A non-traditional Thanksgiving

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! By the time you read this, you may have had enough of Thanksgiving (or more likely, Thanksgiving food). But let me assure you that I didn't have a traditional Thanksgiving. I didn't eat.

Well, not really. I didn't eat anything that suggests Thanksgiving. The week started promising as I planned to cook a multi-course Thanksgiving meal for myself. I had been collecting recipes and was ready to tackle time-consuming recipes because I could spend hours in the kitchen on a holiday. I was really excited.

Then I found out that I needed to take a one-day trip to Canada on Thanksgiving Day. The days leading up to Thanksgiving were also very hectic, so I barely had time for grocery shopping, let alone planning for my feast.

Because of a string of unforeseen events, it was almost 10 pm when I got home on Thanksgiving. Cooking was out of the question. Fortunately I had bought some yummy Taiwanese bread (more on it in the future) in Vancouver and devoured them while I was waiting at the airport. Definitely not what I expected my Thanksgiving meal to be.

I made up for the disappointment on the following day. Still not in the mood for complicated cooking, I decided to have Chinese-style hot pot (like fondue) for dinner. Hearty and warming, it was perfect for a chilly night when I could hear the wind blowing outside.

I made a broth using ginger, leeks, shittake mushrooms, napa cabbage, carrots, and bean sprouts. Then I added tofu, mung bean vermicelli, and an assortment of vegetarian meatballs and fish cakes that I bought from Layonna, a Taiwanese vegetarian food store in Oakland, into the boiling broth. In 30 minutes I had the meal ready to serve, all simmering in one pot.

Simmering hot pot on the stove

I dipped the food in tamari, chili sauce, and sha-cha (Taiwanese barbecue) sauce. The vegetarian meatballs and fish cakes didn't taste like the real deal, but imitated their texture very well (fibrous for the beef, spongy for the fish cake, for instance). The hot pot was 100% vegan but the broth was intensely flavorful, and I drank it as a soup.

(Not the neatest picture but I got to eat!) Hot pot soup served with condiments

So this was how I celebrated Thanksgiving. No turkey, stuffing, or pumpkin pie, but a meal I am thankful for nonetheless. That I could get these Asian ingredients for the hot pot so easily in the Bay area is a blessing by itself.

Dessert soups to warm your soul

As the weather gets cooler, what can be more comforting than snuggling into your sheets with a cup of hot cocoa in your hands? But sometimes I need something more.

During the winter months, I am always struggling to stay warm at night because I don't want to turn on the heat, which makes my skin super-dry. When wearing multiple layers or drinking hot tea doesn't help, there's one last resort: Chinese dessert soups, served warm of course.

They work because they are more substantial than beverages. They contain chewy or chunky ingredients, or are thicker in texture. I think they are the perfect sweet before bed. Although they are filling, they won't leave you feeling stuffed the same way cakes or pastries do. But people also enjoy them during dim-sum lunches or throughout the day.

Like all soups, dessert soups can take a long time to prepare from scratch. But after making so many Western desserts, I felt it's time for me to tackle something uniquely Chinese like this.

Based on what I found in the farmers' market and Oakland's Chinatown, I ended up with two dessert soups common in Cantonese cooking: taro and yam soup with glutinous rice dumplings and black sesame soup.

 Taro and yam soup with glutinous rice dumplings

Both were easy to prepare: no more than 30 minutes from start to finish. I cooked peeled chunks of taro and yam in boiling water with a piece of ginger until the vegetables were soft, then sweetened the soup with Chinese rock sugar. I made the dumplings by mixing glutinous rice flour and water, divided and rolled the dough into balls, then cooked them in the soup.

For the sesame soup, I stirred pre-ground black sesame seeds into boiling water and thickened the mixture with glutinous rice flour. I used agave nectar to sweeten the soup.

Black sesame soup

I used minimal amounts of sugar in the soups to give them just a hint of sweetness. The taro and yam tasted sweet naturally, and I didn't want the sweetness to mask the nutty flavor of the black sesame seeds.

Seriously, these hearty soups warmed my soul from the inside out, and I was good for the night. Bonus point: unlike most desserts, they at least have some nutritional value. Now if I had a food processor or mortar and pestle, I could experiment with other dessert soup classics such as ground peanut and almond soups. Time to add this to my Christmas wish-list...

