Daikon Pork Soup: a Taste of Home

There are endless dishes to eat at a Chinese restaurant: deep-fried, stir-fried, savory, sweet, noodles, meat, vegetables. My favorite dish is none of the above; it is the complimentary plain broth at the beginning of the meal.  I am disproportionally excited for this broth because it reminds me of my parents' cooking. All the Chinese foods that were rare and thus special as a child growing up in the Midwest have become commonplace as an adult living in San Francisco. Conversely, the everyday foods of my childhood have become rare.

What most probably consider as a boring, bland broth is a nostalgic food for me. Do not feel slighted if you have not encountered this broth as not all restaurants serve this. Whenever it does make an appearance at a restaurant, I savor it. Sometimes it comes with a few pieces of daikon or if you're lucky, a chuck of pork. In the past, I have haphazardly cobbled together ingredients to make it but the attempts resulted only in boiled water and inedible chucks of meat.

Then, I stumbled onto this pork rib soup recipe while looking for a lotus root recipe (my current vegetable obsession). It was relegated to my to-try-someday list.  On the same day, I stumbled across the honey dates at the Asian supermarket. Since the honey dates are absolutely essential to the recipe, I decided the universe was telling me to make the soup. That and I did not have dinner plans.

Honey dates and red dates

I purchased a half-rack of baby back ribs, cut into thirds lengthwise across the bones. At home, I further cut the ribs into 2 rib chucks. I used daikon instead of lotus root since it was a fraction of the price and added a carrot. I also parboiled the ribs.

And then boil. With love, of course.

The hardest part of this recipe was resisting the urge to adulterate it. I’m glad I resisted as the recipe yielded a wonderful, light broth that instantly reminded me of my parents’ soup. Cooking does not need to be complex to be meaningful.

Chinese New Year’s cake is another home-cooked food that I was surprised and happy to learn how simple it was to make. Happy Lunar New Year to all those who celebrate.

What simple dish reminds you of home and have you learned how to recreate it? Do you celebrate the Lunar New Year and what are your plans?

My Favorite Gadget and Soap

While soap is not food, this project does involve the kitchen and my favorite piece of kitchen equipment.

I discovered this project on pinterest a while ago. I like the idea of making your own liquid soap so you don’t need to pay for what is essentially water. More importantly, this project uses glycerin which had been sitting unused on my shelf. I had purchased a bottle with the misconception that glycerin makes substances more liquid and thus would be useful in making cake pops. Fact: it does the opposite. It turns melted chocolate back into unmelted chocolate. One could say that a lesson can be learned about researching before making purchases. However, that person would miss out on projects such as this.

First, grate a bar of soap. This is the third reason why I wanted to do this project. Any excuse to use my favorite piece of  kitchen equipment:

I am amazing. Use me!

I call this a food mill but I have friends who call it a ricer. I immediately wanted one after borrowing it from a roommate. It took me about a year to find this one (at the Oakland Museum White Elephant sale). Online searches yields fancier and larger models, but I prefer the simplicity of this design. Prop up the legs, insert a grating disk and the handle, and then turn! Grate piles of carrots, hunks of cheese, and bars of soap in minutes. There is less chance of injury since the food does not need to be held against the blades. Instead, place the food on top, put down the metal arm and turn the handle. Plus, the folding legs occupy less space than a box grater which also means less chance of finger injury when rummaging through a messy cupboard. Have I convinced you yet?

Anyway, changing a bar of soap to liquid soap is very easy. Mix the grated soap, water, and liquid glycerin in a pot.

The soap from Trader Joe's gets a pretty pattern from grating; the resulting big pile of pasta, um, soap that goes plop, plop into the water

Bring the mixture to a boil. Boil until the soap is dissolved.  Allow it to sit until it has solidified.  Do not panic if the soap remains liquid for the first few hours. I was very excited when it started solidifying:

The instructions say to let it sit for 12 hours. I didn't have time to work on it again until after 36 hours. If it seems too solid, first try to blend it. I blended mine and it turned out fine.

Smooth at first, break it down with a beater, to get the final product

Yes, the soap looks a bit disgusting but that's the fun. Apparently this soap is not sudsy but I'm ok with that. Also, Dove soap does not work well with this project but I may try it in the future.  This easy project made me feel ridiculously accomplished.

I hope you have a cheerful and clean 2013.

What is your favorite kitchen equipment, and why? Have you crossed any pinterest projects off your list recently?