Doesn't TaZte Like Chicken

Location: My tiny kitchen

When I was naming our food blog, the first name that came to my mind was Doesn’t TaZte Like Chicken. I didn’t commit to this name right away though. I considered many other names, including a few that I forced out of my friends. Finally after a few days of intense consideration, I decided on choosing my first candidate.

I always want to share food and recipes that are a little different. These are food and recipes that I grew up with and might be familiar to some people. To most people however, these food are foreign and are usually not consumed by the mainstream. These food might not be available at all supermarkets and they usually have a distinctive or sometimes even repulsive smell and taste. When people eat these food for the first time, nobody will say, “Hey, it tastes like chicken!”.

Shrimp paste is a common ingredient used in Chinese and Southeast Asian cooking. It is made of fermented shrimps and a large amount of salt. It has a distinctive and pungent smell. Like blue cheese, shrimp paste is the kind of food that you either love it or can’t stand. If you love it, you will agree that it’s one of the best seasonings for meat.

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This is the simplest shrimp paste recipe that I saw my parents make again and again. It’s also one of my favourite recipes because the pork becomes very tasty after it’s marinated in shrimp paste. I find this dish best served with rice.

Dice pork into cubes that are 1/2 inch in size. You can use tenderloin or any cut that you like. Prepare about 1 and 1/2 cup of pork.

Into the pork add:
- 1 tsp of red chili flakes
- 4 cloves of minced garlic (the more garlic, the merrier!)
- 2 tsp of shrimp paste. You can get this from Asian supermarkets. I find the brands made in Hong Kong are the best. I always use the brand shown in the picture above.
- Freshly ground black pepper

Marinate the pork for 12 hours.

The best part of this recipe is the cooking. I always feel that there is almost no cooking involved! “Eating uncooked pork? You’ll get sick!”, you might gasp. The pork is cooked in the rice cooker along with rice. Because the rice cooker gives off a continuous stream of medium heat, the pork would not be overcooked.

Put 1 and 1/2 cup of rice into the rice cooker. Add water according to the instruction listed for your rice cooker. Before the rice gets fully cooked (that is 30 minutes after the rice cooker started cooking for my rice cooker), place the pork on top of the rice. Make sure the pork is placed on the rice as one layer and no piece is stacked on top of another. After the rice is done, let them sit in the rice cooker to keep warm for 20 minutes.

The juice of the pork seeps into the rice as it gets cooked, which makes the rice very flavourful. The shrimp paste makes the pork tastes extra-savory, while the chili flakes gives the dish a nice kick.

Location: my tiny kitchen

I have always been a fillet mignon type of girl. When my friends and I have dinner at the Keg, I would toss the menu aside without giving it even a glance while my friends consider the pros and cons of getting the Keg’s classic prime rib. I know I would order the fillet mignon wrapped with bacon from the menu, which is what I have ordered in my last ten visits. “The tenderloin is always the safest choice”, I would reassure myself. The meat is tender even if it is slightly overdone. Finding no flaw in this tenderest part of the cow, I was absolutely loyal to it.

My simple life changed when one day my friend asked me to try his New York striploin. Based on my past experience, I was expecting to bite into a tough and chewy piece of meat. I was very wrong. The steak was tender and juicy. To be fair, it wasn’t as tender as a fillet mignon, but it tasted better than a fillet. I was puzzled for a moment. “What is happening?”, I asked myself. The striploin had a much stronger flavour. It had more flavour than two, perhaps three pieces of fillet eaten together. After this encounter, I was never the same beef lover. I know I can’t go back to being a simple fillet girl.

This recipe is my attempt to recreate my friend’s striploin. The taste might not be exact, but the striploin turned out tender, juicy and flavourful. Lime is the special ingredient in this recipe. It tenderized the meat and in addition, its tangy taste perfectly complimented the fatty flavour of the beef.

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I always get my steaks from the butcher counter at Safeway. They sell triple A beef and the quality has always been consistent. I always choose the piece with the most amount of marble. Onto two striploins put:

- 2 tbsp of kosher salt
- 2 tbsp of onion powder
- 2 tbsp of red chili pepper flakes
- juice from 1/2 lime
- generous amount of freshly ground pepper

Message the seasonings into both sides of each steak. Let the steaks marinate for at least 6 hours but no more than 8 hours.

Heat a stainless steel skillet until it becomes very hot. Put 2 tbsp of vegetable oil into the pan. Put the steaks into the pan. Let one side of the steaks to sear until it turns golden brown, which takes about 2 minutes. Turn the steaks over and sear the other side for another 2 minutes. If the steak starts to burn, turn the heat to medium.

When both sides of the steaks are golden brown, turn the heat to medium and cover the pan. Cook the steaks for 1.5 minute. For steaks that are one inch thick, the cook time stated here will cook the steaks to medium-rare. If you like your steaks to be more cooked, let them cooked longer in the covered pan. My cooking was done with a gas stove.

The jicama salad turned out to be disastrous. It was served as a side dish at Bin941 and my husband loved it. I tried to recreate it but I didn’t succeed. The salad tasted like a pile of shredded cucumber with a bitter and slimy after-taste. Yuck.

Luckily, the potato tower was a success. Like the jicama salad, the potato tower was also served as a side dish at Bin941. The potatoes were diced, roasted until crispy and then coated with truffle oil. The diced potatoes were stacked to form a tower. The magic comes from cleverly inserting small drops of blue cheese, chunks of deep fried crispy pancetta and pieces of string beans into the potato tower. Before Bin941, I never knew potato could taste so amazing. I will post this recipe later.