Stuffed Bamboo Fungus on a bed of Egg Whites

After such a long respite, going back to the workforce is no joking matter. The sleep deprivation and constant adrenaline rush catching the bus, the ferry, and later in the work day, closing offices, take their toll on the human body so much so that one collapses on the couch shortly after a quick m.s.g.-laden dinner of instant noodles.

Merely a week into my conscientious efforts at saving time and effort on cooking when I finally got tired of Nissin’s flavor selection and summoned enough energy to cook some real food, which requires at least a couple of hours of leisurely prep.

The result was, of course, stupendously satisfying ~ what with the varying textures and nuances of flavor that simply cannot be matched by instant ramen (no matter how delicious I truly find them) with their accompanying spice packets.



You may have trouble finding bamboo fungus in your area. (There is apicture of a pack of it on the far right of the picture on right.) I saw numerous entries on the internet irreverently likening its form to that of condoms. Do not be put off by this disgusting comparison. Bamboo fungi are quite bland on their own, but they absorb the flavors you cook them with admirably well. What I truly like about them is their springy crisp texture which is completely unique. It is like biting into an intricate fibrous network, which makes for a wonderful experience as your teeth sink into one layer after another of crisp tenderness (you will understand this oxymoron better when you have bitten into one yourself).

Before I bore you anymore with this eternal spring of rhapsodies, let me tell you what you can do if you cannot find bamboo fungus. A suitable substitute would be slicing gourd of most kinds (wintermelon, hairy melon, sponge gourd, or even zucchini) into long rectangular shapes and quite thinly (thickness, not shape). You can lay the stuffing on one end and roll the vegetable up like a scroll or a sushi roll, while making sure to tuck the stuffing in neatly at both open ends. Secure the end of each roll with a toothpick before cooking.

I am giving you a recipe for about a third of what is seen in the pictures. I made too many; and consequently, my plating is heavy, messy, and not as nice as if there are less (or if I had a larger serving plate).




Stuffed Bamboo Fungus on a bed of Egg Whites

12 – 15 pcs. Bamboo fungus, washed and soaked in water

Stuffing:
125 g Chicken thigh, skinned, boned, and chopped
125 g Prawns, shelled and cleaned
10 g Pork fat / Fatty bacon
½ T Garlic, minced
2 Stalks of Scallions, chopped
1 t Ginger, chopped
1 T Rice wine
1 T Corn starch
2 t Salt
1 t Pepper

Egg whites:
3 Egg whites
2 c Water

Sauce and Garnishes:
2 c Stock (Chicken, Pork, Seafood, or Dashinomoto)
2 t Corn starch dissolved in 1 T water
Dash of Sesame oil
1/3 c Carrot slices, blanched, to decorate
2 Shiitake mushrooms, poached, to decorate
2 Prawns, shelled and cleaned
1 Sprig Coriander, washed, to decorate


To make the stuffing, place all the Stuffing ingredients in a food processor and grind until a sticky smooth paste forms. Place this in a piping bag with a plain / round large tip. Squeeze the water out of the bamboo fungi and when they are dry, stuff them one by one. Carefully, to avoid tearing the bamboo fungus, stretch one end of it wide enough for the piping bag tip to fit. Pinching the other end together (so the stuffing would not be forced out of the other end of the tube of bamboo fungus), start piping gently, but forcefully. When the tube feels full and snug with stuffing, neatly press both ends to tuck and level the stuffing. Repeat with the other tubes.

To make the shredded egg whites, simmer 2 c. of water in a 6-8 inch saucepan. Pour in the egg whites. Let this poach for about 3-4 minutes. Take the egg white out while being careful not to tear it. Roll it up and slice crosswise thinly (1/8 inch) so that you end up with shreds when the slices unfurl. Set aside.

To make the sauce and garnish, simmer the stock. You can blanch the carrot slices and cook the shiitakes and prawns in this. Take the garnish out of the stock when they are done. Place the bamboo fungus in the simmering stock. Leave them for a few minutes before turning the tubes (to ensure the entire circumference absorbs the liquid). When the stuffing is cooked through, take the tubes out with a slotted spoon. Thicken the stock with the cornstarch solution. Add the sesame oil then turn off the heat.

To assemble, Place the shredded egg whites in the center of a serving plate. Arrange the tubes around them in a sunray pattern. Drizzle sauce over this arrangement. Place the carrot slices on top of a third of the egg whites. Place the shiitake mushrooms on top of the egg whites next to the carrots and the prawns next to the mushrooms, overlapping the mushrooms and carrots a bit. Glaze with more of the stock. Top with a sprig of coriander that has been bent to curve into a gentle circle. Serve hot.

