XO SAUCE: HOT SAUCE HEAVEN

The first time I tried XO Sauce at a Chinese restaurant during dim-sum, I was wondering what the heck the “XO” meant. Could it mean it’s so good you’ll get “Hugs & Kisses”? nah. I knew XO sauce was expensive owing to its costly primary ingredient: dried scallops (conpoy). Initially, I didn’t know the name derived from its link to the premium XO Brandy. In fact, there isn’t any XO Brandy in any version of XO Sauce I’ve tried. “XO” seems to allude to its expense and its deliciousness. All the ingredients in the sauce are of a premium quality and special in this regard.

XO Sauce is a Cantonese hot sauce. You can eat it as a condiment with wonton soup, noodles, or dumplings. You can use it to make fried rice, fried noodles or put it in a stir-fry with veggies or meats.

Here’s a picture of the costly ingredient in question. The dried scallops I used in my recipe just happened to be pretty big whole scallops. You can also buy tiny itty bitty ones or broken scallops that of course taste the same but are not whole like the ones you see in this pic. These had been sitting pretty in my cupboards for at least half a year. I think if you freeze them, they’d last a really long time. I have used dried scallops in the past that have been hanging around for a few years and they were a little darker and drier, but had the same flavour. I have a feeling they could last almost indefinitely, though I have never had occasion to experience that in our household. Generally, I add dried scallops to “jook” (congee). I don’t really like fussing with the long soaking periods to create steamed and stewed dishes where you can actually rehydrate the suckers (intact) to go with fresh Chinese veggies.

It had never occurred to me to make hot sauce or even XO Sauce for that matter. However, the other day, my MIL gave me a bottle of homemade XO Sauce from her friend and it was da BOMB! I took to eating it dolloped on a boiled egg. I even got fancy and made devilled eggs (yolks piped with a piping bag) and decorated it with a smidgen of XO Sauce on the top; sprinkled with snipped chives. It was so good! Unfortunately, I ate all of those and there aren’t any pictures.

Try it on eggs, it’s out of this world and so easy! It’s also Low Carb and makes for a great snack when you’re feeling for something salty, savoury and spicy.

Notice that pool of oil in the sauce? Well, that’s how it’s preserved. You keep the XO Sauce in the fridge and it should keep for a few months (unless of course you’re me and eat it practically every day). I used fresh red Thai chili peppers and must confess it was a pain to deseed them. I wore rubber gloves and used a paring knife to split the chilies. I scraped out the seeds and cut off the stems. Then I rinsed them. I think that if you like your hot sauce really hot, you could leave more of the seeds in there. I like it mild.

The recipe I developed doesn’t contain any JinHua ham (a dry-cured ham). Even a prosciutto might do. I didn’t feel like heading to the market to look for it. I just used more dried scallops instead. If you like a smoky-sweet flavour, do try finding some dry-cured ham and finely dice it up to add to the scallops. I imagine you could adapt the recipe to suit your tastebuds. You can play around a bit with the proportion of chilies, scallops, dried shrimp and ham. I used scallions and garlic too and think this is preferable to onion, but I guess you can substitute onion for the scallion.

I don’t like my XO sauce swimming in oil, so my version is kind of “dry”. If you like more oil, you can just add more to ensure that all the ingredients are submerged. You can use the hot oil for stir fries and as a condiment too. What a versatile sauce! My recipe makes a huge quantity of XO Sauce…enough for gifting. I would say it would make a great Christmas gift. You could scale it down easily.

CAKEBRAIN’S XO SAUCE

(makes approximately 5-6 cups of sauce)

• 300 g dried scallops (conpoy)
• approx. 50 g JinHua ham (optional)
• 150 g garlic
• 150 g fresh red Thai chilies, destemmed and deseeded (wear gloves)
• 250 g shallots
• 200 g dried shrimp
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 2 tablespoons pure sesame oil
• kosher salt, to taste
• 4-5 cups grapeseed oil or flavourless oil

1. Prepare the fresh chilies first. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. After 15 minutes, or when the temperature has been reached, turn off the oven. Wearing gloves, remove the stems, split in half and scrape out the seeds. Rinse and dry between paper towels. Spread on a sheet pan and place in the turned off oven. Leave the oven door ajar and allow the chilies to dry, preferably overnight.
2. Wash and clean the dried scallops. Cover with hot water and soak for about 3 hours until soft (or overnight if you wish, refrigerated). Strain and reserve the scallop liquid for adding to stir-fries and stock or soups. Finely shred the scallops by hand.
3. Soak the tiny dried shrimp in hot water for 3 hours. Drain.
4. If using the dried ham, dice finely.
5. In a food processor, put the shallots, chili peppers and garlic in the bowl and pulse until finely minced. Remove to a bowl and set aside.
6. Using the food processor, add half the scallops to the processor bowl and pulse a few times. Empty into large bowl. Then put all the ham if using, and the drained dried shrimp in the processor. Pulse a few times until crumbled in appearance. Add this to the large bowl. Finally, add the other half of the dried scallops and mix thoroughly.
7. Heat 4 cups of oil over high heat in a large heavy-bottomed pot. Add the minced onion, garlic and pepper mixture. Saute until translucent. Add the dried scallop mixture and turn down the heat to med-low; continue stirring for approximately 20 minutes. If more oil is needed in order to submerge the ingredients, then add more.
8. Season the XO sauce with paprika and salt to taste. Stir in sesame oil. Continue to cook until there is no longer any moisture rising from the mixture.
9. Remove from heat and allow to cool.
10. Place in containers and seal. Store in the refrigerator.

