International Incident Party - Tacos

I had high hopes for this month's IIP (a worldwide blogger event hosted by penny aka jeroxie of Addictive & Consuming, another local Melbourne food blog).  The theme is tacos, and I pulled out my Diana Kennedy Mexican cookbook and planned to make carnitas, crispy shredded pork, by poaching the meat until it was very tender and all the water evaporated, and then shredding it and frying it in its own fat.  Given that as you read this, I will be in my own personal hell - about to undertake 3 separate flights, by myself, with my 3 kids under the age of 5 - I think cooking anything other than grilled cheese sandwiches this week was somewhat ambitious.

Droll wit that I am, I had intended to start my post with my most embarrassing foodie confession, my beloved taco kit, before saying, "Just joking, here is my brilliant recipe."  But the more I think about it, Penny's International Incident Parties have, for me, been about sharing the things my family loves with the world, and potentially inspiring other busy people, parents or otherwise, that interesting, multicultural food is not hard to make.  This post will at least tick the first box!

The fact of the matter is, much as it is a total bastardisation of proper Mexican food, the taco kit has a very special place in my heart.  When I am feeling fragile, the happy red and yellow box is like a security blanket.  It reminds me of my childhood.  My parents divorced when I was about 12 and we subsequently spent every Sunday with my Dad.  He would often make tacos from an Old El Paso kit.  The table would be covered in white bowls with a myriad of colourful fillings - the meat, with its violently-coloured orange oil coalescing around the edges; crisp shredded iceberg lettuce; yellow grated cheese; bright red diced tomato.  As a young child, it was the perfect meal because you could fill each taco as you chose, and in the bunfight that ensued after the hot shells were placed on the table, no one noticed if you ate any vegetables.

When I am feeling frazzled, there is something comforting about pulling out this "magic box" that has everything you need inside (taco shells, seasoning, and salsa) plus a handy list on the front directing you to purchase 500g of meat, cheese, and lettuce.  Sometimes we crave that for life.  When faced with a difficult decision, it is wonderful to have friends and family to talk it through, but sometimes I want to cry, "Someone, just tell me what to do!"  Some friends of mine are very religious people who live their entire life to the letter of their religion, striving to emulate their prophet right down to the way he cut his nails.  My free spirit rails against this.  It seems such a waste of human ingenuity, but at the same time, I do see the appeal.  Follow these steps, and everything will be perfect.  The taco kit is my secular response to that same fragile human need.

Thanks for indulging me!  I am so excited for my upcoming trip to the USA and all the fabulous Mexican and other Hispanic food.  Even right out in suburbia where I will be, there are fantastic, authentic taquerias and I am going to totally overindulge in tacos el pastor the day I land.  I look forward to having all the ingredients at hand to try out all your fabulous taco recipes!

International Incident Party - Noodles

Penny's International Incident Parties are so fun.  They're sort of culinary word-association tests - say "dumplings" or "noodles", and see the cavalcade of different associations passionate cooks tease from them.  For our last party, I was wanton with wontons.  Now, let's canoodle with noodles!

You know those lists that start, "You know you're a... when..."?  Like, "You know you're obsessed with food when you have cookbooks on your bedside table."  Or, "You know you're a blogger when you begin to regale a friend or family member with a great story, and they interrupt you to say, 'I know.  I read it on your blog.'"  Well, I want to start one with, "You know you're a mum when you can make a killer bolognese sauce."  Here in Australia, when you just can't face another uneaten dinner, pasta with bolognese sauce is every mum's little helper.  Stacked in tidy bricks in my freezer, it conceals a myriad of grated vegetables, and still elicits shrieks of joy when it appears on the table atop pasta and covered in cheese.

Sometimes it does get boring, though, and you need to mix things up.  At this party, I want to share with you our other family favourite - "Grandpa's special noodles," also known in our family as Chinese spaghetti bolognese.  This is based on a traditional recipe from Northern China of wheat noodles topped with pork mince in a sweet brown bean sauce.  Julienned or grated cucumber is added at the last minute, to make a dish that is true comfort food.

Zha Jiang Mian (Grandpa's special noodles)

Serves 3-4 people
Note: Australian tablespoons are 20 mL, not 15 as they are in the US.  Please adjust accordingly!

400g dried wheat noodles, or equivalent of fresh, e.g. lo mein or hokkien
2-3 small Lebanese cucumbers
2 Tb vegetable oil
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
5 green onions, chopped
500g pork mince

Sauce
4 Tb brown bean sauce
2 Tb hoisin sauce
2 Tb Shao Hsing rice wine
1 cup chicken stock
1/2 tsp cornflour dissolved in 2 Tb hot water

Mix sauce ingredients (except cornflour) together and set aside.  If using dried noodles, cook in boiling water, drain, and set aside.  Grate or julienne cucumber. 

Heat a wok over high heat until smoking.  Add the oil, drizzling it down the sides.  Add garlic and spring onion and stir-fry for 20 seconds.  Add pork mince and stir-fry, constantly stirring to break it up.  Cook for around 10 minutes until done.  Add combined sauce ingredients (except cornflour).  Cook over high heat for 7 minutes.  Add cornflour and hot water mixture; bring to the boil, allowing it to thicken.  Cook for a few more minutes and serve atop cooked noodles, topped with cucumber.

I hope you enjoy one of our family favourites.  Make sure you check out all the other oodles of noodles below!

