Southeast Asian Supper
Chicken ginger soup
Ingredients: Pieces of chicken, garlic, ginger, salt.
Cooking time: about 20-25 minutes.
Needs: large pot for the soup.
Cut chicken into medium-sized pieces. and put in water. Heat to boil, and skim off the fat from the top of the water. I usually keep the skin on the chicken pieces.
At the same time cut some garlic and ginger into thin slices, as much or as little as you like. I usually have a little more garlic than ginger. Heat a little oil on a pan and sauté them until the garlic turns a little brown. Throw this into the soup when you've gotten rid of the fat from the top of the water.
Add as much salt as you like and let it sit until the garlic and ginger flavor sufficiently adds to the soup and you're done.
Pork meat balls with eggs
Ingredients: Eggs, ground pork, garlic, tomatoes, soy sauce,
sweet soy sauce, oyster sauce, flour, pepper.
Cooking time: about 35-40 minutes.
Needs: large steamer, large wok (preferably with cover).
This is usually a small surprise for my dinner guests and I'll get to that part.
Hardboil the eggs and peel the skin off. Mince garlic finely and mix it with soy sauce, sweet soy sauce and oyster sauce into the ground pork. This gets a little messy since you need to use your hands to mix everything together!
Once they're all mixed together, take each egg and wrap some meat around the eggs. Put them all into a steamer and let steam until meat is cooked (usually around 20-30 minutes, depending on how thick the meat layer is).
Now cut some more garlic into thin pieces, and tomatoes into small pieces. Get a large wok and heat some oil. Put garlic in, and when it's heated put the balls into the wok. Add a little more soy sauce and sweet sauce as you like, and if the meat gets dry add a little water. I like to add a little flour following the water to make some (thick) sauce. Finally put in the tomato pieces and cover up for a few minutes.
When serving, I don't tell the uninitiated that I have eggs inside the balls, and it's usually a nice surprise (assuming that they're not alergic to eggs).
This is my mom's recipe and we don't have a name for it. Suggestions are solicited.
Salt-and-Pepper Spicy Shrimp
2 tb Salt
1 lb Large shrimp - unpeeled and deveined
2 ts Coarse or kosher salt
1 ts Roasted Sichuan peppercorns -(ground)
1 ts Sugar
2 tb Finely chopped garlic
2 ts Minced peeled fresh ginger
2 tb Finely chopped scallions
2 Fresh red chile peppers - coarsely chopped
2 c Peanut oil; for deep frying
TO CLEAN THE SHRIMP, remove the feathery legs and blot the shrimp dry with paper towels. In a small bowl, combine the coarse salt, peppercorns, and sugar and set aside. In another small bowl, combine the garlic, ginger, scallions and the chopped chilies. Heat a wok or deep skillet until it is hot and add the oil. When the oil is very hot and smoking, add the shrimp and deep-fry for about 1 minute or until they are pink. Remove them immediately with a slotted spoon and drain well. Pour off all but 1 1/2 tablespoons of the oil and reheat the wok. Add the salt-peppercorns-sugar mixture and stir-fry for 10 seconds. Add the garlic-ginger-scallion-chiles mixture and stir-fry for 10 seconds. Return the shrimp to the wok and stir-fry over high heat for about 2 minutes until the spices have thoroughly coated the outer shell of the shrimp. Transfer the shrimp to a serving platter and serve at once.