We made these two dishes. One Chinese: Ginger-Scallion Chicken, one old school: Date and Walnut Bars. Both were excellent. When we eat out a Chinese Restaurants we always skip dessert (can't stand the bean curd). We augmented the recipe by adding some Cashews. A little crunch in the food always helps! Here we got the best of both worlds: Home made Chinese and an excellent dessert!
Ginger-Scallion Chicken
New York Times
In this easy chicken stir-fry, adapted from Lan Hing Riggin, a home cook from Virginia who grew up cooking with her family in Hong Kong, slivers of ginger and scallions turn golden, adding their sweetness and pungency to the oil. A dash of soy sauce provides saltiness and depth, while a full cup of cilantro leaves, used as garnish, makes the dish a bit lighter and fresher. Fire seekers can add a sliced chile or two along with the ginger.
Ingredients
2 large scallions, trimmed
¼ cup peanut oil, or neutral oil such as grapeseed or sunflower, more as necessary
1-¾ pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs or breasts, cut into 1-inch chunks
½ teaspoon kosher salt, as needed
1 cup roughly chopped cilantro leaves and tender stems
1 (2 1/2-inch) piece ginger, cut into thin matchsticks (about 3 tablespoons)
3 tablespoons soy sauce
Preparation
1. Cut the scallions in quarters lengthwise, then cut crosswise into 1 1/2-inch-long pieces. You should end up with thin blades of scallions. Separate out the dark green tops from the pale green and white parts. (You don’t have to be very thorough; some mixing of colors is fine.)
2. Heat oil in a wok or 12-inch skillet over very high heat. When it’s shimmering but not smoking, stir in chicken and salt. Cook, stirring almost constantly, until chicken is barely cooked and no longer pink, 3 to 5 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer chicken onto a serving plate, leaving the oil in the pan. Immediately scatter cilantro and scallion greens (not whites) over hot chicken.
3. Return wok to medium-high heat. Make sure there are at least 2 tablespoons oil in the wok. If not, add more oil. Stir in ginger and cook until lightly browned, about 1 minute. Stir in scallion whites, soy sauce and sugar, and cook for another 30 seconds (if using a skillet, remove from heat). Immediately spoon the contents of the pan evenly over chicken and herbs. Serve right away.
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These Date-and-Walnut Bars Are Food for the Gods
New York Times
At the end of each school year, Margarita Manzke and her seven siblings piled into the family car in Manila, where her father ran a fish-sauce factory, to drive to her mother’s resort in Subic Bay, on the west coast of Luzon, about two hours away. They spent summers there, not swimming and sunbathing like other families on vacation from the city. Not bobbing down the waves on boogie boards, or falling asleep under umbrellas with books in one hand and drinks in the other. Even as a teenager, Manzke was an entrepreneur. And summertime, free from the structure of daily classes and homework, was for one thing, and one thing only: engaging in the sport of friendly competition with her brothers and sisters.
One summer, Manzke and her siblings learned to burn sugar to make the dark, sweet base for homemade sago at gulaman, the drink full of tapioca pearls and jellies. One of her brothers sold these chilled, at a prized location, to the sweaty, thirsty tourists that packed the beach. Big deal! Manzke paid a local butcher to slaughter three whole pigs and roast the meat so she could sell plates of crisp-skinned lechon to the same hungry beachgoers. When one of her sisters turned an empty cottage on the resort property into a makeshift bakery — a cache of sweets and layered cakes — Manzke leveled up, learning to make chocolate cakes filled with a soft custardy center and draw her own regular customers. Their father encouraged the children to be creative with their businesses to earn money for the school year, but they didn’t require much encouragement. “It was so fun,” Manzke said. “I look back and laugh, because I was really kind of insane.”
By the time Manzke was in high school, she’d turned her attention to a book of Filipino desserts and sweets — a thin pamphlet, less than 50 pages long, that she found in the kitchen. It didn’t look like much, but in it, she found a recipe for the golden-colored date-and-walnut bars known in the Philippines as food for the gods. The sweet is especially popular around Christmas, when it’s sold in individually wrapped squares, like tiny fruitcakes. All December, at home in Manila, Manzke made batches of the bars after school, then woke up at 4 a.m. to pack them in the cute boxes she built out of pieces of corrugated cardboard, glue and dark green paint.
Some batches softer. Manzke liked the bars especially tender and chewy, packed with fruit and nuts. And as she refined the technique, based on the basic recipe in the pamphlet, more and more orders came in from her friends, and her friends’ parents, and her parents’ friends. She baked every day to keep up. “It was a lot of trial and error,” said Manzke, who noticed that creaming the butter too much, or using a light hand with the dates, would push the bars toward a more caky texture. Like any pastry chef in the making, she was now in a sweet, ongoing competition with herself, comparing each batch with the previous ones, and slowly moving toward an ideal.
Manzke went on to culinary school, then moved to Los Angeles to work in restaurant kitchens. She sells her perfected date-and-walnut bars at République, the Los Angeles restaurant and bakery she runs with her husband, Walter, where the pastry case is packed each morning with strawberry-pistachio tarts, banana-Nutella crostatas and big chocolate-chip cookies. If you can’t get there, you can make them at home: Cut the dates nice and big. Keep an eye on the butter and sugar, so the mixture doesn’t get overly pale and airy. And don’t skimp on the fruit and nuts. If you follow Manzke’s simple techniques, you’ll get the chewiness that makes the bars so special on your very first try.
Date-and-Walnut Bars
YIELD About 24 bars
TIME1 hour
This recipe for golden, chewy, date-and-walnut-packed bars comes from the Los Angeles pastry chef Margarita Manzke, who grew up in the Philippines and now runs the sweet side of the kitchen at République. When she was in high school, Manzke came across the classic recipe for “food for the gods” in a thin pamphlet of Filipino desserts, and she made the bars again and again, learning how to produce a consistently tender, chewy batch: Don’t overcream the butter, and don’t use a light hand with the dates. Manzke sells fresh bars at République, but know that at home the cooled, cut bars store well in the freezer, ready to pop out and defrost at a moment's notice.
Ingredients
2-⅔ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon kosher salt
4 cups large Medjool dates, pitted and roughly chopped into 1/2-inch pieces
1 pound unsalted butter (4 sticks), at room temperature
2-⅓ packed cups dark brown sugar
¼ cup granulated sugar
6 eggs
2-⅓ cups walnuts, roughly chopped
Preparation
Heat the oven to 325, and line a 13-by-18-inch sheet pan with parchment paper. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl until well mixed and no lumps remain. Tip about 1/2 cup of the flour mixture into a medium bowl; add the dates, and toss well to coat, breaking up the dates as you go. Set aside.
In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter with both sugars just until smoothly incorporated, about 2 minutes on medium speed. Add the eggs in 3 batches, mixing well each time and scraping down the sides of the bowl and the paddle between additions.
Add the flour mixture and date mixture, and mix gently on low just until incorporated. Remove the bowl from the mixer, and use a spatula to fold in the walnuts. Transfer the mixture to the parchment-lined sheet pan, and use an offset spatula to spread it in an even layer, pushing it into the edges and corners and smoothing the surface. Bake until brown and set, about 45 minutes.
Cool completely in the pan, then remove and cut into squares. Serve right away, or store in an airtight container for up to 5 days.
