Stay In Full Winter Break-Mode With This Month’s Cooking Battle

The last Christmas of the decade has come and gone. The presents have been given, and, let’s face it, exchanged. And one gift stands above them all: The 2019 Winter Break. Christmas and New Year’s on successive Wednesdays? Cutting two work weeks to shreds and infuriating millions of American employers? F*ck yeah.

Appreciate these lugubrious winter days. Savor them.

With this break feeling longer than any in recent memory, the boys and I barely even feel guilty that our last Cooking Battle of the decade — themed around Christmas movies — is coming out almost a full week after Christmas itself. Like any good meal, it needed time to simmer. Besides, it’s here now. Vintage style — no guest judges, just you and us.

Bring your cruelest burns to kick-off 2020. We’re de-stressed, well-rested, and prepped to handle your worst.

— Steve Bramucci, Editorial Director, Uproxx Life

PAST RESULTS:

BLT Showdown — 1) Vince 2) Zach 3) Steve
Mac & Cheese Showdown — 1) Vince 2) (tie) Zach, Steve
Taco Showdown — 1) Steve 2) Zach 3) Vince
Winter Stew Showdown — 1) Zach 2) Steve 3) Vince
Date Night Showdown — 1) Zach 2) Vince 3) Steve
Pasta Showdown — 1) Steve 2) Zach 3) Vince
Hot Beef Showdown — 1) Zach 2) Vince 3) Steve
Shellfish Showdown — 1) Vince 2) Zach 3) Steve
BBQ Showdown — 1) Steve 2) Zach 3) Vince
Pumpkin Spice Showdown — 1) (tie) Vince, Zach 2) Steve
Thanksgiving Side Dish Showdown — 1) Vince 2) Steve 3) Zach
Christmas Dessert Showdown — 1) Steve 2) Vince 3) Zach
Chili Cook-off Showdown — 1) Zach 2) Steve 3) Vince
Nacho Showdown — 1) Vince 2) Steve 3) Zach
Burger Showdown — 1) Zach 2) Vince 3) Steve
Breakfast Burrito Showdown — 1) Vince 2) Zach 3) Steve
Fried Noodle Showdown — 1) Steve 2) Zach 3) Vince
Fried Chicken Sandwich Showdown — 1) Vince 2) Steve 3) Zach
Christmas Dessert Showdown Rematch: 1) Zach 2) Steve 3) Vince
Italian Comfort Food Showdown: 1) Steve 2) (tie) Zach & Vince
Date Night Showdown Part II: 1) Vince 2) Zach 3) Steve
Party Food Showdown: 1) Steve 2) Vince 3) Zach
Grilling Showdown: 1) Zach 2) Steve 3) Vince
Film and TV Food Showdown: 1) Vince 2) Zach 3) Steve
Breakfast Sandwich Showdown: 1) Zach 2) Vince 3) Steve
Thanksgiving Showdown Rematch: 1) Zach 2) Steve 3) Vince

CURRENT SCORE:

We’re giving three points to the winner and one to second place for each round. All votes are counted equally. As it stands, the score is:

ZACH: 41
VINCE: 36
STEVE: 32

ZACH’S CHINESE FOOD FROM SCROOGED

I love Scrooged and I love Chinese-American food.

Scrooged is the first Christmas movie I watch every year, usually on Black Friday and then at least two or three more times before Christmas Day. Coming from the West Coast, the old Chinese-migrant American cuisine has a very special place in my heart. In fact, if we wanted to get into the nitty-gritty, Chinese-American food is older than most migrant-American cuisines. Chinese restaurants on the West Coast pre-date the first Italian-American pizzerias by over a half-century. And, to tie it all together, the uniting and re-uniting of Bill Murray and Karen Allen in Scrooged is based around them eating Chinese food in Manhattan, mostly in the late 1960s.

To complete this endeavor, I went deep to figure out what was the hot commodity in Chinese-American restaurants around 1969/1970 when Allen and Murray were smoking dope in bathtubs and making their way through the Kama Sutra while ordering plenty of take out. And, wow, that was an interesting time for Chinese-American cuisine. Spots like Shun Lee Palace in Manhattan were changing the game by moving past the Cantonese roots of the cuisine’s history as migrants from Shanghai, Szechaun, and beyond were bringing new dishes into the fold.

