Recipe time - Korean Beef Skewers & Ramen Noodle Salad

We love to try new dishes at our local Asian restaurants - and on the road, of course - but we also have a lot of fun making favorites at home, too. Our recent Mid-Autumn Festival meal featured a couple of company-pleasers I'd like to share with you today:

Clockwise from top: steamed rice (from our Zojirushi rice-cooker), deep-fried sesame-red-bean balls, the Ramen Noodle Salad, carrots and edamame, grilled pork tenderloin marinated in Cha Siu sauce, Korean beef skewers, and a lazy-susan of various fruits.

My wife suggested I try making Korean beef skewers based on a recipe from Oprah's magazine. I compared it to several other recipes I found on the internet and ended up borrowing some of this, some of that...  The pear is the special ingredient, and it adds sweetness to the slightly spicy sauce. You'll want to prepare this the day before you grill; the marinade works best if you let it soak in overnight.

Ingredients:
About 2 lbs. beef - a sirloin or similar grilling steak - cut into large cubes, about 1.5" to 2".

1/2 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 to 2 tablespoons of sriracha (a common Asian hot sauce)
4 teaspoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil (check your Asian market for this)
2 cans of sliced pears - drain the juice
1 teaspoon five-spice powder (the ultimate Asian staple seasoning)

Preparation:
Everything goes in the mixer (except the steak... ) for a quick and rough blend.  Pour the mixture into a gallon Ziploc bag, add the beef cubes, and let it sit in the refrigerator overnight.

Grill these on bamboo skewers that you've soaked in water for about 20 minutes.  Rotate the skewers for even heating - I find about 15-20 minutes total cooking time is sufficient.

The marinade is a nice rich orange color going on.

This Ramen Noodle Salad has been a consistent winner at potlucks, and packed with all sorts of good nutritious things. You'll want to use your largest mixing bowl, as it makes enough for a full office party...

Ingredients:
1 bag of pre-chopped coleslaw salad mix (or you could do it the hard way with a head of Napa cabbage, carrots, red cabbage...)
5 green onions, sliced (I like to cut them on the diagonal instead of straight down; this is a Cantonese cooking trick that brings out more of the oniony flavor)
1/2 cup sesame seeds (most recipes have you sautee them in butter; not worth the time & trouble)
1/2 cup roasted almonds
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup sunflower seeds (pumpkin seeds make a nice seasonal touch, you could use pine nuts too)
1 small head broccoli
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
3/4 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon five-spice powder
1/2 cup salad oil (canola or something very light, I keep cutting back on the oil)=
1/4 cup toasted sesame oil (this adds unique nuttiness)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1/2 cup cider vinegar (I've tried xiaoxing wine but haven't been happy with the results)
2 packages dried Ramen noodles, crushed

Preparation:
Thoroughly mix the sugar, five-spice, and liquid ingredients in a smaller bowl and set aside.

Place the coleslaw mix, ramen noodles (take out the seasoning packets...), and all the fruits, nuts, and vegetables in your large bowl. Toss these ingredients a couple times.

Whisk the liquid mixture again - you're wanting the oil, vinegar, and sugar to be well-blended - and pour over the dry ingredients.

Again toss the salad - thoroughly distribute the dressing and make sure the smaller pieces are evenly spread through the bowl.  Cover this with clear wrap and let sit in the fridge for several hours / overnight before serving.

Tonkatsu Ramen, a new family favorite!

My wife tried something new at the always-awesome United Noodles here in Minneapolis this weekend: tonkatsu ramen.  It's now one of her "happy foods"- and likely one she'll ask for when cold & flu season rolls around!

Look at that wonderful milky broth (it's not cream, but part of it's pork fat) - the bright red pickled ginger, the beautiful chunk of pork...  This bowl is HUGE - the same size you'd get a serving of pho in!

There's a tea egg in there too - nice rich flavor.  When you stir the ginger into the steaming broth, the whole bowl becomes sweetly aromatic. Plenty of bean sprouts and bok choy are mixed in with the chewy ramen noodles - this was easily a two-person serving.

Urban wildlife likes the Zen Garden, too

It's been dry here in the Twin Cities, so I've been giving the trees a good soak before winter sets in. Over the past week or so, when I set the lawn sprinkler up to cover our Japan-inspired garden, we get dozens of these cute (and fairly tame) fuzzy gray birds who perform aerobatics in the spray and perch themselves on the pine boughs for a long soaking shower.

