Yappy Hoo Near!

Wikipedia has an entry about Tang-Yuan that seems to pretty much line up with what I remember about them.

Last year I made some of these with mochi flour and a rather poor approximation of mung bean filling. This year, I got a bug in my ear and decided to go from scratch. And I managed to remember that when I was very small and was eating them for probably the first or second time, the ones with plum filling were my favorite. The ingredients are simple, the procedure is not complicated, but it is time consuming and labor-intensive in parts. Do not  attempt the filling recipe unless you are willing to literally stir constantly for about 40 minutes. Your arm will get tired.

Here's what you need:

2 or 3 cups sushi rice, in a large pot big enough to fit that plus about 5 cups of water.
a blender, a large colander and a piece of muslin big enough to line it with.

3/4 lb of prunes
2/3 cup cooking oil or shortening. Saturated fats will make the finished produce easier to work with.Lard is traditional, dad used duck fat when he had it.  Chicken, maybe not.
possibly a half cup of sugar, but I didn't this time, I wanted it to be a little tart.

a very heavy 2 qt cooking pot, and NOT a non-stick one.
This recipe will make enough for a whole party of squeamish people, or for a small number of afficionadoes. They are even more weird and ethnic than mochi.

Leave the rice in the water for up to a week, and at least 3 days. Unless you want to risk having it ferment, stow it in the fridge. The rice grains will absorb water to the point where they start to disintegrate. Pinch one in your fingers and you'll see. It'll crush into a coarse mush. Then line your colander with the muslin, and put the rice through the blender, using only as much water as needed to keep it liquid enough for the blender to cope with it. This will take a while. Get it as finely ground as possible, and pour it into the muslin lined colander. Tie up the cloth and let the liquid drain out (this is likely to take at least 24 hours, so put it back in the fridge), and the mass of rice paste is your dough. You should freeze it if you aren't going to use it within a couple days. I found that after draining, freezing and thawing once, it was still coarser than I wanted, so I put a glob of it back in the mini-process and ground it again, with very good results. I suspect that the freezing helps break down the grains.

For the filling, put the prunes in the heavy pan with enough water to cover them, and bring them to a boil. After about 8 or 10 minutes, they should be tender enough to put in the blender, again using as little water as possible. Return the pureed prunes to the pan and add the oil and the sugar if you want it. From now on, be prepared to stir. With the heat at medium, use a wooden spoon to methodically scrape the bottom of the pot. The correct temperature for cooking will make the puree sizzle gently but quickly as you expose the bottom of the pan when stirring. You are going to cook all the water back out of the prunes which you just put in. After about half an hour of stirring, the paste will begin to form a coherent mass, and some of the oil will begin to sweat back out of it. It's done when it is very dark and has a consistency about halfway between Jif and Play-Doh. Turn off the heat and keep stirring until the paste stops sizzling against the pan, then refrigerate it in tupperware until you want to use it.

You know, lots of fruits can be treated this way. Dad used pineapple one year, which was good, and once, there was a batch made out of dried chinese red plums. That didn't go over so well, it was full of tough, splintery fibers. It tasted good, but the texture was decidedly sinister. Very pokey. Good lord, that must have been in like, 1979 or something. Don't feed things like that to your kids, they'll never forget. Anyhoo, the thing is, after all that cooking, anything you use will have a tendency to taste similar. It's the caramelization.

What to do with it:

Take the rice dough, pinch off pieces about 2 tablespoon sized, and roll them onto balls. If the dough was drained long enough to make it too dry, just add a little water back into  it. Make little balls out of the filling, about 1 teaspoon sized. Hold one of the dough balls in your palm and poke a hole in it about down to the middle, and push one of the filling bits into the hole. Gently roll the dough in your palms to re-form it into a solid ball with no filling showing. The whole business should end up about the size of a ping-pong ball. Continue until you have as many as you want.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil and drop the tang-yuan into it. Stir them once so they don't stick to the bottom. Wait for the water to boil again. Once the water boils, turn it down to a simmer. When the tang-yuan are done, they will float to the surface. As the rice starches expand, they become more buoyant. The side that is immersed in the hot water will eventually become so much less dense than the top that they will flip themselves over if you poke them gently. Don't cook them any longer than that, the dough will just disintegrate.

