Saturday's lineup - I woke up to the wonderful banging of our new next-door neighbor's construction crew at 7am, intermittent enough to leave me wide-eyed and bushy tailed. Luckily, a shut eye and pulling the covers over my head won me a couple more hours of sleep. When after my combined 9-hour slumber I did finally awake, I found refreshed, enough so to get moving and to think about this weekend's lineup. The heat wave of a week ago was still fresh in my mind, and the thought of my not wanting to prepare dinner those 2 weeks was also immediately unappealing. With my renewed kitchen energy, and with Hubby finally being roused from his slumber, we made our way down to the local farmers' market to pick up a fresh supply of fruits to stock up. We still had cherries and berries aplenty, and I still had a fresh stock of apricots - so all we picked up were some donut peaches to replenish. We also picked up a apple/cherry bread, as well as a fresh French baguette. I made up my mind to use as much of my energy this weekend to cook and store as much as possible, so that in the case I end up losing my appetite again, poor Hubby wouldn't go hungry.
Upon our return home, we dove into the baguette - Hubby enjoyed some with butter and salami, and I dipped mine in wonderful olive oil with salt and pepper. A simple enough snack, and I also supplemented with 2 of the fresh donut peaches, a small yogurt, and some OJ. Yum!
Pineapples
The Saturday afternoon lineup... a pineapple tart tatin looked wonderfully appealing in a cookbook I was browsing while waiting for Hubby prior to the market trip, so I decided to make a variation. In Chinese cuisine, we have little red-bean snack bars, so I decided to make these same snack bars, but filled with crushed canned pineapples instead of red-bean paste. Another quick trip to the market to get some butter for the pastry dough, and we were ready to roll. Or so I thought.
I replaced the usual all-purpose flour that my recipe called for with an alternate wheat flour. What a failure! The pastry dough was too bready, and too wheaty for this sweet snack. The pineapples, unsweetened, were much more sour than I would have hoped. The batch of pineapple bars went into the trash with sadness, and I decided to go back to the pineapple tart tatin recipe instead, which did call for wheat flour - and achieved it with success! Double yum!
Chinese Dumplings
I also had round dumpling wrappers and ground turkey (actually I got the wrong thing - I meant to get ground chicken, but picked up the wrong package, but no worries - ground turkey or ground chicken both work just fine, as does any ground meat) defrosting in the fridge from the night before. In the morning, before our market trip, I also thinly sliced some Chinese cabbage, and mixed the cabbage with some salt in a colander to drain. The cabbage would reduce by about 1/3 in this mixture - not a lot of salt is necessary - this step is necessary, as too much water inside a dumpling makes them fall apart. While the pineapple tart tatin was baking, I got underway making the filling for the dumplings.
I mixed the ground turkey with some cilantro, the reduced Chinese cabbage, a reconstituted dried Chinese mushroom, some soy sauce, sesame oil, salt, white pepper, and corn starch as a binding agent. Alternate added ingredients to the ground meat include finely minced water chestnut, scallions (which I forgot in the mix yesterday!), more mushrooms, carrots... the list is endless. You can pretty much put in anything you'd like, but do as I do - steam just a bit of the filling first to taste, and to make sure everything stays together and doesn't yield too much water. Nothing like making a whole bunch of dumplings just to find your filling, and dumplings, completely fallen apart upon cooking - or not tasting quite right!
I had a dumpling wrapping party shortly before I got married, and one of the attendees to the party was a veggie - I made sure to have a veggie variation of my family's dumplings. Instead of using the ground meat - use EXTRA FIRM tofu, pressed overnight in the fridge on a pan (to collect the excess water) with a weight (a brick wrapped in foil, or a wood cutting board) to allow any excess water to escape. Though I haven't tried it myself, you can also freeze and thaw a block of firm tofu, and then break it into small chunks - apparently, from what I've read, this yields a grain-sized breakdown of tofu, which would give you more surface area for the spices. Reduce the Chinese cabbage as described above, and mix with any assortment of spices you might like. One item I would recommend not omitting is the corn starch, as the binding agent - though I've had just as good veggie dumplings sans binding agent.
Once I had the filling ready, I set up my dumpling-wrapping station. Freezable trays with corn starch (to prevent sticking by the wrappers), a small bowl of water for the dumpling edges, a set of chopsticks to pick up the filling, and my clean hands. My dumpling wrapping technique - I like to pleat the edges, since, with a round dumpling wrapper, you can pleat one edge and the other side, the continuous edge, reduces in size to accommodate. Yes, I am talking in circles, literally - you math and physics peeps out there know what I'm describing. Just trust me - if you want to try a bunch of pleats, which results in a bunch dumplings looking like cute little purses: lay your dumpling wrapper flat in your hand, put a bit of filling in the middle, wet the edges of the wrapper, and fold the bottom half onto the top. As you fold, starting from one side (left or right) of the top half of the wrapper, start pleating your way to the other side (right or left). I make a bunch of pleats, and then tightly pinch the front and back halfs of the wrapper together to seal.
