Japanese bounty from NYC lol

Lol just as the title says, everytime we go to NYC I buy lots of asian food - half of it (as pictured) is usually Japanese.
From left to right: wasabi, salmon rice seasoning, nori-tamago rice seasoning, two different types of natto, meiji mini chocolate sticks, super-thin pocky, brazilian pudding flavored pudding, flyfish roe, fresh udon noodles in a bowl.
top row: tea-cakes, fresh sashimi (yum!), sweet tofu shells for riceballs, miso soup mix

Low-fat yoghurt hummus

Ingredients Result

Ingredients: (for a basic hummus base)

- 1 tbsp lemon juice

- 1 tbsp peanut butter
- 1/3 cup yoghurt (plain)

- 3/4 cup chickpeas (if you use dried chickpeas like I did make sure to soak them according to the instructions on the back of the packet as well as cook them thoroughly)

- 2 cloves garlic, crushed and roughly chopped

- 2 tsp sesame seed oil

Additional (optional):

- parsley, tomatoes, cucumber (anything of your choice) to garnish

Method:

1. Put chickpeas and garlic in a blender (if you have an open-top blender where u can keep adding ingredients then start pulsing the chickpeas and garlic - if you have a cocktail blender or a bullet blender then put all ingredients in at once). - if the latter option, beat until roughly smooth and serve cold with or without garnish.

2. If the former option, add remaining ingredients gradually and then spoon out and serve cold with or without garnish.

Alternatively you can make a hummus with 1/3 cup olive oil, chickpeas, and garlic in the same fashion. Just two different types of bases.

Natto and mini onigiri-like things

I am currently in love with natto =] left: chopped natto (it came chopped) on daikon w/ spring onions. Right: mini-onigiri made from a mold, topped with rice-seasoning in salmon flavor and nori-tomago flavor.
Full-beaned natto on rice w/ spring onion.

Soo... I'm absolutely obsessed with eating natto for some reason... initially I thought it was the most disgusting thing ever, then I started craving it... and now I want it on a regular basis. <3

Natto = an acquired taste, but definitely worth acquiring!

Mandarin roast chicken with celery hearts

The seasoning ingredients
Mandarins and peel soaked in water underneath the rack
The roast - before baking
End product - yum

So I wanted to make some kinda chicken roast... so I pulled out the chicken and some ingredients I had on hand and whipped up this recipe. The chicken came out surprisingly tender, fragrant, and flavorful so I'm definitely sticking to this recipe from now on =]

Ingredients:

- 1/2 a chicken (just double the ingredients if you use a whole chicken - I just happen to only need to feed two peopl and had half a chicken in the freezer)

- 2 tbsp honey

- 2 tbsp dry sherry / chinese cooking wine (I had wolfberry wine on hand so I used that instead)

- 1 tbsp white vinegar

- 3 tbsp cornstarch

- 1/2 cup parsley (broken up by hand)

- 2 tsp sesame seed oil

- 2 mandarins / clementines

- 2 celery hearts

- 3 slices ginger (2 mm thick)

- 2 tbsp soy sauce

- 1/3 cup hoisin sauce (oyster sauce) mixed with 2 tbsp water

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit.

1. Peel mandarins and place peels face down and 1 1/2 of the mandarins (pulled apart and crushed) in some water in a roasting pan, place rack on top of pan.

2. Pierce chicken all over with a fork so that the sauce can soak in.

3. Mix together honey, wine, cornstarch, sesame seed oil, soy sauce, and vinegar. Brush onto chicken inside and out.

4. Stuff celery hearts, remaining half of a mandarin, and ginger inside the chicken (if using half a chicken tie up with some kitchen string so the pieces stay in - if possible, this isn't necessary).

5. Sprinkle parsley all over.

6. Place in oven and bake for 45 minutes (until golden).

7. Turn up heat to 400 degrees fahrenheit, turn chicken over and bake for 30 minutes.

8. Open up chicken and remove celery, mandarin, and ginger - bake for another 20 minutes.

9. Remove from oven and slice up while hot (don't burn yourself :p)

10. brush with hoisin sauce and water and serve.

Making Kimchi

Day one of making kimchi =] basically the nappa cabbage (Chinese cabbage) is put in a brine solution of 3 tbsp: 4 cups of water.

It's left overnight to let the cabbage get salty and shrivel a bit.

Sorry guys, I forgot the exact recipe for this, basically there's:

fish sauce, spring onions, chilli sauce (korean stuff), chilli powder, sesame seed oil... ahh... yeah.

It tastes good though hehe =]

Jasmine Jelly

Ingredients
Result

I originally got an idea to make these jellies from a drama series, they had used chrysanthemum tea to make chrysanthemum jelly but I didn't have any of that on hand nor did I have fresh jasmine/chrysanthemum flowers thus this is the improvised version haha.

