Tomatillo ("Hog Plum") Salsa: Beyond the Great Wall

I once made a tomatillo chicken dish with canned tomatillos...in Newfoundland, home of bland food. There was no way I could possibly find them fresh, and if by some miracle they popped up in a grocery store near me I'd have to be stupid to buy them. I think maybe once I did and I remember biting into skinned water. That was approximately the flavour. The inside wasn't that liquidy but it was nothing worth writing home about.

I assumed that this was not the true flavour of a tomatillo. Kind of like having an unripe fruit. If something doesn't grow here there's almost no way it can possibly taste as good as it would when it's fresh from a farm or the wild of a place where it actually does grow. Ah, mangoes and dates...I can only imagine. Passion fruit...I dream about these things. Thank goodness cake doesn't grow on trees or only in tropical rain forests. I'd have to buy a cake tree and hit up my brother for the money to start a cake greenhouse in Montreal. It could also serve as a sauna. It'd be next to a boutique hotel. I'd make millions.

Unfortunately, no, this is not to be my destiny. What was I talking about? Oh right, tomatillos. Not a big money-making operation, tomatillos.

When I found them once again at a Montreal farmers' market I got very excited. Do you know what this means? It means they might actually taste like tomatillos are supposed to taste!!! They were organic, even! I could have thrown a party then and there but I forgot to bring a cake from my pretend cake tree (my cake tree would not allow beet buttercream frosting, and would probably just follow all the recipes of Joy the Baker. It would also make cakes according to season - strawberry angel food cakes in summer, chocolate pudding cakes and molasses cakes in winter, and mousse year-round, of course. Cake trees are always in bloom, miracle of nature that they are).

So I don't know if my tomatillos are the best ever, but they are actually flavourful and made possibly my most amazing salsa ever.

These guys look like under-ripe tomatoes, but there's a bit of an addictive tartness to them that makes them go perfectly with a little bit of meaty flavour. I have two tomatillo recipes - one for a sauce for chicken with a little jalapeno from my Southwest Slow-Cooking cookbook, and one from "Beyond The Great Wall" for a Chinese tomatillo salsa for meat or sticky rice that's supposed to be made with a bit of ground pork and cilantro. I'd actually bought a bit of ground cerf (deer) meat on a whim from the same market, completely coincidentally, and igured the stars would never align for me in this way again. So I made the Chinese salsa and I'm so happy I did.

Traditionally, this dish would be made with makawk (or a "hog plum" in English) and is traditional in the south of China near Burma, Thailand and Laos, hence why it's traditionally eaten with Thai sticky rice. According to the cookbook's authors, Jeremy Alford and Naomi Duguid, it's "jaew" a kind of dish made from grilled and then pounded ingredients, so the grilling gives a nice charred, cooked flavour and then the pounding gives a rough, thick texture. It won't be watery like a Mexican salsa.


Ingredients:
3/4lbs tomatillos, unpeeled. this is a bit confusing since tomatillos have skins and peels. I think you want to take off the leafy peel and leave on the tomato skin since it's hard to remove the peel itself if it's not charred, and I'm pretty sure you want the skin off for the pounding step later (don't make this with canned tomatillos because you can't grill them with the peels on and then peel them. It will be a big mess)
1 cup shallots of red onion, unpeeled, halved if large, quartered if red onions
1 head garlic, unpeeled, but separated into individual cloves
1/4 cup water
1/2 tsp salt
2 oz (1/4 cup) ground meat [pork has the most flavour, and is what's called for, but I liked the richer taste of game. So whatever you have that's organic or at least antibiotic-free, such as beef, bison, goat, ox or even venison (deer)]
1/2 cup fresh coriander (cilantro)

If you don't have a gas stove this is not going to be as amazing and it's going to take a lot more time. I don't have a gas stove, but I do have a small grill. It's not super, but it has a grill on the bottom and on top and is named after George Foreman, so it's not bad. Unfortunately it meant that although my tomatillos grilled faster, some got squished, and since they weren't all the same height, some got less charred than others. In the end it probably would have been faster to use a skillet.

You're supposed to put the tomatillos, garlic and shallots on a grill screen or fine-mesh surface on the grill or put them in a cast-iron skillet on medium-high heat. Cook, turning frequently, until splotched with black on all sides and softened. It's supposed to take 10-15 minutes. About 25 minutes later I was almost satisfied with my tomatillos. My grill was pretty charred from the burnt juices of the charred, busted tomatillos, but I love that flavour...maybe that's why my salsa wasn't as watery. I'll have to do it the same way next time.

