Do you know Chinese people love meatballs too? Yes, and the Chinese style meatball dish called Lion’s Head (獅子頭) has a long history, it is a dish good enough for the royals!
After yesterday’s turkey egg pancake rendition, I have about 2.5 lb turkey minced meat left and tonight I have two hungry boys to feed.
The traditional Lion’s Head used pork and must be about 60% lean, 40% fat. However, nobody eats so much fat any more. The most famous kind of Lion’s Head is firstly deep fried and then braised in stork. Again, who has the time to make stork?! And deep frying?! No way – I almost never deep fry anything, except stir fry.
So here is my very yummy and speedy version – it is another East meets West!
Open a can of Campbell great for cooking Cream of Chicken soup, yes, your heard it right. I meant to use chicken broth but I am running out, so I went ahead and tried something new. I will give tips later if you are using chicken broth.
Put it in your wok and add one can of water, so it is just as if you are preparing the soup.
Using an ice-cream scoop, scoop up balls of meat and gradually drop them into the soup. (For marinating instruction, please see the previous post.) I did about 12 balls.
Simmer the balls a little bit before you check to see if they are formed, do not stir too much. After about 10 minutes, they should be quite well cooked, put in sliced nappa cabbage, some chopped garlic, ginger and scallions, cover and cook for another 5 minutes. Finally, cut well soaked vermicelli into 2-inch lengths and drop them in. Stir gradually, cover and simmer for another 5 minutes or so. You can tell if vermicelli becomes transparent, it is ready.
Please note vermicelli is like any noodle, it absorbs liquid like a sponge. Serve the dish immediately with rice. If you let it sit for too long, the whole dish may become very mushy. You should also consume the whole dish in one sitting.
If you are using chicken broth instead of canned cream soup, the sauce is clear rather than creamy. If you want, you can thicken the chicken broth by adding some corn starch, make sure you keep stirring when you add the corn starch. Otherwise, you can still enjoy this dish as if it is a dish with soup.
We three finished the whole thing and someone almost wanted to lick the dish, yum!
Wow! What kind of title is that?
Don't we all jumble our words from time to time? Don't we all, as mothers, when we open the pantry door or the fridge and say - what can I cook tonight? This does not seem to go with that and; there, there's a left over baked potato from 2 nights ago ......
Tonight is one of those nights, with Senior being away, my fridge is half empty; and I just marinated a 3 lb package of minced turkey meat which was on sale - I stared at the bowl for a long time and wah la, a light bulb turned on!
Bottom line: I only want to cook one dish and it should contain some of this minced meat and vegetables.
I remembered a dish that my mom would make for us when she was in the mood for extra work. It is called 煎蛋角(mini pan fried savory egg pancakes). It is made with fish paste and eggs. I quickly got to work and here I present to you, my version of pan fried mini pancake with minced turkey meat, frozen corn, mashed potato, and eggs.
Marinate the minced meat with salt, soya sauce, pinch of sugar, cooking wine and corn starch. About half a pound of meat is good enough for 2-3 servings. Mash one cooked potato and mix with meat, add about half a cup of frozen corn too. For added flavor, I also chopped up some cilantro and garlic real fine and mixed them in. Finally, I cracked 3 eggs and mixed in with all these ingredients.
Heat the pan with some olive oil, spoon in the mixture as if you are frying pancakes. Pressing flat the pancake a little bit, this way it is quicker for the pancake to be cooked through. Have patient, do not turn the pan cakes until they are well formed. You might want to turn the fire to medium or medium low. You only need to turn it once. Just be sure both sides are golden brown and all meats are evenly cooked through.
Remember, you can substitute meat with fish paste which you can find in the butcher or the frozen section in a Chinese grocery store. You can also substitute cilantro with scallion. If you are using fish, don't add the potato or the corn. I added the potato because I really happened to have an old cooked potato sitting in my fridge. Also, very important: if you are using fish paste, stir in only one direction.
Serve with soya sauce for dipping. I did not need to dip as it is already very flavorful. Junior ate two big bowls of rice with many pancakes and lots of soya sauce. We had a great dinner. I hope you will try this out and let me know whether you like it.
Our stomach is a creature of habit, don’t you agree? I don’t know since when, but my stomach would crave for rice if I don’t eat it for a few days.
On occasions when it is necessary for me to go on for a few days without eating rice, like going on a retreat, the first thing I’d do when I get home is to hit my rice cooker.
The rice cooker is really my good friend. I have gone through a number of different rice cookers in my life time and this latest one I own is a special kind made in China. The inner pot is made of clay/stone, whereas if you buy a more regular kind in places like Bed Bath or Costco, the inner pot is usually made of aluminum or alloy of the likes.
Do you know you can use the rice cooker to cook different things? You can use it like an electric cooker. Say if you just add some hot water, after it is boiled, you can use it to cook ramen noodles. That’s what a lot of college students do. You can use it like a steamer and steam food right on top of the rice, or steam other food with the attachment that is provided by the rice cooker. My current rice cooker also comes with an attachment for you to steam a sponge cake – which I have never tried yet.
Today, let’s talk about how you can cook sticky rice. Now, if you don’t have a rice cooker, you can use stove top, or you can use a steamer.
Before cooking, you have to soak some Chinese dried mushroom, at least for a few hours, if not overnight. Cut off the stem before you soak them. An hour or so before the cooking time, also soak some dried shrimp with hot water to make them soft. The other two ingredients are lean Chinese sausage and scallions. (See picture) You can get all these from any Chinese grocery store. Finely diced all these ingredients, as shown in the other picture.
Prepare the rice: I usually do half and half – half regular rice and half sticky rice (glutinous rice). Say if you use two cups of rice, then add two cups of sticky rice. Following the direction of your rice cooker as to how much water to use to cook the rice.
You can use all sticky rice, but that makes the texture really sticky and rather difficult to handle. It is all up to you. I find the mix of half and half just right for me.
My rice cooker has a feature to beep when the water of the rice starts boiling, that is the time for you to add the mushroom, dried shrimp and sausage. If yours does not have the beep, or you are using stove top, watch when the water of the rice brings to a boil and add these ingredients.
After the rice cooker has done its job, let’s wait for at least 10 to 15 more minutes before you open the lid. That way, you can be assured that all ingredients are nicely cooked and steamed through.
Add the scallions, then add some sesame oil, soya sauce and white pepper to taste. Mix all these real nice with the rice ladle or wooden spoon, or both. The mixing is quite a work out, so be patient.
Junior and Senior both love a lot of soya sauce and they usually do that after they scoop the rice to their own bowls. I personally prefer milder taste.
Sticky rice is a pretty popular dish if you go to Chinese Dim Sum (see my earlier post titled “Drinking Tea, Touching Heart”). It may come wrapped in lotus leaves, or come in a stir-fried style. The wrapped kind would taste similar to mine, soft and easy to consume. The rice in the stir-fried style is much harder and more difficult to digest. I can never eat too much of that.
This is another one of my favorite home style dish. I tried a few times using this prepared sticky rice to substitute turkey stuffing. The rice tasted so good after absorbing all the fats and juices from the turkey, it was heavenly!
Do you know Chinese people love meatballs too? Yes, and the Chinese style meatball dish called Lion’s Head (獅子頭) has a long history, it is a dish good enough for the royals!
