Cooks Illustrated sent me another recipe to test. It was a really good idea to go with two email addresses because I get so many more recipes this way. This recipe was for tangerine beef stir fry with onions and snow peas.
It's a fairly simple recipe and I served it with some chow main soba noodles. Rob, however, hated it. This in and of itself really doesn't mean anything. Rob is one of those people who uses food to gain power over whomever is cooking. By withholding his approval he -- by extension -- is showing is displeasure with the cook. Or, as I like to put it, he's getting back at mommy for not paying enough attention to him. Either way, he said he didn't like this recipe.
I, on the other hand, enjoyed it. The flavors are complex -- more complex than most Westerners are used to. One thing the Chinese enjoy a lot more than Americans is bitter flavor. Chinese cuisine works to balance five elements of taste: sweet, sour, spicy, salty, bitter. There is a general enjoyment of foods that are way too bitter for the Western palate. I once tried some bitter melon. I'm not sure what I expected, exactly, something called "bitter melon" is pretty much letting me know how it tastes. I was still shocked when I tasted it; maybe not so much because it was bitter, but more because it was impossible for me to understand how anyone would want to eat it.
This is a long way of saying that this dish had a real bitter element to it, which came from the tangerine zest. The bitterness wasn't overwhelming and in this case adds an interesting dimension to the dish. This was the most flawed recipe I've tried so far -- the onions are way overcooked, among other things, but I enjoyed it.
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