uummmmmmami!

wow! a photo of my lunch, I can't even remember the last time I managed this kind of post.

so...I'm nearly out of my first trimeseter of pregnancy, and I'm not feeling nauseated all the time. I'm still sleepy most of the time, but that definitely beats feeling like I'm about to vomit (all the time - morning sickness is a misnomer).

I should have known back when I created the burrito post that I was pregnant, but instead I just thought I'd never really appreciated HOW good burritos are. anyway, I've gotten over that craving, and have moved on to craving home cooked Chinese food. oh, and Chinese dim sum foods. well, maybe not all dim sum, but specifically radish cake (lo boa gao).

I think it means that I've been missing my mom & dad more than ever (pregnancy will do that to you). thank goodness I took the time to learn about 1/100 of my mom's repertoire of dishes. I really wish I'd learned more, but I suppose a handful of dishes is better than none at all.

last night I worked up the courage to steam a chicken. steamed chicken probably sounds crazy to most people, but Chinese people love a good steamed chicken. the biggest bonus, aside from how tender and fresh it tastes, is how easy it is to prepare. I'd never done it before, but then I've always had it whenever I saw my mom. plus, for some reason I was scared to use my steamer as anything other than a rice cooker. I watched my mom use hers for all sorts of things, but I never ventured beyond rice.

all I had to do to prepare the chicken was wash it, pat it dry, and salt it. then, I put the chicken into my steamer with some sliced ginger and scallion. an hour & fifteen minutes later, I had a delicious, steamed chicken in my kitchen.

my steamer is white, not red, but otherwise it looks like the one in the photo, above.

the traditional dipping sauce for the chicken is where everything gets all umami. I grated a big chunk of ginger, minced about 3/4 of a good-sized scallion, and mixed them together in a small stoneware bowl with some msg and salt. YES! MSG! (Jeffrey Steingarten has a great article on the much maligned additive, titled something like, "Does Everyone in China Have a Headache All the Time?" it's in his book, The Man Who Ate Everything). my mom was always giving me little bags of MSG from Taiwan but I'd never used any. I grew up with it in her cooking, and never felt sick. like I said, I'd never used it in my own cooking, but I did yesterday, and it was awesome. ok, getting back to the dipping sauce: to finish it, I heated a couple of tablespoons of oil in a small, thick-bottomed pot until it was smoking, then poured it over the spice mixture (hence the stoneware bowl). it sizzled and cooked the ginger/scallion combo and became really yummy. it's like chinese pesto! you can see little flecks of ginger and scallion in the photo at the top of this post.

for lunch today, I also had a little bit of okonomiyaki with okonomiyaki sauce and mayonnaise. it wasn't as umami as my chinese fare because I didn't have Kewpi brand mayo (I used Hellman's), but it was pretty darned good. okonomiyaki is, for the most part, a cabbage pancake. the one I had for lunch was topped with thinly sliced beef, but I like it better with seafood (John hates fishy things, so I don't add anything fishy to them when I make them at home). the other night at dinner, I topped mine with bonito flakes and seaweed, but I was too lazy to arrange all that this morning.

tonight I'm going to cook bitter melon with fermented black beans, ma po tofu (John's favorite), and baby bok choy (with ginger and salt - maybe I'll include a little MSG!). plus, I'm going to eat more of my steamed chicken!