PEANUTTY CHOCOLATE CHUNK ICE CREAM

Whoopee! I’ve completed my little project concerning recipe development for these Asian Dessert Mixes. The two flavours I worked with are Black Sesame and Peanut. My previous recipes were the Mini Black Sesame Cheesecakes and the Black Sesame Butter Cookies. I also created a Mini Peanut Chocolate Chip Cookie that you can see pictures of near the bottom of this post.

THE LAPTOP LUNCH KIT: MY LUNCH IS COOLER THAN YOUR LUNCH!

Things have sure come a long way since my plastic Scooby Doo lunch kit with its matching orange thermos from the seventies. I recall having to dispose of it shortly after discovering something smelly growing in it.

Ahh. Vancouver elementary schools in the Seventies were a different affair back then. Back then, I attended Laura Secord Elementary school and the population was primarily Italian, Portuguese and what I could only distinguish was other White kids. I mean, all white kids kind of looked the same to me. So though I could generally tell the difference between Portuguese, Italian, German and so on, on the whole, I just thought of them all as White kids. Asian kids were a minority and South Asian kids you could count on one hand. Actually we used to call my friends East Indian, though currently the term might be politically incorrect; I don’t know. But I digress…as usual.

But this is my blog and I’ll digress if I want to!

The popular lunches of the day came in brown bags and I must confess, it was not that cool to come to my school with a lunch box. You were more than certain to be judged by the picture on the outside and though I did love Scooby Doo, I wasn’t too sure if any kids thought he was cool too. I noticed all the cool kids had brown paper bags. I know that for sure, you could get mocked for wearing a red t-shirt with “Disco Skate” emblazoned on the front in sparkly gold letters (because all the cool kids listened to Kiss, and “Disco Sucks”, don’tcha know?) Hey…it was comfortable and it seemed like a cool idea at the time.

I know that you could get teased for wearing your hair in a pony-tail and of course it was taken for granted that you’d get ridiculed for being too fat, too short, too skinny, too tall, Chinese, Japanese, East Indian or pretty much anything other than white.

So, let me be clear here: I ate at home.

What I did notice on the days I did hang around school around lunchtime was that kids ate white food: white bread sandwiches and juice; cookies, cheese, apples, potato chips and stuff I surely have eaten but rarely had the opportunity to at home for lunch were staples of the day.

When I walked the 3 blocks home on Lakewood Drive and crossed the Grandview Highway (it wasn’t really a big highway—only two lanes-- but it was still called a highway), and then walked across the bridge that spanned over the train tracks below, I knew that awaiting me upstairs in the Office of the Mid-City Motel that we owned and operated, would be a plate of my mother’s fried rice.

Herein lies my nasty aversion to peas. I hate peas in foods that ought not to have peas. My mother poured frozen peas into fried rice and macaroni and cheese. Today, I realize peas are indeed classically in “Yeung Chow” Chinese Fried Rice, but I never thought it a good idea at the time. I used to deftly flick them into a pile only to have my mother cruise on by and comment I had better eat the peas by her next pass by. Fortunately, I had a huge black German Shepherd waiting below the kitchen window outside and she loved peas. I wasn’t allowed out of that kitchen chair until my fried rice was finished.

Thus during my formative years I was sort of psychologically scarred by peas. You see, in China, there were thousands of children who would love to even have a plate of plain rice. In fact, that pile of fat we would rip off and discard on the side of our plates would be coveted morsels that a small village would extend for a week as “soong” (the good stuff you make to go with your rice, like a stir-fry) with their bowls of white rice. So the stories go…and the guilt is slowly ingrained into my little soul. Every morsel of rice must be cleaned from your bowl or you would marry a man with a pock-marked face. Each grain would represent an ugly scar on his face. Every grain was harvested by hand and represented the toil of poor Chinese farmers somewhere across the ocean in a mystical land I had never visited.

So, I never argued. Talking back inevitably resulted in more stories of filial piety and whatnot.

Today, as I cruise by highschool students in our hallways during lunch, I notice potstickers, vegetarian samosas, tofu, meatballs, spaghetti, fried rice, perogies, falafels, pizza and yes, even sandwiches. It brings a smile to my face to know that these kids will never know the pains I took in my youth to fit in with my peers by bringing the appropriate style of lunch to school so they wouldn’t be repulsed or worse, find another way to mock me for being not-White.

Fortunately, I knew how to fit into Seventies Vancouver. I was raised by Seventies television. I knew what western values were and I watched the Monkees, Mister Rogers, Sesame Street, Happy Days, The Love Boat, the Carol Burnett show, Donny & Marie and so much more. I could tell you the time of the day by the show that was on. PBS was my mainstay and thankfully television programs were actually pretty clean back then.

