This is only partially LDS related, but a while ago, elsewhere in the bloggernacle, there was a discussion about gastronomy. Several people mentioned favorite dishes, many of which they came to love while on missions.
While many foods were mentioned, it would be nice to know how to make some of them. So, please post your favorite recipes here.
For kimchee, here and here are good starts. The second site also has other Korean recipes.
One of my favorite dishes from Chile is Pastel de Choclo. Here is a recipe orginally from here. You can, of course, simplify it according to your needs.
Pastel De Choclo
Yield: 6 Servings
1 1/2 lb Chicken pieces
4 md Yellow onions; peeled;1 quartered, 3 chopped
2 Bay leaves
Salt and freshly ground-black pepper
5 c Fresh corn kernels (about 8 ears)
1 c Milk
6 tb Vegetable oil
1 Clove garlic; peeled & crushed
3/4 lb Ground beef
1/4 ts Ground cumin
2 ts Dried oregano
2 ts Sweet paprika
3 tb Roughly chopped raisins
2 Hard-boiled eggs; cut into wedges
6 Black olives; pitted & chopped
2 tb Sugar
Place chicken, the quartered onion, and 1 bay leaf in a pot. Season with salt and pepper, add water to cover, and bring to a simmer over medium-high heat.
Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and cook until chicken is done (15 to 20 minutes).
Remove chicken. When cool, remove skin, pull meat from bones, and tear into large pieces.
Discard cooking liquid and bay leaf and transfer quartered onion to a food processor or blender. Add corn and milk and puree until smooth.
Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a skillet over medium-high heat, add corn puree, cook, stirring until thick (about 5 minutes). Season with salt and pepper.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Heat remaining 4 T. oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and cook until golden (5 to 7 minutes). Discard garlic. Add the 3 chopped onions and 1 1/4 cups water and cook over medium-high heat until liquid evaporates and onions are soft, 5 to 8 minutes.
Add beef, breaking it up with the back of a spoon, and cook, stirring, until brown (5 to 8 minutes). Add cumin, oregano, remaining bay leaf, paprika, and raisins, and season with salt and pepper. Stir in 3/4 cup water, reduce heat to medium, and simmer until mixture is almost dry (about 5 minutes). Remove from heat and discard bay leaf.
Spread beef mixture in the bottom of a 2-quart casserole or in 4 smaller ovenproof dishes. Add chicken, eggs, and olives, spread corn puree on top, and sprinkle with sugar.
Bake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and preheat broiler. Brown under broiler for about 5 minutes.
Serve hot.
I don’t know what Chad too uses for his gyoza (potsticker) recipe, but mine’s pretty good. Well, it would be if I had one. One of these days I’ll have to measure things out. In the meantime, here’s a useless set of directions.
Gyoza (potstickers)
2 packages (60 each, or 120 total) of gyoza skins (wonton skins work fine)
1 lb. ground pork
green cabbage of different varieties (I generally use half regular green cabbage, half nappa (chinese cabbage). Bok choi would be good too).
onions of different varieties (I generally use half green onions and half yellow, white, or sweet onion, depending on what’s in my pantry)
sesame oil
fresh grated ginger (everyone should have a ginger grater — good for zesting citrus and grating nutmeg as well)
minced or pressed garlic/garlic powder/garlic salt
soy sauce
chop up cabbage and onion very fine. I usually do about a quarter head of cabbage, six or seven big leaves of nappa, one bunch of green onions, and one medium yellow/white/sweet onion. squish it all together. grate a thumb-sized piece of ginger and add it, pour some sesame oil in (maybe 2-3 tsp?), a tiny bit of soy sauce (1 tsp?), add some garlic. You can’t taste it because of the pork, but you should be able to detect the ginger and the sesame with your nose.
At this point I usually add more cabbage because it doesn’t look quite right. Whatever. Put a blob of the gu (the techical term for the meat/cabbage/onion mix — sounds like it looks) in the center of a skin. Wet a finger and run it around the edge. Seal and crimp the edge. You can make them look really nice if you know how.
You can freeze these at this point, or you can fry them up. For parties, I deep fry until golden brown — they keep much better this way. For home use, I add a little oil to a pan, heat at medium high, add the gyoza and fry until one side is browned. Then I add a tablespoon or so of water, turn the heat down, and cover and let steam for a few minutes. Be sure the pork cooks all the way through.
Serve with rice and dipping sauce. I make mine with soy sauce, rice vinegar, chili oil, and dry mustard.
We have afternoon church this year, and rather than try to feed the kids lunch and then rush to get them dressed or get the kids dressed and try to keep them clean as we feed them, we’ve decided to have brunch on Sundays. Kristen and Julia love cinnamon rolls, so we looked around for a recipe. The one linked here is fantastic — pretty close to Cinnabon and easy to make. It does make you realize how much butter is in one of those things, though.
Thank you Bryce for your recipe for Gyoza. I am so glad you state to steam them! So many people fry them and it takes all the life out of them. Steamed gyoza are excellent!
I love my gyoza steam-fried too. In my family, we’re known to add all sorts of things to them, one of the favorites is tiny broken shrimp. I’ve also found that having a plethora of dipping sauces is essential — soy sauce, chile oil, soy or rice vinegar, and fish sauce are all staples for us.
I’ll often make crab rangoon when I make gyoza. I don’t have a recipe per se, but this is about what I do:
2 pkgs cream cheese
1/2 c. crab meat (canned or imitation both work fine)
2 Tbs chopped scallions
1 Tbs chopped chives
2 tsp A1 steak sauce (don’t ask me why, it just works)
1 pkg wonton skins
Stir the cream cheese to soften it, then break in the crab meat. Add the next three ingredients and mix well. Place by spoonfuls onto the center of the wonton skins, then fold the skins in half diagonally and seal by moistening the edges with water and squeezing the edge between your thumb and fingers.
Fry the wontons in a deep fryer or hot oil in a frying pan or skillet. Serve hot. (Many people like these with sweet and sour sauce, but I abhor the stuff and just serve it with the condiments above.)
If anybody has a good sweet and sour recipe, telling me how to get the outside crisp and the inside cooked, not a red sauce, but sort of a brown sauce, I would love it.
Our favorite Chinese restaurant people retired a few years back. I decided to just cook my own because I couldn’t find anybody who cooked like them. Yum. I do okay, but I would like a good sweet and sour. I’ve been using a bottled duck sauce and adding a few things to it to get the comparable flavor.
Well, these aren’t as fancy, but:
http://adrr.com/recipe/
Could you post that again? I think something is missing.