Chocolate Pudding & Wonderful Stock

I haven't gone grocery shopping since the 22nd (I think?). Considering I usually spend <$8 per grocery shopping trip, this implies that I had/have a lot of leftover food to consume within the next two weeks! I can't wait to go home! Hopefully, I don't have to spend money on food until I get home (except for veggies of course).

With 3 leftover egg yolks (from failed macarons), I made chocolate pudding! I used fat-free milk, and added some red pepper flakes. I also replaced the cornstarch with about 6 tsp of white flour, and the sugar/cocoa with 120 g dark chocolate. The pudding was smooth and had a crusty top (which was pretty delicious!).



I also have been saving leftover plant parts in the freezer. I made a delicious stock with leftover cilantro, celery bottoms, potato peelings, onion caps/skins, garlic skins, and carrot tops, and eggplant bits. I think that I will do this from now on, and maybe even get my mum to do it at home! Vegetable stock is so easy to make as well -  just dump all the scraps into a saucepan of water, and let it simmer for a few hours! I'm sure non-vegetable stock is also easy to make - just simmer animal bones for a few hours. I think that next time, I'll cut the scraps into small pieces.




I used the stock for my risotto (to use up my leftover Arborio rice), and I also added some celery root juice that I got from Monell (they were going to use it for a study, but chose carrot juice instead). Celery root juice is tangy, sour, not sweet, and quite delicious!




In both instances, SP helped stir. Therefore, he was allowed to eat unlimited portions.

H Mart - Upper Darby, Pennsylvania

I went to H Mart with TJ and CL. To get there from Penn, you take the L train to 69th St. Terminal, followed by a 5-minute walk. Sadly, we got on the wrong side of the SEPTA station, and had to get transfer tickets! I've never travelled West on SEPTA. I actually wanted to walk to 69th St, but apparently it's really shady (and it's about 3 miles?). The furthest west I've walked is to 50th St. (Baltimore and Market).

H Mart is a grocery store that primarily sells Korean, Japanese, and Chinese food, although there is other imported food. I was a bit let down by H Mart. Although there are many vegetables and foods not found elsewhere (green mango, yucca, etc.) it's quite pricey compared to the supermarkets in Chinatown. On the second floor, there is a food court with four restaurants and one overpriced bakery with pastries that are all pre-wrapped and made elsewhere (they don't have an oven; they do have expensive bubble tea and smoothies). There is a sushi restaurant, two Korean food restaurants, and one Korean-Chinese restaurant. I don't remember the names of them, but we each bought food from a different restaurant (except the sushi one). I had lunch and dinner there, while they (having stuffed themselves with pancakes and eggs earlier) just had dinner. We were there from 2 to 6 pm!

At the restaurant closest to the window, CL got a seafood noodle soup (and I got some kimbap). It came with radish kimchi that had sweet pickled garlic in it. CL didn't really like it, so she swapped her dish with TJ's. TJ had gotten a "noodle with seafood and black bean sauce" from the restaurant furthest from the window, but it turned out that there was pork in it! TJ is a pescetarian, so swapping was quite convenient. Her meal also came with radish kimchi. I got thick noodles and vegetables (number 25) from the middle restaurant, which had a yellow shop front. It was really good, and came with cabbage kimchi, miso soup, stewed potatoes! I was so surprised because the bowl is enormous; my chopsticks are shown on the bowl for comparison. I saw that other people also got these giant bowls. The bowls are about half filled with raw veggies and cold rice noodles, which were nice and chewy. There was a bottle of spicy sauce for me to add to my own taste. It was around $8.50 with tax, as were most dishes there. 

The kimbap was pretty good too, but the soy sauce with chili was really salty definitely not umami. $4 with tax. I know there's imitation crab it in...but I ate it anyway (we shared it; I also ended up eating squid that was going to get thrown away because neither TJ nor CL liked it).

H Mart itself is a decent size, has many snacks that I'd like to try, many varieties of miso, and kilos of kimchi (the smallest size was a pound, the largest was a bag the size of a microwave). The produce section offers a styrofoam backed and plastic-wrapped tray of nearly-going-bad-veggies for 99c, so I bought about 12 small potatoes, 6 Asian eggplants, and 4 zucchinis for $4.96. I just cut off the bad squishy parts (about 10% of the veggies).

