Sea-flavor noodles (hai wei mian)

When my Sichuanese cookbook author Fuchsia Dunlop indulged in fiery dan dan noodles in Chengdu, she often coupled it with a bowl of this tamer noodle soup to counterbalance the scorching heat of the dan dan. The sea flavor in this warming dish comes from dried shrimp, as fresh seafood was hard to come by in the inland province of Sichuan. You can find the tiny shrimp sold in plastic bags in any Asian market.

This was an intensely satisfying meal, just the thing for a rainy Sunday afternoon. Be warned — not for mushroom haters.

Adapted from Dunlop's Land of Plenty:

1. Soak 1 ounce of dried baby shitake mushrooms and 1 ounce of dried shrimp for 30 minutes in enough hot water to cover them. (Since I don't have a kitchen scale, I interpreted one ounce as "some.")

2. Cut 1/2 pound of pork loin into thin, 1/8-inch slices and season with salt. Slice 1/4 pound of fresh button mushrooms to match the pork. Slice 3 scallions thinly.

3. Heat 2 T. peanut oil in a wok over a high flame. Add the pork and stir-fry until it whitens. Splash in some Shaoxing rice wine around the edges and let it sizzle. Add the mushrooms and stir-fry another minute. Now pour in the bowl of dried mushrooms and shrimp with their soaking water, as well as 1 quart chicken stock. Bring to a boil and leave to simmer on low for an hour, until the pork is very tender.

4. Season the broth with salt and white pepper. Bring a separate saucepan of water to a boil for cooking the noodles. Add 1 package thin wonton noodles for just 60 seconds, then drain. Divide the noodles into bowls. Spoon the meat and mushrooms over the noodles and sprinkle the scallions on top, then fill the bowls with the soup. Feeds 3.

Breakfast tacos

On the heels of my successful execution of huevos rancheros, the NYT runs a story on Austin's dominance when it comes to breakfast tacos.

Huevos rancheros

Huevos rancheros is one of my favorite brunches, so I had to try this recipe from the Boston Globe Cookbook. For whatever reason, this smoky Southwestern dish is extremely popular in my decidedly Northeastern town, appearing on nearly every Sunday brunch menu across the city. The recipe was written for 12, implying that it's not worth the trouble for any fewer, but thankfully it adapted easily for 2 and really wasn't difficult at all. I have drastically amped up the proportions of garlic and chipotles.

1. Mince one small onion, 2-4 cloves of garlic, and 4 T. fresh cilantro. Open a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce and chop up 2 of the chiles. Grate 2-3 ounces of Cojita, cheddar or jack cheese. Dice 1 avocado.

2. Brown the onion and garlic, then add the chiles, some of the adobo sauce, and about a third of a 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes. Simmer about 10 minutes, then stir in half the cilantro and season with salt and pepper.

3. Empty a 15 oz. can of black beans into a small saucepan and add 1/2 tsp ground cumin. Mash the beans coarsely with a potato masher, then let simmer over low heat.

4. Heat 2 T. peanut or canola oil over medium-high heat in a large frying pan and add 2 corn tortillas. Cook 1 minute or until crisp and brown, then flip and fry the second side. Turn them onto a plate and repeat with 2 more tortillas on a second plate.

5. In the same pan used for the tortillas, fry 4 eggs until whites are set and place one on each tortilla. (You will have some extra beans and chipotle sauce, so feel free to expand the recipe to 3 or 4 people, cooking 2 tortillas and 2 eggs for each person.

6. Ladle some sauce on the eggs, then sprinkle with cheese and cilantro and garnish with beans and avocado.

Rabbit

I've enjoyed it in French bistros since I was a kid, but bunny is the new darling of the slow food movement. Here, aspiring farmers in Brooklyn pay $100 to learn how to kill rabbits.

Fried rice two ways

Whenever John and I made too much rice, we used to stupidly throw away the leftover bits at the bottom of the pot. Now we save them up for fried rice, which must be cooked with cold rice or it comes out mushy. Fried rice is beautiful — it's quick, delicious, colorful and can be made with whatever meat or vegetables you've got.

First up is Mandarin fried rice, adapted from Grace Young's Breath of a Wok. This dish uses lap xuong, the sweet, fatty Chinese sausage found in any Asian grocery. Lap xuong evokes major childhood nostalgia for me. My grandmother sliced it, fried it up and served it to me over sticky rice, the hot fragrant grease sinking through the rice to permeate every grain. As an adult, I noticed that the second ingredient is pork fat. To save our arteries, I bought the "extra lean" kind.

1. Thinly slice 1 Chinese sausage. Mince a few cloves of garlic and an equal amount of ginger. Slice 2-3 scallions thinly.

2. Beat 2 eggs. Heat a wok until smoking, then swirl in 1 T. peanut oil and 1 tsp. sesame oil. Tip in the eggs and tilt the wok so that the eggs cover the surface as thinly as possible to make a pancake. When the pancake is just set, turn it onto a cutting board and slice it into shreds.

3. Reheat the wok with another T. of peanut oil. Add the garlic and ginger and stir-fry 30 seconds. Add the sausage and stir-fry 1 minute. Add the scallions and 2-3 cups of cold cooked rice, breaking up large chunks of rice. Add a splash of Shaoxing rice wine and stir-fry 2-3 minutes until heated through. Season with soy sauce and white pepper, add the egg shreds, and toss to combine. Feeds 2.

The second version is Thai basil fried rice, very loosely adapted from Kasma Loha-Unchit's recipe.

1. Cut 1/2 lb. chicken or pork into small pieces and sprinkle with fish sauce. Chop 6 cloves of garlic and 2 Thai chillis. Thinly slice 3-4 shallots.