We get robins, blue jays, chickadees and more alongside this flock, but none are so darn cute or seem to take such enjoyment in what I'm giving them.  My wife says after they're done, they probably fly to a neighbor's yard to hang up her laundry, and then go tie bows on squirrels...

Wish I knew what species these guys are ... they have black eyebands and a bright yellow stripe at the tip of their tails.

Our Mid-Autumn Festival Meal!

We had some old friends over last night as an excuse to have a Mid-Autumn Festival (Moon Festival) meal!

Clockwise from left: Deep-fried sesame balls with red-bean filling (usually a breakfast snack, but good for noshing at anytime); Ramen-noodle salad with broccoli, and green onion & cilantro on the side; carrots and edamame; grilled pork tenderloin that had been marinated in Cha Siu sauce; beef skewers using a Korean pear sauce recipe; a lazy-susan with various lucky fruits; dipping sauces; and jasmine rice

Chocolate and pumpkin-spice cupcakes with white frosting (because it's the Moon) ... instead of mooncakes.  If I'd had more time I'd have tried making a shortcake cupcake with strawberry jam filling, for something that looked more traditional

And right on cue, the moon came up and filled our backyard with brilliant light all night long!

Additions to my Japan-inspired garden

I've recently added two new elements to my "Zen garden" ... the senses of sight, smell, and touch have been taken care of, but now we can add soothing sound:

And today I strung up LED lights under the pine tree canopy, allowing us to enjoy the garden's beauty day or night, summer or winter. It complements the brilliant moonlight we're experiencing with today's Mid-Autumn Festival...

My Japan-inspired garden

This year we bought a house in the heart of the Twin Cities and moved in from an outer-ring suburb, primarily to be closer to our daughter's Chinese immersion school - and to cut the exhaustive commute my wife and I were burdened with.

With various projects needing to be done with the property, we had neither the time nor spare cash to take a trip to Asia this summer. However, we know travel works two ways - going out to explore the world, and reflecting in to apply what you've learned...

Our design tastes lean both Scandinavian and Asian ("Scandinasian" I call it), and we try to subtly incorporate pieces of Asian culture into our everyday lives to help our daughter grow up to be someone who can easily work in Eastern and Western societies. So we'd kicked around ideas of what someday we'd like to do with our nice fenced backyard (once we'd gotten the invasive buckthorn and half-dead yet overgrown shrubs ripped out) and we both thought a "Zen Garden" would make sense somewhere.

July was brutally hot in Minneapolis this year so not much happened with garden projects, but then fate intervened, as my mother wanted to divide her hostas.  I ended up with about 50 plants to transplant into my yard, and no plan...

Here's the corner (under the big pine tree on the left) where I'd end up placing most of those hostas. The area was already heavily mulched and pretty acidic due to all the pine needles that had fallen over the years.

The grass kind of stopped growing under the pine tree, so that's where I started putting hostas in, and it ended up forming a nice straight line.

Inspiration from travel

Once I'd committed to making something out of that corner in the yard after planting all those perennials, I figured I'd need more of a plan ... inspiration at least to improvise.  And as I scanned through our travel photo files, I found that inspiration in our trip to Tokyo in June 2009:

The Meiji Jingu shrine, next to Harajuku, is an immense stretch of forest and temples - all completely rebuilt after WWII.  This was a royal getaway, but today used for all sorts of public activities. A vast oasis of calm, shade, and restfulness surrounded by skyscrapers, trains, and highways - but when inside you don't notice the outside world at all. No flashy colors or heaps of colorful flowers here - just wood, stone, shadows and light, and all sorts of green.

The roadways are a thick layer of gravel that is sturdy yet giving; it makes you walk a little more slowly and concentrate on what you are doing and feeling. The paths are maintained by monks who you'll see carefully sweeping leaves and pine needles.

In the center of the complex is the main shrine area, with lovely trees and  cut-stone pavers.  We visited early on a weekday and had the whole complex largely to ourselves - a nice effect of jetlag in a city that likes to get started a little later in the morning.

