Soup Noodles

There is a wonderful Shanghai cooking technique that is traditionally applied to pork shank. The shank is stewed in a mixture of dark and light soys, with other aromatic ingredients, and timed so that at the point when the shank is done, the liquid has reduced to a thick glaze that coats the meat. It’s a great way to infuse meat with a lot of flavor, and it evokes a dark, savory quality that is addictive.

It’s not very precise, this business of trying to make the liquid evaporate at the right time. You need an ingredient which will forgive imprecision, for which a variation of 30% or more in the stewing time doesn’t really make much difference. Pork shank works. So does pork belly. But you wouldn’t want to do it with chicken breast.

Which made me surprised when I encountered a Shanghai recipe that suggested applying this technique to a whole (cut-up) chicken. I dutifully followed the recipe, and while it was terrific and juicy for the most part, the chicken breast was hopelessly stringy. This time, I decided to use wings, instead.

The recipe comes from this little book, which I picked up in Hong Kong. That link is to the only place I found it online, and it’s a Singapore source. I’m not sure where to tell you to get it in the U.S.

Adapted for wings, and doubled to allow for some leftovers, it goes like this:

I like Pearl River Bridge brands of both of these, but if you’re in Hong Kong, pick up some soy sauce from Kowloon Soy in Central, and prepare to be amazed.

Okay, I increased the ginger a bit from the original recipe

The original, un-doubled recipe calls for 2 cups of water. I’ve learned that just doubling this for a doubled recipe means you have too much liquid to evaporate. You’ll have to learn, for your stove, what an appropriate amount of liquid is.

Cut the wings into their 3 segments, discarding the wingtips or saving them for stock. Wash the wings and pat dry. Deep fry in batches in 400 degree oil until golden brown, about 6 minutes. The wings will stew so it’s not critical that they be cooked through. Drain on paper towels.

Mix together the soys, rice wine, water, and ginger. The recipe says that you should not add the sugar until the sauce is mostly reduced, but I ignored that, just mixed it in at the beginning, and nothing bad happened. Still, they came out darker than the picture, and I’d imagine that if you added it later, you’d get less of a caramelization effect. I liked the caramelization so I’ll keep doing it my way.

Empty the wok, then heat it over high heat and re-add a few tablespoons of oil. When the oil is hot, add the scallions and briefly saute them until just wilted. Add the fried chicken wings and the liquid, stirring to coat the wings. Let the liquid boil and adjust the heat for a vigorous uncovered simmer. Stir and turn the wings from time to time, as the liquid reduces, so that all sides get some simmering time in the liquid. As the liquid turns thick and glaze-like, stir more often, and finally you’ll reach a point where all of the sauce is clinging to the wings. That’s the time to serve them.

Mine looked like this:

Dark, rich, decadent, delicious. Add a nice green veggie and you’ve got a complete, but messy, meal. The same recipe works great with chicken thighs and drumsticks, too. Make sure you fry them long enough to get the large quantities of fat they carry to exude into the frying oil.

I love chicken wings. They’re the best part of the chicken. Yes, even better than those wonderful soft tenderloinish “oysters” that are imbedded in the chicken’s back. Yes, even better than the luscious liver, firm gizzards and resilient heart. Those bits can be made into something delicious, no question about it, but you wouldn’t want to make a meal of them.

Chicken wings are cheap. That’s odd, really. They only come two per chicken, so they ought to be scarce. They’re easy to cook, so they ought to command the sort of premium that a beef tenderloin does. Why aren’t chicken wings expensive?

My own theory is that the relatively high cost of things like tenderloin and chicken breast in the U.S. is due to the influence of French cuisine ideas here. The relatively flavorless filet mignon (note the adoption of the French name) and chicken breast (okay, I don’t know how to say that in French) form an ideal placid substrate for the sauces that are considered by some to be the glory of French cuisine. Glory or not, this is the sort of thing that gets considered hifalutin’ cooking in the U.S. So the easily-overcooked, realatively flavorless chicken breast costs more per pound than a tasty drumstick or savory wing.

Consider the positive qualities of the chicken wing. It deep-fries to a beautiful crispness, leaving you with a perfect skin-to-meat ratio. It stews well, better than any other part of the chicken, and without a tendency to shed its skin. It’s actually hard to overcook. Wings fried 6 minutes in 375 degree oil are juicy and flavorful; wings fried 12 minutes are sort of gnarled but chewy and tasty. A single chicken wing provides its own variety — the larger bite of the mini-drumstick segment, and the ultimate meat-on-the-bone experience of chewing all those glistening bits off of the two-bone segment. It retains its flavor even in the presence of aggressive spicing. It’s fun to chew. It defies pretensions — just try eating chicken wings with a knife and fork. And, it looks cool.

