Cooking: Chinese New Year, Lent photo dump

Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year went well.  My husband and I both cooked for New Year's, he in Metro, me here.  It's our version of spending time together.

I had to make red bean sticky cake (nian-gao).  It's traditional, it's nostalgic, it's good.  It's pretty much mochi, with sweetened red bean paste mixed in.

Traditionally, the cake is cooked by steaming it, but my I don't have a pot big enough to fit a pie pan.  (Also, I don't have a pie pan.)  It also takes 2-4 hours to steam.

My mom came up with a baked version of the sticky-cake.   She makes this cake by feel, but she sent me the approximate recipe:


Red bean cake
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one can WEI-PAC  sweeetend red bean paste
one box Machiko  KODA FARMS
1/2 C sugar
1/2 C oil   ( either veg, corn,  or canola)
2 and 1/4 C water

Mix all together.  Line 13x9 pan with regular aluminum foil, oil the foil.(don't flour it) Pour in and bake at 400F for 35-40 minutes.
Do not preheat the oven.

After the cake is done, sprinkle some water on the top and put a damp kitchen paper towel on the top.  Cover it with aluminum foil and let it cool.  The cake top is dry after you you bake it.  Putting the damp towel on top and covering it will make the top of the cake soft.
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I made the cake last year, and it didn't turn out so well.  It glued itself to the pan, and the only way I could get it out was to cut out the middle of the cake, leaving the bottom and edges stuck to the pan.

This year, I changed the recipe.  Instead of the oil, I put in one egg, and instead of regular aluminum foil, I used non-stick foil.

Here it is out of the oven. (I sampled a piece of the corner):

The top came out drier than I liked.  It is NOT supposed to be this cracked looking.  Not even the damp paper towel trick worked to smooth it out.  Otherwise, the texture was fine, and luckily, the cake is supposed to be served upside down.

The cake did not stick to the foil at all, and the result was a pretty reddish cake:

I am spatially challenged, and cannot cut cakes into equal sized 10ths.   Otherwise, success!

My husband make the cake per the recipe, and he said that his came out just fine.  Next year, I am going to have to tweak the recipe again.  Maybe bake it in a water bath?

Noodles are another traditional food for New Year's--the long noodles are supposed to represent long life.  A third traditional food is fish--in Chinese, the word for fish is a homophone to the word for surpluses.  (There are other foods too, but I decided that three dishes were enough for me!)

For the noodles, I made otsu--a spicy soba noodle and tofu dish, from a recipe I found from 101cookbooks.  I made a simple steamed fish, the recipe found here,  and I got to use the steamer on my rice cooker for the first time!

Here's the plate, with a side of steamed spinach at the top:

A couple of days later,  I realized that my meal was Lent friendly, too!

Chinese New Year was Sunday, that Wednesday was Ash Wednesday.  It's nice when lunar calendars match up, no?


Ash Wednesday

For Ash Wednesday, I made another Dr. Ornish dish, chickpea stew:

Besides chickpeas, it has green and red peppers, diced tomato, zucchini, onion, and the orange bits you see?  That's sweet potato.  It was served over a bed of basmati rice, with a side of cucumber mint yogurt, and a dessert of orange slices baked in a syrup of orange juice, honey and cinnamon.

I probably had too much fun making this than was proper for an Ash Wednesday.

A New Year Thought

I have been a very fortunate individual this past year.

I was doing laundry while cooking on Chinese New Year.  I had two bags of laundry, so I was carrying one laundry bag in one hand, detergent in my other hand, and the second laundry bag I hung over my wrist.  When I returned to my cooking, I noticed that my wrist was a little red.  And then I noticed something else--this was the first time in a year that I was staring at my wrist with a knife in my hand.

You see, last year at this time, I was not in good spirits.  Last year, what I decided to give up for Lent was thoughts of cutting myself--I was only mostly successful.  It was not a good winter.   Now, the same time, one year later, and I had not thought about self-harm once--not even once! the entire winter.  In fact, I was doing so well that I hadn't even noticed that I had not been thinking of harming myself.  How cool is that?

A concluding photo, from Chinese New Year day:  a two pronged icicle.

A closer look at the point where it splits:

(The penny remains.)

Women play videogames?

I've been watching an Assassin's Creed (AC) playthrough, and so on Wednesday decided to watch the mini-movie, "Assassin's Creed: Lineage", which ties in to the new game coming out on the 17th. I thought it was well done for a promo. The backgrounds looked a bit too CG-y, but I liked how the fights were choreographed to look like fights in-game.

