Whoa! Time is a-flying!
Better get cracking on October 
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BRAISED GLASS NOODLES WITH PORK & NAPA CABBAGE - blog
I’m still waiting on the book, so I made this one from the blog (and was reminded why I hate cooking from blogs - so much extraneous stuff!). The goal was to use some of the giant head of Napa cabbage I got in the CSA box. To make this vegan, I used a vegan jerky instead of pork belly, and a vegetarian oyster sauce. Because the jerky didn’t need to be cooked, I was able to skip the step where you brown the pork and jump to stir-frying the recipe. From there, this was made pretty much per the recipe, but I did add extra liquid. It only calls for 1/2 cup, and at the temperatures get with my wok, that amount of liquid vaporizes almost instantly.
This is a very subtle dish. If anything, I had some extra flavors going on from the seasoning in the jerky, but it was still very subtle. Not bad, actually quite pleasant in terms of textures. Adding some chile oil helped spike things up a bit. Not sure I’d make this again as written. It was fine, but I could do a Korean stew that would be more satisfying. As a one-dish meal, this served 2 (barely) with no leftovers.
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Thanks for that review, I have had that recipe on my list for a long time!
Re: cooking off the blog. I tend to download recipes to the Paprika app and then - for stir frys in particular - rewrite them into numbered mises.
I’m with you on this, and when I wrote my favorites list above had actually included how annoying it is to scroll through to the recipe, but then I discovered the “Jump to Recipe” button on the top right by the recipe title and had to eat (well, delete) my words.
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Yeah, the jump button helped. There are still a lot of ads and flashing things. But once I decided to make it, I printed a paper copy. So the annoyance was temporary. Still, the way blogs are formatted and written these days (SEO trumps decent writing, apparently) drives me crazy. I really can’t stand food blogs anymore. A shame, because there used to be good ones.
Hi everyone,
Been following the Cooking board for a while, figured I’d de-lurk because I have a lot of favorites from the WOL blog. These are all on regular rotation for me:
Chicken Wontons- I usually make a double batch and keep them in the freezer.
Xinjiang Lamb Rice
Rice Cakes with Napa Cabbage and Pork
Cantonese Beef Rice Bowls - this is pure comfort food for me (and a good way to use up the ground beef I get in my meat share). I decrease the chicken broth a bit, I find it too soupy with that much.
Coconut Buns - really satisfies my favorite Chinese bakery cravings since there aren’t any in my area
Chicken Pan-Fried Noodles - I usually use fresh Hong Kong noodles instead of dried, and often change the vegetable. One of my husband’s favorite dinners.
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Welcome to the board! Glad you delurked. Thanks for the reminder about the Cantonese Beef Rice Bowls, which I had forgotten about.
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Welcome, and thanks for the links!
I bookmarked a few of those. Time to make some wontons.
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Yeah. My browser does have the Reader option to remove the ad annoyances, but I don’t always remember to use it before I’m annoyed (plus then you have to pick between jumping to the recipe and eliminating the noise).
I’ve made the Vegetable Fried Rice a few times, always use the veggies of my choice … I think it’s pretty flexible. I like it vegetable heavy and I think it tastes better than what I can get from Chinese restaurants. I prefer basmati rice … I rinse it 6 times and cook the day before (China Moon recipe), spread on a half sheet pan, when cool, I refrigerate until next day. This time I used 6 cups of cooked rice and upped the other ingredients. I eliminated bell peppers since my daughter won’t eat them and also no shiitake (I don’t like) … I love other mushrooms but somehow don’t think they go with fried rice.
I scramble the eggs separately in butter, set aside. I also saute the carrots separately, later add celery and frozen peas. Other times my market has been out of bean sprouts so I just skipped but this time they had them. Reading the recipe, for the very first time I learned that you’re supposed to trim the hairy ends of the sprouts … I never knew that but it makes sense. It’s tedious but I did it. I wonder if most Chinese restaurants bother doing this …
Here are my ingredients:
6 cups cooked basmati rice
¾ teaspoon toasted sesame oil, (should be kept refrigerated)
3 teaspoons dark soy sauce
3 teaspoons light soy sauce
¾ teaspoon salt
¾ teaspoon turmeric
1 cup diced onion and shallots
1 cup diced carrots
½ cup small dice celery
1 cup petite frozen peas
1 cup julienned snow peas
5-6 scallions, chopped
3 cups mung bean sprouts, tails trimmed
3 Tablespoons grapeseed oil
4 cloves garlic, use garlic press or minced
½ teaspoon white pepper
2 Tablespoons Shaoxing Wine
3 eggs scrambled lightly in butter
It takes a while to prep all the ingredients but the cooking part is fast. If I’d had good shrimp or chicken breast, I could have added but veggie fried rice is very satisfying to me.
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Looks delicious!!
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I really like julienned snow peas, Woks recipe just cuts into pieces.
Woks recipe for 4 ½ cups of cooked rice only includes
1 green onion, 1 clove of garlic. You wouldn’t even notice such a tiny amount.
Until Woks, I didn’t know there was dark soy sauce and light soy sauce.
It’s really delicious, even when cold straight from fridge. Just the prep takes me a good while.
I gave some to my neighbor and some to my friend, a good eater + 2 pints for him to take to his family. He said it’s the best fried rice he’s ever eaten.
Flattery will get you everywhere.
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Ain’t that the truth!!! Very kind of you to share.
Sometimes my hand gets too hot when cooking with a wok … I’ve seen cooks wearing black gloves on cooking shows.
Does anyone know anything about them?
Chinese Curry Puffs https://thewoksoflife.com/curry-puffs/
These were absolutely delicious. So much so that my husband said “I’m trying to figure out a way to get you to make these every day.” To me these are a Jamaican thing, but I don’t go to dim sum much, so maybe they are popular there too. I made the curried beef (ground turkey for us) the day before, and then it was easy to just defrost puff pastry, cut it, fill, and fold. I will say that I wasn’t able to get close to 3 tablespoons of the curry into each puff, more like 2, and they looked a bit messy going into the oven, but no one else thought they looked anything less than perfect at dinner. Was so excited about these that I forgot to take a picture. Still have about half the curried meat in the freezer, and will surprise my husband with these sometime when Lulu is away.
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That’s on my list to try; will also attempt the rough puff that they say isn’t too hard, even though I have several frozen packages of TJ’s puff pastry in my freezer from last December! Did you make the filling exactly as written? No need to up any of the spices, etc? Next time, try to take a photo! 
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Curry beef turnovers definitely are, or at least were, a dim sum/Chinese snack thing. I certainly ate many in my childhood. They may have, as the WOL post suggests, gone out of fashion, but they were common in decades past and your report is making me nostalgic even though it’s been over 30 years since I’ve eaten beef, so it’s more of a taste memory. It also makes me think of the baked curry chicken bao from Andrea Nguyen’s Asian Dumplings, which I made when it was a Chowhound COTM and have wanted to do again.
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I made the curried ground turkey exactly as written, and it was delicious. I like a lot of bang. These weren’t hot spicy, just very tasty.
I think impossible meat would work well in these, and the ground turkey certainly worked.
When Lulu was a baby there was a Caribbean store in town. I would buy meat patties there by the dozen. Her first (much loved) sitter and Lulu would heat them for their dinners. I thought of her with so much love while making these yesterday. If she was still in town I would make her a batch.
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I can see why these would remind you of Jamaican patties. My recollection of these from back when is that the pastry wasn’t exactly puff pastry, but was flaky and had a bit of sweetness.
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