So why aren’t there more wonderful chicken wing recipes? Actually, there are pretty many. It’s just that I haven’t found as many as I think there should be. I admit I don’t know what the French and Italians do with chicken wings as a separate piece, but I have enought respect for both of those cuisines that I imagine that they must have figured out something. The Chinese, of course, have not missed out on the special qualities of the chicken wing. More to come on that point.

Even the U.S., which barely has a cuisine outside of the South, has a special chicken wing recipe. It’s almost trivially simple, and really really delicious.

Buffalo Chicken Wings

At least 6-8 cups. I prefer peanut oil for its ability to withstand high temperatures, and avoid corn oil, mainly for reasons of flavor.

I like to make about 4 lbs at a time

Frank’s Hot Sauce

Very roughly, 1/2 cup of Frank’s per lb of wings. You MUST obtain Frank’s Hot Sauce in order to make the true Buffalo Chicken Wing. It’s milder than other hot sauces, or 1/2 cup of it would about kill you. Franks has its own distinctive and special flavor; it’s not fruity like other hot sauces. Substitution just won’t work here. But I’ve found Frank’s Hot Sauce to be pretty available in various parts of the U.S., which makes it pretty shocking to me that restaurant wings rarely seem to use it.

About 1/4 - 1/2 as much butter as hot sauce, to taste. Salted or unsalted, doesn’t seem to matter much.

A matter of taste. If, at the very end, your sauce isn’t lively enough for your taste, add just a little white vinegar to liven it up.

Traditional Accompaniments (optional)

Cut the wings into their 3 segments, discarding the wingtips or saving them for stock-making. Rinse them and dry very thoroughly to avoid spatter.

Heat the oil to 400 degrees in a pan deep enough that the inevitable spatter won’t set your kitchen on fire. Fry the chicken wings in batches until golden brown and cooked through, at least 6 minutes per batch, and drain on paper towels. You should judge your batch size by how much heat your stove can put out. I’ve made them with an apartment stove that could only support 6 wing segments per batch, and I’ve made them over my 30,000 BTU wok burner, which supports about 1 - 1 1/3 lbs per batch, and on some stoves in between.

Heat the hot sauce in a small saucepan until just simmering. Stir in the butter (cut it into small chunks first if it’s cold). You want that French “finishing a sauce” effect where they butter doesn’t heat so much that it turns greasy instead of creamy. When the butter is just melted, and there’s enough of it to get the balance between the rich creaminess of the butter and the bite of the hot sauce right (add vinegar if needed to satisfy your palate here), take it off the heat.

Put the wings in a large, low bowl, and pour enough sauce over to coat, then toss until the wings are thoroughly and generously coated.

Serve with extra sauce on the side for dipping. To be traditional, also serve washed celery sticks and blue cheese dressing for dipping the celery in.

It doesn’t seem like there’s much consensus among Chinese restaurants in the United States as to what a “Kung Pao” dish is. There seems to be some general agreement that it’s a stir-fry, with one kind of meat, some whole dried red peppers, probably some peanuts.

My own vision of what a “Kung Pao” dish, is much narrower. I don’t know whether it’s authentic or not, but if it’s not, well, it ought to be.

My first experience with mind-blowing Chinese food was decades ago, at a Sichuan restaurant in Massachusetts. It’s long since gone now, and in fact it was only good for about the first year I was going there. I assume the chef left. But for its brief heyday, it was magnificent. A friend took me there, and we ordered Kung Pao Chicken. It was incredibly delicious. The dance of flavors; the use of hot and spicy elements, the texture, even the look of the dish, all spoke of magic in food in a way that I had never imagined before. This one eating experience set me on the path of pursuing excellent Chinese food.

In the months following, we worked together to re-create the dish, seeking out cookbooks and experimenting, and we pretty much succeeded, settling on a recipe from Robert A. Delfs’ The Good Food of Szechuan, now out of print. This version succeeded because it followed the principles that made the restaurant version so good:

I don’t think I’ve encountered a restaurant Kung Pao that follows all of these principles, since that one formative experience. Almost always, the peppers are in their original red, not burned black. Almost always, there are additional vegetables added, diluting the impact of the dish. Surprisingly often, these vegetables are not only not complementary, but seem to have been chosen to ruin the purity of the dish: bell peppers, chunks of bamboo shoot (one might get by with slices, but not chunks), even celery.

Why does it matter? Well, it’s like trying to do Texas chili with no cumin, and adding as much cabbage as meat. It’s just wrong. What is special about Kung Pao chicken, as I see it, is a wonderful flavor interaction between the burnt pepper flavors in the oil, and the ginger, and the vinegar, and the soy, and the rice wine, all made savory by the delicate meat (which is why you want something like shrimp or chicken breast, not dark meats).

