Hot Laphing

This weekend, I went to visit Tashi Jong for my first social visit in more than a year.  Of course, I went in large part to visit my friend Sonam, the one who taught me how to make the Summer Chili that I posted very early on in this history of this blog.  Sonam and her sister are absolutely amazing cooks.  I think I eat more when I visit them than any other time in India, except when I visit certain restaurants in New Delhi.

Anyway, not long after I arrived, one heckuva storm hit, knocking out power. This meant we had nothing to do but cook, eat, and talk.  I ended up staying the night because of the sheer strength of the storm (which is always a pleasure with Sonam's family) and I took that time to interrogate her about some of my favorite dishes from her home.  For now, I will just post the recipes. I hope to post a photo guide when I get back to the states.  So let's start with the most unique dish I've ever had at her home, one I've never had anywhere else and I've been craving in the two years since I first tried it: Hot Laphing.  It's a unique mix of Chinese influence in Tibetan cooking!

Now, I've made a Laphing post before, however this starts with a completely different kind of laphing entirely, so be ready for something completely different.

Sonam's recipe started off with "buy one block of white laphing," but for most of us not living in a few specific countries in Asia, that's not possible. Fortunately, white laphing is very simple to make, unlike it's yellow sibling. I'll dedicate a post to white laphing and it's accompanying sauces later, but making the laphing itself is quite simple so let's start with that.

White Laphing (Without Sauce)
1 package of Mung Bean flour (available at most asian groceries)
Water

Take a very large pot on the stove, fill it about half way with water, get that going to a boil.

Meanwhile, take a pitcher and mix the mung bean flour and water until you have a liquid that looks like and has the consistency of light cream.

Slowly, and while stirring, pour the "cream" into the boiling water until you have an odd, gelatinous mess that is mostly clear, but slightly white-ish, like ice. It should not be white.  It should be distinctly translucent.  If it is white, the concentration of mung bean flour is too high and it will have a nasty consistency.


Here is a picture of finished white laphing (the blue is because it is under a tent).  Your gelatinous mess should be slightly-slightly more clear than this:

(Not my photo! So, credit where credit is due)

Once you have your weird gelatin, pour that into a wide tray, I usually use a cake pan, and let it cool and set.  This should take roughly an hour in a cake pan, less if you refrigerate it, and more if you use a deeper pan.  There you go! Laphing!

So now, what we use it for...

Hot Laphing
A large chunk of white laphing (say 2 cups per person), cut into 1" cubes
Vegetable oil
Finely chopped garlic
Meat, cut into bite sized pieces OR vegetables cut into bite sized pieces (less traditional and FAR less flavorful)
Erma/Hua Jiao (Sichuan peppercorns, mentioned at length here) finely ground-a few pinches
MSG (optional)-a large pinch
Salt to taste
Chili powder to taste
Sesame oil
Green onion, chopped

In a pot or pressure cooker, boil up the meat/veg in as little water as you can use to get it to boil.  We don't want to lose any flavor with excess water and we will be using the boiling water.  Just boil it for a minute or two, maximum.

In a large pot, heat up a few teaspoons of vegetable oil (enough to coat the bottom). When that's hot, toss in the garlic and stir until the garlic has browned and the oil has picked up the garlic aroma

Now add the meat/veg and when the oil has stopped sputtering, add some of the water from boiling (approx 1/3 cup per serving. NO MORE.  In fact it's better to go with less and you can add more later!)

Add powdered erma to taste, a pinch of MSG, salt to taste, chili powder to taste and let this cook together for a little while (a few minutes is all it needs).

Gently add the laphing, piece by piece.  Stir gently. It will break up a bit, but you don't want to break it up completely.  Break as little as possible. When the laphing is all stirred in, drizzle with sesame oil and sprinkle the green onion over this.  Give that a gentle stir to mix it in.

There you go! A super quick meal that is absolutely delicious!

Quick Tenthuk

So, I'm in Taiwan with a terrible cold right now. As evening rolled around, and I was completely exhausted and coughing, I had the question of did I want to go out and get dinner, which would involve turning myself into a functional, multilingual human being, go outside into the terrible heat, walk at least half a mile to go to a restaurant, or was I going to cook at home. Well, I wanted something for a cold, so I decided to make my go-to comfort food: Tenthuk.

