fall eats

and just like that it’s fall again. the weather’s becoming chilly and the school work is piling up. (at least for christine, not for me XD) so what else can you do but cook something warm and put off those psets!

to start, i made more hearty stew. this is still basically take what you have the the freezer, chop it up and put it in water to boil. and with the drop in temperature, having a nice rich brothy stew to drink is wonderful.

beef and pork stew with hearty vegetables

Ingredients
1 lb of beef or pork shoulder for stewing, bone in
1/2 celery heart
1 large size potato
1 cup baby carrots
2 bay leaves
paprika
salt and pepper
garlic powder

Start 6 cups of water to heat in a wok or pot. Place lid on for faster heating. When water starts to boil, put in the meat. Make sure you have enough water to cover the meat. Toss in bay leaves and reduce to a simmer.

Cut potato, celery, and carrots to bite size chunks. After meat has been in the water for 3 minutes, toss in the vegetables. Also add in the salt, pepper, paprika, and garlic powder to taste.

Let the stew simmer for 20 minutes, occasionally stirring and flipping the meat. When carrots are tender, the soup is ready to serve.

Wow, I realized that the directions really didn’t teach you anything. Mostly, it’s me with a pot of water, leftovers from the fridge, and a collection of spices. I think experimentation is important, and as long as you don’t add too much of anything, a meat stew will always come out smelling and tasting great.

For christine, we also made a veggie stew and appetizer. Since she’s competing at the MIT tournament in a week. we kept it low calorie by using a lot of tofu and veggies.

Tofu slices with sesame seasoning

Ingredients
1/2 block tofu, firm or soft
furikake (rice seasoning)
sesame oil

Slice the tofu into small, thin slices. Arrange the slices onto a plate for serving. Drizzle sesame oil lightly over the tofu, then sprinkle furikake generously.

Tofu and seaweed soup with soy noodles

Ingredients
1/2 block tofu, firm
1/2 cup baby carrots
1/2 celery heart (about 4 stalks)
1 packet seaweed soup seasoning
1 packet soy protein noodles (or rice noodles)

Bring water to a simmer in a pot. White water is heating up, slice carrots and celery heart into small chunks. Toss the vegetables into the water and let cook until celery is soft. Cut tofu into small cubes.

Add in seaweed seasoning. (Seasoning can be made just from 1 sheet of sushi seaweed and 1 shitake mushroom, diced.) Add in the tofu cubes, and flavor with salt and pepper to taste. Add in the noodles, and let the soup simmer until the noodles are the desired softness.

Length of procrastination: 30 minutes per soup
Ways to prolong procrastination: sit and enjoy the soup!

Taro Coconut Milk with Tapioca (西米露)

Summer is a time for cool, refreshing desserts. Xi mi lu is a popular Asian dessert commonly served after dinner at restaurants, and it is suuuper easy to make. The only difficult part is waiting for the damn thing to cool enough to count as “refreshing”. I burned about fifty layers of skin off the roof of my mouth by tasting it as it cooked.

PSA: Coconut milk fresh off the stove is Very Hot.

Taro Coconut Milk with Tapioca (西米露)
Adapted from Eupho Cafe (Recipe in Chinese)

Ingredients
2/3 cup mini tapioca pearls
600g (about one med) taro
2 cans coconut milk
1/2 cup sugar

Cook the tapioca. The original recipe says to boil water, turn off the heat, add the tapioca, and cover for 20 minutes. Reboil, turn off heat, and cover for 10 minutes. This doesn’t make any sense to me because when you cook tapioca, you have to stir constantly to make sure the pearls don’t stick to each other.  However, I followed the directions blindly and ended up with a solid block of tapioca. I spent the next hour or so trying to separate the pearls. Go Christine. You’re a smart one. Also, I don’t know why my tapioca is green.

SO. Let’s try this again.

Cook the tapioca. Bring about 3 cups of water to a boil and reduce to medium heat. Add the tapioca and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring constantly. The pearls should turn clear when they’re cooked, with no opaque white dots in the middle. Cooked tapioca is slightly chewy (or “QQ”), neither hard nor mushy. Immediately drain and transfer to a bowl of cold water to stop the cooking.

Now, taro is a PAIN to work with. They’re tough little buggers to peel, and bleed starch all over your hands. Do you best to cut them into 1cm cubes.

Toss them into a pot with the coconut milk and bring to a simmer. Add the sugar and cover, stirring occasionally until taro becomes soft, about 30 minutes. Remove from heat and chill in the refrigerator. When ready to eat, drain the tapioca again and add to the taro/coconut milk soup. Mix and serve.

Length of Procrastination: 50 minutes of hands-on time, forever and a half to chill.
Ways to Prolong Procrastination: Cook the tapioca wrongly and spend forever trying to separate the chunks.

