Although we do drink a fair amount of coffee in the morning at our house, the signature beverage here is actually tea.

I know this to be true because we have more varieties of tea in our cupboard than we do coffee.

And though we do have many types of tea which that we enjoy, the tea most often brewed and consumed–on at least a once daily basis, is a Chinese fermented black tea known as shou puer. (There is also a less oxidized variety that can be classified as a green tea known as sheng puer, but I prefer the black tea, so when I talk about puer, I mean shou puer and I am just too lazy to type the entire thing.)

Puer, also know as pu-ehr comes from a large-leaf variety of Camillia sinensis that is grown in Yunnan province, China, and is famous throughout the country for its earthy flavor and aroma and its reputed restorative, healing and digestive properties.

I am told that it is often the chosen beverage for a dim sum luncheon, where its stomach-calming properties make it a perfect accompaniment to the rich meat-stuffed steamed dumplings, pan-fried turnip cakes and crispy, deep-fried taro fritters that are consumed in great quantities. I like to drink it by itself–just as a sort of pick-me-up for long evenings spent sewing, writing, playing with Kat or cooking, and Zak finds it invaluable as an aid to late-night guitar playing.

I have seen it written that puer has the highest amount of caffeine in a Chinese tea, but I must say that I have never had trouble sleeping even on nights when I have stayed up late quilting and drinking cup after cup of puer like a madwoman. If I tried that trick with coffee, I would be up for the next three days, my eyes bugged out with fingers twitching like an addict coming off of crystal meth. Zak doesn’t seem to have that trouble, either–he can sleep just fine after drinking puer by the potful and playing guitar while Kat safely slumbers upstairs.

The truth is, neither of us drink puer because it keeps us awake–we drink it because it tastes good.

The lady who owns our Chinese market in town says we are the only Anglos who buy puer, or who even know what it is. Most people, she says, when they taste it curl their lips and say it tastes like dirt.

Which, in a way, it does. Poetically speaking, it tastes the way the sun-warmed rich soil of the forest smells–it is like drinking the lifeblood of Mother Earth herself. It is rich and complex–and has a rich reddish-amber-brown color. And while I guess some people find that distasteful–I find it to be intoxicating. I love the flavor of it–it is seductive, and after drinking it often for a long time, I find it hard to be happy with other types of tea, even my long time favorites, pouchong and lapsang souchong.

Some people may be put off by the cost of puer tea–because it is fermented and aged, the older teas are more expensive. It is fairly rare, since it comes only from old wild tea trees in the mountains of Yunnan province.

But what is interesting about puer is that you can get a huge number of steepings from a single pot-sized portion of tea leaves. We’ve steeped one batch of really nice puer leaves about six or seven times, and the flavor only gets nicer as we go along. It isn’t odd to get multiple steepings from one pot of good Chinese tea leaves, but puer just seems to be the workhorse of the tea leaf world–it’s just keeps going and going like the Energizer Bunny. It is just a highly forgiving type of tea–many tea leaves require exact temperatures and brewing times to the point that it seems like they are harder to make than meringue on a humid day, but puer is really hard to screw up.

Here is a good overview of how to brew puer tea, along with information on the history, culture and health benefits of puer tea.

We have bought good puer from several sources, but our favorites have been from Holy Mountain Trading Company, Special Teas,. and the Tao of Tea.

You can get it in several forms–loose leaf, which is the type we prefer, in compressed bricks, which is easier to store, and stuffed into dried tangerine skins, which scents the leaves with a lovely floral citrus note that floats as light as a dancing feather over the darker, earthy notes of the tea’s natural flavor.

So there you are–in a household of tea drinkers, this is our favorite, and can be considered the house beverage, since we drink it easily two or three times a day.

Even if it does taste a bit like dirt.

(And yes, Kat loves it, too.)

This year, I planted a whiskey barrel with Thai chilies and basil; eight starts of Thai Dragon chilies, a dozen of Siam Queen basil. These relatively few plants kept us in fresh Thai ingredients for the entire summer and early fall. The rainy early summer resulted in lush growth but the first chilies were fairly mild; however, the drought that fell upon Ohio in the late summer (something like eight weeks without appreciable rain) made for smoking-hot ripe chilies.

The same was true for all of the farmers around here–their first chilies were mild, the ones harvested after the drought, no matter what variety, were at the hotter end of what that variety can be.

It all has to do with water content in the fruits. The less water the plants get, the less water is able to be stored in the tissues of the fruit. The less water in the fruit, the more concentrated the essential oils and flavoring components in the chile, and the better they will be.

