Gone Chow Ngau Hor 干炒牛河

You were at your favorite authentic Chinese restaurant (not a Chop Suey House). While looking at the menu and deciding what to order for lunch, you saw the server passing by you bringing out a steaming platter consisted of beef, some sort of translucent veggies and white flat noodles to a middle aged Chinese man sitting at the next table. The dish looked so plain and ordinary, but you saw your fellow patron adding your favorite chili sauce that was kept in the little clear jar together with the soy sauce and the white pepper on a square Lacquer tray, and ate it with gusto.

Your curiosity was aroused and now you kept asking yourself the question: Should I be brave today and ask the server what it is and try it or just order my usual Chicken Chow Mein or Gon Pau Gai Kow over Rice for lunch?

Your sense of adventure finally took hold and you waved at the friendly server and asked what the guy next to you was eating and she said," Oh, that is just Gone Chow Ngau Hor. (干炒牛河)" Or Dried pan-fried Beef Flat Noodle. You have decided to follow your gut feeling and order the dish. Ten minutes later, the same steamy platter was in front of you. You gingerly took a forkful of well proportioned noodle, beef and veggie and put it into your mouth and the texture and flavor started to explode. The beef was tender with a slightly sweet flavor with a hint of soy. The flat noodles were chewy and soft, the veggies (you discovered were bean sprouts and onion on closer examination) were crunchy and crisp. The dish was quite dry and had no sauce. You were still puzzled by how a combination of such simple ingredients could produce such a flavor profile. You have inadvertently been converted to being a Chow Fun lover.

I am going to share with you a simple recipe so you can make this most popular but seemingly difficult dish. The main ingredients are hor fun, flank steak, bean sprouts, yellow and green onions.

Hor Fun (Flat Rice Noodle) - is one of the four treasures in Cantonese cuisine. Can you name all four?.....Okay, giving up already. These are: Jok (粥), Fun (粉), Mein (麵), Fan (飯), (rice congee or porridge, flat rice noodles, egg noodles and rice). Cantonese eat these items with great gusto and is part of their daily diet.

Recipe for Dried Pan-fried Beef Noodle (干炒牛河):

Ingredients:

12 oz. flank steak (thinly sliced across the grain about 3" by 1")

20 oz. (1 package) fresh flat rice noodle

1 medium yellow onion (thinly sliced)

16 oz. (1 package) bean sprout

1 bunch green onion (Julian)

Beef marinate: 1.5 tbsp light soy sauce, 2 tsp sugar, 2 tsp corn starch.

4 tbsp cooking oil (I used canola oil)

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp light soy sauce

2 tbsp dark soy sauce

2 tbsp oyster sauce

Cooking directions:

Marinate the beef and set aside for about 30 minutes.

Stir fry marinated flank steak with 1 tbsp cooking oil in a wok at high heat. Cook beef to medium rare by only turning the meat only once or twice. Set beef aside on a plate.

Heat wok up with 3 tbsp of of cooking oil and add sliced yellow onion with a tsp of salt. Stir fry onion in high heat until semi-soft (about a minute) then add bean sprouts and stir fry.

Add 3 tbsp of water into the bean sprout/onion mixture and put the wok cover over the wok about 2 minutes (still in high heat).

Take off the cover and add loosen flat noodle, light & dark soy sauce, oyster sauce and green onion into the wok. If the flat noodle is too hard, soften it by put into the microwave oven for about a minute. Add the pre-cook beef and stir fry & mix all ingredients thoroughly.

Serve immediately.

Serve for 6

Cioppino

What is Cioppino?

One might start to ask when seeing it on a restaurant menu or when someone throws that word around just to impress others (as in what I am doing right now).

There are just as many versions of how the word originated as are recipes.

Some might argue the word was a corrupted pronunciation of "ciuppin" (to chop) from the Ligurian dialect of the port city of Genoa, Italy. (Are you impressed yet....) However true it might be, but my favorite one still is:

An Italian fisherman (with his heavy accent) at San Francisco Fisherman's Wharf crying out at the end of the day to ask all his paisans to "chip in now?" for a cook out. His fellow countrymen would toss in a crab, a piece of fish fillet, clams, calamari, prawns, scallops...etc. into the bucket while it was being passed around at the dock.

At any rate, we know quite certain it started in San Francisco, my favorite city by the bay: where I often left my heart (as in the song), my boat and my daughter Jessica in. So I feel it is appropriate for me to share my version of Cioppino as my first recipe in "Frank Cook".

Many of my friends and family have helped me shop, prepare and eat this dish for years. Cioppino, in short, is a seafood stew like the French Bouillabaisse. It starts with a tomato base and is built up with fresh herbs and spices and finished with fresh seafood.

As all my friends know, I am a Cantonese, passionate, untrained, home chef. These four elements make me an interesting, if not, quite dangerous cook. Being Cantonese, I will eat anything that swims in the water that doesn't have a motor, lives on land that doesn't have an engine or flies in the air that doesn't have a propeller. I am passionate with my cooking as every dish is a labor of love. My untrained cooking skills make me willing to try anything however unconventional. As a home chef, it means I don't need a license and am exempt from local Health authorities. One might not know what the "outcome" coming out of my kitchen might be but I can safely say, I still have all my friends and family (other than those who died of natural causes).

I like simple cooking. With that I mean using fresh, inexpensive (in season) ingredients with easy and fast steps. This will be the basis for my future postings on this blog. The goal is to share my cooking style so one can cook a healthy, nutritious and tasty meal in about 30 minutes. So here is how I make my "chip in now":

Frank’s Cioppino
4 cloves of minced garlic
4 tablespoons olive oil
¼ cup fresh dill
2 - 28oz cans tomato sauce
1 cup chopped tomato – fresh or canned
½ cup white wine
Salt and pepper to taste
1 lb. cod or snapper fish fillet ( cut into 1 in. chunks)
3 large fresh Dungeness crabs (cleaned and quartered w/claws cracked)
1 lb prawns (with shell on, deveined by cutting open the back)
½ lb scallops
½ lb calamari
1 dozen clams or mussels
Heat the olive oil and garlic in a stewing pot, slowly browning the garlic, add tomato sauce, white wine, chopped tomatoes, dill, fish fillet, salt and pepper. Bring to the boil and turn the heat to low. Simmer for at least 30 minutes.
Bring broth to a boil with high heat and add clams, crabs, and prawns to the pot. Keep covered for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add scallops and calamari and continue cooking until the calamari curls up.
Serves 6-8 people over long cut pasta (spaghetti, linguine or fettuccine)