Gung Hay Fat Choy! (Happy New Year!)
Today is the big family Chinese New Year dinner and our contribution is, as usual, dessert. I’ve had an inkling to go back to my roots and decided to make some traditional and “fusion” Chinese desserts.
One of several experiments was traditional sesame balls, or phonetically, “jien duy”. These are made of glutinous rice flour and filled with red bean or lotus seed paste, then covered with sesame seeds and deep fried to be puffy, sticky and crispy goodness.
This really brought me back to the days as a little kid sitting at the kitchen table helping my Grandma around Chinese New Year. She would work using an old round waiter’s tray and I mainly remember lots of flour and kneading. Wish I had made more effort to learn the language and the recipes – many have been lost with her passing.
One of my parents’ woks has a nifty rack attached to the top to drain oil:
The most difficult part was preventing the bean paste from squishing out.
Key Steps:
1) Roll a ball of dough in your palm
2) Use your 2nd knuckle on your opposite index finger to make a well.
3) Spoon some bean paste in the well, leaving adequate room on the sides to pinch.
4) Pinch closed like a dumpling, then gently re-roll into a ball.
I did substitute some of the glutinous rice flour with some regular rice flour based on another recipe, but their ratio made the dough too dry. in the end i probably had an 8:1 ratio glutinous to regular, and added maybe 2 cups of water. It’s one of those things where you just keep practicing and recognize what it’s supposed to be like.
It really came out tasty and light! My aunt said Grandma would be proud.
We also made Vietnamese Coffee Ice Cream, but made it creamier and more like a gelato by adding cornstarch ;
and Lychee Ice Cream that was inspired by a few recipes, but tweaked so much I think I can pretty much claim it as my own (not that I could repeat it because it morphed so much). Extremely flavorful but it was much icier than I would have preferred due to the excess lychee juice. I think I’ll try to drain it next time and use a custard base (used coconut milk and whole milk, no eggs or heavy cream);
plus Yellow Split Pea Pudding (ma dao gou). My dad said, “Since when did you want to be so Chinese?”
Since I remembered how yummy roots are.
Filed under Chinese New Year | Comments (2)Homemade is Better. Trust Me.
Pasta and ice cream are so cheap nowadays that I think people overlook how simple they are to make. Making either yourself when you have a couple of free hours on the weekend is SO WORTH IT. The only problem is fighting the cravings for these high-carb, empty calorie treats!
Tip: Super fun activity for 2+ people!!!
Tagliatelle (Lidia Biastianich recipe), accidentally cut the wrong direction making really long noodles. But who cares? They’re heartier yet infinitely more delicate than dried pasta. Top it with some slowwww braised pork and peas – OH MAMA.
Hubby and I have managed to resist making ice cream every day since he bought me the KitchenAid ice cream maker attachment for Christmas. I am a sugar addict and just the thought of it in the freezer makes me salivate. Hence we’ve only made two ice creams. But alas warm weather will be on the horizon eventually!!! I’m dying to make some hazelnut gelato and salted caramel ice cream. I’m salivating now. Disgusting.
We ate most of the vanilla bean ice cream before we thought to take a picture. Yes, if you follow some homemade recipes the milkfat % is oh, just about 3 times that of the maximum 16% allowed by the commercial ice cream industry. But is it worth it (and some post-piggy lactose intolerance)? I think so. We worship David Lebovitz and the beauty of the vanilla bean.
This picture is of the very lemony Meyer lemon ice cream. If you don’t like lemon, don’t make this. It was pleasingly tart but as with the beauty of Meyer lemons, doesn’t make you pucker. Strawberries helped to cut the lemon lemoniness.
Filed under Ice Cream, Pasta | Comments (2)
Sushi!!! Cupcakes!! For Two!! At Home!!
After a day of eating for Chinese New Year, we came home to enjoy a romantic Valentine’s Day making sushi and cupcakes.
The spread: salmon nigiri, salmon and scallop sashimi, spicy salmon, spicy scallop roll, and salmon/cucumber/avocado roll. they were all out of tuna but this was an enormous amount of rice and fish!! had to throw out the frozen edamame that turned out to be about two years old (when we moved in). You can see the cute V-day napkins from my mother-in-law in the corner.
My plate for him:
His plate for me:
Finished with vanilla cupcakes filled with pb frosting and topped with chocolate ganache (from Martha Stewart Living cupcake issue February 2009, so good we had to make it again for this V-day). Hubby was upset that I wanted to take some to the neighbors, lucky for him two of them weren’t home!
Filed under Savory, Valentine's Day | Comments (2)