Now, I have already posted the most traditional tenthuk recipe that I know, but that recipe takes a long time to prepare. It's very rare that your average person outside of Tibet takes the long time involved to make that meal. So the following recipe can be made, start to finish, in less than half an hour. Which is roughly the amount of time I was able to remain conscious. There are no photographs because I was having enough trouble figuring out whether I had added soy sauce or chinese black vinegar to the soup. Fortunately, it was soy sauce.

I made this for one (myself), ate two midsized bowls of it and the rest (I'd say about 1/3 of what I made) is in the fridge, so I would say I made the right amount. As a result, the amounts will seem like very little.

Ingredients:

2 cups Flour

Water

Vegetable oil

1/4 lb of beef, cut thin, one inch pieces.

half a medium sized tomato, chopped

1/4 of a large white onion (or one half of a small white onion!) chopped

1/4 inch of ginger root, finely minced (I went overboard with the ginger. It was delicious)

1 clove of garlic, crushed and minced

2-3 sprigs of scallions, roughly chopped

handful of greens of your choice (optional. I didn't have any. I recommend baby spinach)

soy sauce to taste

salt to taste

chili powder to taste

First, make your dough. Like a lot of the dough described previously, mix flour and water until you get a stretchy, but not terribly sticky ball of dough. You will need to knead it and experiment with how much flour and water. I never get it right on the first try. When you have this big ball of dough, separate it into small balls, about half the size of a fist. pour a little bit of oil over these and roll them around until they are lightly coated in oil. Cover this. If you haven't chopped your meats and vegetables and stuff, you might as well do it now. The dough does well to wait a bit, but it's not too necessary.

Take a pot and put it on the stove, heat up a bit of oil and start to fry up your meat. Stir this around a bit and add a sprinkling of salt. When the oil has picked up some meaty flavor, dump in the garlic, ginger, onions and tomatos. When I don't feel ready to fall down, I add the garlic and ginger first and fry that a bit before adding the others. Give me a break, I am sick and this is faster.

When the tomatos and onions have reduced, add water until you have about 2/3 your desired soup volume. Now add salt and soy to taste.

While this is boiling up you can add chili, if you like, or any other spices you want. Although my version is pretty traditional, don't hesitate to tweak it to your personal tastes!

When the soup is boiling and flavored as you like it, take a dough ball and roll it into a snake-like coil.

For this next step, you may need to add some oil to your fingertips. Take the dough coil and pinch it between your fingers to make a long tape, around 1 inch wide, and 1/8 of an inch thick or even thinner. Tear pieces off (about 1 inch by 1 inch) into the boiling soup. Stir occasionally. Continue until all the dough is gone, or until you have enough noodles. You can freeze the remaining dough for later.

The dough will need only a couple of minutes to boil. Remember to stir occasionally so the noodles don't stick.

As this is coming to a boil, toss in the scallions and greens. They should take only a minute to cook. When the greens have reduced or the scallions have slightly changed color, your soup is ready to eat! Enjoy!

What?? You're Vegetarian??: Potato Momos

Last night I went to a friend's house for momos. She and her husband had invited some guests, absolutely wonderful people, and we were all having a great time, preparing for dinner, when we suddenly found out that one of our guests is vegetarian. Fortunately, a good friend of mine is vegetarian and taught me, years ago, how to make potato momos. We whipped them up very quickly, and everyone seemed to enjoy them. Photos and recipe below!

(Note! Since we were just throwing this together with the leftovers in the fridge, we didn't have cilantro or scallions. Fortunately, it still tasted good! Be creative. This is a great way to get rid of leftovers. I call these my "poor man momos" because it's so cheap to throw together)

Potato Momos
Ingredients:
3 medium sized potatos
1 white onion
1 large bunch of scallions
1 handful of cilantro
1-2 cloves of garlic
1 inch of ginger root
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp cumin (OK, all of these are rough estimates)
Salt to taste
1 cup of frozen peas

Momo Dough

One of my favorite things about this recipe is that its really quick to make and is prepared easily.

Start with cubing some potatoes. Boil these until they are nice and soft and mashable.


While the potatoes are boiling, chop the onions, scallions, garlic, ginger and cilantro. Onions, scallions and cilantro shouldbe coarsely chopped, the ginger and garlic should be finely chopped.

