tofu?

i ate tofu today. i didn't like it, but i ate it. so there! i used to think it was just a texture thing for me, but i feel like that is just an excuse. i really didn't like the taste. BUT, the texture of a food doesn't help me like it any more if i don't like the taste of it to begin with. i've eaten dessert tofu before (coconut flavored is pretty good. it is also useful for making vegan desserts as a kind of egg substitute) and i don't mind it. but the texture of dessert tofu is pretty damn similar to the texture of other tofu. (i know i know... there are many kinds of tofu, and i'm totally stereotyping... forgive me)

anyway, i ate the tofu in a dish called yong tau foo. i just looked it up with my trusty friend wikipedia (we are becoming quite close these days), and the tofu used in yong tao foo is stuffed with a meat paste. apparently yong tau foo means "stuffed bean curd," but it is used in a soup dish. i now know why i didn't like the taste of the tofu. i am fairly adverse to spongy meat pastes in general, but specifically fishballs. the soup was good though, and i liked the veggies and the rice noodles.

as for the description, i'm just going to cut and paste from wikipedia:

Yong tau foo is essentially a clear consomme soup containing a varied selection of food items including fish balls, crab sticks, bittergourds, cuttlefish, lettuce, lady fingers, as well as chilis, and various forms of fresh produce, seafood and meats common in Chinese cuisine.

The dish is eaten with chopsticks and a soup spoon and can be eaten by itself (served with a bowl of steamed rice) or with any choice of egg or rice noodles, or bee hoon (rice vermicelli). Another variation of this dish is to serve it with laksa gravy or curry sauce. Essential accompaniments are spicy, vinegary chili sauce, similar to Indonesian sambal oelek, and a distinctive brown sweet bean sauce or hoisin sauce for dipping.

photo courtesy of Chensiyuan from the Wikipedia Commons

comfort food

i am thinking that comfort food is important. i'm used to cooking for myself at home, and i've cooked once here so far in the past almost 3 weeks. lazy? yeah... but mostly just busy.

when you (not YOU you, the general you) are traveling, or you have moved to a new place, sometimes you just want to eat familiar foods. its normal. some people call that culture shock. now i'm fairly used to asia, so i'm not suffering huge culture shock, but i do miss certain things about eating and food back in canada. you need to satisfy that craving in some way. some people do this by eating fast food. but as my previous post mentioned, i'm not so fond of fast food. however, the other evening my family had a lovely nighttime snack that was pretty blissful. i will let my photos describe the wonderfulness of the snack: (with the help of some tag lines)

yogurt with fruit + sugar

(i was a snob and bought the slightly more expensive natural yogurt - you know, the preservative and additive-free kind. i've given up some of my food snobbishness here already, but i'd like to keep some of my snobbishness, thank you.)

avocado with lime, salt, pepper

(sometimes the simplest things in life are the most amazing)

should one ever try eating 'western' food in asia?

my answer? no. as in, 'avoid it like the plague!'

but if you are desperate for 'western' food (i really hate labeling), at least do it in limited quantities. or make it yourself.

on the weekend i went for brunch with my family. i ordered an eggs benedict, and an americano. i was asked what size of americano i wanted, small, medium or large, so i asked back: 'how many shots do you put in your small?' two. in my barista mind, i am thinking that seems alright, since where i used to work, we also used 2 shots in our 'small' 12 ounce cups. but then i get my americano, and i can see through the glass it is so watered down. i have no idea what size their large is, since their 'small' appeared to be a 16 ounce cup. oh well. i sucked it up because i don't want to appear to be a stuck-up foreigner. or an ang mo, which is a slang word for foreigners. it literally means 'red devil.' haha... so apt.

but my tangent about coffee is over for now. except to say that local coffee beats espresso-based coffee here. so far. i will be sure to let you know if i have a pleasurable encounter with an americano.

as for the eggs benedict... it was okay. i won't say much except that vancouver still has the best eggs benedicts i've ever had. hands down. the west coast of north america does eggs well. very well. i really need to learn how to poach eggs. i hear its easy, but i figure i'm either lazy or i'm scared i'll fail at something easy.


anyway.

i have a confession to make. the other day i had not only 1, but 3, substances that i have pretty much successfully avoided for the past 2 years.
1) fast food fries
2) fast food burger
3) coca cola

i'm not going to mention the name of the place, because i don't want to provide any marketing for this company (yes, bad marketing is still marketing).

but, needless to say, i did not feel good that night. my innards are not used to that many fake substances at once. the fries aren't so bad i guess. but why eat generally tasteless fast food fries that aren't good for me when i can eat tasty homemade yam fries at almost any restaurant in vancouver? sigh. i miss vancouver. kind of.