We also visited the gardens next to the Imperial Palace,  which are also very large and right next to downtown Tokyo. They limit the number of people who can be inside at any given time, but again we arrived early and had no trouble. There's more of a "classical" feel to this place than Meiji Jingu, with dedicated flower beds and a carefully managed calendar of blooms. (Which we completely missed.)

The canopy over this part of the path not only gives some shelter from rain and hot sun, but it also frames up a "borrowed view" to the pond as well as the shrubbery and flowers beyond.

Even without seeing these beds in full bloom, it was still amazing to look at all the different textures and shapes of the plants.  Again, stone and green colors in all their shades were the dominant colors

A big swathe of river rock creates visual interest to this pond scene - in a usual garden there'd be vegetation right up to the edge, but here they're trying to evoke the way that mountain streams can change course in a valley and leave berms of pebbles.

The paths in the Imperial Garden are hard-surfaced, but with pea gravel as part of the mixture, which gives a similar look to the paths in Meiji Jingu.

So lessons learned from Tokyo that I could apply to this project:

• There don't HAVE to be masses of flowers blooming every day. It makes you look more at the leaves and other structures of the plants and notice the conversation they have with the scene around them.
• Large groupings of one kind of plant are preferable to a little bit of this, a little bit of that.
• The borders and pathways are just as important as what's inside them.
• Think about all the senses a visitor will use in the garden - the texture of the ground beneath them, the sounds around them, not just sights and smells.
• Colors - green, brown, and stone can be very pleasing ... and with pines and yews on our lot, give year-round interest.
• "Borrowed space" - making a small garden much bigger

 Getting to work

I spent most of August pulling weeds and leveling out the ground where the walking path would go. Multiple trips to the home-improvement stores were made (a stop at Lowe's for bullet edgers became our "Saturday date night"...)

Fieldstones already on our property serve as visual markers for the main approach.

The path works behind the hostas and through the mulch area.  I planted yews along the back fence for color and texture - and so I don't have to look at the fence in a few years.  The pathway is leveled dirt, with a layer of sand over it, then landscape fabric. Bullet edgers along each side hold in about 3" of pea gravel.

The existing pine needles and chips blend in nicely with the mulch I've applied around the hostas.

Last week I finally completed the gravel pathway - and planted about 100 Japanese Iris bulbs, plus a couple dozen Asiatic lilies and tulips, and transplanted a trunkload of sedum from my mom's place.  This area used to be farmland, and the soil looks pretty rich!

Our dog approves of my work. So do the honeybees from the University of Minnesota nearby.

Detail on the pea gravel and pavers

Like at Meiji Jingu, there's texture and visual interest even in shadow. Plus, using the view into the yard to expand the perceived size of the garden.

 Enjoying the view, and continuing to work

The space under the pine tree is sheltered from the sun - and I hope the snow in winter as well. It is also perfectly situated to watch fireworks from the Minnesota State Fair, just a few blocks south of us:

Flowers of a different kind!

How's this for "borrowed space"?

We ordered up a pallet of bullet edgers, and they were delivered Tuesday. I've laid out how they'll divide the garden area from the lawn ... still need to put them in...

Hosta flowers in bloom give a nice purple accent and complement the pink-purple of the sedum at this time of year.

I'm looking forward to installing a stone bench under the tree here and stringing up lights for the long dark nights to come. What a peaceful space here in the heart of the Twin Cities.

Riding the Dragon

Sometimes we need to stretch to find cultural relevance. Sometimes it's just around the corner in a place you don't expect.

OK, this is clearly not in China much less Asia. In Minneapolis / St. Paul we have two zoos - the older / smaller / free one is in St. Paul and is located in Como Park.  Lots to do there - swimming, concerts, a lake to walk around, good golf course, picnic grounds, and a small amusement park.

Como is only a few blocks away from the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, which start in a couple weeks. My daughter wanted to use up her ride-pass card before the Fair and the start of school.

There's actually a decent array of rides there for younger kids -  nothing for teenagers.  I was pleasantly surprised to see this metal-track kiddie coaster!

Nice work with a Chinese dragon head. St. Paul has a big Asian population & it's becoming a cultural hub because of that. So you know people on staff cared to get it right...

Very impressive styling work - it looks like a Dragonboat!

The ride was not really designed for someone of my size - I had to hold on tight to keep from falling out in a couple places - but my daughter had a blast!

