Chinese Cooking Blog

This dish was made "on-the-fly" and it achieves that ideal flavor combination of hot, sour, salty, sweet.

FOUR-FLAVOR GREEN BEANS WITH SHALLOTS

2 lobes of shallots, peeled and thinly sliced and separated into rings

2 teaspoons of vegetable oil

1 pound of fresh green beans (I had haricots verts, but regular green beans work just fine), trimmed, cut into 2-inch segments and blanched

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon rice vinegar

1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

In the wok, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the shallot rings and stir fry until softened and lightly charred. Add the blanched green beans and stir fry to mix well. Add the soy sauce, rice vinegar, sugar and red pepper flakes. Stir and toss until well combined. Taste a bean. If needed, add a touch more soy sauce. Serve as part of a meal with rice.

It sounds so paltry, but some Chinese cabbage, tofu, soy bean thread (cellophane noodles), water and soy sauce can do wonders. If you have a winter tomato, as I did today, you can chop it up, saute it in the soy sauce and build a little flavor. It's perfect with or without rice.

CABBAGE SOUP

Makes 2 Quarts

1 teaspoon vegetable oil

1 small tomato, any kind, roughly diced (about 1 cup)

1/4 cup soy sauce (or tamari)

2 quarts water

1 small head Chinese cabbage, cut into squares (about 4-5 cups cut)

1 block silken or soft tofu, cut into bite-size squares

1 bundle soy bean thread

Salt to taste, if needed

In a soup pot, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the tomatoes and cook, stirring often, until the tomatoes start to soften, about 1 minute. Add the soy sauce and continue stirring/sauteing, about 1 minute. Add the water, cabbage and tofu. Turn up heat to high and bring to a boil. Immediately turn down the heat to medium or medium-low and let the soup simmer until the cabbage has soften and the tofu heated through. Add the bean thread and let soften, about 2-3 minutes. Taste the soup and add salt to taste, if necessary. I usually have to add a pinch.

You can, at this point, add a sprinkle of white pepper and a drizzle of sesame oil, if you'd like. If you have any cilantro laying around, a few leaves as garnish in each bowl would punch up the flavor.

Serve with rice, if you'd like.

(*This is a belated summary of my United Way of King County Hunger Action Week experience.)

I don't know hunger. Even when my immigrant family first landed in the United States with a few possessions and what was left of my parents' life savings after the expense of transplanting a family of four, we somehow figured out how to survive. We were poor, but we were never hungry. At least my parents never let us suffer hunger.

When I agreed to take the Hunger Challenge, I knew that it was only an exercise meant to draw attention to the United Way's advocacy efforts. I think there's an important distinction here, because without being embedded in a family living in poverty, it would be nearly impossible to simulate the circumstances and mindset that inform food decisions. Sure, I can buy groceries based on a budget and cook from those ingredients. But that only shows that I can shop on a budget and cook. It doesn't show that I understand the desperation, fear and stress of a mom trying to feed her children on food stamps. Even with a budget and rules set by the United Way, I believe the only "suffering" my family experienced was having to stick to a menu.

I participated in the Hunger Challenge to show that if you know how to shop resourcefully and cook, you can feed your family not only on a budget but also using healthful and wholesome ingredients. That applies to any family. But...what if the family is homeless, what if the parent(s) work ungodly hours, what if, what if? I can't answer those questions. What I know for certain is that you will always eat more economically (and healthfully) over time if you cook. You can read the previous posts to see the descriptions of most of what we ate. Here are the stats:

Total budget for the week: 0 or /day for a family of 5.

Total cost of meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner) over 5 days: .75 or .25 under budget for the week.

Average cost per day: .95 or .05 under budget per day.

Breakfast, 3/24: I made breakfast burritos for the kids with two eggs and cheddar cheese. I made some steelcut oatmeal for the grownups. My mom ate her portion plain with a fried egg on the side. My husband and I mixed a touch of brown sugar and dried cranberries in our oatmeal.

Lunch, 3/24: With about a half cup of leftover roast chicken, I made a chicken salad sandwich for my husband to take to work.

For the kids, I boiled the other half bag of pasta and mixed that with the reserved meat sauce that I had made for the lasagna on Monday. The rest of the leftover roast chicken went into a soup with some brown rice, carrots, celery, onions, parsley - and some leftover sauteed zucchini and mushrooms from last night. My mom and I had this soup for lunch.

Dinner, 3/24: There was enough of the chicken and rice soup left for dinner.

The cost of the pot of soup was .50. The total cost of the day: ( under budget).

Breakfast, 3/23: Cereal/milk

Lunch, 3/23: Two of us had leftover stir-fried noodles and three of us had leftover lasagna.

Dinner, 3/23: Roasted chicken, potatoes and carrots, with sauteed zucchini and mushrooms. Cost of dinner, with plenty of leftover chicken to make soup tomorrow = . Total cost for the day: ( under budget).

Today was a crazy day. My daughter had an early dental appointment and she wasn't supposed to eat anything. I ended up not eating anything, either. The rest of the family ate cereal or yogurt. After the appointment, she was restricted to plain foods. So I made her some plain boiled pasta, which her younger brother also gobbled up. My mom ended up having some of the pasta drizzled with soy sauce, sesame oil and chili paste. The cost of the pasta: .25. I ate a piece of the leftover lasagna, as did my husband. Because my mom and the kids didn't have lasagna for lunch, there are still three pieces left that will be lunch for tomorrow.

For dinner, I julienned assorted vegetables, which I stir-fried and mixed with Chinese noodles. The vegetables: Chinese cabbage, crimini mushrooms, carrots, zucchini and celery.