2. Heat a wok until smoking and swirl in 1 T. peanut oil. Add the meat, leaving undisturbed for a minute to brown, then add the garlic, chillis and shallots. Stir-fry a couple minutes until meat is cooked and vegetables slightly browned.

3. Add 2-3 cups cold cooked rice and stir-fry until rice is softened and has begun to brown. Add 2 T. black soy sauce and toss to coat the rice. Season with fish sauce, then remove from heat, stir in a cup of Thai basil leaves and sprinkle liberally with white pepper. Serve with a wedge of lime. Feeds 2.

Red curry chicken

For a really full-bodied curry, there's nothing like pounding your own curry paste. John and I had so much fun doing this at Thai cooking school that I came home and bought a mortar and pestle straight away. We made a wicked green curry in December that burned our throats and made us cry. It was delicious as it was evil.

I had been wanting to try a red curry ever since. Red curry is tamer than green, as it uses ripened red chillis instead of the hotter green ones. I finally worked up the motivation yesterday when I spotted these little Thai eggplants at the Super 88 in Dorchester. Called turtle eggplants for their shape and coloration, these slightly bitter gems play wonderfully against the sweet tang of curry. We ate them everywhere in Bangkok and Chiang Mai, but they can be hard to find in the U.S. I have also used the long Asian eggplants in curries, which are not as bitter but still lovely.

Making curry is nothing more than gathering the ingredients and giving your arm a good workout. If you don't have a mortar, paste can also be achieved with a coffee grinder and food processor. Most everything here is available in Asian groceries or an online store like Temple of Thai, but one thing I cannot lay my hands on in Boston is fresh kaffir lime. In place of this, substitute equal amounts of regular lime zest and minced kaffir lime leaf.

1. Throw 1 T. coriander seeds and 2 cardamom pods into your wok or saucepan and roast them over medium heat until browned. Put these into a mortar (or coffee grinder) with 1/2 tsp. black peppercorns and 1/2 tsp. salt and grind to a fine powder.

2. Cut 10 big red dried Thai chillis in half and shake out the seeds. Soak these in water at least 10 minutes and chop them finely.

3. Mince the following ingredients fine (or chop them in the food processor): 1 tsp. galangal, the lower third of 1 lemongrass stalk, 1 tsp. kaffir lime peel, 1 T. cilantro, 3 T. shallots, 3 T. garlic, 1 tsp. shrimp paste, 10 small red Thai chillis.

4. Now add those ingredients to the mortar and pummel it all into a fine, red paste (or transfer the spices from the grinder to the food processor and puree). This makes 4-5 T., enough for one curry dish, so you may want to double it for another time.

Now for the chicken dish:

1. Cut a pound of chicken breast or thigh meat into small pieces. Season with fish sauce and white pepper.

2. Heat 2 T. peanut oil in a wok and fry 4 T. curry paste until hot and fragrant. Add 1 can coconut milk, reserving a bit for garnish, and bring to a boil. Add 8-10 Thai eggplants, halved or quartered, and simmer a few minutes until soft. Season with fish sauce and palm sugar to taste.

3. Add the chicken pieces and 2 kaffir lime leaves. Simmer a few more minutes until chicken is white and cooked through. Add some water to desired consistency.

4. Stir a handful of Thai basil leaves and transfer the curry to a platter. Garnish with more basil leaves, chillis, and dashes of coconut milk.

Farm-style omelets

In her book Breath of a Wok, Grace Young devotes about three pages of buildup and a full page of description to the following recipe, made for her by a rice farmer when Young visited the southern Chinese city of Yangshuo to research the book. These delicate yet piquant little omelets use dried shitake mushrooms, prized in Chinese cooking for their strong and meaty flavor. The omelets are wok-fried and then braised briefly in the soaking liquid used to rehydrate the mushrooms. These were the best omelets I ever had, bursting with fresh herbs and a little hotness and delicious with white rice. If either the cooking time or the heat is increased, the omelets become dry and tough, so be sure your pork is not icy cold or the omelets will require more time to cook.

Adapted from Young's recipe:

1. In a small bowl, soak a small handful of dried shitake mushrooms in 1/2 cup cold water 30 minutes or until soft. Meanwhile, finely mince 1/4 cup cilantro, a couple scallions, a few cloves of garlic and a couple hot fresh chillis. When the mushrooms are ready, squeeze them dry, reserving the soaking liquid. Discard the stems and finely mince the caps.

2. In a bowl, combine the cilantro, scallions, garlic, chillis and mushrooms with 4 ounces ground pork and a pinch of salt. In another bowl, beat 5-6 large eggs.

3. Heat the wok over high and swirl in a bit of oil, then using a measuring cup, pour a 1/4 cup of egg into the wok like pancake batter. (Young says to do two at once, but I had trouble keeping them separate in the rounded bottom of the wok). Cook on medium 20 seconds until bubbles form around the edges. Spoon some pork mixture onto the pancake and fold it in half. Then fold it in half again to form a flat cigar shape and cook 1-2 minutes until golden. Transfer to a plate. (Or push the omelets up the side of the wok to keep cooking at a lower temperature, but I would only do this if you are working very quickly).

4. Continue forming little omelets with the remaining eggs and pork mixture (you should end up with about 8). When all the eggs are cooked, return the omelets to the wok, increase the heat to high, and add the reserved mushroom liquid. Cover, reduce the heat to medium, and cook 2 minutes. Turn the omelets, cover, and cook 2 minutes or just until the pork is no longer pink. Feeds 2.