Pan-fried Tofu with Napa Cabbage and Vermicelli

The weekend before last, I took a short trip back home to California for my dad’s birthday. Usually when I’m home, my mom doesn’t ever let me touch the stove because, in her words, she doesn’t like eating food made by people who don’t know how to cook. Ouch…burn.

To be fair, my mom is the best cook in the entire world.

This tofu, napa cabbage, and vermicelli dish is one that she taught me that weekend. And because she was swamped with cooking a banquet-sized dinner, she actually let me pan-fry the tofu! (Under her careful supervision, of course.) Progress is being made.

Pan-fried Tofu with Napa Cabbage and Vermicelli
From my momma’s kitchen

Ingredients
1 package of extra-firm tofu
1 medium-sized head of napa cabbage
2 rectangular prisms of vermicelli (they usually come 3 to a bright pink mesh bag in Asian supermarkets)
cooking oil
sesame oil
soy sauce
salt, white pepper, Asian seasonings to taste
corn starch or other thickening agent (optional)

Put vermicelli in a bowl of cold water to soak.

Cut tofu into small, flat blocks, about 1/2″x2″x3″, and lightly pan-fry with sesame oil. Set aside.

Slice the napa cabbage and stir-fry for 5-10 minutes. They should still be crunchy and undercooked. Add in the tofu along with about 1/2 cup of the water the vermicelli has been soaking in and cover.

While you wait, remove the vermicelli from the water and cut into 6″ strands. This step is skippable if you don’t mind long strands of vermicelli or if, like me, you just forget. Add in the vermicelli when the napa is almost cooked through. It’s important not to add the noodles in too early because they’ll turn into mush if cooked for too long. Season to taste. I usually use soy sauce, salt, white pepper, and some Asian “vegetarian seasoning” from home. The thing is like MSG–it makes everything taste like magic–but has to be all-natural because I bought it at an organic/health food store. But I digress.

If you prefer your sauce to be a little thicker, feel free to add in some corn starch or flour.

When your napa is soft, it’s all done! Nom to your heart’s content. Or until it’s all gone.

Length of procrastination: 20 minutes

Ways to prolong procrastination: Cook some rice to go with it!

Meet My New Toy

She was sitting on the shelf at Rite-Aid with a little $19.99 tag in front of her. I walked past her and stole a glance. She glanced back. I walked past again, this time looking pointedly, but trying not to act too interested. She looked pointedly back. On the third pass, I stopped in front of her and stared. She stared back, flashing her cardboard box seductively so that the light bounced off the words “delicious versitility” and “fully automatic”. I nervously shifted my weight from one foot to the other, then stooped down to look her in the eye. She cocked her head and winked at me. I caved.

Yes. I bought an ice cream maker from Rite-Aid. I dare you to judge me after eating some of the ice cream that comes out of it (I feel like using the feminine pronoun here would be inappropriate for some audiences). I don’t have $50 to blow on some gorgeous Cuisineart supermodel. My cute little Hamilton Beach does the job and does it well. Sure, her extension cord is only about a foot long. Sure, it takes an entire freezer full of ice, plus half a carton of salt, for her to freeze ice cream properly. Sure, she’s a bit bulky and unwieldy, but dangnammit, she makes a gallon of ice cream in the flavor of my choice. And that, my friends, is true love.

I’ve made two kinds of ice creams so far: green tea and raspberry+apricot. The green tea was the honest-to-goodness best green tea ice cream I’ve ever had. It’s not made with a custard base (no eggs!), so it’s got a much lighter texture–just like green tea is supposed to be. I’ve always thought that the store-bought versions were too creamy and too sweet, but this ice cream is absolutely perfect. Plus? No heat, so you can go from mixing bowl to mouth in less than an hour.

The raspberry and apricot ice cream came out with a consistency more like frozen yogurt than ice cream, probably due to the amount of water in it. This didn’t bother me, but the apricot syrup did come with a whole ton of sugar, making the final product really crazy freaking sweet. Not that I’m complaining or anything, but I’d probably cut the amount of granulated sugar I put in by half if I were to make this again.

Green Tea Ice Cream
From Jason Truesdell

Ingredients
4 cups heavy cream
4 cups whole milk
2 cups  sugar
4 heaping tbsp matcha (green tea) powder
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Whisk the matcha with the milk and sugar, making sure the powder dissolves. Stir in the cream and vanilla. Chill in the freezer for 15 minutes, then freeze and churn according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.

Makes about 3 quarts.

Raspberry and Apricot Ice Cream
I made it up! Seriously.

Ingredients
5 cups milk (I used 2%)
3 cups + a sprinkle of sugar
1/4 tsp salt
6 large eggs, beaten
4.5 cups heavy cream
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 can of apricot halves (12 oz.)
2 cups frozen raspberries

Combine milk, sugar, and salt in a saucepan over low heat until the sugar dissolves. Do not boil!