Traditionally, these are served in a generous amount of the cooking water. I think that just makes them watery-tasting, so I usually don't do that. However, I have to admit that cooking them from scratch makes the cooking water actually pretty appealing. The freshness of the rice flour is orders of magnitude more delicious than frozen store-bought, and the texture is both firm and tender. You would think something made out of just rice would be boring, but that doesn't have to be so. Rice should taste like rice, and things made out of it should be yummy.

Lastly, I used olive oil in my filling. It's ok, but I don't really recommend it. The oil oxidizes or something in the cooking, and even if you use the most boring kind, the taste becomes more pronounced at the end. Like I said, ok, but definitely not traditional. Use peanut or canola or corn oil if you can't bear to use lard.

Should have taken a picture

I was faced with a need to make something tasty, quick, and acceptable for last minute company. I had not been to the grocery store, at least, not to do more than pick up a couple eggs.

Chicken and noodles in a Florentine-esque sauce

Somewhere, I read that when something is labled "florentine" it is supposed to indicate that it contains spinach. Florence being known for its spinach, I guess. Likewise, in things named "vichysoisse" you ought to expect to find peas, which are supposedly abundant and/or especially special in the neighborhood of Vichy. Which makes me think that it is rather typically american that the one thing best known (to me at any rate) as Vichysoisse is a potato soup, with nary a pea in sight. But that is neither here nor there.

Again- chicken and noodles, etc.

4 frozen chicken tenders
salt, pepper, dash of olive oil

Set a large pot of salted water on to boil the noodles.

Heat a deep skillet with the oil and a sprinkle of salt in it to about medium. Put the frozen tenders in and sprinkle over a generous dash of pepper and a touch more salt. Cover. Meanwhile, assemble:

half a large onion, diced small
2 T tomato paste
1 and a half cups frozen chopped spinach
1 garlic clove
a bag of trader joe's plain papardelle

Flip the chicken tenders over after they brown a bit, and re-cover. When the other side has browned, they will probably be slightly raw inside. That's fine, just put them in a bowl and ignore them for a while. Put a little more oil and a sprinkle of salt in the pan, and throw in the onions. Stir them around, and if they don't sweat enough on their own to take up the chicken residue, add a half cup of water and then crush in the garlic. Stir every few minutes until the onions are caramelized, then add 2 cups of water and the tomato paste and spinach. Cook until the spinach is done, check to make sure it has enough salt, then slice up the chicken bits and return them to the pan to finish cooking. It'll probably only take a couple seconds. Remember to put any juices that may have drained out back into the sauce. Somewhere in there, the water will have come to a boil and you can drop in the noodles, but remember that it only takes about 4 minutes for those things to reach al dente.

Serve with grated cheese, and optional chopped olives.

Happy Solstice!

 Hooray! The darkest day of the year has passed, and it is time to celebrate by putting a pomelo skin on your head. Or a grapefruit. I didn't think I was ever gonna eat a whole pomelo by myself- they're the size of a volleyball. Does anybody but me remember dad wearing one of these distinctive chapeaux to go practice tai chi one time in the summer? Worn at a rakish angle, perhaps?

This, re-posted from facebook, (thanks, Ms. T)  has nothing to do with anything, but it is high-larious! May you snort with laughter in the new year. Also, don't be fooled: the internets are very small. This is the guy who trained me at trader joe's.

Eating Like an American

...or Dude! What is going on here?!?


It's a rhetorical question, yah, got it.

Here's what got me going: a $50 gift certificate to any of the Darden SV Inc. restaurants nationwide. Which, really, is a damn generous company holiday gift. It really is. And I know why they did it too- there aren't that many things that you can give the same thing to 300-some-odd people and have it be even vaguely appropriate. So, restaurant gift cards= free food an booze= cool.

Ok, so what restaurants are those? In Portland, those would be Red Lobster, and Olive Garden. Neither of which actually have locations in Portland. Well, I lie, there's an Olive Garden in Mall 205. And from where I live, it's just as far to Vancouver to get to Red Lobster, but probably more of a pain in the neck.

