Curiouser and Curioser

I've sneaked quite a lot of edibles through customs in my time but none as weird as the weird foodstuffs seized at Kennedy Airport. Ok, maybe the cow dung toothpaste isn't food even where it comes from. But the dead falcon – labeled 'home décor'! – sure looks more at home in a pot than on a display shelf.

Source: The New York Times

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A friend of mine claimed that when he was caught at Heathrow with some bak kwa (肉干), he told the customs officer that the slices of barbecued pork were, umm, his grandfather. And they let him through. I have no idea whether he was kidding; he swore he wasn't.
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Kudzu Soup – Cure-All Elixir

I finally got round to making Kudzu Soup. I had been curious to find out what it was like after seeing it on TV. The Cantonese soup was made with brown beans which had been toasted. That was something new to me, toasting beans before boiling them. And I had never had kudzu, the root vegetable that looks like an elongated mang kuang (yam bean). Two new things in one soup – of course I had to try it.

The colour of the kudzu soup looked rather like lotus root soup because of the brown beans. And the kudzu was tough like lotus roots. Not only did the kudzu pieces not disintegrate in the soup like I had feared, I had to fish 'em out half way through and cut them smaller. And they seemed to neutralize a lot of the meaty sweetness in the pork, so I chucked some dried Chinese red dates and a small dried squid into the pot midway.

Inbetween tinkering with the simmering soup, I looked up some information on kudzu. Phwoar! This unassuming looking root isn't just good for 'cooling' or detoxing the human body that has had too many late nights. It can also cut alcohol consumption, help smokers quit smoking, reduce high blood pressure, lower cholesterol, improve bone density, heal liver fibrosis, widen blood vessels, improve blood circulation, alleviate menopause symptoms, improve complexion, increase breast size . . . . Hey, hang on! Bigger boops?! I downed the whole pot of soup in one go. Glug glug glug glug . . . . I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and looked down. Hmm, they still look the same size. Maybe I have to wait till tomorrow morning?

It's two days later now. I'm still waiting . . . .

Related links:
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2005/05.19/09-kudzu.html
http://www.raysahelian.com/kudzu.html
http://www.gillianmckeith.info/yourbody/food/superfoods/gillianmckeithnutrition_kudzu.php
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=95005747620&topic=18709 (in Chinese)

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Tong Ho Choy	Million Dollar Pet Bowl	Steamed Crabs

Celery Stir-Fry	Pasta with Chicken Bolognese	Mixed Vegetables Stir-Fry

How to Make Mochi

If I tried to do what these guys do, you'd hear, 'Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!' Or rather, it's 'AAAAARGH!' just once, followed by the sound of an ambulance!

In the land of the weird and wonderful, even making mochi at home is quite fascinating.

I'd love to have that wooden thingy at 2:15!

Oh dear, here's the mochi I made. Seems so unexciting compared to those in Japan. Sigh . . . .

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Big Black Coke	Housefly Heads (苍蝇头)	Sesame Balls	Spring Onion Pancakes (葱油饼)	Durian Seeds

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Brain Food – For the Brave

Pig brains used to be a popular food for Chinese. The practice has died out more or less, but I thought it would be nice to have a record of how traditional Double-Boiled Pig Brain Soup is made. And also Pig Brain Omelette, which is the photo on the left. Doesn't look too bad, does it? The other photos, however, are a bit gruesome, to be honest. So, if you're squeamish, you should not read this post. Did you get that? Repeat:

GO AWAY IF YOU'RE SQUEAMISH!

This post is for those who are brave, or those who have a bit of Hannibal in them. If you think you're one of them, please continue reading. Or come back later if you just ate.

Pain d'Amande – Belgian Almond Cookies

'Pain' means bread but Pain d'Amande is actually a cookie, not a bread. These crispy almond thins are served by some cafés 'on the house' with their coffees. I don't know if the singular, lonesome, itsy bitsy cookie helps justify the obscene price for the coffee but I like it very much. Even though I have to take very, very small bites to make it last long enough for half a mug of latte.

Fed up with nibbling at something that's the size of a postage stamp, I sometimes bake my own Pain d'Amande – big ones. I can eat as much as I like till I'm stuffed! Now, if I had an espresso machine, I'd be able to replicate the entire café experience at home. Trouble is, a professional machine that makes an espresso with a good crema costs almost S$10,000 (like these bad boys here). Did you know that? Those big ones used by cafés go for S$30,000! Oh well, I guess I can always have the latte to go. Or hide a few homemade cookies in my handbag!