While that's all grilling and you're forgetting to turn the contents of the grill, you're supposed to put the water in a large skillet and bring it to a boil, then add the meat and salt. Cook until t changes colour and break it up so it doesn't get lumpy. Now who really just cooks a quarter cup of ground meat? No butcher will sell it to you in that quantity. So you either cook the whole pound you bought or you cook the quarter cup and freeze the rest. I just cooked the whole thing and 1/2 a teaspoon of salt was STILL enough! So don't go overboard on it. You can add more to the salsa in the end if it's not salty enough...wait, I DID do that, so maybe I should have just added more in the first place...no, I like the flavour of salt directly on tomatillos...I stick with my original measurements.

The browning of the meat should just take a minute, but I think it'll take a bit longer if you cook a whole pound. If you stir constantly, maybe 3 minutes.

When your grilled things are fully grilled let them cool before removing the charred skins of the onions, garlic and tomatillos. If you left the leafy bits on the tomatillos it might be interesting to just peel that off and leave the uncharred tomato skin on. I don't know what this would taste like. Grilled tomatoes are pretty common in a lot of other food traditions, though (British and Iranian, for example), so it can't be bad either way, just maybe not as sweet? Then put all the grilled and peeled things in the blender of food processor and pulse to chop roughly. you don't want a purée. You want some chunk. Pour it out into a bowl and add the meat (or 1/4 cup of your cooked pound) including a little of its juice. the nice thing about deer is it's a very lean meat (so a steak of it is often very dry if over-cooked or not properly marinated) so when ground there's actually a fair bit of flavour (since this is fattier than most butcher cuts of it) but not a whole lot of excess fat like pork would have.

Just before you serve the salsa stir in the chopped coriander. I had organic stuff that was ridiculously aromatic and not bitter at all. So it went really nicely with the slight tartness of the tomatillos and sweetness of the grilled shallots.

Serving suggestion: Yes, I said serve it as an accompaniment to grilled meat or sticky rice, but I would also serve this as a main dish since it's so high in protein. Blasphemer that I am, I ate it with baked potatoes one night and another with thick sourdough bread. It would also be great with a flatbread too, which I'm sure is what would be used in Northern China if tomatillos (hog plums) grew there.

Pickled Red Chiles: "Beyond the Great Wall"

Feeding my addiction has never been so good for me. Some people say chocolate is better than sex. I say chiles are better than chocolate, and I've had good chocolate.I ran out of Guizhou Chile Paste. You have to understand, that stuff is meant to last a long time. It's not like you eat it by the spoonful. It is addictive, though, and I went through it like it was candy. No, really, the sichuan peppercorns are actually addictive, I think. They would be illegal if someone who had power over such things actually tasted them or knew what they could do. Fortunately, most business lunches don't end up at Chinese restaurants that would dream of using the stuff. In fact, I don't know any restaurants at all in Montreal or Toronto that use them. They probably do, but I don't know them. They're hard enough to find, (both the peppercorns and the restaurants) and even harder to find good quality (both, again).

Fortunately Épices de Cru is an amazing company that is feeding my addiction. Also fortunately, no recipe that calls for these things actually calls for very much, so a small container lasts a long time. Much longer than my chile paste did. They're pungent, to say the least. I bit into a whole peppercorn the other day and subsequently couldn't feel my lips for half an hour. It's not that they're hot or "spicy", whatever that means, but they actually do have an anesthetic quality. It's weird, though, because it's not like a drug that knocks you out. You won't be able to feel your lips, but you'll be high on endorphins and have so much energy. You know how certain foods are supposedly aphrodisiacs? Things like oysters, which I don't understand. They're slimy and delicious but physically I don't think there's actually a property in them that excites you. Sichuan peppercorns elicit a physical response. You'll probably also feel hungry after eating the tiniest bit, because your metabolism will be in overdrive from the endorphins. So you'll want to keep eating, which probably means having more of the dish with the peppercorns...and the cycle continues.

Addiction.

I'm trying to be a careful addict. I don't really want to recover, but I don't want to push my obsession too far. So instead of making the guizhou chile paste again, I decided to try the recipe in Beyond the Great Wall for pickled red peppers. Really I did this because the long red chile peppers looked so fresh at my favourite mushroom shop in Atwater Market (any idea why they put the mushrooms and chile peppers together in a large horizontal display in the middle of the store? I mean, I don't usually cook mushrooms and chilies together). The recipe also calls for a quarter the amount of the sichuan peppercorns needed for the other paste, so the effect shouldn't be so acute. It'll be like going from 8 cups of coffee a day to 2.

There are two ways to do this recipe - the fast way and the not so fast way. Since I don't know how to safely sterilize a jar for pickling, I went with the fast one. I also wanted to eat the pickled chilies with dinner, not in 2 weeks. Even my kitchen forethought tops out at a few days. There's a reason I don't make my own vanilla extract or age bottles of wine.