Recipe:

1 sachet gelatine (Enough to solidify 1 cup of water)

1 jasmine tea bag

1 1/4 cups boiling water

2 tbsp honey

10 goji berries

Method:

1. Use 1/4 cup of boiling water to soak and revive the goji berries.

2. Make 1 cup of jasmine tea with the boiling water and teabag (leave for about 5 mins - depending on how strong you want the jasmine tea taste)

3. Stir the honey into the tea.

4. Stir in the gelatine til well mixed.

5. Pour the honey-tea-gelatine mixture into molds (to make the flower petals I poured the jelly into chinese soup spoons)

6. Slice the goji berries and place a pinch in each jelly.

7. Allow to set and serve cold =]

They taste delicately sweet and aromatic, I was a bit hesitant about the goji berries at first but they added a nice sour-sweet crunch to the jellies.

Scottish Baps

Waiting for the dough to rise
After the dough had risen (it had doubled in volume although you can't really tell)

We had some wholemeal bagels in the cupboard and they'd only been there for a couple of days so one morning I was craving bready goodness and they'd gone moldy =[ I guess it was because they were rich and the cupboard was too warm? Anyhow, I decided to bake some bread of my own and found this recipe (can't remember where sorry!) and altered it a little to make these scottish baps.

Ingredients:

2 tsps dry yeast

2/3 cup lukewarm milk

2/3 cup lukemwarm water

2 tsps salt

3 cups unbleached flour

Method:

1. Mix yeast, water and milk.

2. Add salt to flour and mix well.

3. Add the yeasty mixture to the flour mixture and blend well til doughy (if the mixture is too runny add more flour and add more milk if it's the opposite)

4. Place onto a floured board and knead about 30 times

5. butter/grease a bowl and put the dough in, cover with a damp towel and allow 1 1/2 hours to rise.

Preheat the oven approx. 1 1/4 hours into rising time.

6. Shape the dough into ovals and then brush each bun with milk and sprinkle with flour.

7. Make a small impression in the center of the bun with your finger (make sure your finger is floured so it wont stick). Evenly space the buns on a greased cookie sheet.

8. Bake 15-20 mins or until golden.

9. Remove each bap and place on wire rack to cool.

I personally like these with a little butter but you can use them just as easily as salad rolls etc. eating them hot is best imo - just heat up the cold ones in a toaster or microwave!

Banana smoothie

This is the easiest and quickest way to make a healthy smoothie =] you can make it a milkshake by adding some ice cream too!

Ingredients:

2 bananas

1/2 cup yoghurt (plain)

1 cup milk

Method:

1. Break up bananas into chunks. Throw all ingredients into a blender and blend til smooth.

hahaha yeah this isn't much of a recipe but it's sure simple and tastes nice =] makes 2 servings.

Japanese Mochi

Now I obviously cannot claim credit for these as they are very blatantly store bought and cellophane packaged. I had tried some real Japanese mochi once when a work-mate of my dads brought him some from Japan, when we were in New York the other day I saw these in an Asian food mart and craved the taste. Of course there is no comparison between this slightly rubbery factory-made mochi to the real stuff but these were decent and although I think the red-bean and sesame one tasted really terrible, I quite liked the peanut flavored ones.
They remind me a bit of Tang Yuan (the balls of glutinous rice filled with similar contents that the Chinese people eat on the moon festival), anyhow, just wanted to share my mochi experience. Hoping to get some rice-seasoning next time I'm up there.

Marbled tea eggs

I don't remember the exact age I was when I first had one of these marbled tea eggs but I remember loving the salty taste paired with a delicate aroma of tea. We used to buy them from the old men with huge pots of these eggs sitting by the side of the road in China (when we went on vacation), I've never been too fussy about sanitation as I have never gotten sick in any form eating from one of these nice old men. The eggs were very cheap, often only 50c each (in US dollars that's less than 10c)! So the other day I had a bit of a craving and decided to look up this recipe online while also incorporating what I had learned from my mother the one time she made it. So here's the recipe I used compiled from many websites and with tweaks I made.

Chinese marbled tea eggs:

Ingredients:

- 8 eggs

- water

- 1/2 cup salt / soy sauce (add more if you want to make these eggs as a dish to go with rice instead of eating them plain)

- 2 tbsp Chinese five spice powder

- 8-10 star anise

- 1 tea bag (you can use jasmine tea or black tea, the taste of green tea is often too subtle for these eggs)

- 1 green onion (cut into 5cm lengths)

- 2 tbsp red sugar (this is different to brown sugar but brown sugar will work also)

- 2 tsp cinnamon powder / 1 stick of cinnamon

- ground black pepper (optional)

Method:

1. Place the eggs in a medium pot, cover with water and bring to a boil. Then allow to simmer for 3-5 minutes.

2. Drain and cover with cold water to cool, drain again. Take each egg and gently crack the shell all over without actually letting it fall off (this will make the marbled effect so here is where you can be creative with the cracking!).

