Love2Chow

Tortellini Primavera with Smoked Salmon & Dill

April 20, 2020

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A Perfect Bowl of Hot and Sour Soup

April 05, 2020

Hot and Sour Soup 酸辣汤 is one of the most beloved Chinese restaurant soups. The gentle white pepper heat and vinegary tang are perfectly balanced in a velvety smooth broth, enlivened by delicious slivers of earthy ingredients and lacy egg. Its flexibility and comforting nature make Hot and Sour soup the perfect "shelter-at-home" dish. Following a trip to an Asian market to pick up shelf-stable pantry staples, you can enjoy this delicious soup any time!

While the specific ingredients, from dried to fresh mushrooms, bamboo shoots, carrots or different forms of tofu may vary, the medium-thick broth that suspends these earthy ingredients in Hot and Sour soup should always be peppery and warm with a pleasant vinegary "bite". In Chinese characters, the name of this exciting yet comforting soup 酸辣汤 (suān là tāng) literally means "sour spicy soup."

Shortcut to the vegetarian-friendly Love2Chow recipe.

By the 4th century BCE, in the late Zhou dynasty, Chinese concepts of the five flavors of spicy-hot, sweet, sour, bitter and salty were well recognized, and copiously discussed in ritual, political, moral, cosmological, medical and gustatory contexts. Food ingredients and flavors, particularly in soups, are regarded for their medicinal properties in correcting imbalances within the body.

While Beijing has its version of a peppery soup, most food historians believe Hot and Sour soup originated in Sichuan and the western region of China. It exemplifies the art of harmonizing strong, zesty flavors, which characterizes Sichuan cuisine. Indeed, hot and sour soup is famous for curing a Ming Dynasty Chinese official, Yu Qian, from a bad cold. When passing through Henan 河南, he ordered a Hot and Sour soup that caused him to sweat profusely, breaking his fever and clearing his sinuses by the next day.

Although Sichuan cuisine is well known for its hot dried red peppers, numbing Sichuan peppercorns, and many varieties of sour pickled vegetables, Hot and Sour soup has none of these ingredients. This may be because it predates the introduction of red Capsicum peppers from the Americas in the late 15th or early 16th centuries.

While Sichuan peppercorns from the prickly ash of the Zanthoxylum genus are native to that region of China, linguistic evidence suggests that peppercorns of the genus Piper were introduced to China via the Silk Road as the "foreign pepper" 胡椒 (hú jiāo). The adjective 胡 signifies an origin with non-Han ethnic groups to the north and west of China, or Eurasia. Sometime between the third and 12th centuries, these peppercorns became widely used in Chinese cuisine.

According to theories of traditional Chinese medicine, chicken broth is believed to confer healing qualities by showing warming effects. The black wood ear fungus, with its pleasing, almost crunchy texture, and ground peppercorns are believed to help boost circulation, while vinegar aids digestion. This homestyle soup may also contain cubes of coagulated fresh poultry blood, although this has fallen out of favor in modern times.

Hot and Sour soup commonly contains a triumverate of earthy, dried pantry staples believed to have healing qualities: dried wood ear mushrooms, dried shiitake or winter mushrooms, and dried daylily flowers called golden needles. The soaking water used to rehydrate these ingredients is very flavorful, and can be used to help flavor the soup, or reserved for use whenever a umami punch is desired.

Clockwise from top: rehydrated winter mushrooms or shiitakes, caps sliced thinly; rehydrated dried "wood ear" or "cloud ear" fungi, torn into bite sized pieces; rehydrated day lily buds, cut in half and shredded lengthwise.

Protein is traditionally added through cooked slivers of pork or chicken, and various forms of tofu. Most commonly strips of white, firm tofu or caramel-colored "dry tofu" are used along with yellow bamboo shoots for a multihued earthy palette, punctuated by lacy strands of egg, amber droplets of toasted sesame oil and fresh green scallions and cilantro, added just before serving.

While restaurant versions of this soup are often overly thickened with cornstarch or potato starch, making the soup at home guarantees a perfect consistency to your preference. You mix the starch in a bit of the mushroom soaking water, and add it by the tablespoon until the desired consistency is reached. In testing several recipes, I found myself loving the texture and lighter colors in Grace Young's recipe, which yields a delightfully subtle balance of flavors.

Hot and Sour soup from Wisdom of a Chinese Kitchen by Grace Young.

However, I preferred the stronger flavors of Bruce Cost's recipe, which is more similar to the best restaurant versions. This recipe contains strips of pork, which did not add much in the way of flavor, but often ended up tough and chewy if cooked according to that recipe. I also thought this recipe resulted in an insufficient amount of overly thickened broth, which should ideally form the heart of this warm and comforting soup. I modified the marinade for the pork (See Tips at bottom of post) to yield tender, tasty strips of pork, and adjusted the water levels and the amount of cornstarch for an improved texture.

