Burnt My Fingers

Creamed Celery is one of the top 5 recipe posts on Burnt My Fingers for 2018.

Another year is in the books, as we celebrate the 7^thanniversary of this blog. The Colonel’s KFC Three-Bean Salad is the recipe post that got the most clicks over the past 12 months, but as in the past we’ll give this perennial favorite a bye along with Vincent’s Garlic Cole Slaw and Squash Casserole a la Highland Park Cafeteria. So let’s look at the top 5 recipe posts on Burnt My Fingers other than those three:

1. Vinegar Peppers is an upstate Italian-American classic we hacked in order to make Pork Chops with Vinegar Peppers like they serve at Mio Posto, formerly in Saratoga but now moved to Albany. (Though Danny Petrosino, whose prep we were copying, now owns Osteria Danny if you’re keeping track.) As a bonus, you can use these in Chicken Riggies.
2. Amish Creamed Celery is an exciting newcomer which we developed because we didn’t have the opportunity to try it during our tour of Pennsylvania’s Amish country a year ago. It’s a very pleasant way to use the rest of that package of celery you bought for your Thanksgiving stuffing, a side dish served in a slightly sweet béchamel.
3. Aji Roja (Mild Red Chile Sauce Peruvian-Style). I came up with this tangy mixture, along with a green companion, to serve with the Peruvian grilled heart specialty called anticuchos. The real lure of Aji Roja may be that it’s a taste-alike for the “tacolicious” sauce served in the  Bay Area. Also, we seem to be the only folks to call it “roja” rather than “rojo” which made sense to us because “salsa” is feminine thus we end up on top of Google results when you search for “aji roja”.
4. Pickled Tripe is still going strong, another proof that Burnt My Fingers readers are some of the best people in the world and decidedly different from the patrons of other food blogs. This is a very easy dish to make starting with cooked tripe; our from-scratch Pennsylvania Dutch pickled tripe is still to come.
5. Raw Liver Poke is just what sounds like: a variation of trendy Hawaiian poke made with raw fish and seaweed, except we started with the freshest possible cow’s liver straight from the farm. Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it. We first ordered at Helena’s on Oahu and it took us a couple of decades to duplicate the recipe, but now we’re enjoying it every day! (Well, occasionally.)

Congratulations on choosing such an eclectic mix of ethnic and hole-in-the-wall cuisines!

Douban Jiang Taste Test: eggplant cooked with Pixian style, mystery sauce, Lee Kum Kee

Jimmy Lau, a Chinese-born chef who works at a Japanese omakase restaurant in NYC, pranked the New York Times when interviewed for the feature on how he spends his Sunday. Describing some culinary experimentation he does with his nephew, also a chef, he says “I’m really into a Chinese chili paste made with broad beans called doubanjiang. It gives any meat or fish a really nice spiciness, along with a touch of sourness.”

What’s the prank? If you know Sichuan cooking unike me, you realize that statement is like a guy who sells French fries saying he’s experimenting with a new topping called ketchup. Doubanjiang, aka tobanjang or chili bean sauce, is ubiquitous in spicy dishes like eggplant with garlic or mapo dofu. It’s as common as dirt, though more delicious. Not realizing this, I scrambled to my local Asian market in search of a new treat … and ended up with an interesting taste test as well.

Mystery Douban Jiang (or is it?)

The item I brought home* is what you see in the green container. There is no English on the label other than the ingredient list and it is misleading. It says the product contains wheat flour, margarine, white sugar, corn syrup… a fools paradise of bad-for-you stuff. But it also says “1 serving per bottle” and said serving contains 240 mg of sodium when you’d get that in a teaspoon full. In other words, the container is mislabeled. Wonder where this label was supposed to go? In fact the stuff is brown and spicy and does contain beans though they are cooked to falling-apart softness.

Expensive Pixian Douban is worth it

Still doubting I had the right product, I did as anyone might and went to Amazon. There I found Pixian Broad Bean Paste which according to malafoods meets the stringent certification requirements of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of China (AQSIQ). Can’t beat that.

Then by chance I found in my pantry Lee Kum Kee chili bean sauce, which I’d purchased by mistake thinking it was sriracha type chili sauce. This is recommended by some as a readily available form of doubanjiang and in fact the label calls it toban djan.

Lee Kum Kee… not good

How did they taste? To find out, I made a typical recipe for Chinese eggplant with garlic waiting till the last minute to add the doubanjiang. The Lee Kum Kee was definitely the worst, brassy and one dimensional with an overpowering salty taste. The mystery box was pretty good. But the Pixian, which costs 4 times as much with Amazon Prime, was definitely worth it with a bright, complex taste and a barely-ground texture so you could pick out individual bits of chili skins and mashed beans.

Like Jimmy Lau, I’m interested in experimenting with this new ingredient and may add a dash of it to, for example, sautéed Italian greens. I’ve got enough to last me awhile.

*On a return trip to the Asian Supermarket, I found an easy two dozen variations of doubanjiang. Just dumb luck I ended up with this one the first time.