Super Healthy Veggie Packed Fried Rice

I made this tasty, vegetable-packed dish today as a different take on the usual greasy, starchy fried rice. It's still got oil (olive) and rice (brown, whole grain) but with this many veggies, healthier fats and grains, flaxseed and optional protein, it's a tasty and colorful alternative to the usual stick-to-your-butt-no-matter-how-often-you-bike options in restaurants in Taipei.

It turned out fantastic - both flavor-wise and appearance-wise, with a lot of colorful veggies including pumpkin, red and yellow bell pepper, carrot and purple and green beetroot leaves. It was like a harvest-time reinterpretation of the fried rice genre!

1 cup brown rice

olive oil - need not be extra virgin or fancy (the flavor of extra virgin would get lost in cooking)

a pat of butter (optional)

1 whole bell pepper (or 1/2 each of two different colors of bell pepper)

2 cups of beetroot leaves (they're the ones in the market that are purple on one side and dark green on the other)

1/2 large carrot

1/2 small pumpkin (the gourd-like ones sold in Taiwanese day markets)

1/2 small sweet onion

To taste (optional): Thai fried shallots, black bean sauce, Lao Gan Ma, huajiao "flower pepper", salt, black pepper, fresh red chilis, sesame oil, soy sauce, paprika, vinegar, lemon juice, de-stemmed chopped cilantro, chopped fresh garlic, pulverized fresh ginger

three tbsp ground flaxseed (optional but really good for you)

a small amount of extra virgin olive oil and sesame oil to taste (optional)

Begin the long process to cook brown rice (it takes quite a while), adding a bit of salt, pepper and paprika to the water. Remember that brown rice requires more water (about 50% more), more heat, more steam and more time than white rice.

Set some water to boil to cook the pumpkin (if you want to be super-cool, cook the pumpkin chunks, including peeled skin, first, take out the skin and throw it away, set the cooked pumpkin aside and use the water to cook the rice to give it more nutrients and more flavor).

Wash and chop the onion and bell pepper, set aside

Wash, de-stem and chop beetroot leaves, set aside

Wash and grate or julienne carrot, including skin, add to beetroot leaves, set aside

Use a peeler to de-skin the small pumpkin, scoop out seeds, cut into chunks and boil until just cooked.

Wipe down a wok with just enough olive oil to comfortably cook, add chopped and powdered spices/salt to taste (no liquids yet, but you can add black bean paste, Lao Gan Ma etc). Cook on low/medium until it smells good. Immediately add bell peppers and onions and stir in thoroughly. Add soy sauce, vinegar, lemon juice to taste. Raise to medium heat.

When that is almost but not quite cooked, add beetroot leaves and grated carrot and cook until the leaves go a bit soft (not too soft). Add pumpkin. Mix well on medium (adding a bit of water if it gets a bit dry and threatens to burn).

Add cooked brown rice (ideally you prepared the rice well in advance as brown rice takes forever). Mix well and add flaxseed, stir in.

Add pat of butter and/or any flavoring oils at the end and stir well until it melts evenly into the mix.

The pumpkin should disintegrate somewhat and provide some consistency to the fried rice, but if you like the kind of rice that can be shaped into a dome, mix in one egg and mix well until thoroughly cooked in.

You can also add 1/3 cup cooked yellow lentils and/or walnuts, almonds or cashews if you want some protein (you can also add meat for that matter)!

Note: you can substitute or add vegetables - mushrooms would be great, as would small chunks of cauliflower or sweet potato leaves in lieu of beetroot. You could add tomatoes, bok choi, corn...really whatever you want.

Serve hot.

Reason #9 to Love Taiwan - Seasonal Foods

Young snow pears being cultivated in Lishan

I teach a class in Tucheng Industrial Park every Wednesday morning (I know - and it's really hard to get up for that class on days like today with steely skies and bursting wind). On the way there I can barely keep my eyes open as the MRT snakes towards Yongning Station, but on the way back I usually plug in my headphones and play a few TED talks.

This time I listened first to Jennifer 8. Lee talking about the origins of Chinese food (I've been to the Wok and Roll and seen Yanching Palace that she mentions) and then to Jamie Oliver's prize-winning talk on the state of food and obesity in the USA.

Listening to Jamie Oliver caused me to stop at the market on the way home. I picked up snake eggplant, two bell peppers, a pile of sweet potato leaves, half a pound of tofu, two large carrots and a bunch of cilantro (and got some free green onions as one should). The entire bag cost a grand sum of approximately US $3.

It was bought off the back of a wooden cart, sold by the woman who helped grow it.