 (not sure what it is...) 

(They're twice the size of avocados, and have smooth skin)

I also got some sort of mugwort cake with beans which looked so delicious! I thought it'd be sweet, but it's actually tasteless (like Chinese steamed buns without any filling). I've never had mugwort before, and I'm a little disappointed because I couldn't taste anything different than a normal floury-bread thing. I wish it had been sold individually, but it was not bad.

I also found something that I used to love when I was a kid: ready-to-eat crunchy instant noodles! It's not the same brand, but basically you can add the seasoning, crush the noodles, and then eat them the way you eat chips. There was a brand in Hong Kong that had Snoopy on the package, and came with a Snoopy sticker. I LOVED them. I got the hot rice flavour (but there was also beef and barbecue flavour). It's a bit pricey (99c) but, man, nostalgia!

Also, there was lots of vegetarian pudding. I didn't get any because I had bought some Kingo Pudding by Cocon at Chinatown recently, and here they are (they taste really good frozen)

Although these look like jelly made with gelatin, they're actually solid due to seaweed extract! Here are the ingredients for the pineapple one: water, sugar, nata de coco, milk powder, pineapple juice, seaweed extract, vegetable oil, citric acid, flavour, emulsifier, colouring (including tartrazine E102), and FD&C yellow No. 5. The lychee one doesn't include the last two ingredients, because, well, it's white. I'm not a fan of the pineapple one because it was too sweet, but I bought it for science (and for trying new things).

For those who want REAL pineapple jelly, then, pick these! Why can't gelatin jelly have pineapple? Well, pineapple has this enzyme called bromelain, a protease that breaks down proteins (our duodenum (small intestine) has trypsin, which is also a protease, which breaks down proteins during digestion). The protease breaks down gelatin (collagen protein), so the jelly won't set. I was so astounded when I learned this in high school Biology. The jelly itself is softer, though.
Ultimately, I wouldn't take SEPTA all the way to H Mart regularly, even though there are some pretty neat veggies there. Chinatown is the way to go for now for me!

Coconut Pudding!!

I adore pudding.

I intended to make some Hawaiian haupia today, but in retrospect, it seems that I've made a chunky Puerto Rican tembleque instead, purely by accident. It doesn't really matter, because it's still creamy, delicious, fantastic coconut.

Haupia is supposed to be more solid, like a jelly, and is served in cubes. However, my coconut pudding wouldn't set (not that it matters, since it's still really gooey and delicious) and I also had added vanilla (my sister wanted it) and cinnamon (I wanted it) to the concoction, thus making it more of a tembleque. I also wanted to add nutmeg but my sister opposed that idea. Either way, I stupidly put the hot slurry into a plastic container, so maybe my tembleque is now infused with plastic fumes. Fun.

The pudding's also not really photogenic, especially with indoor photography (it's been raining on/off for the past 64 hours).

The original recipe is here, but I modified it (figures...)

INGREDIENTS for about 500 ml of tembleque

400 ml (1 can) coconut milk

100 g (or more) fresh coconut

50 g sugar

0.5 tsp salt

vanilla

part of a cinnamon stick

20 g cornstarch

40 ml fat-free milk

METHOD

1. Roughly chop coconut. If you're really finicky, you can shred coconut but it takes a lot of time. Chopping coconut chunks into pieces ranging from shreds to pea-size is perfectly acceptable.

2. Mix coconut, coconut milk, sugar, salt, and however much cinnamon and/or vanilla you want in a saucepan.

3. Plop saucepan on medium heat, and stir. You'll start to see bubbles on the side of the pan. Dissolve the cornstarch to the fat-free milk in a non-plastic container.

4. Keep stirring the mixture in the saucepan until you see huge gloopy bubbles form in the middle of the mixture, which will start to foam and rise. This took me about 7 minutes in total.

5. Pour all of the mixture from the saucepan into the milk/cornstarch mixture and stir quickly! Remove cinnamon pieces (optional. Just remember you have them there).

6. Let goo cool. Stick it in the fridge.

7. SLURP UP THE DELICIOUS FRESH&CANNED COCONUT FLAVOUR!

For me, the tembleque had the consistency of really thick porridge/gruel after refrigeration, but it did not adhere to other materials very easily (unlike yoghurt) so it was probably 70-90% the texture of haupia, since it wasn't entirely solid. It tasted mildly of cinnamon, which was really great. The pudding part tasted pretty light, which complimented the fresh chunks of coconut.