3. Cover the eggs with water once again, add all the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil on high heat. Once boiling, turn the heat down to medium-low / low and allow to simmer for an hour or more (to let the flavor really seep into the eggs).

4. You may choose to keep the eggs in the marinade so they can keep absorbing flavor or you can drain. The eggs can keep for anywhere between 4-10 days depending on how salty you made them (the saltier they are, the longer they keep). These eggs can be eaten hot or cold and are brilliant both ways!

I'm rather proud of how pretty my eggs turned out and they tasted good too (I made them not too salty because dad has high blood pressure and I made these so he could have some for lunch), next time Pete challenged me to try and make the cracks symmetrical hahaha, we'll see how that goes!

Sour spicy soup

Every Asian buffet/restaurant I go to offers this sour spicy soup on the menu and I've loved all the varieties I've tried, so here's my version (it's easy to alter this recipe for vegetarian and vegan versions, just omit the meat and egg =])

Recipe:

- 1/2 cup dried wood ear mushrooms, rehydrated and sliced (the measurements are before rehydration for all dried foods)

- 1/2 cup dried shitake mushrooms, rehydrated and sliced

- 1/4 cup dried tiger lilly buds, rehydrated and sliced by hand

- 5 cups chicken broth

- 2/3 cup thinly sliced strips of lean chicken meat

- 2 tsp soy sauce

- 1 tsp white sugar

- 3 tsp salt

- 1 tsp ground white pepper (as an alternative to salt and pepper, you can also use Morton's nature's seasoning - about 1 1/2 tbsps)

- 1/3-1/2 cup of vinegar (I use a mixture of balsamic and white, red wine vinegar is best and I've found that malt vinegar is the worst to use)

- 1 tbsp corn starch / potato powder (kumura powder also works)

- 250g tofu, diced into small cubes/ sliced into 3cmx4mm strips

- 1 strip dried bean curd, rehydrated and cut into 3cm long strips

- 1 lightly beaten egg

- 2 tsp sesame oil

- 1 spring onion, thinly sliced.

(optional: I also added 1 grated carrot and 1/3 grated telegraph cucumber - add at the very end with the tofu. Bamboo shoots are also a common addition - slice these into thin strips and add with the mushrooms)

Method:

1. Put chicken broth, wood ear mushrooms, shitake mushrooms, tiger lily buds, dried bean curd, and chicken in a medium pot and bring to the boil.

2. Add soy sauce, sugar, salt & pepper/ nature's seasoning, and vinegar. Combine a few tbsp cold water with the corn starch and add to the soup when it's boiling.

3. Add the beaten egg when the soup is boiling so that it spreads out more, stir well.

4. Add tofu and the vegetables if you choose to use them. Cover until boiling, then allow to simmer on medium heat for about five minutes (depending on how thick you grated your vegetables, if you keep them in too long they go mushy and you have a huge pile of goo instead of a nicely textured soup).

5. Serve while hot =]

Tabbouleh

Tabbouleh:
Tabbouleh is a Lebanese salad made with bulgur (a type of wheat), parsley, and various other vegetables. I however don't like bulgur thus I make bulgur-less tabbouleh, sometimes with cous cous which isn't very authentic but it still tastes good.

Recipe:
150g parsley (chopped into small pieces)
3 spring onions (sliced thinly)/ 1/3 cup finely diced white onion
Juice of 1 lemon / 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar / 1/3 cup grapefruit juice (freshly squeezed)
5 tbsp olive oil
1/3 telegraph cucumber (diced)
1-1/2 cups tomatoes (diced into small 1/3 cm cubes)
pepper and salt to season
(also optional: add 1/2 cup minced mint leaves to the sauce)

Method:
1. Mix olive oil, lemon juice, pepper, and salt together (optional: balsamic vinegar/grapefruit juice - I like the sour and sweet bitterness that the grapefruit juice gives).
2. Toss together the parsley, tomatoes, spring onions, and cucumber (if you want to make the traditional bulgur tabbouleh or the cous cous tabbouleh then add the prepared grains in this step).
3. pour the sauce mixture over the vegies and refrigerate for 1/2 an hour at least as the salad is best served cold.

Et voila! Tabbouleh salad =]
I particularly like this salad because the parsley (and mint if you choose to use it) helps tone down the onion-y taste of the spring onions so it doesn't leave as strong an oinion breath.

Old

Steamed lobster dish I made a while ago

Side dishes are : Grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, and peppers and also baked potato wedges with parsley and olive oil.

The mayonnaise is made by beating raw egg yolk together with olive oil until it becomes thick and creamy, I also put in some garlic and salt for flavoring.

Summer holidays

I don't know why I only thought of making a blog now about my food and cookie experiences as I've been experimenting with lots of different foods (mostly Asian) this summer to pass time. Anyhow, I will be documenting the food I make/get the chance to eat with the recipes (if I made them) =] enjoy!