- small potatoes boiled in soya sauce
Do you remember I said that I really miss that morning — in summer, an early morning, very early morning, the sun would shines onto my face, my body, I woke up with some ‘lazy’ sweat, I could hear birds singing, soon after, the venders came with their carriers, started setting up their stalls and selling in the streets — and me, I just enjoyed staying in bed listening to this noise, enjoying the freshness of a summer morning. Well, normally, it followed by my be loved auntie coming to wake me up, and give me a pat or kiss.
—- Guess what? I am here again!! Yes, I am back home! Ok, the bed has changed, the house has changed, but the noise from the streets hasn’t, and that ‘sweat’ hasn’t, also the sun still shines in as I remembered. … only my auntie is no longer here, that pat and kiss became the sweetest memory embedded in my memory…
I don’t normally come back home in summer during these hottest days of the year. Cannot even explain why I never did, but one thing is for sure, I never purposely avoid the hotness, rather I really enjoy it, look forward to it. .. I know, for people who know how hot it is, and how much normally people wish to get away from the heat, I am a really strange person. But it is ture — I love it! I keep on thinking it is because I was born in summer, the hottest day, I am used to it since day one. :) Ha… Made sense, no? :)
… I know, I haven’t updated this for some time again. No surprise, with the little one clingy with me all the time, I haven’t been cooking for long time. :) But I have been enjoying Spanish food — hubby’s food! I really want to share those as well, for example, Spanish paella, Spanish omelet — things many years ago I used to hear, and secretly wished to have it often, now I am having it everyday! Oh, no, don’t get me wrong, all these years hubby has been cooking as well, just not like this — after work, putting down his bag, almost immediately gets into kitchen. As you can imagine, our lives are all changed.
Anyway… so, watch this space now! There will be lots of updates, I am going to share some vegetable, recipes and my food experiences in ‘real time’. Ha…
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Here comes first one — small potatoes boiled in soya sauce, another way of eating potato. :) Again, it is a quite traditional dish in northeast China, not fancy at all. However, I only got to know it and began to make it not very very long ago — because the traditional dish uses pork to boil the potato, and you know as I said I don’t eat pork… Eventually, when I was so desperate to have it, so I used beef instead, the result is really not bad. Like many northern dishes, it is a ‘salty’ dish. It is great as a side dish or traditionally to go with steamed bread.
Oh, the main ingredient is small potato, although it is cooked with meat, it is normally mainly the potato served in the plate. And the potato need to be those small ones, and with skins on when cooking. Hopefully it adds on another taste to your normal potato dishes. :)
Here you go, really simple.
Ingredients:
Small potatoes, beef (or pork, better to be a bit ‘fatty’), ginger, spring onion, celery, anise star, cinnamon stick, soya sauce, oil, cooking wine
Preparation:
- Wash the small potatoes, and chop the beef (or pork) into small cubes.
- Slice some ginger into thin pieces, chop the spring onion into small pieces, and roughly chop couple of stems of celery.
Cooking:
- In a heated sauce pan, pour in around 3 spoons of oil, (I like to used soya oil, but others are also good, eg. vegetable oil), when the oil is heating up, add in prepared spring onion, ginger, a few anise stars.
- When the fresh smell rising up from the wok, add in chopped beef. (Couldn’t find very ‘fatty’ beef, just used whatever I could get in hands, but slightly ‘fatty’ piece is better.)
- When the beef turns brownish, add in prepared small potatoes. And stir fry them in the wok for couple of minutes.
- Filling in soya sauce, allow the soya sauce just covered the beef and potato. (I used half / half, half of them is light soya sauce, for the taste, another half is the dark one, for the colour.)
- Add in chopped celery, and couple of spoons of cooking wine.
- Keep the fire low, and boil the potato for about 1 hour or even a bit longer. (I transferred them into another small pot for boiling.)
—- Done!! In some places in Northeast China, people like to have it very spicy, if you like so too, you can add in a few chilies. Also some people like to keep it in a small pot for a week before eating, so the taste could go in better. I prefer eating right after cooking, fresh. If you cook more, it certainly can be kept for a little longer.
— That is it!! Hope you like it, and enjoy the hot summer.:)
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