1) I am in love with my new cutting tools! Friday my friend Amy gave me a present out of the blue. It's a double-bladed mezzaluna. If you're not a total foodie geek like I am you might not know what it is but see it there on the left. It's a curved set of two blades with handles on either end so you can rock it back and forth and cut things. It's so great for herbs and other stuff you just want to rough chop. Tonight it was glorious for finely chopping up ginger after I had cut it into tiny strips with my new Martha Stewart knife my mom gave me for Christmas! Good knives make Kim a happy cook.
2) I went to the store tonight and was checking out the sweet & sour sauces. I wanted to see if there was any upscale sauce with that kind of idea...something fresh...something new...not red and sticky. I couldn't really find anything exactly but I did see a fancy almost $5 bottle of this Tangy Ginger Sauce by Chinablue. I read the ingredients: Cider vinegar, Sugar, Ginger, Soy sauce. I thought, "Hmmm...I bet I could make that." So tonight I decided to use my noggin to plug around the internet and I found the recipe written by the founder of Chinablue himself! It was so insanely easy I made it in a few minutes. Joy!
3) When I went to take a picture tonight of my sauce and the mezzaluna I couldn't find Ryan's camera anywhere! I called him at band practice only to find out he brought it with him. :( Then I remembered my new and beautiful crazy green phone that has a much better camera than my last 80-year old phone. The best part? I took the photo and then Bluetoothed it to my computer! AH! I know this is dorky but I'm new to the Bluetooth scene. I'm just totally in awe of how completely cool it is. No emailing it! No burning disks! Fantastic!
Here's the recipe for that sauce, by the way:
Tangy Ginger Sauce
from Richard Wong's Modern Asian Flavors
Ingredients:
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
7 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1/4 cup very finely minced peeled fresh ginger
Makes about 1 cup
Heat the vinegar, sugar, and soy sauce together in a small pan just until the sugar has melted. Pour the mixture into a bowl, add the ginger, stir well, and refrigerate until cold. The sauce will keep, tightly covered, for several days in the refrigerator.
Notes from the chef:
This is a variation on our family's dipping sauce for steamed, fresh crab Its clean, tart-and-sweet flavor enhances the crab's sweet meatiness. It is one of the first sauces I created for my company, chinablue. Tangy Ginger Sauce is great as a dressing the greens or fruit salads, to pour over vegetables, or to marinate salmon, or as a sauce for steamed, grilled, or baked fish. The sauce gives flavor to simple stir-fry dishes when added for the last few minutes of cooking. The flavor is a great inspiration for desserts as well. The recipe may he doubled.
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