When our elementary school was required to do some surveys, I of course responded on my forms in a manner that I thought they wanted me to respond. In my grade 5 class, we were asked to record everything we ate for a few weeks or so. Everything for breakfast, lunch and dinner plus snacks was to be written down. Today, I realize these forms were collected and I presume, used for statistical purposes to determine something about our population. Currently, there are inner-city schools that provide lunch programs and I guess this was a source for determining such a need.

Anyhoo…at the time I didn’t think too much about why they were doing, but I did what I normally did. I wrote down for breakfast: milk, juice, toast, jam, butter

and for lunch: a ham and cheese sandwich, milk and an apple

and for dinner: pot roast, potatoes, carrots, corn and milk. And so it went for the whole week. I had quite a few ideas of what I thought a balanced western meal was supposed to be because I had learned about the food pyramid on PBS!

I didn’t think I was fibbing. I was just telling them what I thought they wanted to hear. I thought it highly unlikely that the people reading these forms would know what tofu was and I can’t imagine what the translation for “jook” was in the seventies. I didn’t even know it was called “congee” until the Eighties, when Chinese food evolved past Sweet & Sour Pork and Chop Suey. Bok Choy wasn’t a mainstream veggie you could buy at the local Safeway. You do realize of course, that Chinese-Canadian food is stuff Chinese people in restaurants cook for non-Chinese and where soy sauce was a condiment poured over rice (horrors!)? I didn’t even know what Chop Suey was until I heard about it on t.v.

Today, I purchased for my daughter what I think is a cool lunch kit. It’s “green” and has no phthalates. It’s reusable and efficient because you don’t have to try to fit plastic containers into a lunch bag that doesn’t fit all that plastic. Everything nestles nicely and is durable. What’s even more enticing to me was the fact that your food can be presented separated in their own containers sort of like the yummy Swanson salisbury steak t.v.dinners I relished as a youngster. You know, with the watery mashed potatoes and gravy, the mixed veggies (with peas…that I ate!—because they belonged there) and the apple cobbler dessert! Yup. Loved them. You would too if you lived at my house motel. I’m so fond of compartmentalized food that I even like airplane food. I’m the only person I know who actually likes airplane food. I like that everything comes in its own little compartment like those t.v. dinners.

Don’t worry. I don’t like t.v. dinners anymore. Everything just seemed tastier back then it seems. Ding Dongs, fudgsicles, popsicles and wagon wheels were bigger, richer and tastier.

I don’t know whether or not my daughter will be teased about her Laptop lunch kit in her school this coming September, but I think not because they have this anti-bullying campaign going on and there’s plenty of action going on in our district concerning safe schools. But hey, just in case…that’s why I enrolled her in karate classes. Kiai!

Inside the Laptop Lunch kit there is room for an ice-pack in the mesh-lined cover! Yes, at least her lunch will be literally “cooler” than everyone else’s! The patterned carrying bag has a handle, an adjustable strap and a zippered pocket built into the front for napkins and little notes and treats.

I liked the slick black kit which opens up easily to reveal the coordinating pink accents. You don’t have to pull out all these separate plastic boxes to get to your food. You just zip open the bag and you can the inner plastic box inside it while eating. You could even do this on you lap! Inside the outer plastic container you’ll find nestled securely the food containers. This particular kit comes with three resealable lids which seem pretty tight-fitting. You even have a compartment for the matching fork and spoon that comes with the kit! The water bottle I’m not crazy about but it’s practical, light-weight and fits neatly into the space.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to post any pics of her lunches in the style of the cool bento blogs out there, but I do have all the bento paraphernalia and I suppose I ought to have a go at it and see if I can keep it up. I may not be as passionate about posting bento lunches as I am about my baking so I may just try one post in the future to see.

I wasn’t looking to buy this product, but I knew about it from all the bento blogs I read. I happened to see it at my local Chapters store where it was promoted as a “Green” product. I purchased my Laptop Lunch kit with a Chapters members discount (10% off) and a $5 off coupon. Not so bad. They had cool colours. List price was about $49. I hadn’t thought to purchase it online, where it’s for a special internet package price for $25! yikes. oh well. But the shipping is $22.25 to Canada so the total would have been $47.24. I think I got an okay deal in the end.

TORTO BLACK SESAME BUTTER COOKIES

I seriously think that I could build a wicked stack of these cookies, but I was outside on my deck and didn’t want to have them tumbling all over onto the ground.

Isn’t it crazy, this Vancouver weather? Right now, it’s raining. I’m sure the fire-fighters are sighing in relief, but the kiddies are not outside playing now that it’s raining. I’m having to occupy them with crafts and stuff inside. They thoroughly enjoyed eating these black sesame butter cookies that I’ve developed using the Torto brand dessert mix. I also made a Mini Peanut Chocolate Chip cookie with their peanut dessert mix too (which I’ll post later). I’m on a roll. My mother actually loves the peanut cookies. She says I should be charging more money for this recipe because it’s a winner and blah blah blah.

But hey, if I were in it just for the money…sigh…