I meant for this to be my dinner appetizer, but I spooned so much into my bowl that it became a meal.

Hot and sour soup didn't appear in my childhood of Cantonese home dinners. It did, however, appear in my Chinese-American childhood, as a Sichuan/Northern Chinese dish that became bastardized for the greasy take-out joints of suburban America. I have had one too many versions that were so thick and rubbery I could stretch them with my hands like Silly Putty. Here is some advice to the aforementioned Chinese restaurants in the US: Cornstarch is never a main ingredient; just use sparingly.    

(From upper left: Wood ear, lily buds, fresh bamboo, shiitake mushrooms. Bowl: fresh firm tofu.)

In the US, hot and sour soup also tends to lack the lily buds, shiitake mushrooms, and bamboo shoots that make it a nutrient-rich, even somewhat refined, dish. (This is the Chinese version, not to be confused with Vietnamese, Filipino, or Thai hot and sour soups.) I also like to add wood ear and tofu for texture variation. Today I also used fresh instead of canned bamboo shoots, which I couldn't find when I went food shopping this morning. 

The easiest way to make a thick stewy dish into a summery répas is by adding tropical fruit. Or so I told myself yesterday, when I was craving curry but wasn't too keen on the standing in front of a hot stove for the better part of an hour.  The mangoes on the fridge were radiating their very ripened, last-day-for-eating aroma. Into the curry they went.

Yes, I did gluttonously attacked the pits after the flesh was chopped up. And yet much of the juice still found its way to the floor and all over the counter. Mango-soaked kitchen rags may be a side effect of this curry, if you choose to make it with the ripest fruit possible. 

I have seen and eaten mango curries that contained chicken, pork, and lamb, but not vegetables. And why not, when this curry can accomodate whatever assortment you bring back from the market, as long as you cook starches and carrots first, and leave the green stuff until the end. The vegetable selection below was based on whim and color and texture variety.

I did need a glass of ice water to cool off after cooking, but the curry was worth the extra rise in body temperature.

It's the mid-June, meaning asparagus season is coming to a close. I have been seeing less and less of my favorite stalky vegetable at the markets, and what's left tends to be expensive. So I thought I would celebrate the end of the season with a recipe for Shandong-style asparagus. Make this while you still can!

It's true that asparagus isn't used much in Chinese food. I don't recall ever having it at the dinner table growing up, nor at restaurants in Boston's Chinatown. Here in Beijing, whenever asparagus appears on menus it is qingchao-ed (请炒-ed), or lightly stir-fried, with other vegetables.

Shandong province is China's center for asparagus production, so it's no surprise Shandongers showcase the asparagus practically au naturel. And since the dish eaten at room temperature, it makes a perfect appetizer for picnics, grilling dinners, or any other situation when you're wiping the sweat from your brows and spritzing water on your face every 2 minutes to keep cool.

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Shandong-Style Asparagus
Adapted from Saveur

Serves 2 to 4 as an appetizer

1 pound asparagus, trimmed and sliced diagonally into 1 1/2 inch pieces
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
A few drops chilli oil
1 teaspoon toasted white sesame seeds

I had three things on my agenda today, after getting up at 6:30am to disembark an overnight train from Shanghai:

1. Nap
2. Shower
3. Cook

There is an unexplainable euphoria of cooking again in one's own kitchen after a 3-week absence. Sure, I've gotten to cook while away, but it's not the same when it's someone else's domain. I don't know where to find certain spices and condiments, don't know if there are certain spices and condiments. At some places, like my parent's, there are 3 kinds of soy sauce and 5 types of vinegar, but no olive oil. Other kitchens are fully Western, with the exception of some chopsticks for take-out sushi. But as a culinary mongrel, I love to cook with Italian seasonings as much as fermented soy products. Lacking certain ingredients make me feel rather empty inside.

So as much as I like cooking anywhere I can, the anal-retentive cook in me loves grasping the handle of my own wok, or knowing exactly where the cumin is in my cabinet clutter.

One of my favorite spur-of-the-moment dishes to make is pasta with spinach. However, in China, it's often hard to find really fresh, crisp spinach in markets. Spinach seems even less appealing when, at the same market, I can find fresher and ridiculously cheaper Asian greens.

I picked up 3 bunches of tatsoi today for the equivalent of 8 US cents (Finally, something affordable in Shanghai.) Tatsoi is easily distinguishable by the thick, dark green, spoon-shaped leaves. With a lightly bitter taste, like Swiss chard, tatsoi is a good green to eat raw in a salad, or tossed in Chinese soups at the last minute.

The mild mustardy taste also makes tatsoi a nice addition to a dish like brown butter pasta, in which the butter is cooked to the point of nuttiness. (I've been making brown butter pasta with some vegetable variation for lunch almost every day last week, and it's hard to tire of.) Today I finished off the tatsoi pasta with fresh sage, parmesan, and squirt of lemon juice for oomph. The fewer ingredients without compromising good taste, the happier my wallet.