Almond Milk

What an exciting adventure we’ll have with what, until now, has been a cherished secret recipe. It is a beverage that is a wonderful way (because it is utterly delicious) to treat a whooping cough, but like absinth, is tinged with drama and danger.

Now, to make it sound truly magical… here are the three vital ingredients: xin ren or apricot kernels, water, and time. Xin ren is the name for almonds in Chinese and it is strange that they are NOT almonds, but instead, are apricot kernels. Regardless of this nominal confusion, it does smell sweetly like strong almonds and, as an aside, I suspect that Gabriel Garcia Marquez was referring to bei xin ren when he wrote about bitter almonds in Love in the Time of Cholera.



In Chinese traditional medicine, xin ren is used as a tonic for the lungs ~ it has warming properties (yang principle), soothes the lungs, relieves dry cough, and lubricates the large intestines. There are two kinds, which must be used in tandem, to make your potion potent. There is the bei xin ren (literally, northern apricot kernels or bitter almonds, which is the smaller bag on the right) and the nan xin ren (literally, southern apricot kernels or sweet almonds, which is the larger bag on the left).

Here is the dark, mysterious part. Be careful when using bei xin ren. It contains (deep breath!) cyanide(!) and may be mildly toxic, even when cooked properly, which you should, at all cost. As a precautionary rule, I do not give this to children or pregnant women, but I have found it generally safe for the consumption of courageous gourmands like myself.

While it simmers, the perfume of xin ren will waft out of the pot, drift from your kitchen to fill your entire home with an incredibly sweet scent, much to the envy of the excluded kids and women with child. I add a little rice powder to thicken the milk and just a tad of sugar to mildly sweeten it.



Almond Milk

100g Bei xin ren (northern apricot kernels or bitter almonds)
200g Nan xin ren (southern apricot kernels or sweet almonds)
1.5 L Water plus extra for rinsing
½ to 1/3 c. Sugar
1/3 c. Rice flour (NOT glutinous / sticky rice flour) dissolved in 2/3 c. Water

Rinse the apricot kernels to make sure they are clean. Soak the rinsed apricot kernels in 2 cups of water overnight. With a powerful blender or grinder, grind the apricot kernels and some of the soaking water to a smooth, fine paste. Put this paste, along with the soaking water and 1 L. of water, into a saucepan. Bring this to a boil, lower heat, and simmer for 1 to 1.5 hours. Add sugar, to taste. While stirring the pot continuously, pour in the rice flour solution. Keep on stirring the almond milk over the heat until it thickens like a cream soup. Serve hot to preserve its efficacy.

Snow Skin Mooncake

Growing up, this time of the year (but usually, in September) was usually referred to as Mooncake Festival among my siblings. Not quite having the privilege of all four seasons in Manila, Philippines, my family did not stick too close to the traditions of a Mid-Autumn celebration. What we did have was a plenitude of mooncakes sent over from HK every year. I hated those things and remembered enjoying a novelty one particular year --- Snow Skin Mooncakes! The name itself glows with fanciful pleasures. Now, that was truly a long time ago and I hardly remember anything about them except that they were the first mooncakes I have ever enjoyed.

My partner, in the meantime, was feeling like a little orphaned puppy for being isolated from his family in Ecuador, with whom he had spent many, many mid-autumn nights ‘staying home, eating mooncakes and fruits, and staring up the full, round moon’. (sound of howling wolves here) At his whiny behest for a repeat of the snow skin mooncakes I made a month ago (filled with white chocolate ganache) on Mid-Autumn Festival, which is today, (‘but this time with a fruity filling’), I came up with three flavors (originally four, but since I did not have enough containers to make the peach mousse, I settled for three).

The ones I made are filled with summer berry mousse, berry and peach cheesecake, and cookies n’ cream. Mooncake molds (which I’d probably use just this once), being the same price as roughly 1.1 month’s worth of gym fees, were dispensed with. I settled for a little cup that has shallow grooves running down the sides. I am writing all this to justify the plainness of my mooncakes.

I experimented with recipes for the snow skin found in blogs by Yochana and She Bakes, She Cooks. I managed to come up with more than decent ones, but The Partner found the texture too grainy. With a few tweaks, I did come out with a softer, smoother dough. The secret is in the quantity of cooked water and starch solution, I suppose. Anyway, give this a try, you will find that it is not a daunting task at all.

You can fill it with almost anything you like. Jalea de ube with Macapuno or Yema balls (a la egg yolks) would have been nice, too.

You will need lots of bowls / containers and at least overnight for the filling and skin to set properly.