dāo xīao mìan

this whole blogging thing is kind of time-consuming. i'd love to do it every day, but man... it takes up so much time. this is the second time i'm posting in a week. i'm already beating my average for blog posts per week. :)

these past 2 weeks i have been meeting up with old friends from high school. one of those friends is a kiwi (she hails from new zealand. special note: a 'kiwi' is a person from new zealand. not to be confused with the kiwi fruit or the kiwi bird) but she spent over 12 years of her developmental years living in singapore. so, even though she is caucasian, i trust her judgment of se asian foods. or maybe i trust her judgment because she is caucasian? who knows. anyways, last week she introduced me to 'popiah.' (for you caucasians out there it is pronounced kinda like 'poe-pyah') its this wrap with turnips and veggies and peanuts inside. i didn't get a photo and i'm probably not describing it to its justice and i honestly have no idea whether its chinese or malaysian or a lovely mixture or what. but it was amazing. i will definitely be having popiah again, and not just to grab a photo. but this past sunday, we were having lunch and i decided to try something completely new. i had no idea what i was ordering, except that it was some sort of soup, and i had the options of chicken, beef, or pork. it was pretty good. it was called dao xiao mian:

'dāo xīao mìan' (刀削麵, knife-sliced noodles)
(thank you wikipedia)

it was a soup with hand-cut noodles. i had it with chicken (which i am not sure if i would do again - they only give you the options of using a spoon or chopsticks, and yet the chicken was in full drumstick form. i'm sorry but i am not exactly deft enough to be able to cut up chicken drumsticks with chopsticks.) and it was quite tasty. the interesting part was watching the chef handle this lump of dough, because he shaved the noodles off the dough into the hot boiling soup right in front of you.

in my quest to be more adventurous with foods here, one of my friends has shared with me a list of over 50 foods that one has to eat in singapore, so i will have to try to work my way through it while i'm here. we'll see how that goes...

becoming a southeast asian foodie

i used to live in singapore. but i was a teenager, so you can imagine that i ate a lot of fast food, most of which i make sure i avoid these days like most people avoid h1n1.

i will be spending a couple months in the south east region of asia - mainly singapore and indonesia - and i am hoping to be a bit more adventurous with food this time around. i've been here over a week now, but sadly i didn't have my camera on me for many of my meals. lugging that heavy contraption around is just more pain than its worth sometimes. i'm still coming up with a solution to that....

but here are a few of my favorites (from my teen years, and still now) that i managed to sneak photos of:

kopi - malay/indonesian for coffee

i think kou fu is a chain of coffee shops here. its not that i care specifically for THEIR coffee, i just like coffee in general. sadly they do have starbucks here, and sadly, i have ventured into not one, but two of them. at least. overpriced. and i can't even use my starbucks cards so i actually have to pay for the coffee i buy there. but i digress. kou fu, and other coffee shops here like kopitiam, yakun, and other nameless shops here make coffee the traditional malay/indonesian way, which is strong, sweet, and made from a sock. and often made with either sweetened condensed milk or evaporated milk. if you ask for coffee, they will give you coffee with sugar and condensed milk. if you ask for coffee 'o' it is black with sugar. if you don't take sugar or milk you have to be very specific, and ask for 'kopi kosong' which means 'empty coffee.'*

guava - a type of fruit.

this stuff is pre-cut, peeled and conveniently bagged for me, so you can't see the green skin or the seeds inside. its a crunchy fruit, comparable to an apple but not really.
some people think its bland, but i love it.
its even better with salt.
oh yeah, i grew up on this fruit in the jungles of indonesia. i'm pretty sure it was one of the first words i spoke as a baby.

roti prata - oily goodness.

that's not what it means, but seriously, oil never tasted so good. it's an indian delight you can get for roughly 80 cents a piece. (curry included) literally roti prata means 'flat bread.' this is one of the cheapest, most satisfying dishes one can get in singapore.

here's what i gained from wikipedia:

"Roti prata is the Singaporean evolution of the Pakistani and Indian paratha, a pancake bread made of dough composed of fat, egg, flour and water."

please, avid readers (i know you exist! don't worry i am going to write more often than every few months), stay abreast for more exciting foodie adventures with joey.

*important note: i may not actually know what i'm talking about. just general observations. if i write any untruths please, please tell me. this way i can be irritated that you brought my faults to my attention and proceed to correct my naivety and assumptions.

cuteness for sale

what does this have to do with food?

silly question. she's eating a gingerbread man. gingerbread men are cookies... men that don't cause you emotional stress. unless you are the type that stresses over eating cookies. then yes, they still give you stress. so avoid them. or just stop stressing about cookies.

my sister/roomie is selling some christmas cards on etsy. they are cute! buy them!

i feel like i need to post a gingerbread cookie recipe right here. but i haven't actually tried any yet, will do that this christmas. i did decorate some last year for work. they were fun. if you follow my blog, feel free to send me nagging emails about baking gingerbread men. maybe i should be politically correct here... gingerbread people? yes. i will make some gingerbread people this year.

what i want in my kitchen

(photo taken by someone at centralchef.com. not by me)

a french press that doesn't look like a french press? yes. i want this. it is awesome.

looks like you can get it at centralchef.com. it is a 'cafatiere pura orange ceramic french press 8 cup.'