This afternoon, less than 24 hours before hopping on a train to Hong Kong, I was faced with a dilemma. Do I boil some instant ramen noodles and start packing early, to ensure I remember everything and not wait until the last minute? Or do I make myself a good, hearty lunch, while updating my iPod with all the new music and podcasts necessary for a long train ride?

A perpetual procrastinator, I chose the latter.

The plan was to make Kung Pao Chicken (Gongbao Jiding), because that was what I was craving. Then I looked in the fridge and saw a pack of lonely-looking tofu, which would certainly go uneaten before the trip.

"Don't let me go to waste," it seemed to be saying. "Buy chicken another day, when you're not about to go for a 2-week trip."

"Fine," I sighed.

I made Kung Pao Tofu instead. It wasn't chicken, but it was less wasteful and kept in line with my eat-less-meat resolution. (Of course, I can only hold up for so long, since the wonton soups and Cantonese roast ducks in HK are too irresistable.)

Remember when I wrote about the kaleidoscope of tofu available in China? Here's a couple I picked up today at the market:

The lighter colored pack is 豆干 (dòu gān), the super firm kind I like to use in dishes like caramelized tofu. The other was new to me, and intrigued me because the name on the packaging: 啤酒肉片 (píjiǔ ròupiàn) literally reads as "Beer Meat Slices." I know the character for "meat" in Chinese can also mean the flesh of any food, from pigs to pineapples to tofu. But the "beer" part I couldn't figure out, since it wasn't listed as one of the ingredients.

My search for quick vegetarian dishes continues. Going out 3 nights in a row with our vegetarian friends from London has convinced me that while it's a bit inconvenient to go meatless in China, it's not impossible. While I'm not considering becoming a strict vegetarian, my conscience dictates that eating more vegetable and grains and having meat only once or twice a week is better for good ol' planet Earth. (The conscience thing I can blame on Fast Food Nation, this Michael Pollan article, and having lived in gentrified Brooklyn, which probably has the highest concentration of vegetarians outside India and San Francisco.)

Pad See-Ew is a noodle dish that can be made with meat or without. It's a lot like the Cantonese chow hor fun, with thicker sauce and the addition of egg. I have had it countless times in Thai restaurants, but never thought to make at home until I came across Blazing Hot Wok's recipe from earlier this year. This dish has fewer ingredients than Pad Thai and is easier to make, perfect for those lazy "crap, I'm starving but my fridge is practically empty" days.

In my attempts to eat healthier when not dining out, I have been trying to think of filling vegetarian dishes to make at home. Because of deadlines and pure laziness, 7 out of the last 8 meals I made at home was farfalle with cherry tomatoes and olives. And as much as I love pasta, and this oh-so-fragrant Palestinian olive oil Jacob brought back from his last trip to NYC, my stomach was crying out for a change.

I love that in China every market has no less than 5 or 6 kinds of tofu available, ranging from the silky soft kind you steam to extra extra firm bits meant for braising. For this Caramelized Tofu and Almond Salad Bowl, you can use either regular extra firm tofu blocks (the kind usually found in supermarkets in the States) or drier tofu skin squares (China or Chinatown.) Just cook the latter for a few minutes longer.

The caramelized sauce that results from sautéing the tofu in this recipe ends up being a delicious dressing for the salad. Vegetable-wise, I used a very basic mix of lettuce and shredded carrots, but you can also add mushrooms, sprouts, edamame, etc. for variety.

So easy, so filling.

Caramelized Tofu and Almond Salad Bowl

Serves 2

I'm interrupting my Shanghai posts to bring you this seaweed egg drop soup. This is one of those dishes I rarely ate at home growing up (for some reason my mother never made it) but would slurp with delight at restaurants. The simple combination of seaweed shreds and egg makes for great, light comfort food. And it's an easy way to load up on iron.

After a long absence (several months or years, I don't recall), seaweed and egg drop soup has made a sudden comeback in my life. It all started at Jia Jia Tang Bao, where I ordered it to go with soup dumplings because the only other soup choice was chicken and duck blood soup. Then I started seeing it, and having it, at various cafés in Beijing. Then I thought, why not make it at home?*

I like mine with a lot of seaweed, more than most restaurants normally use. A little extra iron, vitamin C, magnesium, and other vitamins can't hurt. (But you can always use less seaweed, like 1 ounce instead of 2 for every 3 cups of liquid.) Good homemade stock is also critical, since the resulting broth has very few other flavorings. To make this soup meatier and more substantial, you can also add minced pork or sliced shiitakes. But the basic version is one of the simplest Chinese soups you can make, and with very few ingredients.