Asian Recipes
460 recipes found
Stir-Fried Rainbow Peppers, Eggplant and Tofu
My method of roasting the eggplant before stir-frying is not at all Chinese, but it allows me to pull off a beautiful, succulent stir-fried eggplant that doesn’t require at least 1/4 cup of oil. The eggplant is already soft when you add it to the wok. Seek out long, light purple Asian eggplant for this.
Longevity Noodles With Chicken, Ginger and Mushrooms
During Chinese New Year, long noodles are eaten in all corners of China. “Longevity noodles,” also presented at birthday celebrations, are never cut or broken by the cook, and if they can be eaten without biting through the strands, it’s considered even more auspicious. Longevity noodles are usually stir fried, presenting challenges to the home cook. Noodles should be stir-fried alone and lightly oiled so that they don’t clump together in the wok, and all ingredients must be completely dry so they sear properly.
Cold Noodles With Sesame Sauce, Chicken And Cucumbers
It doesn't surprise me how often people order cold noodles with sesame sauce at Chinese restaurants. What is surprising, though, is how few people make the dish at home. It is incredibly easy to prepare, with common ingredients, and you can serve it as a main course or appetizer. You don't even need sesame sauce. Peanut butter is an acceptable substitute, as long as you use good peanut butter, simply defined as that made with peanuts and salt. (The name brands contain about 10 percent added hydrogenated fat, plus a couple of other typical additives.) Creamy is more common, but chunky is also good. It's easy enough to buy sesame paste (tahini) at health-food stores specializing in Middle Eastern ingredients and even at supermarkets. Sesame oil, which contributes mightily to the flavor of the finished dish, is a staple sold in Asian food stores (and, increasingly, in supermarkets).
Coconut Chicken Curry
Curry powder is stirred into this braise only during the last minute of cooking, delivering a bright hit of spice on top of the paprika and turmeric mellowed into the slow-simmered chicken. This dish from “Burma Superstar” by Desmond Tan and Kate Leahy (Ten Speed Press, 2017), needs time on the stove but not much attention, and gets even better after resting in the fridge, making it an ideal weeknight meal that can last days. There’s plenty of coconut milk broth to spoon over rice or noodles. At his restaurant, Burma Superstar in Oakland, Calif., Mr. Tan also serves this with platha, a buttery, flaky Burmese flatbread, for dipping.
Taiwanese Popcorn Chicken With Fried Basil
This spiced fried chicken is a staple in the night markets of Taiwan. You can order the chicken in cutlet form or small bites like these, which are served in paper bags with wooden skewers. This recipe uses a few spices that cannot be skipped: five-spice powder and white pepper. The Sichuan peppercorns are a bonus, adding a little numbing tingle. If you can’t find Sichuan peppercorns, use black peppercorns instead. You won’t get the same tingly feeling, but the chicken will be just as good. This fried chicken recipe happens to be gluten-free thanks to the tapioca flour, which imparts the dish’s signature crunch.
Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup
Flavored with warm spices, sugar and fermented broad bean chile paste, Taiwanese beef noodle soup is traditionally made with gelatinous beef shins and tendons, giving the broth a sticky richness. The flavors and technique suit meaty short ribs, which come out meltingly tender and moist. Adding a packet of powdered gelatin to the braising liquid gives it the same lip-sticking richness that braised tendons offer in the traditional version.
Stir-Fried Garlic Green Beans
The green beans should remain crunchy in this dish, which is adapted from Grace Young’s recipe in “Stir-Fry to the Sky’s Edge.”
Brown-Butter Mochi
With a recipe that calls for exactly a can each of coconut and evaporated milks, butter mochi seems like the prime hapa example of classic postwar dump-and-stir baking. Packed with brown butter and brown sugar, this version is rife with the nutty, butterscotch notes of caramelization. The way the thick, dark crust contrasts with the chewy, faintly tropical center will bring the French canelé to mind, but these little cakes are a lot easier to make!
Kukul Mas Maluwa (Sri Lankan Chicken Curry)
The hallmarks of this tasty Sri Lankan chicken curry include creamy coconut milk and homemade curry powder, which is made by toasting and grinding whole spices. Don’t let the long ingredient list deter you; once you have everything together, this dish is very easy to make. Tiny bird chiles are small but potent. In Sri Lanka, the curries are spicy, but you can use as few or as many chiles as you’d like. Prepare it in advance and you’ll find that it’s even more delicious the next day. Serve with some long-grain rice and a few different vegetable curries.
Fish Soup
Ms. Hodgson brought us this recipe over 20 years ago in an article that extolled the virtues of halibut, and indeed, it is very good fish for soups. Here, fish and shellfish are briefly cooked in a saffron-flavored broth. Don't be intimidated. This recipe is extremely simple, and once you've gathered all of the ingredients (perhaps the most time-consuming of all the tasks), it can be put together in about an hour. It can also be made in advance, with the fish cooked in the broth at the last minute. Serve it with our version of rouille (a thick garlicky sauce stirred in after the soup is served) that uses a couple of tablespoons of commercial mayonnaise instead of egg yolks.