While some dishes remained largely unchanged (fried rice, Chop Suey, sweet and sour), others were exploding in popularity with bolder flavors and a little bit of fire. I decided to bridge the two worlds and, in my mind, imagined Bill Murray’s Frank Cross staying kind of old-school and ordering pork fried rice. On the other hand, the worldly Karen Allen’s Claire Phillips (she wears a Moroccan djellaba after getting stoned in a bath … she’s been places) would be more keen to try what’s new. So I’m making Spicy Orange Beef, a la Shun Lee Palace. This was a recipe the new Chinese-migrant chefs were unleashing in this era. It’s new meets old. It’s what Lumpy and Claire would have been eating back then before and after those Kama Sutra sessions.

Ingredients:

Pork Fried Rice:

• 2 cups of refrigerated pre-cooked White Rice
• Half-cup Snow Peas (chopped)
• Half-cup Carrots (diced)
• Half-cup Ham (diced)
• 4 Green Onions (chopped)
• 3 Eggs
• MSG
• White Pepper
• Soy Sauce
• Oyster Sauce
• Fish Sauce
• Peanut Oil
• 1/4 stick of Unsalted Butter

Spicy Orange Beef:

• For the beef: One-pound Skirt Steak
• 2 tbsp. Baking Soda
• 2 tbsp. Corn Starch
• 1 Egg White
• 3 cups Peanut Oil
• MSG

For the sauce:

• One Orange Peel (julienned)
• 1/4 cup Orange Juice
• 1/4 cup Soy Sauce
• 1/4 cup Rice Wine Vinegar
• 1/4 cup Sake (or grain alcohol)
• 1/8 cup Raw Sugar
• 1/8 cup Corn Starch
• 4 Dried Thai Chilis
• White Sesame Seeds

White Rice:

• 18 ounces Jasmine Rice (rinsed)
• Veg Broth

Rice:

For Fried Rice, it’s always imperative you make a batch the night before and let it rest in the fridge overnight before getting started. And, for this recipe, I’ll need rice for fried rice but also rice to serve with the Orange Beef. So let’s start here.

My method is very old school, from the days before rice cookers. I get a medium-sized pot ready and fill it with about 500 grams/18 ounces of Jasmine rice. I use cold tap water to rinse the rice. Basically, I just fill the pot and wash the water out using the lid to keep the rice in. I do this four or five times until the water is pretty much clear of cloudy starch.

Next, I add in a few cups of half-water and half-broth mix. We’re adding depth with salt here but don’t want the water we cook the rice in to overwhelm with saltiness. I add in enough water to cover the rice exactly the depth of the tip of my thumb to the first knuckle over the rice — around an inch. The amount of broth/water you’ll need will depend on the size of the pot you’re using. Eyeball it. It’ll work.

I cover the pot and bring it to a boil. As soon as it boils, turn the heat all the way down to the lowest setting.

Ten to 15 minutes later, the water/broth should have evaporated. But, wait, you’re not done yet. Open the lid and make sure the water is completely gone and then fluff the rice with a fork thoroughly. Put the lid back on and leave off the heat for ten minutes. This residual steam will finish cooking the rice and help keep it light and fluffy. After those ten minutes are up, fluff the rice again with a fork. It’s ready to serve.

I put this rice away for fried rice and I’ll make another batch the next day for the beef.

Fried Rice:

The first step is getting everything ready. I dice the carrots, snow peas, and whites of the green onion (saving the greens for the Orange Beef). I cube the ham. I scramble three eggs and dust them with a pinch of MSG. I get my sauces ready: Soy, fish, and oyster.

I’ve been making fried rice since I was ten, so I can kind of do this blindfolded at this point.

I start with the eggs. I do a very light scramble and add the eggs into a medium frying pan with a glug of peanut oil (not too much, a teaspoon will do) on medium heat. I use a spatula to move the eggs around as if I was making an omelet. Then the eggs have just set and not browned on the bottom, I use the spatula to make sure the egg is moving and loose. I then fold over on end and roll it onto my cutting board. There should be no egg residue left in the frying pan.

In the same pan, I add about a tablespoon more of peanut oil and turn the heat up to high. As soon as it’s hot, I add in my veg and ham. I splash that with fish sauce and a pinch of MSG. You want to fry these until the carrot just starts to get soft, so maybe three to five minutes.