That's what I love about Taiwan: fresh, seasonal food. One year I decided I absolutely had to make chicken curry for dinner - so I went to the market to buy tomatoes. It wasn't the season for tomatoes, so there wasn't a single one to be found! Not even Wellcome had tomatoes (to be fair, my local Wellcome is quite small). Sure, hard, greenish ones were available at Jason's for three times the normal price, but that was it. No chicken curry until tomatoes came back.

And just try to buy a custard apple, green jujube, dragonfruit or pomelo out of season, or get your hands on cilantro when it's not growing well.

In the USA I felt divorced from the idea of seasonal food. Under the great equalizing fluorescence of the supermarket, I could get almost any fruit or vegetable I wanted from whatever continent could grow it at any time of year. In Arlington, Virginia, if I wanted an orange in January or asparagus in December, I could find it. It might cost more (not punitively so) and taste like a pale imitation of the real thing, but I could get it. It wouldn't even seem that expensive, although while American produce prices don't seem that high when you're there, my $3 bag of healthy goodness sure makes them appear stratospheric by comparison.

Here, if I went to the local wet market right now and asked for, say, a dragonfruit, I'd get laughed at by more than one vendor.

To be fair, not everything in Taiwan is local and you can get out-of-season foods if you are willing to pay more, but that's just it: you do have to pay more and often hunt them down. In the USA the costs might fluctuate slightly but not enough to punish out-of-season cooks who can't (or don't care to) discern flavor differences in less-fresh produce.

I'm not a total mushy-heart though - I don't for a second believe that the market vendors don't sell out-of-season produce because "it's not as good and not as nutritious". They don't sell it because some of them are direct representatives of the farm that grew the food, and you can't sell what you can't grow. Others are middleman vendors who buy from various sources (which is why you can get California and New Zealand fruit in the wet market, too), but they sell mostly seasonal foods because they know the frugal market shoppers - often grandmothers who will bargain you down for a shaved penny - aren't going to pay inflated prices. If nobody will buy it at an out of season price, they won't sell it.

That's what happened with the cilantro, anyway: when it wasn't available I asked why not. One vendor assured me she could get it but she wasn't going to, because "I'd have to charge 75 kuai a bunch and do you think these people are going to pay that?" she said as she gestured towards the crowd. It's the invisible hand of the market, but in this case, it works.

It forces me to think seasonally, cook seasonally and as a result eat seasonally - something that more people should be doing.

It's Biriyani-Pilaf Fusion Night!

I'm working on two fairly long posts on two tough topics: cultural appropriation and sexism in the workplace for female expats - but it's going to be another week at least before either is published. I'm thinkin' I might actually do a 2nd draft of each, which will be a big change from my usual habit of "blurble on and on following my thoughts and hit 'Publish'." :)

In the meantime, enjoy this awesome recipe for fusion brown rice biriyani-pilaf - one of the many foreign dishes I routinely cook in Taipei with ingredients available locally.

(Serves 2)

Ingredients:

1.5 cups brown rice, pref. organic
6 dates, pitted if possible
A cup of nuts (cashews are best but almonds or peanuts would do)
One large carrot
Small chunks or slivers of pre-cooked meat (cured pepper beef or ham, pre-cooked beef liver or pan-cooked mutton or chicken in spices would all do - I totally used the last nub of cured pepper ham in our fridge) - optional
2 heaping teaspoons ground flaxseed
Finely sliced and grated orange peel
1 tbsp ginger, cut into coins or crushed
As much garlic as you can stand
olive oil
Sesame oil (optional)
salt
ground cumin, black pepper, turmeric, coriander seed, paprika, allspice (about 1 tsp each, give or take for taste and freshness) - all available at Trinity Superstores near City Hall MRT or at Jason's or even Wellcome - you don't need all of these spices, it's really to your taste. You only really need the cumin, pepper and turmeric
Salt to taste
A dash of cinnamon (optional)
cayenne pepper to taste (optional)
lemon juice to taste (about 1/5 cup for me)
2 tablespoons butter (optional)

Method:

Begin the cooking of your brown rice (this takes time - for every cup of rice use 2.5 cups water and a dash of salt) - You can use white or basmati rice but I try to be healthy with the brown

Julienne your carrot - I have a julienne peeler that I got as a Christmas gift and love so YAY - including the skin
Chop up your dates
Chop up your optional meat
Put nuts, dates, carrot and meat (already cooked if not cured) into a bowl and set aside

Sliver or crush your garlic
Measure out your spices
Coin or crush your ginger
Sliver or grind your orange peel

Put as much olive oil as you think you'll need into your pan - I use a wok because I'm awesome. You don't need extra virgin olive oil as the flavors in that cook off most of the time - but you can drizzle a little extra virgin over it when it's done.