It made me wonder, though, of what the target and actual demographics are for the game. It played on SpikeTV at midnight, and yeah, that should say it all. Every commercial break included an ad for Extenze. A majority of the commercial breaks included an ad for Burger King, with Girls Gone Wild in third place.

Perhaps SpikeTV was the only channel with an available and/or affordable time slot. But the ads really made me feel left out. Surely women play such games, right?

Which leads me to another thought--do women do voice-over narration in movies? The last one I remember was in "Madeline." Don LaFontaine, of course, was the narration master. Did that influence the preference for male narrators, or a male narrators preferred because they sound more authoritative?

My last observation: Since I have not had a TV for the past two years, I have used my computer to watch videos. This means that when I do watch TV, I find myself periodically reaching for the remote--so that I can jiggle it to prevent the screen saver from coming on.

Brought to you by the letter C

My actual, complete grocery list for this week:

cream
cheddar
corn meal
collard greens
chips
chocolate chips

Today's blog challenge is to compose each sentence so that it contains at least one word beginning with the letter "C."  And the content of today's post: Cooking, of course!

I discovered that one can make risotto in the rice cooker, even a simple rice cooker, with no "risotto" option. Simply heat half the broth near boiling before pouring it in the rice, and turn on the cooker. As the cooking cycle nears completion, pour in the other half of the broth--again, heated near boiling--into the cooker, and let it simmer for another 10-15 minutes.

I made a more customary mushroom risotto. I stirred in chopped mushrooms and chopped sautéed onions to the pot at the beginning, along with the uncooked rice. After the rice was finished cooking, I added the parmesan.

Comprises about 4 servings
1 cup Arborio rice
3.5 cups broth
2 oz dried shiitake mushrooms, rehydrated, then chopped
1/4 onion, chopped then sautéed
1/3 cup grated Parmesan

For the broth, I used about 2 cups chicken broth, and the other 1.5 cups I used the water that I had used to soak the shiitake mushrooms. I used about 4 cups of water to soak the 2 oz of mushroom.

I was quite content with the results. There was no charring, no sticking, no watching and stirring. Clean-up was a breeze.

I also tried my hand at composing a Southern meal: Pork n' beans, cornbread, collard greens.

This was my first time cooking collard greens. I had no idea how to cook them, but assumed that, as with kale or mustard greens, a short braising with a little onion and garlic would do. I was therefore surprised that the 'correct' way of cooking collards involves having them sit in a pot for an hour with a little water and chopped ham hocks. I was also surprised to learn that when cooking collards in such a lengthy manner, they emit a potentially off-putting boiled cabbage-like smell.

I therefore ignored the cooking advice, and just braised them. There were no cloying odors.  (Though the next day, my garbage, where I had chucked the stems, did smell.) The leaves were crunchy, and little tough, but not in a stringy way. The texture was more like that of a soft meat, which contrasted nicely with the mushy beans and the coarse cornbread.

It was also my first time cooking cornbread from scratch, rather than from a mix. I came across, and recommend, this recipe. The recipe includes sugar and eggs, and I was worried it might come out too cake-like. I had no cause for worry.  The cornbread was still quite dense, the sweetness was only mild, and it was fine to eat alone, without butter.

The only other thing worth commenting on is that I threw out my dying violet, and took the new violet out of quarantine. I was saddened by the casualty. My shelf just looks changed...

I conclude with a photo. My previous posts captured some of the beauty of fall. In contrast, this one captures some ugliness.

Here is the story: I was walking back from class. My path crossed under a large maple. As I approach it to walk under its canopy, I hear rustling and see a hawk fly from the branches. At the same time, a small creature falls from the tree. It is the corpse of a headless pigeon, one wing plucked of feathers.

Moral of the story: Bird carcasses should not fall out of trees at my feet. Otherwise, I'm liable to document it, to the detriment of civilization.

(If this had come about a week earlier, it would have been perfect for Halloween.)

Challenge: Complete.  Though I admit that many sentences sound a bit contrived.

Winterizing

It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown...

Garrison Keillor is one of my heroes. I've been a fan of his since I was in high school, when I wondered why my tape recorder wasn't auto-programmable like my VCR. I would pull my chair up to the boombox on my dresser and just sit and listen to his baritone. The Guy Noir segments were my favorite. One day, I hope my blog posts will be as good as his tales from Lake Wobegon, and then I can die happy.

