# Double Awesome Chinese Food



## phatch (Mar 29, 2002)

The title strikes me as a bit orwellian but at least the book doesn't go that direction.

So this is a cookbook based on food from a Boston area food truck. And also some of their home practices. As such, this is much more of a Chinese fusion cookbook. So common things get remade: Apple (sweetened) hoisin sauce; pickled cranberries; olive oil vinaigrette with fermented black beans that dresses a salad later with blue cheese, green curry with halloumi, red curry Frito pie, hot and sour borscht. A lot of this comes across to me as menu hype 101, getting trendy buzzwords into the menu to stand out and spark interest. And now it's in the cookbook too.

Making special hoisin is fussier than I particularly want to get involved with. I can make vinaigrette easily enough though to play with that. And the thing that tempts me the most involves my nemesis scallion pancakes.

And that temptation is a hot dog in a scallion pancake with kimchi. You don't need any more recipe that really-- although they also add some arugula and Sriracha aioli--you just need the scallion pancake. Their pancake version is fairly simply written and similar to other boiling water doughs I've used in the past for this. Their directions lack the upsight I recently figured out which is to be more generous with the sesame oil and to pinch seal the top seam when you roll up the scallions into the now laminated dough roll. Yeah I'm slow sometimes.

Even if you're just using a commercially available frozen scallion pancake, this is something to include in your next hot dog event without much extra work.

My beet-loving daughter homed in on the borscht idea though that one left me cold. It gets some curry paste and kimchi juice and a little coconut milk. And while I like fermented beets in sauer kraut, and a curried beet is not a bad idea, they didn't suceed here with cold fusion either.

There are lots of new to me combinations here. It's worth looking at to see which ones spark with your preferences. But it's not worth the full price of admission. Hardback only, no ebook version. Try your library. I got my copy used through www.alibris.com


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