Add dry spices, ginger, garlic, orange peel, turn on low heat and cook until lightly roasted and it smells awesome.

Add lemon juice, allow to heat up a bit and then dump in the carrot/nut/meat/date mixture, cook gently on low-medium heat until it smells good and looks just lightly cooked (you don't want it getting too soggy)

Add brown rice which should have already been cooked and mix together stir-fry style. When everything is well mixed and colored with the spices (should be yellow from the turmeric), add a tiny bit of sesame oil (good for you!) and monter a buerre (bad for you but oh so good) with the butter. Mix in flaxseed quickly (very very good for you) and serve hot.

If you want to do even better, substitute 1/3 of the rice with cooked yellow lentils, mixed right in (or just add lentils) - don't overcook them to soup consistency; you want them cooked so that they retain some structure and cohesion but of course soft enough that they are pleasant to eat, and lentils taste great with the spices in this recipe!

You can also customize this recipe with vegetables you like by adding or substituting: bell peppers, tomatoes, well-chopped spinach, cauliflower, onions and mushrooms all work a treat.

Kung Po Chicken Ding (宮保雞丁)

That's the menu name of kung pao chicken that my sister found in a Chinese restaurant in the Hudson Valley. Awesome.

Anyway, the other night I made kung pao chicken and invited a few friends over to help us eat it. Best NT $620 (for ingredients) that I ever spent. One friend provided beer, another saved the day with hua jiao (花椒) when my local Wellcome turned out to be sold out. Not as good as the fresh hua jiao used in the Sichuan restaurant in Dingxi that has my heart, but still good. Two more brought desserts, including a selection from My Sweetie Pie, the awesome bakery owned by Grandma Nitti's.

The meaning of "gong bao" (or as we say in the American language, "kung pao") is "palace guard" - a lot of Chinese food has fancy names like "Buddha Jumps Over A Wall", "Cross The Bridge Noodles", "Eight Treasures", "Four Gods Soup" etc. that don't really tell you what it is. So this one is Palace Guard Diced Chicken (ji ding).

I realize every kung pao chicken recipe is different, but here is mine (serves 6-8)

Ingredients:

Eight breasts of chicken (I bought 4 packages from Wellcome with appeared to have approx. 2 breasts' worth of meat each in them)

Unroasted, unsalted peanuts - at least 2 cups or to taste

1 sprig of green onion, chopped into chunks

2 cloves of garlic finely minced (optional but I would never leave it out)

a few ginger coins - about half a thumb's worth (optional)

1 tall shot glass or larger Chinese tea cup full of Shaoxing rice wine - no you can't use cheap cooking wine or some other kind of cheaper rice wine. NO YOU CANT NO NO NO! Dry sherry would be OK, though, as that will mimic the effect that the flavor has on the sauce, or a really good, rich rice wine.

1/2 cup regular soy sauce or 1 cup low sodium light soy sauce

1 capful of rice vinegar

sprinkle of sugar to taste - I put about half a palmful

salt to taste

1 tbsp lemon juice (optional or to taste - I like the tangy flavor it gives the sauce)

A **** ton of cooking oil...you can use olive oil if you like (I know that sounds weird but it actually works)

sesame oil - 1 tbsp or to taste

If you like - it's my little secret - a sprinkling of squid oil. You can't taste it in the final product, but it lends this amazing, full, rounded flavor even under all the chili (below)

And now, for the best part!

2 handfuls (or to taste) of hua jiao - flower pepper, which creates that classic numbing feeling

2-3 tbsp Lao Gan Ma black bean peanut chili in oil from Guizhou

handfuls and handfuls of dried red chilis - really you can't overdo this, but you can underdo it, so figure out the point where it seems ridiculous then add some more

about 1 tbsp black pepper

3-4 chopped fresh red Sichuan chilis (any small, thin red chili will do)

Some of that not-too-spicy chili paste with garlic and vinegar you can buy cheaply at Wellcome

(In the USA, all you need is some chopped fresh chili, dried chili and hua jiao, though a chili paste would also be good - not all of the above may be easily available)

Process:

Dice the chicken breasts and put in bowl, adding the soy sauce, vinegar, lemon juice, salt to taste, shaoxing wine, sugar, a bit of the garlic, and the chili pastes. Set aside.

In a wok or large pan with huge lip, heat the cooking oil. In it, lightly roast the black pepper, flower pepper, dried chilis, the rest of the garlic and ginger until it smells awesome. Use as much oil as you like - if the whole mess is deep fried it's great, but if you just want to stir fry, that's OK too. I stir-fry because I'd like to not have a heart attack when I'm 34.