When the potatoes are done, mash them, also mash in the chopped onions, cilantro, scallions, garlic, ginger and spices. Feel free to taste this, since there is nothing that can't be eaten in its current state.

Now, so as not to destroy the peas, gently mix them in with a fork, spoon or spatula. The peas will defrost on their own.

Now time to make the momos! For information on folding the momos, check here!

Thinley watches as I start work on the momos.
He wanted food NOW! I can't blame him...

Steam for 15 minutes, or until the wrappers are no longer sticky.

Tashi, baby Rinchen, and Thinley, all eagerly awaiting momos.

Jessica and Thinley ready for dinner!

OK, seriously, kids love momos. I'm just going to say that not only is this a great, filling, veg option instead of meat momos and is fat free, insofar as I can tell, but kids seriously love this. Thinley puts ketchup on his. Potatoes and ketchup? Is any kid NOT going to like that? I love it too, but I stick with chili sauce.

MOMOS! Beef Filling. A photo guide

The most famous and most popular Tibetan dish, hands down, is the momo. Momo is a dumpling, similar to gyoza and many other Asian dumplings.

In Tibet there are many kind of momos. The differences are not only the filling, but also the manner of cooking and even the dough. I plan on posting MANY momo recipes here, but I just wanted to start with one of the simples. Plain, everyday, thin skinned, beef momo.

Momo in Tibet would normally be filled with yak meat, but aside from once or twice a year when my brother and I spit out the $13/pound and get some ground yak meat (very difficult to find in the USA) we stick with beef. The best yak meat substitute is actually freerange buffalo. In some places, you can find that for only a dollar or two more per pound and the difference is really noticable.

Momo are great. Everyone loves them. My parents, brother, grandma. Here's the best part, on those rare occasions (like right now) when I am in the USA, my American high school and college friends who have no Tibet exposure aside from me specifically request momo parties! So the following photos were taken at last night's momo party. Sorry there aren't any photos of the finished momos. We...we ate them.

Beef Momos

Filling Ingredients
1/4 of a pound (roughly) of ground beef or lamb or bison per person present
2/3 the volume of beef in scallions (that is to say if the beef fills up half a bowl, you want 2/3 of the remaining half full of scallions)
white onion (optional, I use one really large white onion for 3 pounds of beef)
chopped fresh garlic, to taste
chopped ginger root, to taste
Soy sauce

Dough Ingredients
Flour
Water
a few pinches of salt

Equipment
Large mixing bowl
Medium mixing bowl
cutting board and knives
good, large steamer

Start by mixing flour and water in a bowl with a few pinches of salt until you have a stretchy, but not sticky ball of dough. Let this sit while you prepare everthing else. Cover it with a damp towel or something.
Put your beef into a mixing bowl and start chopping up your ginger, garlic, onions and scallions.


Now, add some soy sauce to taste and some warm water (for the quantity you see here, I used about a cup.) and mix this all together into a big pile of meat!



YAYYY. Meat.
OK, moving on. Take the dough and roll it between your hands to form coils about an inch and a half thick.

Slice these into discs about 3/4 of an inch thick and squish these between your hands in a spiralling motion.


Take the spiraled discs and start rolling them with a small rolling pin, rolling only the edges and turning the disc to get all sides. The center should be thicker than the edges. A 3 or 4 inch flat disc is ideal. If you lack a small wooden dowel, for a rolling pin, I recommend a beer bottle! As you can see, our men who were rolling were pleased. We let them drink the beers first.


Get some forks for your meat. Preferably, put them in the meat tines down. As you can see, we had problems with this.

And now the two most popular way to fold momos!

Circular Momos: Gently cupping a disc on your fingers, fork in about a tablespoon of filling.
Pinch one side, forming a corner, then keep pinching the edge over to that first pinch. Pull another bit of the edge and pinch to the first spot and continue doing this all the way around, it will start closing the dough. Use your thumb to gently push in the meat. Cup it carefully in your hand to help it keep a round shape.
A better angle to see the pinching.
Finally it will be pinched shut with a tiny spiral of dough at the top, pinch that spiral to itself to form a circle at the top.
And you get a beautiful final product like so!