In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs as you pour half of the hot milk mixture into it. This tempers the eggs so that you get custard instead of scrambled eggs when you pour everything back into the saucepan. Cook over medium heat while stirring until the mixture coats the back of the spoon. It’ll be nice and thick and almost gooey. Chill in the refrigerator (or freezer).

While you’re waiting for your custard base to cool, scoop out your apricot halves and dice them. Save the syrup! Size doesn’t matter a whole heckuva lot. Just make sure you’re okay with that size apricot going into your mouth. Add the syrup and apricot pieces into your cooling custard.

In a small saucepan, heat the frozen raspberries with a sprinkle of sugar so that their juices come out. Stir and squash them as best you can, then pour the raspberries through a strainer into your apricot-flavored custard. This’ll remove the raspberry seeds and residual pulp, but feel free to skip this step if you like the crunch.

When everything’s cold, stir in the heavy cream and vanilla. Freeze and churn according to your ice cream maker’s directions.

Makes one gallon.

Length of procrastination: 50 minutes  (green tea), 1.5 hours (raspberry apricot)

Ways to prolong procrastination: Repeatedly open the freezer door to check whether the custard is cool yet. The answer is no, and it probably prolongs the cooling process. Oops.

Also: Bobby’s back! All the nice, high-res artsy-fartsy photos were taken by him. Visit his blog for more pictures and general awesomeness. ^^

I’m submitting these to the Ice Cream Social hosted by Savor The Thyme, Tangled Noodle and Scotty Snacks.

Veggie Dumplings

Let me be honest–I’ve never made dumplings in my life. In my twenty-one years, never have I sat down next to my mommy and helped her wrap the scrumptious, intricate crescents. Last weekend, after the Fourth of July madness, some of my ATS lovelies came over to help me wrap my very first dumplings. If you’re going to  make dumplings, I highly encourage you to do it with friends. It involves a lot of washing and shredding and dicing, which may drive the average person insane. The logical solution is to get someone else to do it.

Also, it takes five people one-fifth of the time to wrap nearly a 89 dumplings as it takes one person.

Veggie Dumplings
From Angela, Stephie, Tiffy, Zach, and me.

Ingredients
1 pack silken tofu (two blocks)
1 small head napa cabbage
2 large eggs
5 dried shiitake mushrooms, rehydrated
2 blocks of dried vermicelli, rehydrated
2 packs dumpling wrappers
salt
white pepper

Smash the tofu with the flat side of your Asian butcher knife until it looks like cottage cheese. Set aside.

Wash and shred the napa cabbage. Avoid the small bitter leaves in the middle of the head. Toss the shreds with salt to remove the excess water and set aside to drain.

Beat the eggs and fry over a large skillet to create thin pancakes of egg. Shred into pieces about 2 inches long and set aside.

Remove the stems of the shiitake mushrooms and dice. Set aside.

Cut the vermicelli into short strands, at most 2 inches in length. Shorter strands will be easier to wrap, but if they’re too short, the strands will turn into mush. Not tasty.

Take all of the shredded and diced ingredients that you set aside and dump them into the smushed tofu. Thoroughly combine. Don’t be a wuss–use your hands! At this point, you can add a little white pepper and salt to season the filling, but most people will be eating dumplings with soy sauce, which adds a significant amount of salty flavor.

Now it’s time to wrap the dumplings. There are tons of different ways of wrapping them–you can just seal the edges together or pleat one edge. It takes some practice and a lot of patience to create a nice, pleated dumpling. When wrapping, keep in mind that any air in the middle of the wrapped dumplings will expand in the heat and give you a funny-looking bloated dumpling. No worries; you can just squeeze the air out with a spoon as you cook them, and the taste isn’t compromised. You may want to flour the plate or aluminum foil you’re placing the folded dumplings on so that they won’t stick to the surface.

Bring a pot of water to a boil and add a drop of sesame oil so that the dumplings don’t stick to each other. Add the dumplings and wait for the water to boil again. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for another 5 minutes or so, until the skin becomes soft and not too chewy.

Any leftover dumplings can be frozen in a ziploc bag for about a week.

Length of Procrastination: About 3 hours
Ways to Prolong Procrastination: Make a delicious frozen treat for dessert while waiting for dinnertime. (Foreshadowing! DUN DUN DUNNN.)

Sweet mung bean soup (綠豆湯)

This is quite possibly the simplest soup you’ll ever make, short of heating up a can of Campbell’s or something. It’s perfect hot on a frigid winter morning or cold on a warm spring afternoon.

Sweet Mung Bean Soup (綠豆湯)
From my momma’s kitchen. No, really.