Fresh Dragonfruit Time!

As a tropical crop, Dragonfruit are in-season pretty much all the time. At your local Asian market (like United Noodles or Uwajimaya) you'll find them with other fresh fruits & veggies - and also in the form of canned beverages. I've also come across dried dragonfruit slices, notably at Trader Joe's.

My daughter's recovering from surgery on the back of her throat & on a liquid diet for another week, so we've been making a lot of smoothies. She loves mango (your Asian grocer probably has the freshest selection, by the way) but I wanted to make her something different. United Noodles just got a delivery of dragonfruit, so I picked up a couple yesterday.

The fruit are almost the size of a softball, with an intimidating-looking scaly rind. Ripe ones have just a bit of give to them. Getting at the flesh is surprisingly easy (certainly compared to peeling a mango).

You don't want to keep the fruit too long; much like an avocado, when it's ripe you want to use it. (However, you can freeze sliced dragonfruit for later use.) Place the dragonfruit on a clean cutting board, and with a cleaver or other large knife, slice it right down the middle.

 Notice there's no pit or core in the middle - it's more like a kiwi, but the seeds are evenly distributed.
(There are "pink" and "white" varieties. The pink one here gives a brilliant color juice, so wipe up any spills quickly...)

From this point, you can scoop out the flesh with a spoon, or work off the rind (I cut around the inside to 'pop' the flesh out) and slice the fruit into chunks.

One dragonfruit will give you about a pint of sliced flesh, a surprisingly hearty amount. Store the sliced fruit in the refrigerator & use it within a couple days; you can also freeze it, which works well for making smoothies.

The taste is very subtle - the little seeds have a tiny crunch like a kiwi (and don't tend to get stuck in your teeth), and the flavor is somewhere between white grape and pear. I'd say the pink ones have a bit more flavor than the white ones, having tried both.

Of course, the smoothies made with this fruit have a kid-pleasing electric purple color!


(I have many Asian fruits described at http://weninchina.com/Food/Tropical_Fruits.html - as well as entries for a number of other Chinese favorites!)

Great Mandarin Flash Cards!

My kindergartner (she's in a Mandarin immersion school) found these flash cards from Berlitz I picked up a few years ago. Her eyes lit up as she opened the pack - and she giggled with delight as she totally OWNED those cards!  (She was hitting over 80% just looking at the Chinese characters!)

There are 50 cards in the box - illustration, hanzi and pinyin on the face side; written English word on the back side. Suggested retail is $8.95.

(Standard blogging disclosure: I got the pack for free from the Berlitz representative at an education trade show...)

Outstanding new Hong Kong timelapse video!

The travel videos and timelapses I've been posting here are inspiration for both you, the viewer, as well as me. If I can't be out roaming the streets and harborfronts of Asia, at least I can watch what others have done. This piece is simply amazing; the music ("Bruce Lee Never Died" by Istanbul Disco Mafia) takes the video work to a completely different level. Enjoy!

Photos: Soups at Obento-ya, Minneapolis

Obento-ya is our favorite Japanese restaurant here in the Twin Cities - an intimate, inexpensive bistro serving homestyle izkaya cooking and sushi. I took our daughter there last night after school...

 You can never go wrong with a nice big bowl of udon. The shrimp and vegetables are lightly battered and fried - seaweed and green onion on the side to mix in.

She loves the miso with tofu cubes - and so do we. If you have a cold or are feeling run-down, a nice bowl of this will bring your health and spirits right back up.

Hainan Airlines - American Airlines codeshare services: potential routes for Summer 2012

In December 2011 American Airlines and Hainan Airlines announced they would begin a transpacific codeshare arrangement. American would place its AA code on Hainan’s flights between Seattle and Beijing, and on domestic Chinese flights from Beijing. Hainan would place its HU code on American’s flights from Beijing to Chicago, and from Shanghai to Chicago and Los Angeles, as well as on connecting flights in North America on American.

(Click map below for expanded view of transpacific codeshare services:)

Each carrier’s rivals on either side of the Pacific had already created strong cooperative links (Air China and its subsidiary Shenzhen Airlines with Star Alliance partner United Airlines; China Southern and China Eastern with SkyTeam partner Delta), so travel industry observers figured a hookup between American and Hainan was likely as they were the last major carriers left unaffiliated.