UPDATE: Actually, leaving the pudding in the fridge overnight meant that my pudding is solid, can be cut into cubes, and looks more like chunky haupia.

UPDATE (26 August): I made coconut pudding again today without coconut milk; I just grated fresh coconut, added 800 ml of water to it, threw in some cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla, and let it simmer on the stove for about 20 minutes. Then I mixed some cornstarch with a few tablespoons of cold water and then added the hot coconut slurry to it. Cornstarch clumps when it's added to hot water (from my experience).

Slow Rise Bakery

I have decided that bread is my favourite food. Although I adore chocolate, soft chocolate chip cookies, and avocado sushi, if I had to pick one food to live on for the rest of my life, it would be bread.

Crusty whole wheat sliced bread.

French bread.

Ciabatta.

Grain bread.

Walnut bread.

In short, I love bread.

At Clark Park's Farmer's Market, I found a loaf of bread sitting in a box.

It was $1 because it had been in the freezer.

I toasted it. Mixed it with milk and coconut and dried roses. It turned out really textured...and bland.

Lesson learned: ADD SUGAR!!

To the layperson, it probably looks like oatmeal or oat bran. This is amazingly versatile! Bread that can double as oatmeal, granola, oat bran, toast, pudding, cookie batter, and dessert, all at the same time!

Later I finished the loaf of bread through toasting it. This bread, unlike the other breads I've tried, is extremely gluteny and...chewy, it's almost like there's rice flour in it.

Slow Rise Bakery, 43rd and Baltimore Ave.

Chocolate Pudding!

Something is wrong about my blog. Something terrible and ignored for 17 months.

The pie is a lie.

Despite calling my blog PIE-314, I've yet to make a pie and blog it on here. Sure, cheesecake has some sorta shell, and egg tarts can be considered open-top pies, and I've posted about pie before (made by others). I've just never made pie from scratch.

Actually, scratch that. I've made pies a few times in my life and I believe that they all turned out to be pretty much disasters. The chocolate pie I made when I was in year 8 turned out to have super overwhipped filling (it was still delicious, though). The berry pie with lattice top I made when Harry Potter 5 came out was really sour I didn't follow a recipe and I used only a few teaspoons of sugar.

The apple pies I made nearly EXACTLY 4 years ago, on Memorial Day 2007, were made with some biscuit mix and cracker crumbs (cracker crumb top). If THAT doesn't sound bad enough, I used dried apples that I tried to rehydrate by sticking them in water for half an hour (figuring osmosis would do something). I also followed no recipe, meaning that I had this dried-apple-and-preservatives-and-water sludge sitting on biscuit-mix-mixed-with-crackers concoction sitting in the oven for some random amount of time...but it didn't burn.

The best part was that the crust actually turned out pretty delicious.

The worst part was that I gave one of the two pies that I had made to my neighbour...and I actually felt proud of what I had made. So, now I cringe.

On Friday, I will actually make an apple pie. (Why? To show that in 4 years, I taught myself how to bake. It's not for a patriotic reason.) From scratch. I guess you all know by now that I dislike the whole pre-made crust, cake mix, pudding mix etc. enterprise.

So how does all this tie in with chocolate pudding? Well, I was going to make a chocolate pie, and I was determined to follow the recipe for once (instead of tweaking everything), because it was a tofu recipe by Alton Brown, and he's pretty awesome. However, I was pretty occupied most of today, and it was also really hot, so baking just didn't sound appetizing. Instead, I just made chocolate pudding from the pie recipe. No, not pie filling, because instead of using 13 ounces of chocolate, I only used 4 (116 g). Why? ...I only had 116 g of chocolate. It's perfectly fine, though, because 4 oz of strong chocolate makes the pudding taste like chocolate, too. I'm never going to buy pudding again! Those pudding cups are silly now!

Ingredients for pretty bitter but so intensely chocolately pudding (just the way I like it!)

116 g (4 oz) 65% cocoa chocolate

1 tbsp honey

1 lb silken tofu

2 tsp instant coffee

1 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder

vanilla

Method:

Stick everything except tofu in the microwave for 30 s.

Blend with tofu.