Snow Skin

2 c. Glutinous rice flour
½ c. Rice flour
½ c. Cake flour
1 c. Full cream milk
½ c. Water
3 T. Wheat starch
1 T. Vegetable oil

Transfer the glutinous rice flour, rice flour, and cake flour to a shallow dish and bake in 180C for 30 min. Cool completely. Reserve 1/3 c. of flour.

Mix the milk, water, and wheat starch in a bowl until the starch is completely dissolved. Microwave this on high for 30 SECONDS (not minutes). Stir until smooth. Microwave for another 30 seconds. Add the oil, stir until completely smooth, and set aside to cool completely.

When both mixtures are cool, mix the starch mixture into the flours gradually (not all at once). Knead with your hands until you come up with a pliable dough, that is about 3 steps away from being squishy and wet. You may have excess starch solution that you can store in the fridge for immediate future use. Do not force the flours to take in more moisture than what is right. You should have a very malleable play dough softness; any harder, then you should add more starch mix, any softer then you’d be in trouble if you didn’t have any more flour on hand. Next, wrap the dough in cling film and chill in the fridge overnight.



Filling:

Basic Cheesecake:

250 g. Cream cheese
1 c. Whipping cream
½ c. Sugar
2 t. Lemon juice
2 t. Vanilla
1 T. gelatin dissolved in ¼ c. boiling water (I intentionally added more gelatin powder to harden the filling. You can use less for a proper cheesecake.)

Mix everything but the gelatin solution with a mixer until light and fluffy. While the mixer is running, pour the gelatin solution in a thin stream. Continue beating until all the ingredients have been incorporated properly. Chill the mixture overnight.

Summer Berry Mousse

2 c. Mixed berries (or you can opt for just one kind, washed and drained properly)
½ c. Water
2 t. Gelatin
1 c. Sugar
1 T. Lemon juice
1 c. Cream
1 c. Egg whites

Puree the berries and put into a saucepan with the water, gelatin, sugar, and lemon juice. Cook over low heat until the consistency of syrup has been achieved. (At this point, you may opt to reserve a couple of tablespoons of this mixture for the cheesecake. Just do it. I will explain later.) Cool and chill. When it’s good and cold, beat the egg whites with an electric mixer until stiff peaks form. Add the cream to the berries and mix with an electric mixer until it is thick and creamy. Gently, fold the beaten egg whites into the berry-cream mix. Chill overnight. (This is also good as a dessert poured into glasses with sponge fingers in them.)

To Assemble

The reserved tablespoons of berry-gelatin mix without the cream and egg whites, sliced into small pieces
Peaches (balled with a melon baller like faux egg yolks) or cubed (any other fruit may substitute), chill uncovered to dry them out a bit

Oreos, some crushed, some cut into chunks, mixed with 2 T. milk to soften slightly

1. Fruit cheesecake - Roll out the skin and spoon some basic cheesecake into it. Add a couple of peach balls and a small spoonful of the berry-gelatin (sans cream and egg whites) mix. Wrap, mold, and chill overnight.
2. Cookies n’ cream - Mix some of the basic cheesecake mixture with the crushed oreos. Wrap, mold, and chill overnight.
3. Summer berry mousse. Bundle the mousse into the skin. You may add fruits. Wrap, mold, and chill overnight.

Wrapping Technique



Please refer to the montage on right for the proper wrapping and sealing technique. I came up with it after being left feeling disappointed by the thick undersides of the mooncakes with the traditional wrapping (or system-less manner of wrapping) technique. Short of using precisely measured shapes for the skin and pre-molding the filling, I found this gives the thinnest possible skin all throughout the cake.

Roll out about a third of a cup of dough into an oval (not round). Lay the skin on your palm, which you should cup slightly. Arrange the filling so it is distributed fairly evenly on the oval center of the oval skin. Do not mound it into a round shape in the very middle of the skin. Now, fold the lengths of the skin towards the center of the filling. The edges of the skin should touch, so do not overfill. Next, bring the widths of the oval towards the center. Starting on the outer edges, start crimping the skin inward until you have fitted the skin precisely to the filling. Cut away the excess skin (crimped edges).

This is a process of elimination. You start with a large piece of skin to make wrapping easier and work your way to a smaller (precisely fitted) pouch, while pushing and cupping the filling into a round shape as you crimp. Trim the excess skin. Roll the pouch in the reserved flour and pat into your mold. Press it gently, so that it doesn’t burst, but press it firmly enough so that the patterns would show up distinctly on the skin. Turn out. Chill overnight. If you have been careful in achieving a soft pliable dough, then you shouldn’t have too many problems about the skin tearing while you wrap with them; but if you do get little tears and holes, do not worry, just patch them up with little bits of dough.