• Penny – Jeroxie (Addictive & Consuming) – Homemade ban mian with minced pork and mushrooms
• Christine – Christine’s Recipes – Spicy Pork Mince and Noodles in Crisp Lettuce Cups
• Mardi – Eat, Live, Travel, Write – Ginger scallion & Butter noodles
• Trix – Tasty Trix – Summer ‘Noodles’ with yellow and green zucchini with cool basil oil tomato sauce
• Shirley – Enriching your kid – Vermicilli Biryani with Tahini
• Natasha – 5 Star Foodie – Homemade Soba Noodles
• Anges – Off the spork – Handpulled noodles at home
• Joanne – Second Helping
• Cherry – Sweet Cherry Pie – Coconut noodles with honey glazed pork belly
• Tracey - Tangled Noodle
• Evelyne - Cheap Ethnic Eatz – Incidental Noodles
• Ms Baklover - Footscray Food Blog – Zha Jiang Mian
• Casey – Eating, Gardening & Living in Bulgaria
• Tamar – Koreanfornian Cooking – Tteokbokki
• Billy – Half-Eaten – Pumpkin Miso Noodles in Shitake Dashi Broth
• Nina – Consumed Food Love – Vietnamese Noodle Salad
• Suresh – 3 hungry tummies – Twice cooked pork with rice noodles
• Anh – A food Lover’s Journey – Taco Soba Noodle
• Lori – Wannabe Gourmand – Nonya Curry Laksa

Thanks to Kate from Mommy Monologues for the "You know you're a blogger when..." line.  They all made me laugh!

International Incident Party - Dumplings

It's not a stretch to say that penny aka jeroxie is somewhat of a legend in the Melbourne food blogging community, and I was lucky enough to meet her recently. I am very excited to pack my little pink beauty case and jet off to her latest International Incident Party, where we will be being wanton with dumplings.

I do love how Penny encourages crazy variation on a theme. If you didn't know, I do have three dumplings of my own, and they are wont to split at the seams at the most inappropriate moments. This puts some constraints on my cooking flights of fancy, but at the same time, my three kids inspire me to weave interesting, healthy, multicultural things into our nightly meals. Wontons are a favourite of theirs, as they can help make them and they taste absolutely divine.

First, you will need to make the broth. Anh of A Food Lover's Journey recently told me that in Vietnam, the "first test" of a wife is whether she can make a good broth, followed by the quality of her nuoc mam cham (dipping sauce).

Chicken Broth (Canh)

Note this makes a huge quantity! It's so delicious, though, and great to freeze.

Chicken carcasses (12 frames or around 2.5 kg meaty bones)
Large knob of ginger, roughly chopped
About 5 cloves of garlic, bashed with a cleaver
Bunch of spring onions, white parts only
Salt
White sugar
Fish sauce
Light soy sauce

Place chicken, ginger, garlic and spring onions in a large pot and fill with water. Bring to the boil and then simmer on very low heat, uncovered, for at least 3 hours. Strain through a colander into a very large bowl and leave on the bench to cool overnight.

Before and after removing fat

Early next morning, place into the fridge. After about 8 hours, the fat will have congealed into a solid white "raft" that you can easily lift off and discard. Don't stress if you don't get it all.  Line a colander with a piece of muslin or an old teatowel and pour the broth through it into a clean pot.  Bring to the boil, and season very well. I use a ratio of probably 40:30:20:10 salt:sugar:fish sauce:light soy sauce. Mmm, chicken broth... so nourishing to body and soul.

Wontons


2 x 150g packets wonton wrappers (from the fridge of any Asian grocer)
300g pork mince
10 prawns
3 spring onions, chopped
2 Tb finely chopped ginger
1/2 tsp white pepper
1 Tb light soy sauce
1 Tb fish sauce
1 Tb Shao Hsing cooking wine
1 Tb oyster sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp cornflour


Remove wonton wrappers from fridge. Place all ingredients (except wonton wrappers and cornflour) in a food processor and process to a semi-coarse paste.

Now, dissolve cornflour in about 1 Tb water in a small dish. Set up a tray dusted with cornflour and have a damp teatowel ready to cover the dumplings as you make them.

1. Place a teaspoonful of filling in the centre of the wrapper.
2. Using your finger, paint a small amount of cornflour mixture around the top edge and halfway down each side.
3. Fold the bottom part of the wrapper up over the filling and press to seal, making a rectangle.
4. Next, fold the top margin of the rectangle over, using both index fingers (one of mine had to hold the camera!)
5. Now, the tricky bit - sticking the bottom corners together. Here's a video of how it's done:

6. Make sure you use just a little dab of cornflour to stick the corners together, and fold them to one side so they sit flat. Place wontons on the cornflour-dusted tray and cover with a damp teatowel so they don't dry out.

Tricky? You will get better with time. Really, though, it does not matter what shape you do the wontons, as long as the filling is safely enclosed. The kids love to help me (although do be prepared for cornflour EVERYWHERE!)

Setting out wrappers for Mum to fill; "painting" cornflour around edges (with a clean paintbrush)

Next, cook whatever accompaniments you would like, in the simmering broth (such as green vegetables, noodles etc - make sure you cook the noodles really al dente as they will continue to cook when you add the broth at the end).  Remove each ingredient as it is done and place in individual bowls.  Cook the wontons last for about 5-6 minutes (you can always remove one and chop in half to check they are done).  Add to the bowls, ladle over hot broth, and garnish with chilli, chopped spring onion (green part), and fried shallots.

The translation of wonton is "swallowing clouds", and this soup really puts me on Cloud Nine.  Thank you Penny for hosting, and I look forward to seeing everyone else's heavenly creations!