I then add in about two cups of rice, a glug of each soy and oyster sauce, white pepper dash, and the butter (yes, butter and this technique is Chef Roy Choi approved). I mix all thoroughly with a spatula until everything is evenly coated. I then use the spatula to pat down the rice in the pan and lower the heat to the lowest setting.

In about the time it’ll take to make the Orange beef, the bottom of the rice will get a beautiful crust thanks to the butter. This is crucial to any good fried rice. You’ll know it’s happening when steam starts to rise from the pan. Give the rice a good mix and you’ll see the beautiful crispy bits as pictured below. Fried Rice done.

Spicy Orange Beef:

I start off with a one-pound piece of locally-raised skirt steak. You can use sirloin or even rib-eye if you want. Just make sure it’s grass-fed and humanely raised. I cut 1/4-inch slices against the grain of the steak and then cut about one-inch slices from those strips, making bite-sized pieces.

I then cover the steak in the baking soda, cover, and place in the fridge for 30 minutes.

In the meantime, I julienne by orange peel and squeeze the juice from the orange.

To make the base for the sauce, I combine the OJ, soy sauce, vinegar, sake, sugar, and corn starch and whisk vigorously until a smooth sauce is formed. There should be zero clumps of corn starch.

Next, I fish my beef from the fridge and get the peanut oil in a wok and up to 375F for frying.

You have to work quickly here. I add the egg white and cornstarch to the beef and toss. The starch and egg form a paste-like coating over the beef with little white knobs — these will be delightful crunchy bits later.

I then fry the beef in small batches for about two minutes, using a wire spatula to turn at least once. The beef is small enough, that it’ll be cooking to a perfect pink inside and crunchy outside in that amount of time. I place the fried beef on a cookie sheet lined with a paper towel (sorry, I don’t have a pic of this) and repeat frying the batches.

Once the beef is fried, I remove all but about one tablespoon of the peanut oil (I just pour it off into a pot). I then add in the orange peel and dried chilis and cook for about 90 seconds over the highest heat. You just want the orange peel to start to brown.

I then add in the sauce mixture and keep the whole thing moving with a wooden spoon. The sauce should thicken within a minute or so. I remove from the heat and put the beef in the sauce and toss until everything is coated. I sprinkle on a good teaspoon of white sesame seeds and the greens from the green onion and give another toss or two to evenly distribute. DONE.

Serve:

I work fast and fill my Chinese take out boxes with white rice, Spicy Orange beef, and fried rice. Amazingly, the beef fits exactly into one box. As does the rice. I’m always happily surprised whenever things work out like this.

The beef is a throwback delight. The actual beef is nice and pink on the inside, juicy, and soft as velvet with a little bit of chew. The coating is still crunchy and thin, the perfect counterpoint to the sauce and meat. The sauce is an umami bomb with orange and chili spice as its shrapnel. It’s big flavors that are goddamn delicious. I seriously ate half the box in one sitting. I ate the other half cold for breakfast the next morning and it was still delicious.

I love this fried rice. I love it so much, I’ve already made it again this week. It’s texturally interesting and just straight-up delightful. The crunch from the buttery crispy bottom, the soft egg, the crunch of the veg, and the umami of the rice is everything I love about this type of food. Five stars!

The one thing I know:

via GIPHY

Altogether, this was a filling meal that hit a huge nostalgia note and brought a smile to my face. It’s also great fuel to recover after a long wintry Kama Sutra session next to the Christmas tree.

Steve on Zach’s Dish:

I am on record as loving virtually all iterations of Zach. I like road-weary Zach and indignant Zach and 3 am drunk text Zach and, it turns out, dropping-a-whole-shit-ton-of-sex-references-while-writing-a-mini-dissertation-on-Chinese-food Zach. Somewhere around the time you patiently unpacked how to make Jasmine rice while dropping endless hints that you’re f*cking a lot this break, I said to myself: “I’m all in.”

Tell me more, Zach. Are you a Parshva Samputa guy or more of a Uttana Samputa type?

Food looks good. No huge complaints. It’s unshowy, rich, oil-laden Chinese-American food. I’ve never seen this soft porn movie Scrooged that you keep talking about, but I’m sure your meal would have been a hit with its horny protagonists. Quick question though: Which of these two complete dishes does the guy who has campaigned to disqualify Vince and I on numerous technicalities want us to judge? They both look good — meaning they look exactly like Chinese-American takeout in every way — but why get takeout when you can have Zach serve it up with a bit of personal history, a few movie references, and some sexual fluids accidentally emitted as he patted his rice, oiled his noodles, and… formed a paste to coat his beef with little white knobs?