Stick in fridge overnight.

Eat.

Since my pudding is still chillin' in the "chill chest" (Alton Brown terminology), I guess I'll take more photogenic pictures tomorrow at breakfast time [Update: it's the first photo]

What? You don't eat pudding for breakfast?

Nutritionally, it's the same as eating scrambled tofu and drinking hot chocolate, which many people do for breakfast. So why can't I eat pudding?

I'm making apple pie on Friday.

(By the way, it's world thyroid day...not that much happens)

Mind the Food Gap - Urban Nutrition Initiative Dinner

Today at Commons there was a dinner from 6 to 7:30pm hosted by the Urban Nutrition Initiative, which is a community service group that teaches high school kids how to plant gardens and how to cook and do nutritional planning. This week, actually, is Food Week. Initially I wasn't even going to go, but I figured that I might as well go after my Nutrition midterm [which I did not do well on. I definitely didn't get above a 95% which really irks me because this stuff is really easy...] and I wondered if I'd be late, since I had to get my camera from my dorm. The really stupid thing is that I came into my dorm, left my school bag in my room, then went back out. As I approached Commons, I realised that I'd forgotten to bring my camera. By then, it was 6:10 so I figured I might just blog without pictures. However, downstairs in Commons, no one was serving food or anything... so I went back to my dorm and rushed back out and back to Commons. By then, they'd started discussing stuff about food justice. I think it's a really broad topic that one could write a book about, or devote a blog to. Either way, it was a light discussion for my table since we didn't have a table leader from the group to talk to us.

This event seemed pretty legit since they gave us 3 different sized forks and a spoon. They also emphasised the fact that the produce was local; the first course was "Roasted Red Pepper & Brie Cheese Soup", which was really delicious, actually. It was really tangy, great with the bread crust [but the bread by itself was pretty plain].

The "Spinach Salad with Local Feta, Red Onion and Warm Shallot Vinaigrette" was amazing. I seriously loved the vinaigrette!!!! I could drink that stuff [okay, I can't.]

The feta cheese chunks were really huge though, and different from the feta cheese I had eaten at this Greek restaurant back in high school.

Everyone else had "Hendricks [sic. no apostrophe] Chicken with Tarragon Cream Sauce, Sage Whipped Potato and Sautéed Broccoli Rabe". Since I'm a vegetarian, they gave me some butternut risotto. I tell you, this is NOT risotto. It's bulgur with butternut squash and cranberries. It is not a risotto. Risottos are sticky and creamy and made with arborio rice or other short-grain sticky rice. It was alright. The vegetable side was way too buttery. I guess it's personal preference, but I've grown up eating either steamed vegetables or vegetables cooked in light oil. I'm not used to the butter-drenched vegetables thing. Nor am I used to spreading a tablespoon of butter on bread, either...

However, the lighting was great so my pictures turned out nice. Actually, the guy next to me took pictures of his food too!

"Warm Bread Pudding with Maple Crème Anglaise" was pretty intense...the plate was cold and the pudding was sort of lukewarm. The bread pudding was nicely textured, and there were a lot of raisins. Overall, it was really sugar saturated. The maple glaze did not have any maple flavour. The thing that confuses me is that they said that this was grown locally, so I wonder whether Philly has a maple tree farm? I doubt it...but I could be wrong.

Interesting. I think I want to join this group to teach nutrition to kids.

Quinoa Porridge [Sort Of]!

I think I'm going crazy. I am obsessed with grainy porridges. E.g. rice pudding, oat bran porridge, oatmeal, etc. The list goes on. Anything with carbs, really.

Today I decided to make quinoa porridge, which is quite a deviation from the norm since quinoa isn't really used in making sweet dishes [I think?]; it's usually used for salads or stir fries or soups or something savoury. Now I know why quinoa isn't used for porridge. It doesn't soften or get mushy or gluey, so it doesn't make a very gooey porridge.

I also added way too much honey [two teaspoons for about 3 cups of quinoa seemed pretty reasonable, but I guess I was wrong]. Actually, I think that the extra raisins also made the porridge super sweet. I doubt there will be a "next time", but if there were, I would definitely just cut out adding honey, since the raisins suffice in rendering the porridge to taste like some sort of textured candy.

TAPIOCA!

I love tapioca.