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! Or Happy Mooncake Festival!

Radish Cake (Trip to Chinatown 1, the sequel)

Not wanting to waste the ingredients left over from cooking the dish from my last entry, I decided to whip up some radish cake, also known as low bok gow and turnip cake (or oddly, some people call it CARROT?!? cake), one of the dimsum cart's staples. This is one of few dishes I could think of that share similar taste and textural elements with Kiam Peng and yet, is quite distinct in form.

Radish Cake was something I never liked. I remember it as having the vaguely pasty and greasy quality of candles. My mother used to get it from a specialty store when I was little and no one could quite explain where the radish is in the cake. After a little research, I unraveled the mystery (there is radish in the cake!) and produced a 6x8x2 inch pan of very tasty radish cake (,indeed).

Because I am too cheap to pay $20 or so for a slab of preserved pork belly, I used streaky bacon instead. No harm done, really. It was heartily stamped with the voracious approval of my casual-Chinese-cuisine critic, JCarlos, whose mother built a small fortune selling Chinese delicacies in Ecuador.


Radish Cake

Main elements:
100 g. Streaky bacon, chopped finely
3 pcs. Chinese sausage, chopped finely
½ c. Dried shrimp
½ c. Dried mushrooms
3 c. Daikon (White Icicle), coarsely grated
2 c. Rice flour (not glutinous, but the kind used for making shortbread)
1 T. Sesame seeds, toasted
4 c. Water

Flavoring:
1/3 cup Fried shallots
1 T. Garlic, minced
1 t. Ginger, finely grated
1 T. Sugar
1 t. White pepper
1 t. Five spice powder
1 T. Cooking wine
2 t. Sesame oil

Soak the shrimps and mushrooms in 2 cups of water until they have been hydrated. Set aside. In a pot, render the fat from the bacon and sausage pieces over low heat. Add the grated daikon and stir-fry until the daikon is wilted. Add the shrimp, mushrooms, and water into the pot. Stir the rice flour into the remaining 2 cups of water until smooth. Add the rice flour mix into the pot. Cook over low heat until the mixture thickens into the consistency of condensed cream soup (from a can). Stir the flavoring in. Pour the mixture into a greased heatproof pan and sprinkle the sesame seeds on top of it. Steam over high heat for about one hour. Remove from the heat. Cool until room temperature has been achieved, then chill overnight.




I think some people eat it steamed through (see picture on right), but I served it the only way I know how --- sliced into approximately 1x2x0.5 (WxLxH/Thickness)inch rectangles and pan-fried until crisp (see picture on the very top of this post).

Trip to Chinatown 1

Look at what I found at Yuen’s Market in Brisbane --- Gulong brand Pork Leg with Mushrooms! This nifty, nitrate-laden little package has yummy chunks of real pork hock (with bits of bone, too), along with chewy skin, mushrooms, and stewed chestnuts!

What I failed to appreciate about it when I was little was the fact that I’d have to cook for myself one day. And this day comes. Gulong Pork Leg makes an incredibly easy and fast Kiam Peng. ( I think it translates to ‘Salty Rice’ in my fookien dialect.) This dish brings to mind images of suffering women toiling slavishly over steaming pots and never fails to impress kids who grew up in their mothers’ Chinese kitchens.

If you do not have access to canned pork leg, you can use the real thing for this dish… just that the entire process would take longer.



Kiam Peng

Aromatics:
½ pc. Onion, roughly chopped
1 Tablespoon Garlic, minced
2 teaspoons Ginger, grated finely
1 T Oil

Condiments:
2 T Soy Sauce
1 t Chinese Five Spice Powder
2 T Cooking Wine

Components:
¼ cup Dried Shrimp
1 ½ pcs. Chinese Sausage (Lup Chung), cut into 1/8 inch diagonal slices
1/3 cup Dried Sliced Black Mushrooms
1 can Gulong Pork Leg with Mushrooms
1 ½ cups Sticky / Glutinous / Sweet Rice, soaked overnight in cool water and drained

Accompaniments:
Coriander, roughly chopped
Fried shallots
Hot sauce (I prefer the Sriracha brand; the original version of which has a green cap)

In a pot, saute the aromatics in the hot oil. Add the drained rice and the condiments. Stir fry over medium heat until all the rice grains have been coated in oil. Add all the other ingredients and 2 more cups of water. Stir well. Cover and simmer over a very low fire until rice is cooked through. This would take about 20 minutes. Stir the rice once in a while, just so it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot. After all the water has been absorbed, take the pot off the heat and let it sit, covered, for 10 minutes. Garnish with coriander and fried shallots and serve with hot sauce on the side.