I stir-fried the vegetables in a couple tablespoons of vegetable oil and then added about a 1/4 cup of soy sauce. I then added the noodles, which I had just boiled. Total cost: .50. There was enough leftover to feed the kids tomorrow for lunch.

Day 2 tally of three meals plus grapes and oranges for snacks: -- under budget.

It's Hunger Action Week and the United Way of King County has enlisted members of the community to take the Hunger Challenge. The basic premise is this: Try feeding yourself for per day over five days. Because I have a family of five (husband, two kids, my mother and me), I get to work with per day.

I shopped for the week based on a budget of 0. To be honest, when I saw that I had per day, my first thought was that this wouldn't really be much of a challenge. Resourceful cooks can feed the proverbial army for that amount. I considered working in a reverse golf handicap, so to speak, to make it more of a challenge. Ultimately, I decided that I would use the cushion to purchase as many organic items as would fit within the budget. I also decided that I would stick to using only the most common kitchen tools and equipment to minimize any unfair advantages.

To be clear, if my family were in such dire straits that I had to choose between paying for food or rent, the last detail I'd be worried about is whether my canned tomatoes were organic.

The Week Begins

One way that I save money is by making enough dinner so that there are leftovers for lunch the next day. So instead of starting the Hunger Challenge with breakfast this morning, I started with Sunday dinner. We found flank steak on sale for about . I made a flank steak "satay" by slicing the meat thinly on the bias and then marinating the pieces in a mixture of soy sauce, green onions, garlic, ginger, sesame oil, brown sugar and the juice of half an orange. I normally would grill the meat, but decided to pan-sear the flank steak to adhere to my own rule of using basic equipment.

Dinner, 3/20: Flank steak satay with steamed rice and stir-fried baby bok choy

Breakfast, 3/21: Congee made from leftover rice paired with leftover stir-fried baby bok choy. Congee is a typical Chinese breakfast. I make a simple version with just water, instead of broth, and leftover cooked rice.

Lunch, 3/21: Flank steak satay lettuce wraps, with shaved carrots (drizzled with a squeeze of lemon juice), fresh cilantro and a schmear of chili bean paste on the beef. I packed this for my husband to take to the office.

Lunch, 3/21 for Meilee to take to preschool:

Dinner, 3/21: Lasagna, toasted baguette with garlic butter, chopped salad with honey-mustard vinaigrette. (While this blog normally focuses on Chinese cooking, I wanted my menu for the Hunger Challenge to represent a typical week for my family, which consists of cross-cultural foods.) I made my own bolognese sauce and bechamel. I made extra sauce and was able to save about two cups to use later in the week for an easy pasta lunch for the kids. We ate half the lasagna for dinner and will have the rest for lunch tomorrow. (**Addendum: I made both sauces and assembled the lasagna in 30 minutes.)

Total cost so far of the four meals we've eaten plus tomorrow's lunch made from tonight's leftovers = .39 or .27 per meal for five people. The total cost for today was about .50. I will round up to - still under budget - because my kids snacked on some apples, oranges and a yogurt.

Yay! Cozi.com selected my blog as a Cozi Family Fave! If you don't know about Cozi.com, offers lots of great tools for families to keep track of schedules and grocery lists -- and there's even a journal function for you to record milestones big and small. Thank you, Cozi!

Green Onion (or Scallion) Pancake

I like efficiency. My father was fond of saying: "If it takes you only two steps, why would you take three?" I think of that often, especially when I'm cooking. I appreciate recipes that are more than one-hit wonders.

The dough from my potsticker recipe is just flour and warm water, but there are several ways you can use the dough. If you doubled the amount of dough, you could make potstickers, green onion pancakes and homestyle noodles in one session. You can freeze what you don't plan on eating right away for a snack or meal on another day. The photo below shows the finished products: From the left are the green onion pancakes, potstickers and hand-cut noodles.

To make the noodles:

• Roll out the dough to desired thickness from 1/8" to 1/4".
• Fold dough in half and in half again.
• Cut strips to desired width.
• Unfurl the noodles and either cook right away or place on a baking sheet to freeze. Once frozen, store noodles in a plastic zipper bag.

To make the green onion pancakes:

• Chopped green onions, about 1 tablespoon per pancake.
• Salt
• Vegetable oil
• Dough
• To cook: Heat a skillet over medium heat. Add about 1 teaspoon vegetable oil. Place a pancake in the pan. Cook until browned on one side, turn and cook the other side until browned. You may need to adjust the heat if the pancake is browning too quickly.

Green Onion Pancakes from Hsiao-Ching Chou on Vimeo.

To make make the potstickers:

• Follow the recipe.
• Watch this video to see how to roll out the wrappers and then pleat to seal the edges.

Potsticker from Hsiao-Ching Chou on Vimeo.

Ready for the pan: After you place the dumplings in the pan, you add water, cover with a lid, and let cook for 7-9 minutes.

This wok represents a new beginning. I bought it for practical purposes, but when Grace Young visited Seattle on book tour for "Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge," I was reminded that a wok could actually be an heirloom. I hadn't taken very good care of my carbon steel wok and let it languish in storage as I opted to use a (gasp!) non-stick wok. But after looking at Grace's new book, I was inspired to revive my carbon steel wok. (Grace rehabilitated my old wok, giving it a "facial" to remove the rust.) I had decided that I should be more diligent about cooking in it. I also decided I would get a second wok, season it with care and cook in it. Then, one day twenty or so years from now, I will give each of my children a wok that has the memory of their childhoods and the many Chinese dishes that will have been stir-fried in it.