Hamantashen!

It's nearly that time of year again! Okay, so it's Purim next week, but AK and her family decided to have the yearly make-a-lot-of-hamantashen party today, since two of us are going back to college [why are college spring breaks so badly timed?!] This year, there were a ton of little kids, and I taught two of them how to make hamantashen dough, which was really fun actually. One of the kids said she likes cooking, which makes me feel all happy inside.

We made hamantashen with apricot, raspberry, and strawberry jam, and we also had some with chocolate chips. I think that next year I want to make some peanut butter hamantashen, just to try it out (and perhaps make a hamantashen within a hamantashen within a hamantashen... just because today someone made a chocolate chip haman).

I'm not sure how many we made, but we started around 1pm and all the baking was done around 3:30pm.

This is (at least) half of what we ended up with.

I'm not sure that I should write out the recipe because it's AK's family recipe, and not mine, but I have to say that there is a LOT of sugar, oil, and butter in a batch of hamantashen. There is also a secret ingredient, which, after baking, is barely detectable. However, it adds a really fresh, zingy dimension to the cookie, so it doesn't taste purely buttery.

One thing is for certain: SHOPRITE HAMANTASHEN PALE IN COMPARISON!!! The meagre jam in those are too sticky, the dough is crumbly and tasteless, and they're also not as cooly shaped as these ones. Today, I personally prefer hamantashen a bit toasted/brownish, but the normal-baked ones are great too. I'm not Jewish but I'm really glad I get to have the chance to make different cultural desserts!!

Soy "Steak" Style Strips

This is another review on something called "Steak Style Strips". In the package, they remind me of cooked liver, which my mum used to make with peppers (and it used to taste pretty good. Actually, animal livers are a great source of vitamin A, iron [yes!!], vitamin D, vitamin B12, and protein. Oh, and cholesterol, but I think that the other nutrients outweigh the cholesterol content). I'm not sure why I'm advertising the consumption of livers since I don't eat them myself, but these soy strips neither taste like liver nor have the nutrients that liver has.

I cooked them two ways.

1. In the pan with some spices and some ketchup. This tasted rather bland and had a seriously gluteny texture. It was a bit peppery, but it definitely did not taste like steak. The only reasons I was thinking "Hmmm, rather steaky" were that these pieces of soy actually looked like sliced steak, and they were labelled as "steak" flavoured. In other words, appearance is vital in tricking the mind into assuming things...especially when these strips are a small component of a larger meal. In my case, they weren't, but I'd imagine if they were chopped up and used in instant noodles, you couldn't tell the difference! My food tech teacher told me in year 8 that a lot of TVP is actually used in instant noodles instead of using actual chunks of cow or pig; instead, they just add a ton of flavouring to the TVP so that it tastes like animal flesh, but lasts much longer (won't expire that soon!)! Anyway, the pan version was a bit bland.

2. Microwave, with the same spices and some ketchup. These definitely tasted more salty, and since I put them in the microwave for 2:00 mins, some of the strips were pretty crispy/crunchy in that inside-out way that the microwave likes to irradiate food. In this aspect, the microwave provided more textured and flavoured [primarily salty] soy strips. The best part about the microwaved version is that the texture, although still a bit gluteny, resembles animal flesh pretty well [way better than the Smart Cutlets did].

When they say "seasoned", I believe they mean "mixed with a ton of salt and a bit of pepper".

Also, the bread was from Costco and it was the multigrain bread that comes in one loaf rather than two when you buy them. The bread is dry, rather sweet, and kind of stale. I do not have a favourable impression of it. For sliced bread, I seriously prefer the organic whole wheat bread that comes in a two-pack from Costco.

NYC Trip No 2

I suppose it will become a tradition for me, KC and DS to go to NYC once/year just to chill out and eat food. Last time, we hung out after AP exams in May.

We got to Chinatown at 10:30 am, but nothing much was open until over 11 am. Actually, some bakeries were, so we browsed them (because I was looking for strawberry egg tarts for my sister. We actually got to a store that sold green tea, papaya, almond, Portuguese, and normal egg tarts, but did NOT sell strawberry ones! Upsetting!). There were also other bubble tea places, but DS wanted to go to TenRen. This time, I got the coconut bubble tea since I think I prefer the milk-based teas over the water-based ones. This makes sense, of course, because the fat in the milk is highly loved by taste buds. Actually, is "fat" a taste? Is it a flavour like sweet or umami? If not, then why is fat-free milk so much less palatable than whole-fat milk? There perhaps are some sort of receptors that respond to fat content in foods. The coconut bubble tea was actually just sweet milk bubble tea [I think they used sweetened condensed milk at some point) with dried shredded coconut in it. I wish they had used coconut milk or coconut water, since the coconut flavour wasn't too defined. Also, all the tapioca was glued together into a great clump, so I ended up chugging 17 or so tapioca balls at once. Overall though, the bubble tea was awesome.

For lunch, we went to Shanghai Asian Manor, which was interesting because the shop side had a giant depiction of a bun in a bamboo steamer. Evidently, it's disproportional; honestly, do you expect a bun the size of a bamboo steamer? The silliness, for some reason, made me want to go to the store. Actually, any restaurants that have food sculptures on the store front beckon me in.

A meal in Chinatown is pretty well priced and pretty amazing too. We got 24 steamed buns, which was a lot, actually. The ones above are some grilled pig-mince buns (pork buns). Since DS and KC couldn't finish the last three, they ate the animal parts and I ate the bun parts. The grilled part was pretty amazing, and I wish that the whole bun was crispy and grilled instead of just the bottom of the bun.