But that's totally irrellevant! In the process of locating a venue for spending my lucre, of course I looked at the menus on the websites, and of course I opened the link to the...dun-dun...nutrition facts.

They still use 2000 calories per day as a benchmark for calculating a person's nutritional
needs. I probably do all right on about that, maybe less, say about 1800 on a slothful Saturday. I'm 35, I'm female and not built on heroic lines. I don't work out, but on the other hand, I spend a lot of time riding Shank's Mare. Super fit I am not. Where am I going with this...

Oh, the Nutrition Facts! Yay for hyperlinks. How often do people eat at restaurants? Hopefully, not often. When I was 22, I could eat an entree of chicken alfredo without batting an eye. Or maybe some Calamari?
How many grams of saturated fat are you supposed to stay under in a day? We haven't even got to the desserts yet, I think that would just get depressing. I love dessert, it's supposed to be chock full of saturated fats.

So why does the menu at Olive garden bug me? Well, for one thing, all the portions are in these feasting-for-a-special-occasion sizes, and for another, because everything on it looks the same. It's all the same cream sauce, all the same noodles, all the same piece of chicken meat, all the same piece of cow parts. Don't even get me started on the fact that vegetables are only mentioned in a roundabout way. Red Lobster too. You can have broccoli or asparagus. Asparagus only sometimes, and broccoli you have to ask for especially. I like my broccoli, but sheesh...is that it? Mountains of food, all the same. You could close your eyes and point 3 or 4 different times and get exactly the same meal, but with some rather irrational price differences. They have taken the natural human joy of feasting and turned it into a process for maximizing calories per dollar. All the things that make food more than just consumption have been jettisoned, and the only index of value is how much stuff you get. Evidently, lots of people agree with them. You don't get chain restaurants by having complex criteria for what you want to serve. You get hot cart pods.

So, am I gonna use my gift certificate? Yeah, sure.There was a short period a few years back when I ate at restaurants regularly. I gained weight, duh. But the thing that in retrospect seems particularly sad to me is how boring it was. I could have spent less time, eaten better, and enjoyed myself more if I had been cooking. It would have cost less too, by a long shot. But there was the convenience of a predictable restaurant. Sometimes it is nice just to have someone else clear up the stupid dishes. Sometimes I do want a cocktail, and not being the kind of gal who keeps a full bar (or even an empty one) at home, a drink at a restaurant is always kinda nice. It's the middle of the winter, and going somewhere warm, that is not my house, where I can have my peck and booze and neither I nor my friends have to clear away the debris after dinner, is pleasant. The food will not be special, but since my employer has already paid for it, it would be silly not to use the certificate.

Here's the thing though: eating at a restaurant should be a treat. It should be indulgent, and you should be able to get things you don't get at home, and they should be tasty and interesting, and sometimes even remarkable, to eat. And dangit, there should be dessert. And on special occasions, sure, maybe that dessert could have enough calories in it to last you a whole day. But the quantity, and the calories, and the fat or sodium or whatever should be secondary. Eat things than make you go 'Hm. I'll be darned.' Eat things that make you feel giddy with excitement. Eat things made by people you love, eat in the company of people who care about you. Feed your friends things they won't cook for themselves, things that are crunchy, or spicy, or bitter, or fishy, or just anything interesting. It's December, the weather is crap, and if ever there is a time of year when we need food to be more than just calories, this is it.

Bread

I started making my own bread because I am a cheapskate, and I picked up a really fancy bread machine at Goodwill for 40 bucks. I thought well, hell, I eat about a loaf of bread a week, sometimes more than that. At $3.oo a loaf or so, x 52 weeks a year on average, shit that's a ton of money! I had some pretty sorry results to begin with.  Gummy, crumbly wheat bread, sodden heavy white bread. The dough that over expanded and mushroomed out over the top of the pan. The dough I forgot to put yeast in.

But I got past that and now I have 2 recipes that I like an awful lot. This one is the simple one.