It's been a quiet week here in University Town, out on the edge of the mountains.

This week, I got ready for winter. I took my car in to be winterized. I also "shrunk wrapped" my bedroom windows. And finally, I purchased my first named African violet.

I've been a longtime fan of African violets. I gave them up when I went to college, but started growing them again when I moved north. They do two things: help keep the air humid, and help me from going crazy in the winter. They grow and bloom beautifully when there is nothing but gray and snow outside.

I have three violets. One is dying--a victim, I believe, of the cold draft that came through the window on the early snow days. I bought another to replace it. I used some of the leftover window plastic to build a bubble around the new violet, and it is now in quarantine, on the same shelf with the others. The new violet is a scraggly thing, having been on a low shelf in the back of the store. Even so, it looks sturdy, and so far, it's doing very well. I have high hopes for it--higher hopes than when I got the violet it is replacing. All of my previous violets have been NOID grocery store acquisitions. The new one was, too, but surprisingly, the pot had a tag. It's my first named violet: Anthoflores Berti.

This week, I made a classic Chinese dish: Tomato Egg Rice, or, as the blog Rice Again calls it: Chinese Egg Tomato S**t.  I used Arborio rice, since I had a large container of it left over from a failed risotto recipe. My ingredients:

1 cup Arborio rice
3 cups chicken broth
28-oz can of peeled tomatoes
4 eggs

I cooked the rice in the classic method: putting the rice and one cup of broth in the pan, stirring over heat until it was absorbed. I then added the second cup of broth, stirring until absorbed. Repeat for the third cup of broth. Finally, I added in the tomatoes, straight from the can, juice and all. Continued cooking and stirring. After about 5 minutes, I was afraid that I had put in too much liquid, but after cooling a bit, it was a nice creamy consistency.

I cracked the eggs in a bowl, scrambled them with a fork, and then put them in a hot fry pan, continuing to scramble them into small pieces until done. The dish was served by sprinkling the egg on top of the tomato risotto.

I used to think that I did not like risotto. This dish changed my mind.

Happy Halloween!

Early Snow

It was halfway through October, the afternoon of 10/15, when it started snowing. It was too early for snow. The leaves were still on the trees, some of the trees still green, when a the wet mush started falling. The temps weren't even freezing. But it snowed all night--6 inches.

I went to bed angry. I was certain it would all freeze overnight. I can deal with a certain amount snow. What I DON'T like dealing with is when snow melts, then freezes, leaving your car embedded in the middle of an ice cube. I needn't have worried. The temperatures remained just above freezing.

I heard snow falling off the roof and the tree outside my bedroom in soft thuds all night. In the early morning I heard a sharp crack and a louder crash, but I assumed that it was just more snow, falling off all at once in the sun. Once again, I was wrong. Large branches had fallen off the tree in front of my window.

Six inches of snowfall is normal here, but more a mid-winter phenomenon. October was early, and yes, it was a lot for a first snowfall. However, my morning was completely unremarkable, and my gas-heated apartment was warm. I started my drive to school completely oblivious to the disruptions the snow had caused.

The roads were clear of snow, but there was plenty of debris. Broken branches were everywhere--the trees couldn't bear the weight of the wet snow on the leaves. On my way to school, two stoplights were blacked out.

Parts of the campus were closed off. A mass e-mail went out to all the students advising them to stay away from certain tree-lined walkways because of falling branches. It was homecoming weekend, but no one was allowed to camp out by the stadium (as is customary) due to the continuing snow and the threat of dropping temperatures. The parade was postponed. The homecoming coronation was moved inside, and no one was allowed to park on the grass lots--and there are more grass lots around the stadium than paved areas. Instead, the University called the area shopping centers, and asking to use their parking lots for game day parking.

Once I got to school Friday morning, I heard from classmates that had lost power, and even heat. The news reported 12% of the town was without power. The Red Cross set up an emergency shelter in a nearby elementary school. Today, Saturday morning, I got an e-mail from my church pastor saying that if anyone was still without power (like his family) to feel free to call his cell, and that the church would try to get them a temporary place to stay.

Of course, the first snow also brings out people's sense of fun. As I was leaving school on Friday afternoon I saw that someone(s) had made a snow sofa and a snow TV, complete with willow whip antennas.

Photos are here: Snow Day

Addendum: The National Weather Service has reported that this was the earliest local snowfall in recorded history.