Anger Burger

I am formally announcing my change of this website from Anger Burger to Asian Burger.  Which, as Mike’s dad pointed out, is a bao, one of those BBQ pork buns.  So, maybe Anger Bao?

I’m not actually changing it, I’m too lazy.  But what is my issue?  What the fuck with the Asian-explosion?  Frankly, it’s going to keep happening until I run out of the fresh ingredients purchased from the Asian-market last week.  Deal with it.

Fried rice is an obvious choice.  We don’t make it very often because its messy and that sort of thing rules daily life.  Can you imagine what it would be like to be so affluent that you didn’t care what dishes/walls you dirtied while cooking?  Far out.  Anyway, fried rice.  Which resulted in fried rice stuck to the stove, the floor, the cupboards and the side of my face, but it’s delicious and I also — once again — make Mike to the cooking.  I do the prep.  That’s why I have the missing knuckles in the household.  I’m not going to give you a recipe for fried rice but I will tell you what I think makes it taste best:

• Chinese sausages (lap cheung) – they are dried, come in packets like hot dogs, and are the most astonishing combination of ultra-greasy, salty-sweet.  A common way to prepare them is to throw them in with the rice when it’s cooking (before the rice heats up, just lay them in the rice and water and then set to cook) and when its done, extract them and chop the sausages according to whatever you’re eating.  The rice will take on a slight umami, and the sausages themselves are superb, like sweet salami.

• Egg.  Egg.  Egg.  Fried rice needs egg.

• Some other meat/primary flavor.  We used shrimp in the photo above (leftover shrimp from the potstickers from the other day, actually), but often use leftover Spam.  Yes, Spam.  Spam fried rice is a thing of great universal beauty.

• Small vegetables.  It doesn’t really matter what you use, but it should be diced small.  Encountering anything of unwieldiness or mass in your fried rice is really a  sad affair.  Fried rice is comfort food: it should lack challenge both in palate and consistency.  With this in mind, frozen peas are the vegetable of choice.

And that’s basically it.  That’s not the whole recipe of course, but those are the most important parts.

Last night I wanted something on the opposite Asian spectrum from fried rice, something clean-tasting and virtuous.  Buckwheat noods!

Beautiful buckwheat noods.  Look at them sit there, so demure and unappealingly-colored.  And yet, they are miracle food for my poor bowel.  In the case of last night I quickly poached two boneless, skinless chicken thighs in boiling water and then boiled the noodles in the same water.  When they were done I rinsed them in cold water and reserved them to drain in the sink while I heated up some broth (a weak mix of a little miso, some sugar, soy sauce a teeny tiny dash of fish sauce, adding little increments of each until it tasted good) and prepared some simple bowls.  Also: if the Ministry of Asian Affairs doesn’t show up at my door demanding I stop butchering their recipes, I’ll be shocked.

Pour the hot broth over after you’ve assembled the stuff.

Basically each bowl gets some noodles, some shredded poached chicken thighs, generous portions of green onion and shiso leaf, a small mound of chopped fresh ginger and my personal favorite, a little Japanese-style egg omelette.  The omelette is simply two eggs, a teaspoon of sugar, a pinch of dashi granules (which is basically fish-flavored MSG) and a teaspoon or two of soy sauce.  In a pan, spread the egg thin and as it cooks but before it is totally cooked, roll it into a tube.  As it sits over low heat it melds into a solid tube of egg. Unless you fuck it up, like I did, and it stays a little runny on one side, but you know what?  It was delicious, and the slightly runny part added to the soup broth in the bowl, and everything was exactly what I wanted.

Like this.

Honestly, I felt like I could have eaten an entire second bowl, but I remembered the part where I wanted to feel good and not like a human beach ball.

Also, I had this conversation with Mike:

me: “Are you getting tired of Asian food yet?”

Mike: “I’m a white boy from Seattle, of course I’m not tired of Asian food yet.”