Pickled Ginger

1 ginger root
rice vinegar
salt
sugar

Cut branches of ginger root apart. Peel off the skin. Use a mandolin to finely slice ginger along the grain (be very careful to not cut your fingers!). Lightly salt the ginger slices (use about 1 tsp of salt) and let sit for at least 1 hour to overnight.

Rinse the salt off the ginger slices, and shake dry in a colander. If you are using unseasoned rice vinegar, Mix a pinch of sugar (1 tsp-ish) with a small amount of vinegar in the bottom of a small jar until the sugar dissolves (seasoned rice vinegar already has sugar in it). Lightly pack the ginger sliced in to the small jar (separate the slices from each other as you place them in the jar). Add enough rice vinegar to cover all of the ginger slices. Refrigerate for at least a couple hours (preferably a 3 or more days). Should keep for several months. Fresh ginger may turn pinkish, but old ginger will not.

Chinese Sticky Rice

with quail eggs, black cloud fungus, dried scallops, black mushrooms, fried scallops



The key to making this rice is to use sweet glutinous rice, to soak it, to saute it before steaming, and use lots of Chinese seasonings. Wash rice thoroughly; place in a bowl and cover rice with water. Let the rice soak for at least two hours or overnight. While the rice is soaking, quickly rinse and then soak any dried ingredients in cold water (e.g. black cloud fungus, dried scallops, black mushrooms); save soaking water.

Drain rice. Place oil in a wide pan and heat. When the pan is hot, add the drained rice, and saute until the outside of the rice kernels are dried out; use as much oil as necessary to keep the grains from sticking to the pan (about 5 minutes or more). Just before turning off the heat, saute any flavoring ingredients that should be heated until fragrant (e.g. Chinese shrimp paste or bbq paste, dried red chili peppers).

Mince additional ingredients (black cloud fungus) and slice mushrooms. Add rice, the mushroom and dried scallop soaking water, and any other ingredients that you would like to add to your rice (e.g. fried scallops, peeled hard boiled quailed eggs). Add other flavoring ingredients (e.g. soy sauce, Chinese vinegar, sesame oil, ground white pepper, salt, chili oil, 1 star anise). Add water until the rice is covered. Stir carefully with fingers, being careful not to crush the rice grains. Cook in rice cooker on normal setting. When the machine beeps, fluff rice with rice paddle.

Forbidden Rice

(mixed with white rice)