Trio of dishes from across China

I can take a culinary tour of Chinese dishes whenever I want in the Bay area because Asian ingredients are much more accessible here. Not Americanized Chinese dishes, but dishes I regularly ate when growing up in Hong Kong.

All three dishes I am featuring today are simple to prepare as always (otherwise I wouldn't have attempted them!). They hail from different parts of China and should satisfy different palates.

Braised Shredded Tofu with Bok-Choy (Shanghai)

For years every Sunday, my family and I visited one of two Shanghainese vegetarian restaurants in turn for lunch or dinner. We often ordered this Shanghainese staple - shredded tofu braised with bok-choy and sliced mushrooms in a light broth. It served as a counterpoint to more strongly flavored dishes my dad liked to order, and it went particularly well with steamed rice.

I can find shredded tofu at any Chinese supermarket in the Bay area so I decided to recreate the dish at home. Simply heat some sliced ginger in oil, throw in all the ingredients, and add some water to bring to boil. Then season with salt, tamari, a bit of rice vinegar, and it's ready to serve. Typical of Shanghainese food, the slight vinegary taste of this dish whets your appetite.

Braised Shredded Tofu with Bok-Choy

Stir-fried Vegetarian Cuttlefish with Sweet Peppers (Canton)

Although the recipe is from a Taiwanese vegetarian cookbook, I assume the dish is Cantonese as I've encountered the original, non-vegetarian version of it many times in Cantonese restaurants. I was quite surprised to find vegetarian cuttlefish at the Marina supermarket in San Mateo. There's a large enough Chinese population in San Mateo to create demand for it.

This dish is supposedly to be spicy. I started with heating some Thai chilies in oil, then I stir-fried the sliced cuttlefish (boiled), sweet peppers, and some leftover enoki mushrooms on high heat. I finished it by seasoning with salt and soy sauce.

Stir-fried Vegetarian Cuttlefish with Sweet Peppers

The vegetarian cuttlefish did not taste like the real deal, but nonetheless it had a convincing fishy flavor and spongy texture reminiscent of fish balls. Definitely an interesting try!

Ma-Po Tofu (Sichuan)

Before you roll your eyes and brush this off as nothing special, listen to this: I've only real, numbing hot Ma-Po Tofu ONCE in the US. And I had it at a nondescript, hole-in-the-wall Chinese take-out place in Washington, DC.

Sichuan-style Ma-Po Tofu requires the use of Sichuan peppercorns and other specialty chilies in the sauce. My limited pantry didn't have them, so I made up the heat with Thai chilies. I sauteed sliced red peppers, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, and potatoes in oil heated with ginger and the chilies, added soft tofu cubes, then I doused the mixture with spicy bean paste thinned with tamari and water.

(Unauthentic) Ma-Po Tofu

The end-product burst with tongue-tingling flavors and served up a variety of textures (silky from the tofu, chunky from the peppers, starchy from the potatoes). This was probably still far from the authentic Sichuan dish, but I was more than happy with it.

Weekend dispatches from the kitchen

Sorry that I haven't updated this blog as often as I want. The last couple of weeks were filled with commitments that it was difficult to set aside time to write. Now that it's November, I know I cannot put it off any longer, otherwise you may never come back!

I try to make more complicated dishes over weekends. Not only because I have more time, but I find it to be a huge stress reliever. I am a constantly on-the-go person and there are often a hundred things in my head at one time (this is NOT bragging!). Cooking is one of the few activities that can force me to let go of my immediate concerns and focus on what I have on my hands: create something delicious. Obviously I have to stay alert because the kitchen can be a dangerous place!

I agree 100% with one of my friends who said cooking is therapeutic. The process of creating something is very satisfying to me. Unlike other pursuits such as sports that require lots of hard work and perseverance before you begin to see payoffs, cooking is relatively easy. Also a bonus: you get to eat what you make.

One of my recent weekend projects was an arugula/carrot frittata, adapted from my favorite cookbook Vegetarian Suppers from Deborah Madison's Kitchen. This also helped me use up leftover veggies in my fridge. I'm not a big fan of cheese so I left it out, and there were probably more veggies than eggs, so this is not a typical frittata. But it was delicious and comforting, especially when eaten along with toasted crumpets (kind of like English muffins). I'll certainly add this to my brunch repertoire.