Ingredients:
4 long red chile peppers
1/2 cup unseasoned rice vinegar
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt (I used Himalayan crystal salt)
1/8 tsp sichuan peppercorns (it didn't say ground, so I assume whole was fine)
1/2 star anise, whole or broken (I found a whole half).

I like that this isn't a sweet pickle. Actually, the chiles are kind of sweet on their own, so I don't think it needs any sugar, but feel free to add some the second time you make it if you're not happy with your first batch.

Take out the seeds of the chile peppers. This is where the flavourless heat comes from. If you don't take them out the chiles will just burn you. Without them, you can actually taste the freshness of the peppers.

Now the recipe said to remove the tops and slice the chiles into half inch slices, but it didn't specify how to cut them length-wise. I decided to make thin strips and estimate 1/2" slices. I think I misread the directions and actually cut them into 1 1/2" slices, but that's what teeth are for...when you mess up. Place the chiles in a heat-proof bowl large enough to press a small plate on top of them later, or a lid that touches the surface of the chiles. This will make sense in a minute.

Heat the vinegar in a saucepan (don't boil, just warm) and then add the salt, sichuan peppercorns and star anise. Bring the mixture to a boil and then pour over the chiles in the bowl. Now you want to put the small plate or lid on top of the chiles to weigh them down and completely cover them in the pickling liquid. If your bowl is too deep the liquid will just spread out and not do its job, and if the bowl is too small you may not be able to get a weight or plate in there to keep the chiles submerged and covered. Let them stand 30 minutes, or longer to infuse.
So I did, and then I drained off the pickling liquid and and used it to pickle some radish that I had cut into matchsticks. I am thinking of now draining the radishes to use the liquid to pickle some corrots. If I do this I will add some sugar to the liquid. I like the sweetness of the carrots.

Despite two marriage proposals this past week, I am still in search of high-quality chocolate.

Hani Chile-Garlic Paste: "Beyond the Great Wall"

The first thing I made when I got back to Newfoundland were my staples.

Guizhou Chile Paste and Hani Chile-Garlic Paste

Needless to say I was coughing up a lung for the rest of the afternoon. I used a 250mL container of dried Birds Eye chiles. That's enough to cause anyone who even walked into the room to be stricken by the inability to breathe properly. These things are pungent.

Ingredients:
1 head of garlic
2 shallots
1/4 tsp salt
4 dried bird chiles (I assume this means birds eye chiles. The recipe also says you can use serrano)

The nice thing about this recipe is that you don't need to peel the garlic or shallots, just separate the cloves and place them with the un-skinned shallots on an oiled baking sheet in a 400 degree Fahrenheit oven for 20 minutes. It's just a different way of roasting them. You could also do the more standard method of chopping off the top quarter of the head of garlic and wrapping it in aluminum foil, but since you're only gong to half-roast it, you'll have to separate the cloves later anyway to get the insides out. Also, why waste aluminum? The cloves of garlic and the shallots are actually supposed to be stuck directly in the coals of a fire or gas flame, but, alas...these things don't exist in my kitchen. No smokey flavour for me.

After 20 minutes and another 10 let them cool, just peel off the skins of the garlic and shallots. Chop the shallots a little before tossing them in a mortar and pestle or a food processor (or blender) with the salt. I accidentally diced the shallots in advance, so I actually put them in aluminum foil to roast, instead of leaving them in their skin on the baking sheet. It worked fine...I think. I had nothing to compare it to. Next time I will read properly before dicing. It's at the point where I just assume shallots are meant to be diced. I need to learn to be more lazy.

I also didn't have fresh chiles, which the recipe called for, but I was soaking a bunch of dried birds eye chiles for the Guizhou chile paste, so I sneaked four of the soaked ones, chopped them roughly, and threw them into the food processor too. It really would be better to do this with a mortar and pestle, both to get a less-processed consistency and for authenticity, but life is short and my eyes were already stinging. Breathing is also important, I hear.

Compared to the Guizhou chile paste, this is a very mild condiment. The garlic flavour is sweetened and tempered by the roasting, and the amount of chiles was just right. I added this paste to mashed potatoes (in place of normal roasted garlic) that I had made to accompany spice-rubbed trout, but I forgot that I'd put it in until I had a sip of a Merlot and my mouth got set on fire. How was the wine so spicy???? It took me a good few minutes to remember the chiles in the potato. I couldn't taste them at all until they were set off by the wine. Amazing...

Chile Paste Verdict

I'm finally back with the results of the Chile paste. I got to try the Guizhou chile paste on a lot of different foods - a Chinese New Year noodle dish, on a mild thai chicken dish, and on potatoes. The verdict?

Flaming lips-hot. Not a whole lot of flavour to the heat, but very, very spicy. I should have saved it for the Valentines Day post. "How (opt. "Ow") to leave your lover...speechless". When their lips won't move...

Maybe better to market it to those who wish their significant other would be a bit less verbose. The leaving part could be optional.