Egg Drop Soup
This soup is very easy to make and very delicious. It is in fact so easy to make that it really is the sort of thing you can summon the will to cook even when you arrive home from work hungry. I originally made it out of nostalgia for a soup I had in college that endows its eater with good soup manners. I think it would work just as nicely with beef broth.
Health Soup
This is a recipe for a very big batch, because it freezes well; in addition to death and taxes, we can be confident of future illness. If you want less soup, halve the recipe. If the sick person likes noodles when sick, I add a single serving of rice noodles for each serving, in the last few minutes of warming it.
Black Cod Broiled With Miso
Black cod with miso was not invented by Nobu Matsuhisa, the chef at Nobu in TriBeCa, but he certainly popularized it. His time-consuming recipe, which calls for soaking the fish in a sweet miso marinade for a couple of days, is a variation on a traditional Japanese process that uses sake lees, the sweet solids that remain after making sake, to marinate fish. If you broil black cod with nothing but salt, you already have a winning dish. If you broil it with miso – the intensely salty paste made from fermented soybeans – along with some mirin and quite a bit of sugar, you create something stunningly delicious. And no long marination is necessary.
Salmon Fried Rice
It’s always a clever idea to cook extra rice so that you can make fried rice the next night, or the one after that, using various bits and bobs in your fridge. Allowing the rice a day or two to dry out makes it doubly flavorful: Since the grains have less moisture, they’ll absorb even more flavor from whatever liquid you add to them. Plus, the dry grains remain separate, which means more surface area to soak up any seasoning. When it comes to fried rice, anything goes — leftover meat or fish, or whatever stray vegetables are lurking in your produce drawer or freezer will do. Just make sure you don’t crowd the pan, or your rice will steam instead of crisp.
Sichuan Chicken With Chiles
This recipe unites those who would become ecstatic when they see a dish of chicken skin on a restaurant menu and those who would flee into the street. The keys to dishes that feature handfuls of dried chiles are one, don't eat the chiles. And two, don't let any of them break open while cooking; each broken one will intensify the heat exponentially. But they're sturdy devils, so this is not that difficult. The browned chiles lend the dish a nearly fiery smokiness, rather than just plain fire. Browning the skin renders its fat, which in turn is used to cook the other ingredients. It's best to stir-fry the ingredients in batches, to brown them nicely, then combine them and build the simple sauce.
Ponzu
Spicy Ginger Chicken and Rice Casserole
Braised Short Ribs
Cumin Lamb Stir-Fry
Fragrant, intense and full of fiery chile, this lamb stir-fry isn’t for the timid eater. For the most authentic flavor, it’s worth your while to seek out Sichuan peppercorns, which have a woodsy, tongue-numbing, camphor quality. (They are available at specialty spice markets, in Chinatown, or online.) You can substitute regular black peppercorns, but you won’t get the same punch. If you’re not a lamb-lover, you can also try this with lean beef. Serve this over white or brown rice to cut the heat, with a side of sliced cucumbers dressed with sesame oil and salt for freshness.
Stir-Fried Sesame Shrimp and Spinach
The classic Chinese way to clean shrimp and ensure a succulent flavor and crisp texture, says Grace Young, author of “Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge,” is to use a combination of salt and water, either dousing the shrimp in two rinses of heavily salted water or rubbing the shrimp with salt, then rinsing with water. If you don’t eat salt, then just rinse the shrimp with plain water. I recommend bunch spinach for this; you don’t have to stem it, just cut away the base of the leaves and rinse well.
Stir-Fried Tofu and Peppers
This attractive stir-fry is inspired by a traditional Chinese dish called rainbow beef. The vegetarian version works well, and it’s also easier to make. If you prefer a very firm tofu, take the extra time to weight it as directed in step 1. I am happy to skip this step and use firm tofu that hasn’t been weighted.
Spinach, Tofu and Sesame Stir-Fry
You can serve this simple stir-fry with grains or noodles, or (my preference) use it as a filling for a whole wheat pita pocket.
Somen Noodles With Poached Egg, Bok Choy and Mushrooms
The perfect salve for cold winter days, this vegetarian noodle soup can be cobbled together in an instant from the contents of a well-stocked kitchen. It takes its flavor from a quick bouillon using just four ingredients: soy sauce, sesame oil, scallions and shiitakes, which deliver a hefty, flavorful dose of glutamate. Poached eggs add richness to the clean and comforting broth. Fresh eggs have stronger, firmer albumen (egg whites) and will thus hold their shape better than older eggs, which have a tendency to unfurl. The main key to achieving that teardrop shape during poaching is allowing the eggs to simmer without disturbance until cooked.
Gingery Fried Rice With Bok Choy, Mushrooms and Basil
An ideal recipe for reducing waste in the kitchen, fried rice is a great way to use up spare tofu, leftover meats or wobbly vegetables. Master Sam Sifton’s fried rice technique, and you’ll have the tools to repurpose leftovers and surplus vegetables. But if it’s a bright, fresh slew of greens and herbs you’re after, this recipe supplies a high ratio of vegetables to rice. Everything cooks quickly, so your mise en place truly counts here: Get everything chopped and prepped before you pick up the pan, and dinner can be ready in 20.