• 1 small pack of mung beans (available at your local Asian supermarket)
• sugar (preferably rock sugar, also available at your local Asian supermarket, but brown or white work as well)
• a lot of water (roughly 1:4 ratio mung beans to water by volume)

Bring water to a boil. Add mung beans. Cover and cook until beans are soft, about 30 minutes. Add sugar to taste.

That’s all there is to it. Told you it was easy. Stick it in the refrigerator if you want to drink it cold.

Length of procrastination: 30 minutes

Ways to prolong procrastination: Pour leftover soup into an ice tray, cover with saran wrap, stick toothpicks in each compartment. Freeze, and you have yourself mung bean popsicles!

asian lettuce wraps

in preparation for the Columbia taekwondo tournament, many people are probably cutting weight and eating very little. here’s a way to kick the boredom of your old salad and put some spice into that leftover head of lettuce. or, you could just make these lettuce wraps because they’re so damn tasty. p.f. chang’s got nothing on us!

lettuce wraps with furikake and rice cake crumble

ingredients
1 head of lettuce
3 mushrooms
1 medium carrot
1 celery stem
1 white onion
1 clove garlic
1 chicken breast (optional)
olive oil
sesame oil
mushroom flavored soy sauce
1 unflavored rice cake
furikake topping

Dice the carrot, celery, mushrooms and onion. The pieces should be small but can still be chunky for texture. Crush and dice the garlic. In a sautee pan, heat olive oil and brown the garlic, then add the carrot and celery Sautee until the ingredients are starting to soften, and add the mushroom and onion. Add soy sauce and sesame oil to coat all the ingredients. Cook until onion is caramelized.

If making chicken lettuce wraps, cut the chicken breast into chunks, and cook in olive oil. Add sesame oil, soy sauce, and salt and pepper to taste. After chicken is thoroughly cooked, remove from heat, and on a chopping board, further cut the chicken into small chunks. Mix in with the vegetable ingredients.

Crush the rice cake using a spoon in a bowl, or just using your hands.

Arrange the lettuce wraps. For each wrap, spoon out some filling into the middle of a large (contiguous) piece of lettuce. Sprinkle rice cake crumble and furikake on top, wrap, and enjoy.

Length of procrastination: 20-30 minutes
Ways to prolong procrastination: Hold a charity fundraiser and serve lettuce wraps as finger food, along with pineapple skewers (recipe to come) and mushroom crescents

Stir-fry Noodles With Two (!) Kinds of Onions

I’ve been craving noodles for the longest time. Specifically, I want steaming bowl of honest-to-goodness, hand-pulled ramen with miso soup (sans bonito flakes), mushrooms, and scallions. Because there’s a 7.10 exam on Thursday and a 7.23 exam on Monday, ramen at Porter Square seems a little out of reach. And since Bobby and I lacked the time and ingredients to make any kind of real broth, stir-fry noodles it was.

Stir-fry Noodles With Two (count ’em!) Kinds of Onions

Ingredients

• enough noodles to fill your stomach — we used flat buckwheat noodles that my parents sent from California, but honestly any kind of Asian noodles works
• 1 red onion, chopped
• 1 stalk green onion, chopped or a handful of frozen chopped scallions
• 1 clove garlic, diced
• 1 small potato, sliced
• any other kind of veggies, sliced
• olive oil
• vinegar
• soy sauce
• salt
• pepper

1. Bring water in a large pot to a rolling boil. Cook the noodles on low heat for 2-3 minutes.
2. While the noodles are cooking, heat about 2 tbsp oil in a wok. Add the garlic and scallions and stir-fry until you can smell the aroma. Be careful if you’re using frozen scallions because the water will cause the oil to splatter all over the place.
3. Add another generous amount of oil and stir-fry the rest of the onions, the potatoes, and any other vegetables you may have in your refrigerator. Take a bite of the slowest-cooking vegetable–you’re done when it’s slightly crunchier than the ideal.
4. Transfer the noodles from the pot to the wok along with about 1/4 cup of the water. Stir-fry until all the water has evaporated. Add a splash of vinegar and soy sauce, salt, and pepper to taste. Stir-fry for another 5 minutes.

Notes: Before cooking the noodles in water, I heated them with a bit of oil on low heat in a pan for about 5 minutes. The package of my noodles say that they can be completely cooked this way, but I was pretty skeptical so I cooked them in water, then finished stir-frying. If you’re looking for crunchy noodles, add a lot more oil during the second round of stir-frying.

The final result!

I love salt.


What happens when you do it correctly.

Length of procrastination: 15-20 minutes

Ways to prolong procrastination: Grab a bowl of green tea ice cream for dessert. Length of procrastination is directly proportional to the size of your ice cream tub. Gallon tubs work best.