Using Flo Braker's recipe – which I've adapted, using less sugar and more almonds – making Pain d'Amande is quite idiot-proof. I'm very happy this dead easy cookie that I like very much originates from Belgium. I visited the country all of one time donkey's years ago, but the Belgians left a big impression on me. Every time I was lost, all I had to do was whip out my map and immediately, someone would jump on me and ask me where I wanted to go to. I never got a chance to use my map! Now, when I see a tourist poring over one and I'm too shy to help him unless he asks, I feel ashamed of myself. I wish I were more like the Belgians. They're a nice people. And they make nice Pain d'Amande.

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Chocolate Chip Cookies	Birthday Cake	Sesame Balls	Lemon Tarts	Gingersnaps

Slurpilicious Pork Ribs with Taucheo and Garlic

30 minutes into steaming the pork ribs, the aroma wafted from the kitchen to the living room. It was the savory, garlicky fragrance from the taucheo (aka 豆酱 or fermented soya beans) and garlic, which had been fried till every bit was a rich golden brown.

'Is it done yet?'

'Not yet.'

Five minutes later, 'Is it done yet? I can smell it.'

'Not yet lah. The ribs aren't soft yet.'

Five minutes later, 'Is it done yet . . . ?' And so on and so forth.

You can imagine the amount of displeasure there was when I insisted on taking a few photos before everyone could dig in.

'Are you done yet?'

'Not yet lah. One more photo.'

'Hurry up! I'm very hungry.'

'One more, top view . . . . One more, eye level . . . .'

'#$!☠&☠^♠‡!!! ☠!#♠♠☠&☠^♠‡!!! ☠☠☠☠&☠^♠‡!!!'

Ok, I got the message.

You see what a homely dish does to people when it strikes the right notes? Who needs shark's fin, caviar or foie gras? If, like me, you're a salt and garlic junkie, you'd love these slurpilicious pork ribs dripping savory, garlicky juices on piping hot rice. Don't hold anyone back from tucking into the magical combination of fried taucheo, brown garlic, tender pork and steaming rice. Or you might have a mutiny in the kitchen, like I almost did.

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Braised Pork with Red Fermented Beancurd (炸肉)	Roasted Cauliflower	Minced Pork & Olive Vegetables Stir-Fry (肉脞炒乌橄榄菜)	Drunken Prawns	Lion's Head (清汤狮子头)

Thai Basil Chicken – Aroy Mak Mak!

Why are fat people fat? The finger has pointed at sugar, carbs, fat, high-fructose corn syrup, metabolic rate, genes, not having breakfast, having a heavy dinner, having a late dinner, some virus (!), fast food, packaged food, soft drinks, portion sizes, depression, boredom, childhood obesity, hormones, mixing with other fat people, lack of information, lack of education, lack of exercise, lack of will power, etc, etc. Anything and everything under the sun that can be blamed has been.

The most bizarre reason cited for obesity, I think, is poverty. Poor people can't afford foods which are not fattening and hence, they have to eat foods which make them fat. To me, this argument is utter rubbish. It's not difficult to eat well and eat cheaply. Fruits and vegetables are dirt cheap. So are chicken and pork, especially if you buy frozen. Eggs cost next to nothing. A piece of beef tenderloin may be expensive, but certainly not minced beef.

Good, nutritious ingredients are much cheaper than the fast, convenient crap that poor people get fat on. So why don't they go for the healthier and cheaper option? This is where the fat-and-poor brigade wheel out their second argument. They say they have to work all the time – they're poor, remember? – so they have no time to cook. Never mind that poor people in the past cooked all the time. Modern, 'economically disadvantaged' folks are too busy to turn ingredients into something edible. Again, utter rubbish. The recipe I'm sharing today, Thai Basil Chicken, takes three minutes to prep and cook. THREE MINUTES! Queuing at a burger joint or hawker centre takes longer than three minutes around meal time! Hang on, just getting there takes longer than three minutes! I would have cooked, eaten and washed up whilst the poverty stricken, oh-so-busy fat slob is still waiting for his greasy grub.

Eaten with rice, Thai Basil Chicken isn't a balanced meal but neither is a cheeseburger or chicken rice. It's cheaper though, besides having a lot less fat, and no chemical additives or msg. And it's lip smacking good, or aroy mak mak in Thai.