These are the crab and pig-mince xiao[3] long[2] bao[1] with the soup that leaks out when you bite into it. Apparently, the crab taste is really not prominent, and the soup was too watery and unauthentic. I can't vouch for that since I didn't actually eat any, but I remember this time I was in Wuhan MANY years ago, and my relatives and I ate a zillion mini xiao[3] long[2] bao[1], and it was DELICIOUSLY ADDICTIVE.

For some reason, the vegetable buns were wrapped in dumpling wrappers. I do not consider these buns. Sure, they're steamed, but where are the yeast-and-white-flour-and-salt-and-oil infusions [aka, the dough for the steamed BUNS!?]!

These were delicious, and filled with vegetables that complemented each other, and the dumplings [oh, I'm calling them dumplings now because they don't taste like buns!] went really well with the soy sauce mixed with with Chinese celery and sesame oil. They were also really pretty. They remind me of triskelions [that compose clathrin-coated pits].

For dinner, we were going to go to Red Lobster but KC and DS were being really considerate because they realised that I don't eat animals. I suppose I would've liked to go to Red Lobster, just to check it out, but Olive Garde was fine too [yes, Olive Garde. The neon light for "n" in "Garden" was broken]. Since it's NYC Times Square, the prices were really jacked up. Also, since it's NYC, the Calories of each dish was posted, which made me feel terrible and super conscious of myself. We had a nice view, though.

I was debating whether I wanted eggplant parm or mushroom ravioli, but I actually didn't really want either... I wasn't really hungry, to say the truth. It's been 4 hours since then, and I'm still not hungry. Emotionally, perhaps, but physically not. So, at Olive Garde(n), I got a chocolate mousse with cookie crumbs, because I don't think that my local Olive Garden has chocolate mousse.

The mousse was really good, but that's a really generic statement because chocolate mousse is always really good. The cookie crumb base was basically crushed Oreos. I should try to make mousse myself one day. Once, in HK, I made peach mousse and it was only alright. After we kept it in the freezer for weeks, my mum started using chunks of it as ice (not in drinks or food or anything, but as ice, to keep non-foodstuffs cold). Another time, I was trying to make chocolate pie and I overbeat the cream, and it turned out sort of like mousse, but much more airy and ugly.

Lightlife Smart Cutlets

To use up more dining $s, I decided to buy some Smart Cutlets and stick them on a pan and have one for dinner with veggies. I grilled one plain, and it was completely bland, so I decided to grill the second one with garlic, pepper, and pesto seasoning.

The texture was supposed to resemble chicken, I suppose, but it definitely tasted a bit gluteny and too uniform. I like the fact that there was no super-salty flavour, but there was basically no inherent "flavour", unless I added seasonings. Although the 17 g of protein is a perk, this doesn't taste as delicious as tofu, or tempeh, which have their own textures and flavours. This grilled cutlet is homogeneous to the point that I really don't know what I'm eating, even though I know it's soy and gluten.

My mum also decided to stir fry peppers and celery with apple. And goji berries. This was a sweet change. Yes. Sweet. (Oh my eardrums are tearing!!)

CAFFEINE Coffee Cookies!!!

My brother, JM, and a few other high school people are currently competing in an... M3(?) competition that started this morning at 6am and ends at 9pm. Basically, they are presented with a problem, and have to make some sort of model and proposal for fixing the problem. This year's problem has something to do with a drought in a lake in Colorado, I think. Anyway, I just went to visit them and they had a lot of untouched food just sitting there because they're so busy. It looks pretty hectic. My brother told me last night to make them coffee-infused finger foods because they would need the caffeine. So, I made coffee cookies.

I found a recipe online but I changed it a lot because for some reason, I feel confident in my cooking/altering everything. So, here is my version of ridiculously humongous soft, moist coffee flavoured cookies.

Ingredients for 26 ridiculously large [size-of-your-palm], flat, and moist cookies:

1. 1/2 cup oil

2. 1 cup white sugar

3. 2 eggs

4. vanilla

5. coffee [I'll explain this in the Method]

6. 2 cups self-raising flour

7. 1/2 tsp baking soda

Method:

1. At the crack of dawn, get half a cup of boiling water and spoon in 3-4 heaping tbsp of ground coffee. Add a few tbsp of instant coffee just for the caffeine kick. Add more tbsp of instant coffee to your liking! Actually, I'm not even sure I saturated the water that much; I'm sure I could've added MUCH more instant coffee. The end result was a cookie that tasted like coffee, but was not tremendously bitter. This, I would say, is the amount of coffee needed to make "normal" tasting coffee cookies.

2. Mix all wet ingredients in a giant bowl. Add in the coffee mixture with the granules, although if you don't like the spotty appearance, you can filter out the granules. The batter should be dark brown.

3. Add in dry ingredients. I used self-raising flour, which already had some baking powder and salt in it, for simplicity. [a.k.a I didn't have non-self-raising bleached flour]

4. The mixture should be quite gooey, a bit stickier than cake batter, and look like the very first image above.

5. Spoon onto cookie sheets and bake at 380 degrees F in a unpreheated oven on the bottom rack for 9 minutes.

6. Let them sit in oven for 10 minutes at least, or longer if you want. Alternatively, let them bake for another 1-2 minutes.

7. Let them cool on cooling racks, and they should harden a bit but still be moist, flat, and a bit cakey.

Note: They puff up to 2 times their original size.