There’s even a story that goes with what I think of as the authentic version of Kung Pao. It’s said that the Grand Duke’s cook, making a chicken dish one night, accidently burned the peppers. Pressed for time and low on supplies, he went ahead anyway, and presented the result to his master as a new dish. The Duke and his guests praised this new dish to the skies, and it became famous as “Grand Duke’s chicken.” I guess cooks didn’t get much credit in those days, there not being any Food TV.

The magical quality of burnt peppers in oil makes this story believable.

The Delfs version of Kung Pao chicken, suitably tweaked for my tastes, has become perhaps my favorite recipe in the world. Later in the book is a variation for shrimp, which I’ve also tweaked, adding peanuts and increasing the vinegar and sugar.

Kung Pao Shrimp

I recommend medium size, about 24 count, and I recommend you buy them with the shells on and take them off yourself. It does make a difference.

Clean the shrimp by making a brine (about 1 tsp salt per 2 cups water) and adding the shrimp. Let sit 2 minutes, then drain and rinse the shrimp thoroughly with cold water, then drain again. This is a Chinese trick that is remarkably effective at purifying the shrimp. Often enough, the liquid you pour down the drain seems putrid or iodiny, but the shrimp are left pure and bouncy. The shrimp will turn somewhat white during this operation.

Whisk together until foamy:

Mix this marinade with the shrimp, and let sit 20 minutes.

Now mix up the sauce. Whisk together:

Put into a handy bowl:

The recipe recommends cutting off the top and shaking the seeds out; I don’t bother.

In another bowl, put:

Or more, or fewer, depending on your tastes. My wife loves lots of peanuts in this dish.

Chop until fine and combine in a bowl separate from the peppers:

1 tablespoon scallion
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon garlic

Drain the shrimp to remove excess marinade. Heat your wok, and add 4 tablespoons of peanut oil. When the oil is hot, add the shrimp, stir-fry for about 10 seconds until they just turn color, then get them out of the pan and drain.

Turn on your hood if you’ve got one, or open some windows. Burning hot peppers produces nasty fumes. Replenish the oil so that there’s still 4 tablespoons in the wok, and re-heat. Add the hot peppers and heat them until they’re entirely black.

Toss in the ginger, garlic, scallion mixture and stir-fry briefly until aromatic (just a few seconds). Add the shrimp, and stir-fry to almost complete their cooking (they’ll start to curl up).

Add the peanuts to the wok. Stir the sauce to recombine the liquids with the cornstarch, because the liquids will have settled. Pour the sauce into the wok, and stir everything around so the sauce coats the shrimp evenly as it thickens. Get it out of the pan and serve.

Here’s what mine looked like.

I used shrimp that were pre-peeled and too small, so it wasn’t as good as it could have been, nor as good as it has been other times I’ve made it, but it was still really good. This is a doubled recipe, which works fine if you have the stove heat for it.

Don’t eat the burned peppers!

Perhaps you can see, after all of these steps, why I regard this recipe as dauntingly complex. One of the nice things about Chinese cooking, though, is that “complex” means “a lot of steps.” That demands persistence, but not magic. I am no expert on French cooking, but have read many words by those who are. As far as I can tell, “complex” in a French recipe means “if you hold the spoon wrong or get the heat wrong or don’t have that mystical sense of what French cooking is, forget producing the characteristic magic of the cuisine.” I love French food, sometimes almost half as much as Chinese food, but this sort of fussiness is not for me.

So you have your steamed, starch-coated ducks:

And your sauce, and only one more step between you and pressed duck Nirvana.

Frying. Warm your sauce while you’re doing this.

Put a quart or so of peanut oil in whatever vessel you use for deep-frying, enough oil to fully cover one side of a duck half as it fries, and heat it to 375 degrees. Slide the duck in, to minimize splatter, and fry it for 2-3 minutes on each side. It should be nicely brown, and the inside part should show nice crisp details. Drain it, then slice into bands, put on a plate, ladle some sauce over, sparsely, then serve it immediately, with some sauce on the side.

What’s it like? Crisp, with a deep satisfying crunch, on the outside, soft and meaty and fatty and impossibly rich on the inside. The sauce, which seems wrong by itself, achieves a perfect synergy when combined with the duck. The acidity counteracts the richness of the duck; the sweetness enhances it. It’s so good…an extended wallow in hedonistic decadance. I guess it was worth the trouble after all….if I can just convey that thought to myself, 6 months from now.

Now to resume with the pressed duck halves:

Whisk until foamy:

and pour them into a wide, flat bowl or plate, so that you can easily dip the duck halves and coat them with egg white.