By the end of September, there were so many chilies on the plants that they were leaning over, unable to support the weight of the plethora of ripe fruits. Because we are going out of town for ten days, I decided yesterday that I needed to go ahead and pick the ripe chilies and preserve them somehow and leave the green ones on the plants to pick when we came back. Once I got close to the plants, though, I noticed that there were very few green fruits, except on one plant that is still covered with blooms.

So, using scissors, I cut the heads off of all the chile plants, except the one that was still blooming, and brought the bundle of plant tops, all filled with brilliant scarlet fruits, inside.

I spread them out on the dining room table, put on latex gloves and went to work stripping the chilies off of the stalks.

Every now and then, a green fruit would appear, and those I set aside, with their stems intact, to be frozen. The red fruits, however, went together in a bowl, to be turned into my own homemade chile-garlic sauce. The red fruits I very carefully separated from their stems and the little green caps that attach the fruit to the stem–these tough bits of plant matter would not be tasty ground up inside my Chinese-style chile garlic sauce.

I had help in my work from Delia, who decided to gnaw upon a green chile after she picked up one of the plant tops and dashes away with it.

Karma was instant and brutal; the kitten jumped straight up in the air and dashed away.

She didn’t stay away long–while I was still patiently snapping green caps off of the red chilies, she jumped up on the table and watched the proceedings intently, while she batted at the chile leaves idly with her polydactyl paws.

It is imperative to wear gloves even when harvesting chilies–the oils, especially in really hot varieties like these Thai chilies–can be very irritating to skin, and even if it doesn’t bother your hands, if you should rub your eye or nose, you could be in for a world of pain.

(Can you tell I have done that before? It really, really sucks, so now I am quite cautious.)

But, let us talk about how to make Chinese Chile-Garlic Sauce.

This is one of my pantry staples, and last year, I decided to go ahead and make my own. One may ask why, since it is easily obtained in the store, is cheap and tastes pretty darned good. Well, it has to do with the satisfaction of doing something yourself–of growing something from a seedling to a ripe fruit, picking it and turning it into something else. Not only is it satisfying on its own, every time you use the results of your efforts over the next year, that satisfaction from a little bit of self-sufficiency returns to you. Besides–as good as the store bought versions taste–the homemade ones are better.

The version I made last year was fairly tame, but very flavorful, since I made it with red New Mexico chilies, serranos and cayennes. This year’s version was made with my own Thai chilies and two types of cayenne, both bought from the Farmer’s Market. I put together mixed red chilies with fresh garlic, also from the Farmer’s Market, with some salt, some sugar and some locally made apple cider vinegar (rice vinegar is more traditional, but apple cider vinegar is local and works fine, too), and ground it all into a thick paste in the food processor.

While grinding the chilies, it is a good idea to put the vent hood on in your kitchen and open the windows, especially if you are using really hot chilies. Otherwise, you might find it hard to breathe, and if you have asthma, the capsaicin in the air my trigger an attack of wheezing. So, keep your albuterol handy, and keep the ventilation going, even if it is cold outside. Better to put on a jacket and breathe, I say!

After everything is ground together, I add more vinegar–enough to make the sauce somewhat fluid–it thins as it ages–and then I stir it all up well. Once it is stirred, I scrape the resulting sauce into a jar, screw on or lock down the lid and let it sit on my counter for a day in a slightly warm place. After that, I let it finish aging in the refrigerator–it is ready to eat in about a week, but it tastes best after a month. I still have a tiny bit of the gallon I made last fall, and it is divine; this batch will be hotter, but with an amazing garlicky aroma from the hardy German garlic I used this time around.

I use this Chinese chile-garlic sauce in lots of my stir-fries, and Zak loves to put a big spoonful into his ramen. It can be used to spice anything up, but I like it best in my Chinese recipes–it tastes better than any store-bought version I have ever had. The chile fragrance is just amazing, and the garlic is much more pronounced than the commercially made types.

Of course, this is not the only way to preserve the chile harvest. I also made kimchi Hunan salted chilies and frozen chilies. Last year, I also made kimchi-style cucumber pickles, which I just opened two nights ago. WOW, were they amazingly good–they tasted great on bulgogi burgers with lettuce, tomatoes, homemade chile-garlic sauce and ketchup. I also discovered that I really like just snacking on these pickles, when I need a pick-me-up during the day. They sure are an eye-opener.

But this recipe is probably the easiest to manage for a beginning pepper preserver. While the Hunan salted chilies are technically simpler, having only two ingredients, I have heard from folks who have had them go awry. This can happen with lactic acid fermentation, so if you are wary of losing a batch of chilies to the problem of not enough salt and rot, I suggest you try this sauce. The vinegar keeps everything chilled out and fresh.

Chinese Chile-Garlic Sauce
Ingredients:

Mine lasts about a year if properly refrigerated.

