LAZY MARY’S LEMON TART

Living in Southern California, you can’t escape the sweet scent of citrus blossoms wafting above the smog. I discovered a particular kind of lemon - the Meyer Lemon - growing in a friend’s backyard. Here in LA, it miraculously blooms and fruits twice a year, once in the winter months and once in the spring/summer! Reading more, it seems that this sweeter than average lemon is a native of China, a cross between a lemon and a mandarin orange. 

I’ve wanted to try making the Lazy Mary’s Lemon Tart recipe ever since I heard it mentioned on NPR at the end of January. Now that it’s summer and there’s plenty of gorgeous sunshine, why not make a big yellow round dessert?!

I’m a complete beginner baker, never grew up with it. My mother used our oven to store pots, a tradition I carry on today. So I was freaked out about making a crust. But this recipe for both the crust and filling are great, remarkably easy.

CRUST

Ingredients: 3 cups all purpose flour (I used unbleached whole wheat), 1 1/2 cups cold butter (I froze it by accident, don’t do it!), 1 egg, 6 tablespoons ice water (add ice cubes to water), 1 tablespoon white vinegar, 1 teaspoon salt, grated zest of 1 Meyer lemon

1. Mix flour, butter, egg, cold water, vinegar and salt together with a big fork or spatula. I don’t have a food processor, but I think that would also help. Apparently you don’t need to break down the butter completely. I actually froze the butter so it was very hard and chunky. I had to really use my hands to squish the cubes :(

2. The portions make two crusts so divide the dough and form two disks. Add the lemon zest to the tart dough and save the rest.

3. Place the dough in the center of the tart pan. Spread it out and up the sides of the pan with your fingers. This was very hard for me since the dough was a bit mushy. I tried to spread it up on the sides as much as possible and make the bottom even. The tart pan I bought has a removable bottom, which I didn’t understand until my friend told me it’s for ease of serving later!

4. Bake the tart shell for about 10 minutes at 350 degrees. I took it out and tried to also smooth out the sides/ center a bit more. 

TART FILLING

Ingredients: 1 large Meyer lemon cut into pieces and seeds removed, 1 1/2 superfine white sugar (I used powdered sugar and only 1 cup), 1/2 cup unsalted butter, 4 eggs, 1 teaspoon vanilla

1. Mix everything together in a blender until smooth. Yay for my vitamix!

2. After you pre-baked the shell for 10 minutes, pour the filling. Put it back into the oven and bake for 40 minutes at 350 degrees. I rotated my tart after 30 minutes since my oven flame doesn’t seem to be even. Check to see if the top is turning golden!

The recipe can be found here. If you’re looking for more things to make with Meyer lemons, check out this LA Times article, 100 Things to do with a Meyer Lemon.

Now I realize how much butter goes into tarts and pies! Wow. 

As the spring season in LA passes with lightening speed, we wanted to commemorate the cold with something warm, creamy, mushy, fatty and completely delicious. The recipe posted on the LA Times site for “Beef Daube” by Chef Yoon, owner of Father’s Office, sounded perfect.

The dish was fairly easy to make, provided you get all the ingredients. It just takes time. We used a big, heavy, rectangular iron pan on a gas stove to cook this, which wasn’t the most efficient container, but it worked out fine. I would wait until the stew has cooled down a bit before diving in since the flavors really bloom. Also, add freshly ground black peper to taste! Next time, we thought we would add some shitake mushrooms and substitute the egg noodles with udon noodles for some Asian flair.

I love fermenting foods, especially kimchi. And if you’re like me who can eat it any time of day (and what with stores charging $7-$10/bottle!), it’s way more gratifying to make vats at home without thinning out your wallet! When that combination of sweet, spicy, salty, tangy, umami, crunchy goodness hits my taste buds, I can hardly stop myself from eating a whole jar in one sitting! 

Here is a vegan-style kimchi recipe. You can also experiment adding anchovies, dried shrimp, carrots, or beef stock if you desire. 

Ingredients (for 2 medium sized jars):

1 medium head of Napa cabbage, 1 1/2 tbs of kosher salt, 1/2 cup of pure cane sugar, 20 minced garlic cloves, 20 slices of peeled/minced fresh ginger, 1/2 cup of Korean chile powder, 1/4 cup of fish sauce, 1/4 cup of light soy sauce, 1 cup of diced green onions

Making the kimchi:

1. Separate and wash the cabbage leaves. Cut lengthwise in half and crosswise into 1-inch pieces. 

2. Combine the salt, sugar, garlic, ginger, chile powder, fish sauce, soy sauce and green onions in a large bowl. 

3. Add cabbage to the brine and mix thoroughly.

3. Store in jars and refrigerate. The kimchi will absorb the flavors after 24 hours and is best consumed in 2 weeks time. Yum!

The whole Superbowl phenomenon was foreign to me as a Canadian. But I was excited about the opportunity to try Maangchi’s Korean fried chicken recipe! 

Ingredients (for 3-4 servings):

3 pounds (about 1.5 kg) of chicken chunks, salt, ground black pepper, potato starch powder, flour,sweet rice flour, egg, baking soda, canola oil (or grapeseed oil), garlic, ketchup,  hot pepper paste, rice syrup, apple vinegar.