Vince on Zach’s Dish:

Jesus, will you settle down about the Kama Sutra? Am I going to eat this food or rub it on my chest while I crank my white nob? Look, I have neither the knowledge nor the inclination to quibble much with your technique here. This was more or less how we made orange chicken at the Chinese restaurant I used to work at, and I do love that Chinese baking soda/corn starch fried beef stuff. It’s delicious. That being said, you did like two days of work to make… Chinese takeout? It looks pretty good, but I don’t think I could bring myself to pay more than $8.50 for it. Sorry, man, no one’s performing the Congress of the Cowgirl on you under the Christmas tree for takeout Chinese.

STEVE’S TWINKIE FROM DIE HARD

“They’re for my wife, she’s pregnant.”

Same, Carl Winslow, same. Regardless of the source of my holiday gluttony, Twinkies are a perfect food to Chef-i-fy. They’re literally just cream-filled sponge cakes, but the storebought ones are loaded with weird preservatives and supposedly have an indefinite shelflife. My update is every bit as light and airy as the ones in Die Hard — a movie which I have no particular attachment to and won’t wax philosophic on — but better in a million tiny ways.

Allow me to elaborate (but not nearly as much elaboration as Zach just did to explain the process of making serviceable-looking Chinese takeout).

Ingredients (cribbed heavily from these two recipes)

• Nonstick cooking spray — I used coconut-based spray for a nice toasted coconut note
• 1/2 cup cake flour
• 1/4 cup AP flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• Two tablespoons heavy cream
• Four tablespoons butter
• Two sliced vanilla beans
• Five large eggs at room temperature, separated
• 12 tablespoons sugar
• ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar
• Dried figs
• Hercules Mulligan Rum-Rye
• Almond extract

Close readers of the series will note that the image above isn’t my kitchen. It’s actually an Airbnb in Leavenworth, Washington. Meaning that I made my dish on the fly. Whether this is an act of poor planning or of culinary heroism is for you to decide. Please choose the latter, because I’m falling behind.

The Cake

Step 1 here is to sift all the dry elements — the two flours, the salt, the baking powder — together and set them aside. No need to share a photo of that. Next, it’s egg time. I separate the yolks and whites and start beating the whites, adding sugar as I go.

This is stand mixer work that I did by hand, but it got done in due time. I added six tablespoons of sugar and the cream of tartar to the whites and brought them to soft peak stage then set them aside. In the same bowl, I mixed the yolks with the other six tablespoons of sugar.

The yolks looked like this:

I dropped the whipped whites on top of the yolks, added in the dry mix, and then made a little trough to slide in the butter — which had been melted and had vanilla beans steeping in it.

The key here is to keep the cake airy/ spongy — so the whole mix is stirred together for literally five seconds. Then it’s into a makeshift Twinkie pan which I made by shaping a tin pan left at the Airbnb with a bottle of Loganberry liqueur. I could have made a better replica with a spice jar but I like my cream-filled cakes thicker and longer than you’re probably used to.

Into the oven at 350 right-a-freaking-way — time is the enemy here.

You’ll see that this is ridiculously overloaded with vanilla bean. If you find me a cake that someone says is “too vanilla-y”, I’ll eat my hat and their cake. More vanilla bean is always better. Always.

Here’s a hack for you: You can buy awesome vanilla beans on eBay straight from Madagascar. The quality is better than the two-beans-for-seven-dollars you get at the store and the price is about 1/4 (you get a bean for a buck).

While the cakes baked, I made my filling. Here I diverged from the available recipes. I had about a half of one beaten egg-white left, added a few glugs of heavy cream, a fair bit of sugar, the vanilla beans fished out of my batter, and two capfuls of almond extract. The cakes fall under the heading of “baking” — that’s science. This bit was “cooking” — which is done by feel. I tasted as I went and landed on a sweet-but-not-overly-sugary whipped-cream-more-vanilla and nicely-almondy filling. Then I whipped it until it was pillowy and spooned it into that ketchup squirter that you see in the ingredient photo.

My Twinkie came out with misshapen ends, so I trimmed them. I wish I hadn’t — they looked funky. On the other hand, no regrets about not buying a $12 silicone Twinkie tray on Amazon. This way was f