250 g. H2O
28 g butter or margarine
22 g dry milk
7 g salt
50 g honey
300 g white bread flour
90 g whole wheat flour
90 g old fashioned oatmeal
7 g instant yeast

The thing is, I don't feel like I really know how to make bread. I put the stuff in the machine, it makes the dough. That's the hard part, usually. I don't like to knead dough because my wrist hurts, and it makes a big mess. Mostly I don't like the mess; my apartment is small, and has carpet. So, the machine does the real work, then it beeps at me when it's time to put the dough in a bread pan. Yes, I know, I could leave the stuff in there and the machine would bake it for me too, but I like the regular loaf pan shape better, and besides, the dough beaters leave these annoying craters in the bottom of the loaf if you do that. Makes it hard to get a neat sandwich out of the middle of the loaf. So I put it in a regular pan, I let it poof up until it's about 1 inch higher than my pan, then I put it in the oven at 350 for 45 minutes. Then I turn the oven off and leave it in there without opening the oven for about 10 more minutes. I take it out, whack the pan (lightly) on my bread board to pop the loaf out and that's it. Let it cool on a rack to keep the outside crispy.

Now I'm a bread snob. The last time I bought a loaf of bread was during the heat wave in august or whenever, and I thought wow, I should have just got bagels or english muffins or something, cuz this stuff sucks!

Here's my complicated recipe, it's the loaf in the picture.

350 g H2O
7 g salt
30 g brown sugar
30 g molasses-don't use the extra dark kind! it's gross.
15 g dry milk optional
30 g butter

Put the above ingredients into the bowl of your bread machine. Layer on the following, in this order:

240 g white bread flour
220 g whole wheat flour
10 g wheat guten
15 g sesame seeds-I use a mix of toasted black & white
12 g poppy seed
40 g cracked wheat
40 g steel cut oats
15 g ground toasted flax seeds
7 g instant yeast


Make the bread the same as above, but add 10 minutes to the baking time, it's a much larger loaf. If you want to make it prettier, take a sharp knife and gently slash the top of the loaf before baking.

I'm Asian! What D'you Want!?!

"If you want to be Chinese, you have to eat the nasty stuff."
So says Chow Yun Fat's character to the neophyte, in the movie The Corruptor. Well, in that case Mr. Chow, I got my bona-fides right here. The thing that divides the white from the yellow is not a line, it's a preserved duck egg. One of these stinky little green and brown babies and you'll have enough gosh-darned authentic chinese kung-fu to whoop the ass out of a whole reel full of John Woo villains. No hair on the chest though. Chinese guys don't do that. I guess we're more closely related to whales and manatees than everyone else.

Moving on.


Sushi rice rolls with some fishy seasoning mix I got at Fubonn, served with fresh young coconut and preserved duck egg, aka "peedan." I do wish I'd had some pickled ginger though.

Take a cup of sushi rice and rinse it well. Drain, add about 1 3/4 c. water back to the pot and cook as you would ordinary rice. When it's done, mix 2 T cider or rice vinegar with a dash of salt and a heaping teaspoon of brown sugar, then toss it gently into the rice using a fork so you don't make the rice grains just turn into mush. Let it cool enough to handle, and roll about a cup in a sheet of toasted nori. Slice the roll with a wet knife (keeps the blade from sticking) and dunk the ends of the rolls in the seasoning mix.

Here's what I used. It's crunchy, fishy, sweet and salty. I am having a hard time not eating it straight out of the can.

Thats about it. I had a hangover yesterday, so I got a young coconut at the grocery store- coconut water has lots of potassium in it. The texture of the coconut meat is kinda weird, a little fleshy or something, but it's got nothing on peedan. I think the ones I got were a bit dehydrated, the yolks should be runny.

But what do they taste like? Um...sulphur? Rubber? Like something somebody dared you to eat? They're chemically cooked in lye... And the package declares, not at all reassuringly, that they are "lead free"- Gosh, I hope so.


And one last reason to love the preserved duck egg: 110% of your daily cholesterol intake.

Um, yes. I know, it's not a John Woo movie. Stupid joke. Sigh.