Now, you need an unusual ingredient:

This can be found in Asian markets; the one I’ve seen is a small yellow box. The powder in it is mostly in coarse granules, so I mash it in a mortar until it’s a fine powder.

Sift the powder together with:

onto a plate, covering the plate evenly.

Take each duck half, dip into the egg whites, turning to coat thoroughly, then place on to the plate with the combined powders. Use a spoon to spread the powder evenly on all sides of the duck, making sure that everything is covered, and that there are no places where the starch is really thick. Then it looks like this:

Select two shallow plates that will fit your steamer. Line them with parchment paper to avoid sticking. I use pyrex pie plates. Put a duck half into each plate, and the plates into the steamer tiers. Steam gently, over medium heat, for 30 minutes:

Let the duck halves cool thoroughly, then wrap them in plastic wrap and refrigerate until chilled.

Okay, so the duck has been split, simmered, de-boned and pressed, and the next step is to powder it up, steam it, fry it, and eat it. But there’s one more thing to do first — make the sauce.

You’re going to have to bear with me on this one. The sauce has pineapple in it, and that takes some explanation. At least it does if you’re like me. To me, pineapple, while delicious fresh, hints at wrongness when used in cuisine. Too cloying. Too ham-handed in its obviousness. One thinks of things like pineapple on pizza, or pineapple on a baked ham, or pineapple upside-down cake, all things which intrude, to my taste, too much high-toned, frivolous sweetness for the context.

This sauce is different. Why? Because it goes to a lot of trouble to balance pineapple with moderating influences — vinegar, for a well-balanced sweet-sour effect; soy sauce, to blunt the tutti-fruitti element, and rice wine, which combines with the soy to form a base of depth and richness. What you wind up with is a little like the condiment known as “duck sauce,” but better.

Here’s how you make it:

Mix the soy sauce, vinegar, rice wine, and sugar in a bowl large enough to hold everything, whisking so that the sugar dissolves completely. Drain the pineapple and use the food processor or blender to blend it into a fine puree. Add the pineapple puree to the soy mixture.

In a small saucepan, heat the oil and add the garlic clove, stirring and flipping it until its aroma is apparent, reducing the heat as needed to avoid browning or burning it. Add the pineapple mixture, and heat it until it simmers, stirring to avoid burning. Re-stir the cornstarch mixture because it will have separated somewhat, then stir it into the pan, continuing to stir until the sauce thickens, a matter of 15 seconds or so. Take it off the heat, and taste for a proper sweet-sour balance.

Let it sit until cool; it will absorb some extra goodness from the garlic. Remove the garlic clove and re-heat before serving with the duck.

This step is the one I most had in mind when I said that this was the most complicated recipe in Barbara Tropp’s book. You’ve got a duck, cut in half, simmered in aromatic water, cooled, and now you have to take out all of the bones without turning it into a pile of shreds.

It was actually easier than I expected, and that’s mostly because the duck was really cold. That seemed to keep it together. Here’s what I did, slowly and carefully:

Then I went over the whole duck, feeling for stray bones and cartialage and pulling it free, always gently. Any scraps of duck that came off with the bones, I poked into stray crevices.

Whew!

Compared to that, pressing the duck halves was simple, and sort of fun. You wrap them in wax paper and put something heavy on them for a few hours. I used a stockpot with a gallon jug of oil on one, and a pile of cookbooks on the other. After pressing, the boneless duck halves looked like this:

When dealing with duck, there’s always a question: what to do with all of that fat? Ducks have tons of fat, built up to protect them from cold water, and it’s layered inside.

I’ve seen a lot of solutions: poke it all over with a fork and brown the skin in a pot, letting the fat run out. Steam it for a long time and let the fat run out. This one is simple: just simmer it in water.

If using fresh peel, scrape off the white part. I used aged dried tangerine peel I brought back from Hong Kong.

Trim off the duck’s head, tail, wingtips, and feet. Cut the duck in half, lengthwise, leaving the backbone on one of the halves. Pull off any clumps of fat or little gland-looking things. As much as you can, try to snap the junction between leg and thigh bones, and at the base of the wing bone. It’ll make removing the bones later, easier.

Rub the duck halves all over with the salt, and sprinkle over the wine. Place into a pot that will barely hold the halves next to each other, and add the ginger, scallion, anise, and peel. Cover, plus a half-inch, with boiling water, and simmer 1 hour. Remove the duck halves, pull off any clinging seasoning pieces, and let cool.

At this point, I wrapped them and put them in the refrigerator until the next day. The next step is deboning, and it’s supposed to be a lot easier with a fully chilled duck-half.