Yes, tapioca is used in bubble tea [a.k.a. pearl milk tea], which SVC introduced to me a few years ago and I was thinking "Hmm. What is so interesting about THAT?".

How wrong I was.

Tapioca Pudding is also the name of a character from the Peanuts series by Charles Schulz. I don't think I can truthfully say that I've had tapioca pudding before... though I HAVE had extra-gooey creamy tapioca, which I suppose could constitute as a sort of pudding. Anyway, my mum decided to cook this mini tapioca we had sitting in a shelf, and apparently, this kind disintegrates really easily. The orbs were mushy. However, after adding some soy milk, the globular mass started separating from each other... and I actually ended up with something that appeared to look like tapioca! Yay! [Earlier on it was a clear jelly mass, like a bowl of steaming gelatin pieces, or hair gel]. Personally I like it with a lot of blueberries :) although the mug with banana wasn't too bad. I didn't add sugar to either mugful, though, but I think that's just my preference.

MS's Grad Party - Desserts!

Okay I lied. I WILL talk about MS's grad party, because it was truly the one with the most ethnically diverse foods [well. Apart from mine :P, but mine doesn't count]. This month, June, has been the most prodigal month of my life. No kidding. All that EXCESS food ["XS" as my chem teacher used to write, while we balanced out equations]... all that variety...

This is LEGIT Americana. Eat and party. Oh, and run away from exercise.

This is the stuff I've been missin' out since 2006, though I don't really know if I would've wanted partying to interfere with schoolwork. Maybe it was just better that I used to be antisocial, because by being antisocial, I would get all my work done.

But now that HS is over, I can party all I want!! This morning, JM came over for breakfast, I went for a super-long walk with MZ, JM and my bro and I went to the weight room... and it was all real chill, just hanging out and letting time slide by, without a sense of anxiety and procrastination.

Okay, so the dessert at MS's party was really sweet! She is Philippino, so there was a ton of ethnic food, which I love. Oh, there was a whole roasted pig... as a side note. MP commented on the irony that I found it enticing, but I basically blog about anything that interests me, food-wise... so here it is!

Glutinous rice pudding, with some brown sugar topping that was the reason the pudding tasted good. [I like corner and side pieces].

Mango trifle. It. Was. The. Best. Thing. There. Layers of mango and cream, patched up with sponge cake and crushed sweet biscuit pieces, and a crunchy top...

Pieces of trifle, with watermelon and the rice pudding.

I think that this was sweet grass jelly drink, with colourful tapioca balls inside. I am not sure, though.

Plantain wrapped in sweet pastry. It actually tasted like sweet potato pastry, for a second, but then I saw the seeds and the yellow filling. Oh, and the texture was not sweet potatoey. Plantains are awesome!

Eggplant parm; glutinous rice flour sweet bun, with a piece of processed cheese [It was sticky and nice until I got to the cheese]; soft taro pudding, coconut rice pudding - second favourite dessert there; some mini rice cake [see below] that I didn't like as much; upside down flan spongecake.

Another rice pudding, above which is the mini rice cake that I didn't really fancy.

Sponge cake! With flan on top! I love flan, in general, and the fact that this cake is absolutely beautifully shaped truly helped me to more helpings of it...

Plate of everything. The one in the bottom left is the coconut rice pudding, and I took the corner piece, with the crusty top and sides. I think that I love corner pieces because it has the widest range of textures.

My Grad Party!

Too much dessert from Costco.

YES APPLE PIE!! Though, I like pumpkin pie more. SD likes apple pie.

Fried rice [one vegetarian], cold noodles, grilled corn, water gun, croutons, POTATO SALAD WITH APPLE!, some weird cow-flesh thing [in the background].

Snack table: trail mix [I made it], fried corn kernels, tortillas, Goldfish crackers, Doritos, crudites and honey mustard dip [I made it], mango salsa, potato chips, toasted pine nuts.

I made rice pudding for the first time of my life. SC and JM liked it. :D YAY

Crudites!

Pasta with thyme and Monterey jack cheese!!

MORE RICE PUDDING!!!!!

I needa get better at estimating the amount of food to make. We had pretty much 60% of the food left, after the party. and maybe 80% of the dessert. This does not bode well with the fact that I will be home [since school is over] for the next few weeks, as I will be consuming that food.