Latest news with #KevinPang
New York Times
5 days ago
- Lifestyle
- New York Times
For a Better Stir-Fry, Velvet Your Chicken
I'll be honest — I am stubbornly Team Thighs 'n' Legs when it comes to chicken. But I do appreciate that there are applications where white meat is the better choice. I like to use chicken breasts (preferably with skin and breastbone) as the base for a chicken soup, or poached for cold salads. And while I'd normally reach for boneless, skinless thighs for stir-fries, the technique that Kevin Pang uses for his new butter-soy chicken and asparagus stir-fry has caught my eye. The technique, you might guess, is velveting. Velveting — a two-step process that involves marinating the meat in a cornstarch mixture and then blanching it in either oil or water — keeps the chicken breast slices from drying out and helps the soy-butter sauce cling better. I'll make this dish with asparagus while it's in season, and then switch to green beans or snap peas. Kevin doesn't add anything spicy to his stir-fry, but I wouldn't say no to some spoonfuls of — all together now — chile crisp. Featured Recipe View Recipe → Speaking of soy sauce and chile crisp: We recently published this very handy guide to which condiments belong in the fridge and which are plenty happy in your pantry. It's both informative and good for settling arguments. Here's the tl;dr version: Sesame salmon bowls: This Kay Chun one-pot recipe, inspired by chirashi, combines vinegared rice with just-cooked salmon, crunchy vegetables and a soy vinaigrette. If you have any furikake, I'd sprinkle some on the rice before assembling your bowl. Pasta with green bean ragù: From the wizard who brought us gochujang buttered noodles and a glorious pasta al pomodoro comes this rich, stick-to-your-bones pasta that still feels summery. Eric Kim, always. Easy chickpea salad: Any recipe that includes za'atar gets my attention (and yes, I am fully committed to this za'atar and labneh spaghetti). Kristina Felix's potluck-perfect dish includes cucumbers, red onion, tomato, lemon, fresh herbs and that lovely, sumac-y spice mix. Pistachio halvah Rice Krispies treats: I mean, the name kind of says it all, doesn't it? A delightful recipe adapted by Lisa Donovan from Shilpa and Miro Uskokovic, who opened Hani's Bakery and Café in Manhattan in 2024.
New York Times
20-02-2025
- General
- New York Times
Hainan Chicken Rice Might Just Be My Favorite Chicken Dish
Do you have a dish you love so much that you collect recipes for it? Something that you always want to eat, that always sounds good. So good that you look for different versions, noting their similarities and differences, trying them all to see which one you like best, which version is the ideal version for that day, for your energy level, for what you have in the fridge and pantry. I have several gotta-cook-'em-all dishes, and they're all chicken-and-rice-based: chicken adobo, Japanese-style chicken curry and, my current muse, Hainan chicken rice. Unlike adobo or curry, which essentially simmer away after a meager amount of prep, Hainan chicken rice can involve a lot of steps. None of them are difficult, but they can eat up an afternoon, making it the perfect thing for a winter weekend. The yield is fantastic: perfect, succulent chicken that's had an aromatic soak with ginger, scallions and garlic; soothing chicken soup; rice that's been cooked in some of said soup with pandan leaves; and a sparkly ginger-scallion sauce. Hainan chicken rice is maybe my favorite chicken dish — nourishing but not heavy, comforting but not cloying. And the elements branch out into helpful leftovers. The rice becomes fried rice, of course; the chicken goes into any number of applications; the soup is stock for stew (or curry!); and the ginger-scallion sauce is tossed with noodles for a stellar lunch. All of which is to say: I'm very excited to add Kevin Pang's recipe to my collection. Featured Recipe View Recipe → Before we move on, I want to call out Genevieve Ko's ginger scallion chicken and rice and Sue Li's chicken and rice with scallion-ginger sauce as excellent Hainan chicken rice shortcuts. They both feature gently cooked chicken with fragrant rice and a ginger-scallion situation, but with total cook times that wouldn't feel insane on a Wednesday. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
South China Morning Post
30-01-2025
- General
- South China Morning Post
How ginger transforms dishes, from China to Chicago
As a child, second-generation Chinese-American food writer Kevin Pang did not like mistakenly biting into slices of ginger in the food his mother prepared. 'It is thick and meaty. It's these coins that you find in braised dishes, and when you bite into it, there's nothing pleasant about it. It burns, it's woody, it's fibrous, you can't chew through it. And that was sort of my introduction to ginger,' he says in a video call from Chicago. 'As a kid, with a very undeveloped palate, and when everything is a lot more sensitive, a food as strong as ginger is not something that I necessarily thought, 'Oh, great – thanks Mum for including ginger in this recipe,'' he recalls. But as Pang, now the co-author of A Very Chinese Cookbook , got older, he began to appreciate how this spice added another flavour dimension to dishes. Jeffrey Pang, co-author with Kevin Pang of A Very Chinese Cookbook, with a dish of lobster with ginger and scallions 'It might be one of those things where you appreciate it more as you age, as you develop a palate, as you realise that, no, you're not really eating ginger whole, you're not biting into it, but it has numerous applications,' he says. Pang calls ginger and garlic 'besties' when stir-frying vegetables like bok choy and gai lan, and ginger is essential in beef dishes – from marinating ground beef with ginger juice, to adding large slices or coins of ginger when braising chunks of meat, which Pang says adds dimensions of spiciness and herbaceousness to the dish. When impressing his non-Chinese friends, he likes to make ginger scallion sauce by chopping scallions, grating ginger and then pouring hot oil on them, which creates a compelling sizzle and a strongly fragrant scent. Crystallised ginger. 'I like the aroma that it kicks up from the scallion and the ginger, and the fact that it bubbles and boils. It's alchemy – this very magical moment where [the oil] wakes up the aroma. And my friends always say, 'That smells incredible.'