Water chestnuts are not locally grown here in Ohio, at least, not that I know of.

But, when they are fresh, they are truly divine, and I will buy them even if they were grown in California or Florida. Not only will I buy them, but I will buy several pounds of them, and use them in stir fries for a week, and the truth is, they are so delectably crisp and nutty-sweet that none of us ever tire of them. They are just that delicious.

I like coming up with new recipes to use them in, because that is more fun than just making the same several recipes–as good as they are–over and over again.

With super fresh local chicken, cilantro, green garlic and scallions all from the farmer’s market, as well as some really fresh baby bok choy, I decided to put together a new twist on the Cilantro Chicken I posted about a few weeks ago.

Here, I substituted fresh water chestnuts for the carrots, and added the baby bok choy along with about a half teaspoon of freshly toasted, ground Sichuan peppercorns. I love the combination of the nutty-sweet water chestnuts and the shimmery, flowery fragrance and tongue-tingling taste of the Sichuan peppercorns. They are amazing together, and I have used them in both Five Fires Beef and Sichuan Chicken with Garlic Sauce. And while these recipes are delicious, and I love making them, there is always room for another stir-fry recipe in my kitchen!

Let’s talk a little bit about how to handle fresh water chestnuts before we go on to the recipe. They should look like the ones in the picture here–there should be no sign of mold–no blue green spots, nor fuzzy white spots. They should be plump and firm. Some of them are sold cleaned and shiny, and others have a thin or sometimes thick layer of mud on them–I have found that the mud actually helps keep mold from attacking them. The shiny ones can have mold on the inside that you cannot detect until you start peeling them. The mud seems to seal any cracks in the skin that allow mold entry to the sweet interior flesh.

Store them loosely wrapped in the fridge for only a few days–five at the most–before using them. When you are ready to peel them, rinse them well, then cut off the top and bottom, and with a sharp paring knife, carve off the peel along the diameter of the chestnut. If you see any spots with blue mold or bright yellow flesh inside, cut those portions away, or if it is a big amount, toss that chestnut. The flesh should be bright white with the texture of fresh coconut–it should be quite firm. When you bite into them raw–and I suggest it–they are super crisp and VERY sweet, like the best candy in the world.

After they are peeled, rinse them again to get any flecks of peel off, and then slice them however you like. I tend to cut them into squarish slices, not rounds, just because it is easier to set them on the flat bottom or top and slice through that way than to set them on the round edge and cut round slices.

One other note on this recipe–I use fresh Thai chilies in it, but you don’t have to use chilies at all, or you can use dry Chinese or Thai chilies instead. You can add more chilies, or less, to your taste–I like a little bit of them, just to add zing that balances the sweetness of the water chestnuts. I like more garlic than ginger in this recipe, but if you want, you could make it the other way around. I will put my foot down and insist on scallions instead of onions for this stir-fry, though. Scallions have a green sharpness that goes perfectly with the cilantro and bok choy and really boosts the fresh flavor of the dish. Onions would be too strong.

Okay, enough stalling. Here is the recipe for you, which I hope you try and enjoy.

And remember, if you cannot get fresh water chestnuts, try using jicama instead. It has the same texture and a similar, if not quite as sweet flavor. Canned water chestnuts just won’t do for this recipe, so just pass on them this time around.

Oh, and one more thing–if you want to do a vegetarian version of this recipe, wheat gluten, also known as seitan, makes a great substitute for the chicken.

Cilantro Chicken with Fresh Water Chestnuts and Baby Bok Choy
Ingredients:

Serve immediately with steamed rice.

This is one of those easy to put together, simple stir-fries which has a minimum of ingredients but a maximum of flavor that make it perfect for a quick dinner after work.

While this is an original recipe, I didn’t come up with the idea myself; I based it on a dish I had at China Fortune here in Athens the other week.

Their version had tiny cubes of chicken breast and thigh, coated in cornstarch and deep fried until crispy. Then, they were stir fried with scallion, garlic, ginger and chilies with a thick, dark brown sauce. At the end, a large amount of roughly chopped cilantro leaves and stems were added, and stir fried until they wilted.

The main flavors are the cilantro, garlic and chilies, and I wanted to do a version that was similar, but with a lighter, less thick sauce, and without the extra step and added fat of deep-frying. I also wanted to add a vegetable so that I could get away with serving it after work without having to go through the added effort of making a second vegetable dish.

And since everyone in our household loves carrots, and their brilliant orange color would go beautifully with the green cilantro, they seemed like a natural choice. Of course, you could add a different vegetable, or entirely leave out the vegetation, with the exception of the cilantro and aromatics.

