coconut vanilla bean rice pudding brulee.  the bitten word is definitely putting his food magazines to use with these homemade sliders inspired by the little owl in new york city.  oh carol, for the love of cupcakes, can you please send me one of your coconut and white chocolate baby mudcakes?  if you haven't eaten yet, lina of eat yet? can help you out with some of her delicious photos.  sip snap savor wins the award for the most artistic photos with this army of grape tomatoes attacking a flood of yellow curry.  heather of gild the voodoolily offers us a juicy breakfast burger.  i'm ready to get baking with get baked's chewy chocolate nut bar or almond corner's fuzzy morello cherry cake.  melissa bernais of itsa monkey spotted a mango for us.  and last but not least, one of my favorite readers and the man behind closet cooking kevin lynch flipped up some hearty banana buttermilk pancakes so we can start the morning right.

the fighting and salivation continues through friday, march 21st!  remember to upload your photo by then at http://foodfight.thepetitepig.com

food porn fight: recap of day 1

we're at end of round 1 of the food porn fight, and the fight is off to a pretty good start with twenty delicious photos slung in the first twenty four hours.  some highlights to recap:

amanda of slow like honey threw a sweet first punch with her photo of rich bittersweet chocolate cake with a dark and smooth chocolate ganache.

nags knocked out us out with eight decadent photos, a few featuring some beautiful southern indian dishes.  the most interesting had to be curd rice with pomegranates served with chow chow sambhar.  i hope she tells us a little more about this dish.

rasa malaysia of the famed blog of the same name baked up some banana bread for our food fight.  i hope she'll point us to the recipe?   

and then there were my friends marlo and mandy who shot some ethnic twists with marzipan sushi cakes and a german american pie.

but the strongest punch goes out to my fellow dc foodie food rockz man with his roasted bone marrow.  i'm ready to put him on a plane out to sf to make me some of that meat crack.  mmmm.

others great food bloggers who also joined in on round 1 were:dan & joy of gourmetednina's kitchenfood makes me happycoconut & limebring it on for round 2.  you have until friday, march 21st to show us what you're made of.   

bring on the food [porn] fight

the food porn fight is on.  if you haven't heard about this, no worries.  you've got till next friday to upload your most appetizing photo on the food fight site, which officially launched today.  in the words of amanda from slow like honey, "bring it on."

let the games begin . . . may the most deliciously porntastic food photo win.

1, 2, 3 cheese!

one more thing, please upload as many photos as you'd like but please only upload each photo once.   

the year of food porn: the petite pig's 2008 food porn contest

i'm not really one to make new year's resolutions, but i did declare 2008 to be the year of food porn. last june, i finally acquired a digital slr and have been playing food photographer since. with the start of tastespotting last year, i know that hundreds of other food bloggers have been doing the same. i thought it would be great to reward the great art that's been going on in the kitchen of so many, so i'm announcing the petite pig's 2008 food porn contest. mid this week, the contest will be going live at a url to be named. there are just two rules: 1) submit only a photo taken by you; and 2) submit it only once. anyone out there with a camera and some food to photograph can submit, and you'll have till march friday, march 21st to share your food porn with the rest of the world wide web. all the photos submitted will then be compiled in a gallery for voting. the public will have from monday, march 24th to friday, march 28th to vote for the most delicious photo. the photo with the most votes gets a check for 200 bucks from yours truly. simple as that.

so get shooting.

for those of you who want to get your photo in early, email it to me at thepetitepig@gmail.com with your name and email and if the photo has a link, include that too.

excited to see what you all got on your memory card.

vietnamese summer rolls with flank steak

photo by allan.

tonight two good friends, markell and moira, my brother and i headed over to marin to do some pro-bono catering for an intimate fundraising event by the international accountability project (iap) where my friend joanna levitt is the co-director.  joanna is leaving for india tomorrow night where she'll begin three months of on-the-ground work to further the causes of iap.  a true hero, it was an honor to be able to contribute to the cause that she loves by doing something that i love, feeding people.  since joanna is headed off for asia, a menu of small asian bites was requested.  in the last few days i got to rediscover some of my favorite asian cookbooks: fuschia dunlop's "land of plenty" highlighting food from china's sichuan province, "the food of china" which is a must-have just for its photos of chinese life through food, and nancy's mcdermott's "quick and easy vietnamese," which really makes vietnamese food easy for anyone. 

