Sanctuary from The Mad World
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch. - Orson Welles

Otoro, the fattiest tuna belly is an entirely different animal from the sour, muscular, and dry tuna pieces sold in fish stores here.  The pale pink slices quiver on the plate and melt in the mouth.  It is fatty and very rich so you don’t need much to be satisfied.  It doesn’t taste like fish at all.  With the Swiss aversion to anything fatty - their meat cuts are notoriously dry - I doubt I can find this in the sprouting sushi restaurants here.

So I was really surprised when I found it in Nishi, the Japanese shop in Zurich.  Although it was frozen, I bought it as I wanted to sate my longing for otoro.  It wasn’t bad although I’d much prefer a fresh piece. 

The shop, by the way, is amazing.  They carry proper Japanese rice, produced in Japan and North-America, as well as various condiments from soy-sauce of unreadable labels to shaved bonito flakes.  They also have utensils such as bento boxes and shabu-shabu pots.  They have rare items such as konyaku and natto.  But they’re not cheap.  Their Zojirushi (elephant) brand of rice cookers cost more than CHF 400!

But I do wish I could cart those items away.  

I’ve done char siew/char siu before using Chubby Hubby’s recipe. Delicious as it was, it lacked the complexity I couldn’t pin point. So I did further research and experimented with a combined recipes from "I eat I shoot I post" and Rasa Malaysia . Gaah! It was good. Together with Charmaine of Tasty Treat’s recipe , I should be cured of my cravings of this Asian staple of char siew, siu youk, on a bed of fluffy hainanese chicken rice and crisp, cleansing cucumber.

Now, the details.

Rasa Malaysia encourages the use of molasses but I don’t think it warrants my stocking it. Google advises me on several substitutes and I choose brown sugar. I want the sugar to be in liquid form as I find granulated sugar often doesn’t dissolve well in sauces and therefore, melts only at cooking time. So I added the extra step of making melted brown sugar. BTW, to ensure the caramelized sweetness, we want to use 3 tbsp (or more) of liquid brown sugar and not 3 tbsp of the granulated version so make more and keep the rest for other use.

Oyster and Hoisin sauce, to me, are not the prime ingredients as they all taste the same. The five spice and bean paste are as they add the elusive yet enticing flavours to good Char Siew. I used Lee Kum Kee’s garlic bean paste for this purpose.

Lastly, the grilling. To achieve that glazed, charred look, it’s best to baste the meat, prior and during the grilling with the thick, original marinating sauce and not the thin liquid left over after the meat is removed. Of course it’s ideal to grill the meat on outdoor barbecue. Rasa Malaysia suggests a combination of roasting and pan-grilling. Both are not viable for me so the instruction below caters for apartment dwellers with only oven at their disposal.

PS: I eliminate the use of red colouring. I wonder why it has to be red, what original ingredient was used that made this dish red. My mother said it was Fungkiuk.

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The air is crisp, the trees are bald.  Builders start constructing the booths for the Herbstmesse.  It is time for blut and leberwurst. 

PS:  Rhyming is hard.

Wise chefs say the simpler the dishes, the more difficult they are. I can’t agree more when I was making this dish. Sure I’ve cooked pasta with mushroom countless of time but this season’s sample of Porcini, also called Bolet in French or Steinpilzen in German, made me rethink my technique.

On a recent trip to the Italian-speaking Switzerland, we discovered that Porcini, the wild mushroom abundant only at the end of summer and early autumn, was in rage.  We sampled a few but we love the one served in Carona in the compound of its Botanical Garden.  The porcini was brown and nutty. All the earthy flavours shine. Texturally, it was juicy and firm. I realize I’ve always done my mushroom incorrectly.

Mushrooms are friends of butter, onion and parsley. So I use them. The key is in the timing. You’ll be rewarded with sweet, flavourful, and toothsome mushroom sauce. Due to the rather oily nature of the dish, it’s best served with bone-dry, light white wine.

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This week, for some reasons, I was craving for black-pepper beef with tons of red, green, and yellow peppers. This dish, a staple in Chinese fast-food all over the world, has never been my favourite. They always appear sweet and gunky. But I recently fell in love with black-pepper crab in Singapore where, instead of gunky sauce, it was fried in a sea of cracked black pepper. I decide to try the black-pepper beef with generous amount of pepper for that fruity yet steamy, peppery flavour.

This recipe is rather detailed than usual. A friend must cook on her own these days and she’s been asking for recipes which meet her utensil and seasoning restrictions. The dishes must also keep well so that making dinner equals to reheating. I think this fits the bill.

I hope this is helpful, Leony. No need to be exact with the measurement but just taste and have fun!

Ingredients:
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