So, without further blather, he is another simple Chinese stir fry, from my kitchen to yours.

Cilantro Chicken
Ingredients:

Serve immediately with steamed rice.

On a cold winter night, when the weather is blustery and damp, there is nothing that warms myself and my family up more than a bowl of za jiang mein–Chinese wheat noodles tossed with a hearty, spicy-sweet meat and tofu sauce and topped with crisp raw or blanched vegetables.

And since last night, our weather changed from springlike back to winter, I promised everyone that I would make a big batch of what some folks call “Chinese Spaghetti,” and had my proposal greeted with much applause and acclaim.

There was only one problem.

I wasn’t in the mood for meat.

I wanted mushrooms.

So, I thought to myself, “Is there any reason I couldn’t make a thick, somewhat chunky sauce like the za jiang meat sauce, but instead of meat, use mushrooms?”

I decided that there was absolutely no reason in the world I couldn’t or shouldn’t do that, so I did, although I also still made a batch of the meaty version for everyone else. I -had- promised, and besides, not everyone in this house loves mushrooms as much as I do.

Now, I have to admit that while this sauce was inspired by the soybean-paste based za jiang sauce, I detoured considerably from the usual recipe while I was in the process of creation. I wanted something spicier than the usual, so I added both fresh and Hunan salted chilies, and there was some kale and collards in the fridge that looked ever so tasty, so I chopped them finely and added them. And then, after those additions, I found that at the end of cooking, I needed to add a slosh of Chianking black vinegar (you can use balsamic if you don’t have the Chianking); the sour note balanced the spicy-hot chilies and slightly bitter greens to perfection.

The original sauce often includes tiny cubes of pressed tofu which are probably there to add a textural interest as well as to stretch the meat and make it go farther without lightening up the recipe considerably. (It is supposed to be warming, stick-to-your-ribs fare–after all, it is a dish common around Beijing which is not in the least bit balmy in the wintertime.) I kept these little cubes because I love them, but I also added about three ounces of crumbled, unpressed extra firm tofu that I marinated in dark soy sauce. This served two purposes: it boosted the protein level of the dish, and it helped mimic the texture of the meat sauce, without being as heavy.

I used two types of mushrooms in the sauce as well–if I had more varieties, I would have used them. For the bulk of the sauce, I used regular fresh button mushrooms, which I minced up finely, as if I was making duxelles, and fresh shiitake mushrooms, which I diced into 1/4″ pieces, to add textural variety. I could also have used rehydrated dried shiitake, but I had fresh ones on hand, so that is what went into the pot. These mushrooms were cooked together after I had thoroughly browned an onion with the chilies and some fermented black beans. With the mushrooms went finely minced garlic, ginger and scallion, and as the liquid cooked down and the mushrooms began to brown and stick to the pan, I deglazed with a good splash of Shao Hsing wine, although dry sherry would have worked just as well. After that, in went the two types of tofu to cook for a minute or two before the chopped greens went in.

As soon as the collards and kale turned from dull pine green to emerald, I tossed some soy sauce, a dab of ground bean sauce and hoisin sauce, and a sprinkle of sugar into the pan with a scant 1/4 cup of vegetable broth. A bare teaspoon of cornstarch and water slurry thickened the sauce after it cooked for a minute or so, and at the very end, two big handfuls of cilantro were stirred in along with a few drops of sesame oil and the tablespoon of vinegar.

How did it taste?

It ended up rich, redolent with the dark mystery of mushrooms, and sparkling with chile heat and the bittersweet kiss of winter greens. The vinegar gave it just the last fillip of tang it needed to enter the realm of deliciousness, while the cilantro added a fresh liveliness that is hard to resist.

It was just as good as the usual za jiang mein with meat, although, after I was done with it, it tasted considerably different, being as I used less soybean pastes and sugar and more chilies. It was lovely, though, and satisfied that mushroom longing I had, without being heavy and overly filling.

It was good stuff. I will be making it again–although since I was the only one eating this batch, I can either freeze the leftovers or use them in a Chinese rice noodle stir fry for lunch, or toss them with ramen or rice. We’ll see. Any of those options would taste wonderful.

One more thing–if I had thought of it, I would have used mushroom soy sauce for this dish–it has the essence of dried shiitake mushrooms in it. That would have ruled!

There is always the next time, though….

Chinese Wheat Noodles With Mushroom-Tofu Sauce
Ingredients:

Toss immediately with freshly boiled, well drained, steaming hot Chinese wheat noodles (I used dried–fresh would be great, too), and add any jullienned raw or blanched vegetable garnish you would like–I used carrots, but you could use sweet red, green or any color you like bell pepper, seeded cucumber, radish, daikon, kohlrabi. It is all good.