And here, for you viewing pleasure, is the most beautiful momo I've ever made:


Crescent Shaped Momos:

Hold the dough disc in your hand and fill it kind of like a soft taco. Pinch the end


On one side, and ONLY one side, pleat the edge, pinching it to the flat side. So one pinch, move about 3/4 cm, another pinch, move 3/4 cm...continue. It's pleating, plain and simple. One side will remain flat. This will naturally create a crescent shape.

Keep carefully moving along the edge pleating until you come to the end, and which point, pinch it at the end, shutting it and pinch all along the top edge to make sure its sealed.

LOOK!!! I made a momo!

Lightly oil your steamer and lay the momos on them so that they are not touching. Steam for about 20-25 minutes over boiling water. Serve with chili sauce, soy sauce, and black vinegar if you have it!

Yellow Laphing: A Photo Guide

As you may have seen, yesterday I failed at making Yellow Laphing. Today, fortunately, I have redeemed myself.

And so, I present you with an Illustrated Guide to Yellow Laphing
Ingredients:
White all purpose flour
Water
a few pinches of salt
a few pinches of MSG (as always, optional)
soy sauce
garlic
chili paste

Equipment:
Large pot or clean bucket
Mixing bowl
Ladle
circular cake pans (2 or 3)
Wide pot with a lid.
Trays or pans

Before making the Laphing
peel a few cloves of garlic.
Drop these into a bottle of water to soak and flavor the water.

The Night Before
Yellow Laphing is a two day procedure.
The night before, in a large mixing bowl, mix flour and water. The amount is up to you, but 4 cups of flour will make about 10 laphing pancakes, in my experience.
Knead this into a nice dough ball.


Set up a large pot and place a screen type strainer over the top. It must be fine or else it wont strain appropriately.


Now pour water over the dough ball and start kneading the dough in the water. The water will turn milky white.




When the water is white, strain it through the strainer, holding back the dough and catching any dough bits in the strainer. Put the dough and bits back into the bowl. Repeat the process.


The dough will start to break apart and change consistency. You are extracting the gluten from the flour. As this happens, you will start getting little gluten bits at the bottom, which seem to act a bit differently from dough, this is a good sign.

Continue kneading and squeezing the gluten. It will start to feel rubbery and squeaky. It may even squeak (mine does!) this usually means the gluten is nearly ready. Keep repeating the kneading and straining until the water runs mostly clear and you are left with a nice clump of gluten, which you can mold together with your hands and squeeze out any remaining water.


knead a pinch of baking soda into your gluten, cover and leave that for tomorrow. Cover your big pot full of white water and let that sit until tomorrow.

Day of Serving

THIS is where I made my epic fail yesterday. Open the pot, the water should be settled. Mostly clear on the top and white thick goop at the bottom. Bring the pot CAREFULLY over to the sink. POUR the water out into the sink until the white goop is about to pour. This should leave a thin layer of water over a thick layer of goop. This was where I failed yesterday! I scooped out the water instead of pouring it and so I didn't get out enough water and made icky jelly instead of pancakes.

Add a few pinches of salt, a pinch or two of MSG, a small pinch of tumeric and a tablespoon of vegetable oil into your white goop and stir it together with a ladle.

Put an inch or so of water in your wide bottomed pot and bring this to a boil. On your counter, put the trays and partially fill them with water and maybe an ice cube or two.

Stir the goop and ladle one spoonful into the cake pan. It should just barely cover the bottom if you tip the pan around. Maybe a ladle and a half. Float the pan in the boiling water. Tip it around a bit until the bottom is coated and the coating has started to solidify. Also, make sure a bit tips up onto the sides.


Cover the pan and let the water come back to a boil. When it's boiled for a minute or two, the pancake should be a translucent yellow. Carefully pull the pan out and float it in your cooling bath on the counter.


Wait until the pancake is cool to the touch, then run your fingernail (please wash your hands first) along the sides (this is why you have to get some up on the side) until you get it to start peeling. Then carefully peel off the pancake.



ooh! A pancake! Look! I made a pancake!!!

I find that a 3 pan system is best. One boiling, 2 cooling. Stack the pancakes in a tray or dish.





On a clean cutting board, cut a piece of your gluten into centimeter by centimeter pieces. Roll a pancake and slice it into half inch wide coils.


Put the noodles in a bowl and top it with the gluten. Sprinkle salt, msg, and chili to taste. Pour soy sauce over that and then water the soy sauce into a "soup" with your garlic water and stir. Serve! mmmmmmmmmmmm