Hot and Sour soup, modified from the Epicurious website by Bruce Cost, after adjusting recipe to improve the broth consistency.

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Dan dan noodles 擔擔面 with delicious meat or vegan toppings

March 23, 2020

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Travel

Pandemics and Travel Disruptions: Which companies have your back?

March 14, 2020

The past five days has been crazy. With colleges sending their students home (plus Daylight Saving time, full moons and Friday the 13th), we've spent long hours on hold cancelling Spring Break family vacation plans while driving a 28 h round trip to get our freshman home. Having to deal with 4 airlines, 10 flights (both kids had circle trips involving different cities), rental minivan, two hotels, and round trip tickets to two cancelled work meetings, it has become very clear which airlines we will be using in the future!

The airline winner: Delta Airlines.

Over the years, we had already found ourselves leaning towards Delta Airlines. This was partly because of the ease of searching for flights using dollars, frequent flier miles or a combination of miles + dollars on their website. We also liked the Delta app with its ability to follow the progress of your checked luggage to see if it made the airplane on tight connections. It is nicer to have time to be mentally prepared in the event of a luggage separation, or reassured that things will go smoothly in baggage claim at the other end.

Despite having bought all non-refundable tickets, we were able to get 100% of the price paid as a refund in the case of one round trip ticket, or a credit that can be used ~~within one year~~ by May 31, 2022 in the case of 5 other one way flight segments. All it took was about an hour on hold, and the agent was willing to work on our adult kids' itineraries in the same phone call. When we explained the trip was canceled due to coronavirus-related college closures, they took care of it and sent email confirmations with instructions on how to use the credits in the future.

To get the change fee waived, we will have to call the reservation in, as opposed to doing it online.

UPDATE: On April 3, 2020, Delta sent out an email informing us that we will have until May 31, 2022 to use the credit, and they are updating their website to show this extended expiration date.

The airline runner up: Spirit Airlines.

Spirit Airlines is designed for bare bones travel. They do not offer as many flights as other airlines, but do offer particularly useful non-stop flights that include mid-sized destinations. You have to pay for your overhead storage space separately, as only a small backpack or laptop bag is included. Moreover, you get the best rates for planning ahead and buying this space at the time of the online booking. For regular cancellations, the fee is $90/ticket if you do it online, and $100 if you call it in or cancel at the airport. Checking in online and getting your boarding pass using their app is free, with a small charge if you want to print it at the airport.

With that background, and the poor response I had already received from American (see below), I was not expecting much. Of all the companies we had to deal with, it was the hardest to get through to speak to an agent (or even to text or chat). So I was very pleasantly surprised, when I did get through after holding for 35-40 minutes from 7:15 am, to get the entire price paid as a credit, including the overhead bin space and advance seat assignment fees. This credit has to be reticketed within ~~six~~ 12 months~~, but you can fly up to a year afterwards.~~

While the time is shorter, any one of the three of us in the itinerary would be able to use the credit. Moreover, we can enter a code and view or use the credit online.

To top it off, after realizing their phone and text systems were both overwhelmed on Weds evening, they developed a mechanism to prioritize those with flights occurring within 24 h, followed by a special website to handle corona-virus related changes and credits for the rest of us. And yes, they did get back to me by text to let me know about the new link on Friday morning.

UPDATE: In January 2021, I checked to see if there was any chance my credit was still there. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they had extended the ticketing deadline to March 2021, with the flight having to be completed by May 31, 2021.

Not recommended: American Airlines, United Airlines, Avis

These three companies all sent out very misleading emails designed to give the impression they were making special provisions to accommodate passengers for COVID-19 related changes. But after sitting on hold for over an hour with each one, we were stuck with the usual cancellation/change fees due to narrow and technical interpretations of what type of changes are related to COVID-19.

In short, American and United said that COVID-related waivers are not applicable because: 1) the US government has not banned domestic travel to the US city in question, 2) we bought our tickets before March 5 at 9 am, and 3) university closures and meeting cancellations don't count as situations out of our control. To make things worse, their policies are to issue full credit, and then charge the change fee of $200 for American or $100 for United at the time the new ticket is purchased rather than deducting it at the time of cancellation.

Avis charged a $50 cancellation fee, again indicating the fee waivers will only apply if the US government bans domestic flights.

UPDATE 1:
On March 31, 2021 I received an email from American with a link to their revised COVID policy indicating:
If you:

Bought your ticket before March 1, 2020, for travel through May 31, 2020, you can rebook without change fees.
Booked your trip March 1 – April 30, 2020, for all future travel, you can also change your reservation at a later date without change fees.