To turn the three-minute job into a balanced meal, all that's needed is some veggies. Which would take another five minutes, blanched or stir fried. A cheap, healthy, balanced meal in eight minutes. How often do you get served in eight minutes when you eat out?

According to United Nations, 25,000 people die every day from hunger or hunger related causes. To say that a fat person is fat because he's 'poor' makes a mockery of these truly poor people.

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Tri-Coloured Steamed Eggs (三色蒸水蛋)	Pear and Snow Fungus Sweet Soup (银耳雪梨糖水)	Glutinous Rice with Chicken (糯米雞)	Pork Maw Soup (豬肚湯)

Mark Bittman's Very Strange Fried Rice

Here's Mark Bittman's demonstration on how to make fried rice which I find quite amusing, towards the end around 3:15:



I guess the man loves his soya sauce and sesame oil! But not so much that he wanted to scoop up the salty, oily, soggy puddle in the bowl. Maybe that's why he ate the fried rice with a fork instead of spoon. Anyways, why was the soya sauce added after the rice was done? And he didn't mix it around. These Americans are really weird.

If you follow Mark Bittman's method, you'd have a problem way before you get to drown the rice in soya sauce and sesame oil. Getting ginger and garlic to hit the right shade of golden brown at the same time is more difficult than you might think. Ginger, compared to garlic, browns much slower because it's more fibrous and watery. For both jhkkkto brown perfectly at the same time, the garlic bits would have to be bigger than the ginger bits. And you'd have to work out how much bigger. Why bother, right? It's much easier to fry them separately. Then, please use the garlicky, gingery oil to fry the leeks and rice. There's lots of flavour in that oil. Why waste it?

Most importantly, CRANK UP THE HEAT. The rice needs to be fried out of its living daylights, not just reheated. After that, season BEFORE you plate, lightly. The soya sauce needs to be mixed in properly, caramelized and evaporated so that it doesn't make the rice soggy. Besides being salty, it also adds fragrance. But you get that only when it's heated in a very hot wok, which is much better than a pan 'cause you need to do some serious tossing. Add a bit of salt or oyster sauce so that the soya sauce taste is not too dominant. Add a pinch of sugar to smooth the edges of the salty flavour . . . . What else? Oh yes, don't forget a good dash of ground white pepper. The peppery aroma makes a real difference to fried rice.

If you want to add sesame oil, just a few tiny drops would do. Make sure it's white, not black. If too much is added or if it's black, the sesame oil would overwhelm the fragrance of the rice (and leeks). If that's the case, you might as well not fry the rice. Just mix it with sesame oil and eat!

Making fried rice is easy. Making good fried rice, never mind whether it's 'the best', is actually not so easy. Frankly, Mark Bittman's fried rice is quite appalling. Is the one made made by Jean-Georges himself any better? I don't know but if I went to his restaurant, I'd rather have his melting, warm chocolate cake. He's apparently the one who started the worldwide craze for chocolate cakes with undercooked, molten chocolate lava in the middle. Now that is one of the best cakes/chocolate cakes/desserts in the world..

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Noodles with Red Red Yeast Wine Dregs (红糟面线)	Steamed Crabs	Chicken with Red Yeast Wine Dregs (红糟鸡)	Prawns with Red Fermented Beancurd

Dumping Andrea Nguyen's Asian Dumplings (Updated on 11 January 2011)

I get very irritated when I see phonies who pretend to be experts in areas that they know nuts about. Mrbreakfast is one, and Andrea Nguyen is another. The American Vietnamese based in California has a book (Asian Dumplings), a blog (asiandumplingtips.com) and classes in the US for making Chinese dumplings. She and her dumpling making tips can also be found on/in American TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. Click here for her frenetic media appearances, public events and classes.

Andrea Nguyen's cooking style is pretty 'serious'. She's not the if-it-tastes-good-it's-ok type like, say, Nigella Lawson. Nope, she's the stay-true-to-authenticity type who urges readers to have everything homemade, including fresh spring roll wrappers!

