…if what they want is GOOD food.

I don’t quite know how it happened, but somehow I got a cold in the middle of August. While San Francisco isn’t exactly known for it’s sweltering summers, I found myself craving something that would warm me to the core and nourish me at the same time. Recalling the virtues of chicken noodle soup, I figured I would try my hand at creating a chinese-style broth infused with the healing qualities of garlic and ginger. So, with a batch of homemade chicken stock in the freezer and a handful of asian ingredients and cooking techniques, I set out to create a soup that would have me feeling healthy again in no time.

Drawing inspiration from Barbara Tropp’s iconic, China Moon Cookbook, I began by making a simple “infusion” that would serve as the backbone of my soup. The long, slow simmering of copious amounts of roasted garlic and other aromatics imbue the broth with a rich and savory quality while the basil stems thrown in during the last fifteen minutes of simmering add a beautiful floral finish. Once infused, the broth is good enough to eat by itself, but I was feeling a bit adventurous, and wanted to add some protein and vitamins. Using a technique called “velveting,” the marinated chicken breast is only partially cooked in simmering water before it is drained and finished in the soup. The pieces end up being juicy, extremely tender and pleasantly salty. Finished with some shiitake mushrooms, baby bok choy, spinach and a good pinch of Szechwan pepper-salt, I had a soup that is as delicious as it is healthy.

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I can’t say I blame most chefs when they say that they would choose a perfectly roasted chicken as their last meal on earth. There is something intoxicating about the aroma of well roasted bird with crackling crisp skin and juicy, tender meat. Maybe that’s why there’s a half mile long line at the farmer’s market waiting to get one of Thomas Odermatt’s now famous RoliRoti birds.  That being said, sometimes I want something a little different.

Recently, after purchasing a beautiful organic Rosie chicken from the supermarket, I looked into my rapidly aging spice drawer and realized that it was time to make use of some of them before it they lost all of their flavor. Knowing I wanted to roast the bird whole, I found a great recipe on Epicurious.com for a chicken roasted in a Moroccan style. With the key ingredient in the dish being the spice blend Ras Al-Honout, I turned to Marcus Samuelsson’s book The Soul of a New Cuisine for a recipe. An extremely heady, aromatic blend of cinnamon, turmeric, nutmeg, cardamom and cloves, the Ras Al-Hanout lends the dish a truly exotic and authentic quality, miles away in flavor from your typical weeknight roasted chicken dinner.

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Learning to stir-fry properly has taken me a very long time. In fact, I still have a ways to go. What is seemingly the easiest and quickest way to cook is in fact quite difficult to do well.  We’ve all done it at one point or another: soggy, partially cooked vegetables, under-browned meat with no flavor and heavy, copious amounts of grease. No, stir-frying isn’t as easy as Martin Yan and Rachel Ray might have us believe after all. But if you can remember a few simple rules, you can see results on par with some of the best asian takeout spots in your neighborhood.

Simply put, you need to bring the heat. From the second the first item goes into your pan to last moment before it’s plated, you must have your wok or skillet on the largest burner cranked-up as high as it will go. While this might seem intimidating at first, keep in mind that this intense heat will render the most authentic end-product; it’s the closest we home cooks can get to the insane amount of heat created by a 300,000 BTU wok station at a Chinese restaurant.

This recipe is a great one to get your feet wet with high heat stir-frying. Once your prep work is done, this meal comes together in a matter of minutes. Delicious, crispy pork blends perfectly with the crunch of cashews and a floral hit of mint and basil. Salty fish sauce and the bright tang of lime juice and zest elevate the dish beyond your humdrum takeout order, adding a taste that is both pleasant and unique.

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