Add peanuts. Just dump 'em in.

Cook peanuts until lightly golden. Add chicken. You can add the whole marinade for a more 'cooked' taste, or if you want the raw awesome of all that chili, leave it out for now.

Cook chicken until tender and just exactly done - when I think this is happening I take a larger chunk out, cut it in half on a cutting board and check the center. Do not overcook. Nothing is more gross than overcooked chicken, except maybe overcooked fish.

Quickly add the chopped onion, giving it a few whisks around in the hot mess, before turning off.

Use a slotted spoon or other straining thing to get the chicken, onion and dried chilis onto the plate while leaving behind the **** ton of oil. If you did not add the marinade to the mess, dump as much of it over now as you like. (adding it while cooking makes it taste 'cooked', adding it after makes it taste 'raw' - I like it both ways.)

Breathe fire, young grasshopper!

Taiwan-friendly ethnic food recipes (Ethiopian fusion satay)

Just a few favorites I've managed to concoct with a reasonable level of authenticity from ingredients available in Taiwan...nevermind that a lot of these seem to come from Jason's (Taipei 101 and Takashimaya) and City Super (the green SOGO).

I've compiled a list of ingredients for each and as I put them up, will note where one can buy each ingredient, at least if they seem hard to get.

All will be saved under the tag ethnic_food_recipes with the food described in the title.

I was going to start with something easy - Iranian salad - but decided instead to begin with something difficult - Ethiopian food.

It is possible to make real Ethiopian food in Taiwan, at least I know one can make various wots, alechas and tibs, but you can't get teff flour so it's impossible to make the injera bread that it's all eaten with. I had teff sent to me from the USA but not everyone has that option...so I've concocted this delicious recipe as a compromise - keeping the original flavor of Ethiopian wot (spicy tomato based gravy) dishes but in a form accessible to those in Taiwan.

Hence, Ethiopian fusion satay. These were a huge hit at the Christmas party - a few pounds of chicken gone within an hour. Trust me, they will be well received.

Ingredients:

white breastmeat chicken (real doro wot is made with drumsticks, but whatever, you need injera to eat that), cut into largish chunks - any Wellcome or day market

cucumbers - the small kind are better - any market

satay sticks - Wellcome

one large tomato and 1/2 white onion - any market

2 cloves garlic and about a teaspoon of chopped ginger - any market

1 bay leaf - spice section of large Wellcomes or Jason's

ghee (clarified butter) - Indian spice shop off exit 4 of Taipei City Hall MRT 2nd floor of a nondescript building near the Dante, Taipei Milk King and Korea Viand)

1 cinnamon stick or some powdered cinnamon - spice section of any supermarket

berbere spice powder - make your own from this website: http://www.congocookbook.com/sauce_recipes/berbere.html

(It's not as hard as it sounds - spices all available at aforementioned Indian spice shop, Jason's or Cafe Alexandre on Zhongshan N. Road, Tianmu)...and you can use it again to season meat or soups.

salt, black pepper and lemon juice - anywhere

paprika - Jason's

some red wine if you feel like it

Procedure:

Slice the cucumbers into wide coins by working diagonally. Set aside.

Rub the chicken with some berbere, salt, lemon juice and black pepper to taste.

Chop onion and tomato finely.

Put ghee - measurements according to what is needed to cook your chosen amount of chicken - into a wok or cooking vessel and melt. Add a lot of paprika (1/3 of the bottle or so if it's sweet paprika, much less if it's spicy), some berbere, the cinnamon stick, garlic, ginger and bay leaf. Allow to cook briefly until it smells really good.

Add onion and tomato and cook briefly.

Add chicken.

Cook for awhile, then add more lemon juice, salt, berbere, black pepper etc. to taste. Throw in a little red wine at the end if you wish. Cook until chicken is just finished - any longer and it starts to get tough - and it should be coated now in a thick, spicy red gravy. Set aside to cool.

When the chicken is hot but manageable, don a pair of gloves or scrub your hands and skewer on satay sticks, alternating chicken/cucumber slice - I find that two chicken chunks and 2 cucumbers is good.

Serve as is, or with the spicy gravy left in the wok added to a little chicken broth with flour to thicken, or with a sauce of your own concocting. I use a sauce I make with alecha spice powder, lemon juice and turmeric but that's a whole other production).

This sounds hard, but really the only tough part is the berbere, and that isn't so tough once you have all the ingredients together. It helps to get a mortar and pestle to grind the ones that come whole, though a hammer and Ziploc bag works almost as well.