Monday, July 23, 2012

Char Sui, Egg Rolls and Tapa's for July

Up until Friday I had no idea what I was making for Tapa's night.   My mind was blank, zippo, nada, nothing came to mind.  sigh.

But then I remembered running across a recipe clipping for Char Shu pork last week, and while I was at one of my favorite stores this week in the Big City, I also picked up a few necessities,  Sesame oil, Char Sui sauce, Hoisin sauce, noodles, you know, just pantry items.   At least for me they're pantry items.  I love to use Sesame Oil to season and enhance foods.   The Char Sui sauce looked interesting and of course Hoisin sauce, which I use to enhance BBQ sauce.  It adds that little 'something' to make a sauce more interesting.

So, I picked up some pork tenderloin tips at the store, slathered the Char Sui sauce on them, and marinated them for a couple of hours before throwing them in the oven to cook off.    I then sliced them thinly and served them with some Chinese Hot Mustard and Chile Sauce.    I do have to say, if you're going to serve something like this mustard, it would be a good idea to put a little sign in the pot warning people.   Unfortunately I didn't do it, until a couple of my guests had tried the mustard out the hard way.  So I made a sign and put it in the pot.


I also made some egg rolls, and followed some tips I had gotten online of making sure that the filling was not too moist before rolling up the egg rolls.     
 Stir fry some finely sliced cabbage, I only used a quarter of a head, three carrots, cut into matchsticks or grated, a can of chinese vegetables, drained, half a pound of fresh mushrooms.
 Hint:   If you don't use fresh ginger all the time, freeze the root, and then take out of the freezer and use a Microplane to get however much of the ginger you need for a recipe.
 I love my Microplane, and by using it, I can get just as much ginger for the recipe as I need from the frozen root.   I used about a half teaspoon here.  I then added a dash of sesame seed oil, some soy sauce, rice vinegar, and let it cook for a couple of minutes so that the flavor would infuse into the vegetables. 
 Dump the cooked veggies into a pan and tilt it until the juice runs off.   When making egg rolls you don't want there to be much juice.   It makes them soggy.   Especially when you make them earlier in the day and fry them just before your guests arrive. 
 I would suggest dusting the prepared egg rolls very, very lightly with a little cornstarch to prevent them from sticking to each other if you prepare them earlier in the day as I did here.    I also made these vegetarian, because I knew some of my guest are vegetarian.  But you can add some minced shrimp, chicken or pork to the vegetable mixture when you're cooking the initial veggies.   And you know me, that lovely liquid which came off of the vegetables, I kept it and added it to my stock container in the freezer.  Am I going to have a great stock pot soon.  giggle.


And I have to apologize.   I didn't get pictures of all the food, I thought I had, but I guess I was having too good of a time so I missed some shots.   sigh.   However, as usual the food was fantastic, the variety of foods brought was intriguing and we all had a good time.     And some of the pictures are a little blurry.     I missed getting pictures of an awesome salad and some cupcakes.  
Quinoa Salad

 There was some awesome goat cheese in this container as well as some fantastic pita crackers.

Rotel Bites

Cowboy Caviar

Caprese Salad

Greek Spinach Dish (sorry can't remember the name)
  
Fresh Fruit and Biscuits (Cookies for the Yanks).

Brownies in the foreground, and a fantastic fruit salad in back.
Sidsel Munkholm - Author
Sidsel Munkholm - Author

Sid loves to cook, feed people and have fun in the kitchen. She shares her successes and the involuntary offerings she sometimes gives the kitchen goddess as well. And she's still looking for the mythical fairy to help her clean the kitchen after a marathon cooking session. Currently working on a cookbook showcasing the recipes from her Danish heritage.

4 comments:

  1. everything looks great! I bet the mustard was hot!

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    Replies
    1. It was HOT!!!, but good. However I promise to never serve it again without the proper warning labels attached.

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  2. Monday AM -- have now completely recovered from the Chinese Hot Mustard. Never Again.
    Skip

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So glad to hear that. And I promise to label anything like that again. Or better yet, I'll just save that for me.

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