When you're someone who goes round teaching Americans how to make Chinese dumplings from scratch, I expect you to get the basics right. Sadly, Andrea Nguyen doesn't even understand the difference between hot and cold water dough, and when she should use one or the other. When asked why she makes boiled jiaozi wrappers with hot water whilst billions of Chinese have been using cold water for thousands of years, she said it's because the American flour she uses has more gluten than Asian flour. But her book says American and Asian flour have similar gluten levels, I pointed out. Oops! She uses hot water because American flour is unbleached, whereas Asian flour is bleached. Which is absolute nonsense, as I explained in my comment (edited for clarity) on her blog:

Andrea First, let's dispense with the word 'Asian' when we mean Chinese, shall we? To make good Chinese dumplings (with non-leavened flour), you need to understand when to use hot water or cold water to make the dough. Whether hot or cold water should be used has nothing to do with the gluten level in the flour or whether the flour is bleached. The decision depends on how the dumpling is cooked. If it's poached/boiled or deep fried, the dough should be made with cold water. If it's pan fried, steamed or toasted/dry fried, it should be made with hot water. This principle is crucial to making good Chinese dumplings. If you don't know this, you shouldn't be teaching anyone how to make Chinese dumplings. To use the basic hot water dough on page 22 of your book regardless of how the dumpling is cooked is simply wrong. The dumpling dough's water content and resilience can be changed by varying the water temperature. The variations are necessary for achieving the ideal dumpling. A hot water dough has more water and is weak/yielding. That's because flour can absorb more hot than cold water, and hot water weakens and partially cooks the gluten but cold water doesn't. A cold water dough, in comparison, is not only stronger/more stretchy but also has less water. If you make a steamed jiaozi with a high moisture, yielding and partially cooked hot water dough, it would be nice and soft when it's cooked. Made with a low moisture, raw and strong cold water dough, it would be stiff. Of course, the stiff dumpling is still edible. Or just keep steaming till it eventually softens and the cows come home, but the filling would be way overcooked by then. If you make a boiled jiaozi with a low moisture and strong cold water dough, the wrapper would be thin and chewy as a good jiaozi should be. Made with a high moisture, partially cooked hot water dough, like your recipe, it would overcook, absorb too much water and turn mushy or worse, tear and break. Way around it? Make a thicker wrapper, and put up with a mushy jiaozi. Is it edible? Of course, but it's not a good jiaozi, is it? It's a misconception that the Chinese use only bleached or highly bleached flour. If you step out of the big cities in China to smaller towns and villages, you'd find lots of yellowish dumplings sold in the streets. These are all made with unbleached flour. Do the small town folks or villagers use hot water for boiled jiaozi because their flour is not bleached? Nope, never. If you tell the people in China to make their boiled jiaozi with hot water dough, you'd be laughed out of the country. You've taken a recipe used by billions of Chinese for thousands of years, turned it upside down, and failed to warn your readers and students that your method isn't authentic. Nor have you given any good reason for changing the traditional, standard recipe. Instead, you flip flop from flour nationality to gluten level to bleach to huffing and puffing when your inconsistencies and self-contradictions are caught. Your recipe for Cantonese wonton/siumai wrappers (page 64 of book) is also wrong. These wrappers should be yellow, and they should be made with alkali water which is what makes these Cantonese dumplings taste and look Cantonese/'southern' rather than 'northern'. Again, that's pretty basic. According to you, your recipe for wonton/siumai wrappers can be used for Cantonese spring roll wrappers. That's just plain wrong. Fried spring roll wrappers taste nothing like fried wonton wrappers, Cantonese or northern style. The two wrappers are completely different. Cantonese spring roll wrappers have lots of little holes that allow oil to seep in easily when they're fried. The wrappers made with your recipe would be quite oil proof. The look, mouthfeel and taste wouldn't be anything like Cantonese spring roll wrappers. I hope you understand why I'm not happy that you're teaching something that's fundamentally wrong. After all, you had a hissy fit with Rachael Ray's chicken pho recipe, didn't you? Best regards

In Andrea Nguyen's post where we've exchanged a few swipes, she said she had consulted Fuschia Dunlop (who is not a chef although Wikipedia says she is) on her recipe for jiaozi filling. Come on! There're 1.3 bn Chinese in the world, of whom 902 m eat jiaozi and 430 m make jiaozi at least once a month . . . . Ok, I just made that up, but you know what I mean. Why consult an English woman on a Chinese recipe?!

Click here for an update with more scathing comments on Andrea Nguyen and Asian Dumplings, published on 11 January 2011.
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Pork & Garlic Chives Jiaozi (饺子)	Teochew Pork Porridge	Kimchi Soup with Meatballs	Steamed Pork with Salted Fish

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