First attempt at asian cooking.

So bright and early this morning my mother and I began our wild goose chase for bok choy, Szechuan peppercorns, and sunflower oil. Bok choy was spotted successfully and attained at approximately 11:30 this morning at Wal-mart. We snagged the last two heads. They may not have been in the best shape, but hey. It was bok choy. I was shocked we could even find it, honestly. This is Louisiana haha, our cabbage is Amurrcan (phonetic spelling). Szechuan peppercorns and sunflower oil, however, we weren't so lucky. We rummaged around the grocery store and Wal-mart for appropriate substitutions, and then we returned home to begin the fun stuff: cookin!

Today I took on niu rou mian and jiaozi. My parents have been wanting to try some authentic Chinese food since I returned from China, and authentic Chinese food exists at neither Lucky Village nor China Star, our local Chinese buffets. My only option was to cook it, which was perfectly fine with me. I found the recipes through foodgawker, the most ballin website ever. The niu rou mian recipe I used (which was delish, by the way) can be found here at Noodle Fever, and the jiaozi recipe is here at Soy and Pepper. Great blogs, folks!

This culinary adventure began with beef shank, green onions, ginger, and water. Made a fiiiine smelling broth for the niu rou mian. I seriously just couldn't stop smelling it. I think it was the ginger... haha I walked around the kitchen holding a ginger root to my nose for a good few minutes before we started the broth. 

Seasonings for the niu rou mian, including star anise, garlic, ginger, chili bean paste, and gimpy "assorted" peppercorns (because Szechuan peppercorns do not exist here; sad day). The star anise seriously gave me the noms for some black licorice.

The seasoning paste sizzling in the skillet. It smelled so good I was this close to poppin that spoon in my mouth and closing up shop with a big bowl of seasoning paste in my lap.

Once the seasoning paste was safely in the broth, I had a few hours to kill. So I decided.... what the heck, let's make fresh noodles. After coating about 20 different utensils and dishes with flour, this was my finished product (before they were cooked). They're a little rough around the edges, but I was very very proud of them. I had my chest puffed out and was strutting around the kitchen like I was somethin... until I started making dumpling wrappers, which kicked my butt.

The aforementioned mess. While making this mess, I adopted a new philosophy: if you've gotta fool with flour, you might as well have fun doing it.

After a couple hours of simmering, this is what the broth looked like. I think at this point my nostrils were clogged with flour, because people were commenting on how great it smelled all the way in the living room but I couldn't smell a dang thing.

Our completed jiaozi! As you can tell, I made the wrappers from scratch. Mom and I spent a good hour trying to get the filling in without punching holes in the dough (I killed two dumplings; Mom killed none). These came out about 2-3 larger than jiaozi should be (like jiaozi candy bars haha), and they were pretty ugly. But they were steamy and delicious! We were super proud.