Freeze these guys right away in the freezable tray - otherwise, if you just let them sit, they'll all stick together into a dumpling mess! Once they're frozen (I set mine in the freezer overnight just to be safe), you can bag them up the next day, making sure to squeeze out as much air as possible. The dumplings hold their own up to 6 months - or at the least, I've personally have had them up to that time without colorful cases of botulism.
So that was Saturday...
Sunday started off with the same food zeal. During my breakfast of a donut peach, some yogurt, and a slice of my pineapple tart, I decided my Sunday itinerary would be to make some cha sao bao (chinese buns, filled with marinated baked pork), the baked variety. I also had some potatoes in the fridge, and wanting to get those used up, I decided upon a dinner of steak and potatoes, as well as to make some Indian potato treats my friend Sapna's mother made for me once.
Cha Sao Bao
The pork - I first defrosted this, and marinated it in soy, hoisin, and sugar, in the fridge. While it was marinating, I got to working on the dough for the buns. Not wanting to make the same wheat/white mistake, I made over to our local organic supermarket and picked up some all purpose flour, and with that done, the dough was well under way. After about an hour, I put the pork into the oven to bake.
During the dough's rising time, I cooked the potatoes for the Indian potato treats in the microwave and brought out lumpia wrappers to thaw. I felt a hunkering for a snack, so I fixed myself a Taiwanese snack of shao bing (flat bread),yo tiao (deep fried dough strip), both available in the local Asian store and, conveniently, in my freezer. These items, when made into a little sandwich, go great with the soy milk we have, so there I was, little snack in place, and two premade snacks in process.
The dough, having risen twice and been punched down twice, were ready for forming and wrapping. I cut the pork into little pieces, and chopped up some scallions as well. With Hubby's help, we rolled out the dough into flat discs, wrapped up some scallions as well as some pork in each, sealed the opening, and inverted them onto a greased baking pan. This we did for 15 of these buns, each about 3" in diameter raw. Into the oven they went, for 20 minutes. More snacks and meals ready!
Indian potato-filled lumpia snacks
Yes, this is a long title for this snack, but I don't know if there is any other name for it. The lumpia wrappers (available in Asian grocery stores) were defrosting, and the potatoes were cooking in the nuker. Once the potatoes were done, I peeled them and added to the naked potatoes some tumeric, ground coriander, ground cumin, salt, and ground fenugreek. I let this sit for a little while, to let the potatoes cool a bit and to let the tumeric settle in (or mostly just to finish my little shao bing yo tiao snack). I mashed up the potatoes well, and started wrapping the little snacks. A bit of water was all I needed to seal the edge, and I rolled them up like little egg rolls. With a whole batch of these complete, I put them into a freezer bag and into the freezer they went, for future devouring! (I plan on baking them, with a brush of butter on them)
Weekend's revelations
So I had some extra energy... having remembered not wanting to cook, and not wanting to worry about getting meals ready in the future, I put my energy to good use, to prepare for those such days in the future. Wheat flour and white flour are not interchangeable - and all for wanting healthy food, sometimes white flours is just the right thing to use, nothing else. We are all capable of a lot more than we think we can do, and sometimes, by just taking initiative, we get our energy moving and are able to get things done.
Last foodie thought for the night - last weekend, when my father came to visit, we made a very basic chicken soup for the three of us - sliced chicken breast, fried shallots, scallions, sliced Chinese cabbage, Chinese mushroom, dried lilly buds, salt and pepper. OK, so maybe not that basic, but for Chinese cooking, pretty basic. I found that some dishes, in particular soups and noodle soups, by having the ingredients you need on hand, you can put it all together, and just let it go - no need to stand at the stove minute after minute. We did just that - sauteed the shallots and scallions, added the chicken slices, added water as well as the Chinese cabbage, Chinese mushroom, lilly buds, and just let it all cook together for about an hour. The flavors really melded, and when all was ready, I added some salt and pepper to taste. We cooked up some noodles, and there we had it - instant meal! We had a bowl of the soup left over from the weekend, and I had some just last night. WOW - letting a soup sit for a week in the fridge really just gets the flavors popping out and melding together! Reheating, I added only some more chicken stock and some more Chinese cabbage, and again, an instant meal. Sometimes, chicken soup is just the thing - and if you have the energy and stomach for it, just make some soup, and store it away in the fridge or freezer. It'll come in handy later on.
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