Arugula-Carrot Frittata with Toasted Crumpets 

 

Because of my fascination with baking, I am naturally a fan of Dorie Greenspan, one of the doyennes of baking in America. Her specialty is French baking, and I've learned SO MUCH about fancy French pastries (macarons, the Pierre Herme cult, etc.) from her blog. Her Baking: From My Home to Yours is a definitive work in baking, but because it's a tomb of 500+ pages, I was hesitant to pick it up from my neighborhood library although I saw it on the shelf for a couple of times.

I finally mustered up the courage to take it home one weekend. After flipping through many luscious pictures AND painfully long recipes of cakes, tarts, and pies, I decided to try two that I believed were manageable: Chewy, Chunky Blondies and Swedish Apple Cake that is a variation of the Swedish Visiting Cake in the book.

 Dorie's Chewy, Chunky Blondies

Dorie's simple yet elegant Swedish Apple Cake

Not surprisingly, both turned out to be wonderful, despite my limited baking skills and using 50% less sugar in the batter. The blondies flecked with chocolate chips and shredded coconut had a hefty texture but you'd certainly ask for more, while the apple cake was simple yet sophisticated. I am looking to tackle more of Dorie's recipes in the future, so please stay tuned!

My favorite bakeries (Mexican edition)

What is the most delicious Spanish word I've learned in California?

Panaderia (bakery) it is.

Every time I walk past a Mexican bakery, I can't help but step inside, grab a tray and a pair of tongs, and start piling breads and pastries onto the tray as if I were hypnotized. I can easily spend half an hour checking out the selections and deciding what to get. The low prices certainly don't help. Since I am often the only non-Latino in the store and unable to speak Spanish, I have more than once attracted interesting gazes from the cashier and other customers alike.

I knew almost nothing about Mexican baking before moving to the Bay area. My only exposure had been a type of sweet bun called "Mexican bun" commonly found in bakeries in Hong Kong. I had no idea how the Mexican bun was introduced to Hong Kong, but it does resemble the pan dulce (sweet bun) that I see in Mexican bakeries. Talk about cultural amalgamation!

I love pan dulces for similar reasons I like Asian buns - most are soft and not too sweet. But pan dulces are denser and more filling than their Asian counterparts because of their heavy use of eggs and margarine. After eating a couple of these goodies, I hardly have room for anything else for the rest of the day or even the next morning. They are diet busters for sure, I don't even want to think about the amount of carbs and fats (trans, hydrogenated, all the bad stuff) they contain.

(Forgive my limited Spanish)

Two pan dulces (the one with the sugar coating should be called concha, which literally means shell) and a flat cookie sprinkled with sesame seeds

Cuerno (croissant), Mexican cheesecake slice, another pan dulce sprinkled with sugar

This sounds incredible to me too, but I've sampled more than a dozen of Mexican bakeries from the Peninsula, San Francisco's Mission District, all the way to Oakland in the East Bay. My favorites: Panaderia Hernandez in South San Francisco and La Flor De Michoacan in San Mateo near where I live. I've bought from both bakeries enough times that the cashiers can probably recognize me.

My favorite panaderia -  Panaderia Hernandez in South San Francisco

Panaderia Hernandez's overflowing pastry case

Both bakeries offer incredible selections of freshly baked pan dulces, cakes, and cookies. Their pan dulces are just right with their sweetness and richness, so you don't need to wash them down with water/tea/coffee. They are also not too dry - I learned from a book that this can easily be a problem due to the high proportion of yeast in the dough.

Most important, the vast majority of their pan dulces do not seem to contain lard. I still cannot spot it all the time, but as a vegetarian I try to avoid it, and I am really put off by its smell.

If I had to pick the better among the two, it would be Panaderia Hernandez. Their pastries have a more delicate taste, likely because they are made from better ingredients (you don't get the off-taste). Their sizes are HUGE, but strangely enough they are cheaper too, even though the bakery is inside an upscale-ish Mexican supermarket. Too bad it's at an out-of-the-way location, but I continue to plan trips just to visit it!