Guizhou Chile Paste: "Beyond the Great Wall"

Getting a new cookbook makes me really excited. Opening it is like waking up on Christmas morning again and again because with each page turn there's a new recipe you didn't see before. I actually did get this book for Christmas, though, thus making Christmas even better. Combining my fake Christmas simile with real Christmas made for a pretty amazing morning.

"Beyond the Great Wall" book is much more than a cookbook. It's my first step into "culinary anthropology." Apparently that's a real degree offered at a University in Hawaii. Hawaii gets so many things right...not that I'm about to hop on a plane to Hawaii...but...

...the two authors of the book, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, are two curious travelers who spent upwards of 30 years trekking all over Asia, exploring food and customs. They were 2 of the first Americans to set foot in Tibet after it re-opened to foreigners in 1979 (After about 120 years of being closed) and to really delve into the lesser known parts of China. That's what this book is - recipes from "beyond the great wall", the food of the minority non-Han Chinese.

The recipes are arranged by type, from "Condiments and Seasonings", through "Noodles and Dumplings", "Breads", "Fish", "Lamb and Beef" to "Drinks and Sweet Treats". The photos make the book worth it by themselves, but the recipes sound so simple. Simple in ingredients, not in techniques. Chile paste goes on everything, soups and hot pots are flavoured by boiled meat and fish, and noodles are thrown in the broth after the meat is cooked. All that gets added to a whole steamed fish is salt, pepper, ginger, scallions and chile. Congee is water and rice, with optional chile paste or soy-vinegar dipping sauce. This is not sweet and sour sauce or kung pao Chinese. They do not believe in combos or complimentary fortune cookies.

So if I was going to make a recipe, I was going to use good ingredients. Otherwise, it would taste like a lot less than a North American is accustomed to, and as much as I usually keep my fish-steaming simple, I wanted to love this book. I want the first thing I eat from this book to be incredible so I can shout its praises, and say it's more than just stories and photos.

I decided I should start with the basics. This is supposed to be pungent..."Guizhou Chile Paste"

I bought a bag of Sichuan hot peppers, and a container of whole Sichuan peppercorns. The book says the peppercorns are completely different than black peppercorns. The book said to stem the chilis, but they didn't have much stem in the first place (to be honest I was a little scared because the book didn't specify the type of chili to use, whereas in other recipes it did, but I figured Sichuan hot peppers with Sichuan peppercorns?...When my tongue falls off I'll know, I suppose). You set the hot peppers in a bowl and pour over a cup of boiling water. Then let it sit for an hour.

When the hour's up, transfer it to a blender or food processor with a tsp. of salt. Then heat a skillet on high heat. No oil yet (I heated it with the oil but this turned out to be a mistake). When the pan is hot add 2 tbsp of peanut oil or vegetable (I used sesame, sorry. At least it wasn't olive. What a disaster that would have been) and reduce the heat to medium. Then added 2 tbsp of shallots, minced, with 1 tsp of ground Sichuan pepper, and sauté 3 minutes. The onion should get translucent, but it browned very quickly in my hot oil. If I'd added the oil only after heating the skillet, it would have worked better.

Anyway, after 3 minutes I added the chili purée from the blender, brought the pan contents to a boil and reduced the heat to simmer for 5 minutes. The liquid is supposed to reduce by half, and give you about 1/2 c. of liquid, but I ended up with a bit more, since the reference to half a cup isn't given until the end of the recipe.

Then I put the paste in a bowl and added a tbsp of rice vinegar. After the paste is cooled, transfer it to a glass jar and stick it in the fridge, not the cupboard. Since this isn't a pickled sauce that seals properly in a jar that's been sterilized, it doesn't last as long in the fridge, but the vinegar and salt will keep it around for awhile. The chilies also have preserving qualities. The recipe didn't say how long it was good for, but I'm going to guess at least a month. My tongue will be on fire by March 10th.

Tomorrow I'll try the paste and give the spiciness verdict. Big potluck. Lots to cook.

I fixed the potato salad!

On my last chance, I added another 1/2 tsp. of garlic powder and another tsp. of dijon mustard. It made everything better. On the downside, I have about a tbsp of kozlik's dijon left and no way to sample my next dijon mini-investment until I get back to Toronto, whenever that is. I may have to choose from the smaller selection at La Vieille Europe and cross my fingers. It's just not the same as St. Lawrence Market. Maybe I'm just nostalgic after talking with another Torontonian yesterday about the differences between Montreal's Jean-Talon and Toronto's St. Lawrence. Oh I miss it.

On the upside, I found Sizchuan Peppercorns at a little shop in Plaza St-Hubert today and hope to make my first recipe from Beyond the Great Wall soon: Sizchuan Chili Paste. More dried chili adventures.