Sybaritica

Today’s recipe is a bit of a twist on the common Italian antipasto specialty of roasted and marinated sweet peppers. As the process of making those can be a bit time consuming (especially the fiddly task of peeling off the skins), I tried the technique of flash-frying strips of different sorts of sweet bell peppers and then marinating them, with the skin still on, in seasoned oil. The process turned out to achieve much  the same sort of smoky-sweet flavor roasting and made for a terrific appetizer…

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Dressed Cucumbers appear quite commonly on Japanese restaurant menus and today’s post is inspired by such a dish I enjoyed in one of them a while ago. I haven’t tried to completely reproduce that recipe (it was quite spicy, for starters), but I have borrowed the idea of using good, thick slices rather than the thinner ones you generally get…

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Chinese Preserved Sausage has a lovely sweet, apple-like taste that makes it a nice addition to to vegetable dishes featuring robust greens like Gai-Lan or Green-Beans, but, personally, I think it also works nicely with the more delicate crispness of fresh snow-pea pods. You could pair the two to make a side dish within a larger meal, of course, but it is quite rich and I conceived today’s recipe as more of an appetizer, or a small offering served in a series of dim-sum type dishes…

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The filling for these Jalapeño peppers is very straightforward and simple… not much more than ground pork with scallion and garlic, really. It is the sauce, though, that I think makes this little appetizer so special. It is based on Oyster Sauce mixed with some rice wine and a little chilli oil, and the sweetness of the primary ingredient is just right without needing any added sugar…

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