Details of specific flight connections are still being worked out between the companies and are unlikely to be announced before Spring 2012. However, I’ve examined the current Winter 2012 timetables for each carrier to anticipate just what kinds of new connections are likely to be offered:

At Shanghai, neither carrier brings much to the relationship. The Chinese government allocates routes, fares, and frequencies among the various domestic carriers (much like how it was done in America pre-deregulation), picking who gets to dominate certain cities. The authorities have decided Hainan Airlines will have the slimmest presence in the country’s largest city – giving them only 7 daily flights from the international airport at Shanghai-Pudong, and just 5 daily flights from the downtown airport Shanghai-Hongqiao.

American’s arrival from Los Angeles gets in too late to connect to any HU departures at Pudong. The Chicago arrival comes in a bit earlier, allowing for connections to the major city Xi’an and resort center Haikou.  Heading eastbound, there is a possible daily connection from Haikou to the Los Angeles flight, and on the Chicago flight, travelers from Haikou, Xi’an, and Lanzhou could make connections.

With these meager connecting opportunities in the People’s Republic, the value of the codeshare agreement as far as Shanghai is concerned is to help Hainan’s local sales team book more corporate travel into the U.S.A.

(Click map below for two-way connections via PVG:)

At Beijing, Hainan Airlines has a much stronger presence, running a connecting hub with multiple banks of flights to dozens of domestic cities – as well as a growing number of overseas destinations. The HU flights to and from Seattle connect smoothly to many Chinese cities. Hainan’s operation is based out of the “old” side of the airport; mostly in Terminal 2, with a few flights from Terminal 1 just next door.

American Airlines has a daily run from Beijing to Chicago. AA flight #186 leaves PEK at 6:55 am on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and at 7:55 am on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. This flight arrives ORD before breakfast and delivers connecting passengers to their final destinations in the Midwest and East Coast by lunchtime. AA flight #187 arrives inbound from Chicago at 11:30 pm Beijing time.  American’s flights use the new Terminal 3 complex on the far side of the airport.

You may suspect that late-night arrivals and early-morning departures at Beijing don’t make for easy connections, and you would be correct. As it stands today, any connection heading into China or heading out to the U.S. would require an overnight stay in Beijing. (On the airport grounds are two full-service hotels: a Hilton and a Langham Place.)

The late-night-early-morning timing was not American Airlines’ choice; they had requested mid-day slots when the route was approved. The Beijing airport authority had other ideas. Perhaps now with a strong local advocate it might be possible to shift the timing of the Chicago run to allow for good connections on both ends so that AA and HU can both profit. (A separate question would be if American could move its flight to Terminal 2 to allow “walking” connections instead of requiring passengers to use shuttle buses.)

If we assume the timing for AA #186 and #187 stays as-is, early-morning departures from Beijing that American may want to put their code on could include:

• Chengdu
• Chongqing
• Dongying
• Fuzhou
• Guilin
• Hailar
• Harbin
• Kunming
• Lanzhou
• Manzhouli
• Mudanjiang
• Shanghai-Hongqiao
• Shanghai-Pudong
• Shenzhen
• Urumqi
• Wenzhou
• Xi'an
• Xiamen

Flights from these cities get into Beijing late at night, so may be potential code-share candidates:

• Changchun
• Changsha
• Changzhi
• Chengdu
• Chongqing
• Haikou
• Hailar
• Hangzhou
• Harbin
• Hohhot
• Jiamusi
• Jinjiang
• Kunming
• Mudanjiang
• Nanchang
• Nanning
• Ningbo
• Qiqihar
• Sanya
• Shanghai-Hongqiao
• Shenzhen
• Urumqi
• Wenzhou
• Wuhai
• Xi'an
• Xiamen
• Yinchuan

Cities that have both inbound and outbound potential codeshare are shown on this map (click for larger view):

To recap, while the Hainan-American partnership is important, at present there are few new service possibilities for U.S.-originating passengers looking to travel beyond Beijing. If American’s Chicago-Beijing flights can be rescheduled, however, a significant number of new connections may become possible. The HU-AA connections through Shanghai will be useful for only one or two cities, and are not likely to develop further.

We will keep watching developments in this association with great interest – follow @weninchina on Twitter and bookmark this blog for the latest news.