Although United did not send a message, I checked their COVID policy page and noted:

If you're scheduled to travel March 10 – April 30, 2020 and would like to change your plans, there is no fee to do so, regardless of when you purchased your ticket or where you're traveling. This is in addition to our previous waiver, which waives all change fees – domestic and international – for tickets purchased March 3 – March 31, 2020.
For more information visit https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly/travel/notices.html.

Interestingly, this was dated March 10, prior to when we called to cancel our tickets on March 13, but the agents did not seem to know about the policy and informed us usual change fees would apply.

UPDATE 2: In March 2022, I received an email from American that they had extended my unused flight credit to be valid for ticketing until Sept. 30, 2022 for travel through December 2022. This was a smart strategy, as I had resigned myself to losing that money as I did not plan to fly American anymore. The process of using the flight credit in July 2022 was very straightforward on their website, but I ended up calling the agent, because I was booking flights for both myself and my husband and the flight credit could only be used to support my travel. I was pleasantly surprised when the balance (my new flight was less expensive than the flight affected by COVID), was issued as a new flight credit expiring in July 2023, and the agent automatically applied that second credit to my husband's flight.

Travel insurance? Useless.

I have always been suspicious of travel insurance, because if you read the fine print, so many situations that might come up are excluded. One of my flights was bought with a credit card that offered Trip Cancellation/Interruption Insurance. After sitting on hold with the credit card number, the first agent heard my situation and confirmed that the cancellation fee losses should be covered. She transferred me to a second agent, after an even longer hold, who asked a few more screening questions and also thought it was clearly a covered cancellation for a situation that I had no control over. He tried to transfer me to a third person for filing the claim, but I ended up in a phone tag situation over 3 days. When I finally got through to her, she said, "We don't cover any coronavirus-related interruptions." I asked her how they could have possibly known about the coronavirus at the time the policy was issued to cardholders. She replied, "We don't cover anything related to viruses." Yet, the policy clearly states that interruptions due to illness, which may certainly be viral in nature, are covered.

Tips:

🐾 Quick reference. Delta Customer Service 800-221-1212. Listen to recording for the number to call for cancellations.

🐾 Calling early in the morning was key to getting through to Spirit Airlines. The airline has now set up an online option for coronavirus-related changes, which should speed things up dramatically. http://bit.ly/Spirit_TravelAlert. 801-401-2222 (phone or WhatsApp); text 487-63.

🐾 With American, you can put your preferred flights on a 24 h hold, which saves the price and seat assignments. Then you can call them if you want to pay through a mixture of flight credits and other mechanisms.

DID YOU HAVE A GOOD OR BAD EXPERIENCE WITH TRAVEL DISRUPTIONS?

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Tag @love2chowblog and hashtag it #love2chow

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My Dad's Chili Mac -- a rediscovered crowd pleaser

March 06, 2020

At almost every family gathering, from ski weekends to Labor Day at the lake, my nieces and nephews have come to expect a delicious, cheesy beef macaroni casserole in a slightly tart-sweet chili tomato sauce. Part of my own childhood memories, the dish was lost for 30 years until a chance conversation with our children's nanny...

Tart, slightly sweet, tomato sauce with lots of cheese, complemented nicely with Sriracha for a bit of extra heat

Shortcut to the Love2Chow recipe.
In the late 1970's, my father was inspired by a short squat jar of "Old-Fashioned Chili Sauce" to create this mild, beef chili macaroni dish. It was a huge hit! My dad was so proud, amazing his friends when their kids, who were too picky to eat anything other than frozen chicken nuggets or hot dogs, eagerly consumed my dad's potluck dish. Before I went to college, I got the recipe from him and tried to make it. However, we could no longer find the right sweet-tangy old fashioned chili sauce, and the dish just was not the same.

Shortly before Christmas in 2004, I was reminiscing about this dish with our nanny from Utah. It turned out that she knew of a yummy chili sauce in a short squat jar that her dad used for sloppy joe sandwiches. She brought back a jar for me to try, and it was exactly the same shaped jar with the same type-face on the lid. Instead of "Old-Fashioned" it has been rebranded as "Homade Chili Sauce." As soon as I opened it, I knew it was the same sauce from my childhood. I made Chili Mac as a surprise for my sister, and she recognized it at once!

It turns out the sauce can be still be purchased in grocery stores in at least Utah and Indiana. I scoured the internet and found that I could also mail order it by the case. It was made by Ventura Foods in Cerritos, CA, and then later acquired by Allied Old English in NJ.

In my own version, I have cut back the meat by half and added zucchini and/or yellow squash and/or carrots. It becomes a complete meal with all the food groups. At one gathering, my sister-in-laws thought that some of their kids would never eat anything with any vegetables in it and that I should leave out the zucchini. But I had been adding vegetables for years, and their kids had already been happily eating large quantities of it! Nevertheless, I started grating instead of chopping the zucchini.