after taking in all the great inspiration of my cookbooks, friends and recent asian meals, i finally decided on a menu of 4 simple but tasty asian dishes: vietnamese summer rolls with flank steak; lemongrass shrimp; vegetarian mu-shu purses and pork and ginger-apple potstickers.  and to round out all the savoriness, markell satisfied all of our sweet tooth's (teeth?) with an asian inspired ginger-coconut cream puff.  as a red meat lover, i have to say my favorite dish of the evening was the summer rolls.  my brother had marinated and tenderized the steak last night with soy sauce, fish sauce and brown sugar and it just tasted absolutely divine with the nuoc nam dipping sauce.  the recipe below is for the flank steak version but the possibilities for summer rolls are endless.  the photos above actually show summer rolls made with two different combinations: tuna & avocado and poached shrimp & cucumber.   this dish is much easier than one would expect and so incredibly healthy and satisfying. 

vietnamese summer rolls with flank steak
serves 4-6

for the summer rolls:

2 tbs soy sauce
1 tbs fish sauce
1/2 tbs brown sugar

1 small flank steak

12 oz of rice stick rice noodles*
1 cup of mint, de-stemmed
1 head of green lettuce, torn into pieces
2 medium cucumber

20 sheets of medium-sized rice paper** (about 8 inch in diameter)

1 cup of nuoc nam for dipping (recipe can be found in the vietnamese salad recipe)

the night before:

combine soy sauce, fish sauce and brown sugar in a bowl. place flank steak in a pyrex baking dish and pour marinade over. using a fork, stab the meat all over to tenderize it and also let the flavors of the marinade set in. cover and let marinate overnight in the fridge.

for the filling:

prepare the rice sticks like you would any other noodle. bring a pot of water to boil, add the noodles, cook until they’re just tender (about 12 minutes) and strain.

while the noodles are cooking, you can quickly cook your flank steak. place your top oven rack about 6” away from your broiler (that thing that spits out fire from the ceiling of your oven). place your marinated flank steak on a broiler pan and broil on high for 10 minutes. if you want your steak a little bit more well-done (shame on you), flip the steak over and broil for another 3 to 4 minutes. remove from the oven and cover with two layers of foil. let rest for 10 minutes before slicing into half inch thick slices against the grain (cut perpendicular to the grain which should run lengthwise on a flank steak).

once your noodles are ready and your flank steak is sliced, you have all your filling ingredients ready. set out your mint, lettuce, cucumbers, noodles, steak and bean sprouts in an assembly line. it’s time to wrap!

to wrap:

the rice paper must be soaked in a bit of warm water before it’ll become pliable for wrapping. fill up an 8” frying pan with a little less than 1 inch of water and heat over medium-low heat. the water should be warm but definitely not too hot to touch. quickly skim the rice paper through the water. you want to make sure that the entire surface gets wet but be careful not to soak it in water or it’ll end up tearing too easily. you can practice with a few until you get the hang of it.

once the rice paper is wet, set it flat on a plate and let it soften (this should not take long). i like to have two plates out, each with a piece of wet rice paper on it, to make the process a bit more efficient. you can roll one while the other rice paper is softening. once the rice paper is soft place 1 or 2 pieces of lettuce 1 inch away from the bottom edge of the paper, then add on the noodles, meat and the rest of the toppings. it’s important not to be too greedy here. the rice paper is delicate and it’s better to start with less or you may end up with an exploding summer roll. wrap by folding over the bottom edge over the filling, roll once through and then fold over the two edges and finish rolling through. take your empty plate and wet another sheet of rice paper to put on it. then fill the other plate while the other sheet of rice paper is softening. wrap until all the filling ingredients are gone.

enjoy by dipping into a bowl of nuoc nam.

*rice sticks are simply just a type of rice noodles. as their name suggests, they’re shaped like pick-up-sticks (one of my favorite childhood games which i’m sure has now been turned into a facebook application or something along those lines). they’re common in vietnamese dishes and is often served in a large bowl and topped with some julienned cucumbers and carrots, a tasty grilled meat and then tossed with the quintessential vietnamese sauce, nuoc nam. vietnamese summer rolls just take all the goodness of that bowl of noodles and packages it in a more portable form with a sheet of rice paper. they can be found in an asian grocer and even now in big-box grocers these days.

**some brands of rice paper are better than others.  i prefer the brands with the rose or elephant logo.  they tend to tear less.