Directions:

1. Rinse chunks of chicken in cold water. Drain.
   
2. Add 1 tbs ground black pepper and 1 teaspoon salt. It’s fun to experiment with different salts to enhance the flavor. I’ve used pink salt and black lava salt.
3. Add ½ cup potato starch powder, ¼ cup all-purpose flour, ¼ cup sweet rice flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and 1 egg.
4. Mix well by hand and completely coat the chicken. I found that it’s hard to coat the chicken evenly so maybe you could coat the chicken first with the egg and then add the powder ingredients so that they stick.
5. Put 6-7 cups of oil in a wok or frying pan and heat it up. You could try a deep fryer too if you have it.
6. After it’s heated for about 7-8 minutes, test if the oil is ready by dipping a sample chunk of chicken into the oil. If the oil bubbles, it’s the right temperature to start frying.

7. Fry them using the double-frying method:

   1. Fry the chicken chunks for 10 minutes over high heat.
   2. Take them out of the oil and shake them off in a strainer. Let them sit for a few minutes.
   3. Fry them again for another 10 minutes until all pieces look golden brown and are crunchy outside.
      

8. While you are frying, you can make the sauce:

   1. Put 1 tbs canola oil and 4 cloves of minced garlic into a heated pan.
   2. Add 1/3 cup tomato ketchup, 1/3 cup rice syrup, ¼ cup hot pepper paste, 1 tbs apple vinegar and simmer the mixture for about about 7 minutes. Keep your heat low and be sure not to burn the sauce.

Chicken is done? Then coat your chicken with the sauce:

1. Reheat the sauce. I sprinkled some salt onto the fried chicken before I put the sauce on.
2. Put the freshly fried chicken into the sauce and gently mix it up with a wooden spoon.
3. Sprinkle some roasted sesame seeds over top and serve hot or warm.

This past Saturday, I went to Arcadia, California for two purposes. One, to eat at Din Tai Fung Dumpling House where the juiciest pork dumplings or “little dragon dumplings” live and perish in hungry patrons’ mouths. Two, to attend the Huntington Library and Gardens year of the dragon celebrations. 

Like most holidays, Chinese holidays revolve around food. But I’d like to think that the Chinese are more obsessed than most. With a history of a few thousand years and its fair share of natural and unnatural disasters causing famine, Chinese like to eat. More than that, we like to eat in public. A loud packed restaurant is the ultimate affirmation of Confucian ideals - family, filial piety, friendship and loyalty. The dumplings at Din Tai Fung were full of “pork juice” and therefore grotesquely delicious, especially dipped in vinegar and fresh ginger.

In many Chinese villages, people slaughter a pig to celebrate the violent birth of spring. But here, I guess I just squeeze pork juice in my mouth. 

The next stop was Huntington Library and Gardens. I got a free membership to this magical place by helping with the campaign to expand the Chinese gardens, the Garden of Flowing Fragrance. The entire grounds is such a natural and cultural treasure. It’s just tucked away in little Arcadia! 

Chinese lunar new year is all about spring. When I was in China a few years ago, I literally felt a change on the first day of spring in the lunar calendar. Maybe it was psychosomatic, but I felt warmth pierce through the cold of winter. And then I realized that green is the most amazing colour, as seen in this Venus fly trap plant.

When I was in the gardens, I could see the forces of nature push into gear. Blossoms, all blushing and fresh, birds and insects caught in a frenzy of activity. Bees gorge themselves on pollen. This is how the earth’s face changes. This is how life begins. When we eat as humans, we just need to remember we’re a part of this too.

I made kimchi chigae tonight! Since I grew up with spicy food and lived in Koreatown for a year, I’ve come to love Korean food. It’s spicy but also a little sweet, different from the mouth-numbing Sichuan ingredients of my hometown. I’ve tried making kimchi chigae before from a random recipe I found online, but this time, I tried a new recipe from a website called Maangchi. This woman is awesome. She’s gained such a following online that she’s being sponsored by Youtube to travel around the world and cook with her viewers! You can find the following recipe as well as a video here.

Ingredients:

• about 1/2 pound of pork belly meat
• 4 or 5 cups of chopped kimchi (the well-fermented kind works best)
  
• 1 tbs sugar, 1 tsp of hot pepper flakes, 1 tbs hot pepper paste
• 1 onion, a few stalks of green onions
• really soft tofu, half packet or full
• sesame oil and water

How to get cooking:

1. In a shallow pot, put some chopped kimchi and juice.
2. Add sliced onion, hot pepper paste, hot pepper flakes, sugar, and green onions, and pork belly.
3. Pour water over top until all the ingredients are submerged.
4. Close the lid of the pot and boil it for 25 or 30 minutes. (first 10 minutes will be high heat and then turn it down to medium heat)
5. Add some tofu and boil it 5 minutes more and put some sesame oil right before serving.

I made a bit of modifications by adding a tablespoon of crushed fresh garlic (because I love garlic), and also some dried shrimp to give it a seafood flavor. The weather in LA has been chilly at night, so this spicy stew is very heart-warming. Makes me want to share it with my family!

Welcome to a dialogue about food between two friends, one on each coast of North America.

Yay! WeWin Food!