... and pumpkin pie again

thanksgiving: the time of year we roast birds that are way too big for our ovens and turn vegetables into sweet desserts. weird.

i like yams, but i've never really liked that sweet yam stuff that people make for thanksgiving dinners. i've never roasted a turkey, and honestly have no plans or desires to. i much prefer chicken anyhow. and i do have plans AND desires to roast a chicken this year yet. maybe for christmas? or my birthday... ooh... potential dinner party plans are developing in my head now.

i decided to forgo the turkey tradition (that i've never really followed anyway so its really not that unusual for me) and made waffles instead. i had some friends over for brunch and made a batch of traditional waffles, and a batch of vegan waffles (one of my best friends is vegan, so it makes me be creative and try more new things). the regular waffles fluffed up and cooked perfectly - although would have tasted better right off the wafflemaker instead of being let to sit in a pan in the oven to slowly get wimpy. the vegan waffles, however, had issues. they browned nicely and tasted great, but it completely split apart and baffled me.

i got the vegan waffle recipe at veganyumyum (a fantastic blog with beautiful photos), minus the blueberries.

(my kitchen after a day of waffles, pie, and lounging about. not pictured are the sink + another counter of dishes)

but my post doesn't have 'waffles' in the title, it has 'pumpkin pie,' so i shall now get back on topic. ahem.

so i made pumpkin pie. this tradition i upheld with much glee. i made 2 of them. one of them vegan. i wasn't exceptionally fond of pumpkin pie as a child, but i have been loving the crap out if it now that i have been making it myself.

lately, my go-to-pie-crust-recipe has been taken from simply recipes. for the filling i followed the recipe from joy of baking, but i have also used the crust recipe from joy of baking last year when i made pumpkin pie and i remember it turning out as well.

i'm not an expert pie dough baker, but i'll do my best to explain the basics of making pie dough, as i know it.

this one in particular is called a Pâte Brisée

ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups flour, plus extra for rolling
• 1 cup unsalted butter, very-cold, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• 4 to 8 Tbsp ice water

1. first thing i do is cut the butter (if you want to make your pie vegan, this is where you substitute earth balance or another vegan buttery spread, in place of butter) into cubes and toss them in the freezer for a few minutes (wrapped in wax paper or something)
   
   
2. whisk dry ingredients together (flour, salt, sugar) in a medium/large bowl
   
   
3. throw cold butter cubes in and cut with a pastry cutter. (or if you're a rich, fancy baker, use a food processor). some recipes say you can just use 2 knives for this, but i've never tried it. if you don't have a pastry cutter or a food processor, just use your hands. it's quite fun to use your hands. cut until it looks like 'coarse bread crumbs'
   
   
4. add ice water a little bit at a time, and 'toss' the mixture until it starts to stick together. if you squeeze some of the mixture together and it stays together, its pretty much ready. i generally use all 8 Tablespoons of ice water, though...
   
   
5. form into 2 round disc shapes, plop onto parchment paper and refridgerate for a while. about an hour-ish. you can use it right away, but putting it in the fridge does something like relax the gluten or something technical like that. but you can use this time to make your filling. after 45 minutes to an hour, take the dough out of fridge and let it sit for at least 15 minutes before rolling. holding the dough with your hands helps warm it up quicker too. mm... body heat.
   
   
6. filling!
   

   • 3 large eggs
     

   • 2 cups fresh pumpkin puree or 1 - 15 ounce can (425 grams) pure pumpkin

   • 1/2 cup (120 ml) whipping cream
     

   • 1/2 cup (110 grams) light brown sugar

   • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

   • 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

   • 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

   • 1/2 teaspoon salt

   • whisk eggs in a large bowl. add everything else and stir/whisk. i added some nutmeg too.
     
     
7. use the same parchment paper you used to wrap the dough in the fridge. put a bit of flour on it, plop the round disc of dough on it, and start rolling. make sure your rolling pin is well floured.
   
   
8. (see pictures below)
   

8. (roll from center out, and try to keep in a circular shape.
roll until about 1/4 or 1/8th of an inch thick)

9. (roll into circle that is bigger than your pie pan.
place pan on top of dough, and gently flip,
then peel the parchment paper off and press the dough into pan)

10. (now you can pour the filling in.
and cut the edges of the pie dough off with a knife or scissors)

11. bake! in a preheated 375 F oven.
for 45 to 55 minutes
(until crust is browned and filling is set.
test by inserting knife one inch from the edge and it should come out clean)

12. serve with freshly whipped cream and indulge your senses.