Adventures in Chinese cooking, attempt deux.

One of the few bonuses of having our parents attempting to move in the spring is the wealth of stuff that is now up for grabs. I've been slowly accumulating some favorite furniture and knick knacks out of the basement, and had the fortune to find my giant Chinese cookbook in the process. I've always appreciated cookbooks with CLEAR instructions and tips and tricks, both of which this book has. It also doubles as a coffee table book due to its beautiful pictures, and a coffee table if you put some legs under it. This thing weighs a ton.

The Food of China, photos by Jason Lowe, recipes by Deh-Ta Hsuing and Nina Simonds

I've been meaning to try and make congee for a long time now. For some reason I always thought it was a hard thing to make, although clearly I was delusional. It just takes a while. The Risotto of China. Or rice porridge. Risotto sounds nicer. This recipe is also only for 4 servings, unlike the mega bowls you get at Chinese restaurants. There's nothing wrong with the mega bowls, but it helps if you have six to seven people, versus the one that I'd be feeding. I halved this recipe, and it was a great dinner and leftover lunch the next day.


Plain Congee, with accompaniments
Serves 4

220 g (1 cup) of short-grain rice
2.25 litres (9 cups) chicken stock or water
light soy sauce, to taste
sesame oil, to taste

Toppings!
3 spring onions (Green onions? Are these not the same thing?) chopped
4 tablespoons chopped coriander (ignore)
30 g (1 oz) slicked pickled ginger (I used fresh)
4 tablespoons finely chopped preserved turnip (didn't have)
4 tablespoons roasted peanuts (didn't have these either)
2 one-thousand year old eggs, cut into slivers (really?)
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds (nope)
2 fried dough sticks, sliced diagonally (hate these things)
[I added 2 cloves of chopped garlic. Because I'm like that]

Put rice in a bowl and, using your fingers as a rake, rinse under cold running water to remove any dust. Drain rice in a colander. Place in a clay pot (if you're authentic), casserole or large saucepan and stir in water/chicken stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer very gently, stirring occasionally, for 1 3/4 to 2 hours, or until it has a porridge-like texture and the rice is breaking up.

Add a sprinkling of soy sauce, sesame oil and white pepper (if you're fancy and have many kinds of pepper)  to season the congee. The congee can be served plain, or choose a selection from the toppings listed and serve in bowls alongside the congee for guests to help themselves.

As you can see form the pictures, I added shrimp. Normally, they taste great in congee. According to the seafood congee recipe underneath the regular one, you add the uncooked shrimp at the end, bring the congee back up to a boil, and cook them in the congee directly for about a minute. I discovered that this was mildly dangerous, since the congee bubbled and exploded frequently, and didn't really taste that exciting. I may stick with plain and toppings from now on. Otherwise however, this turned out great! I can see this being done frequently during the upcoming winter, especially now that I go to Bulkbarn regularly.


Also, December starts on Saturday. I've waited long enough to start holiday posts. You've been warned. Again.

Also, the chicken survived!

Adventures in Chinese cooking, attempt one.

I really like Chinese food. This is a fairly general statement, I'm ware, but generally speaking, I enjoy and will eat most to all Chinese dishes that are put in front of me. With the exception of tripe. That  was unpleasant.

I was perusing my usual run of blogs one day, and found this recipe for Egg Drop Soup on The Kitchn's blog. Egg Drop soup is one of those things that I've usually like (there have been some bad ones over the years), and have always wondered how to make it properly. Emma's instruction are nice and clear, and her tip for pouring the eggs properly into the soup is genius. Her recipe also includes a full list of the ingredients that can be used to make this soup, and I'm sure everyone has their own variations I've put mine at the end of her recipe. I was quite pleased with my combo.

Egg Drop Soup
Serves 4 as an appetizer or 2 for a light dinner

  Base Ingredients
4 cups (32 oz) chicken or vegetable stock
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon cornstarch
2 to 4 large eggs
Salt or soy sauce

Flavoring Extras - Use one or all
1/2" fresh ginger, peeled and cut into rounds
1 stem lemongrass, bruised
1/2 teaspoon peppercorns
2 star anise
6-8 whole cloves
1 cinnamon stick
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons miso

Soup Extras - Use one or all
1/2 block (7-8 oz) extra-firm tofu, cut into bite-sized pieces
8 oz mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 bunch baby bok choy, thinly sliced
4 spring onions, thinly sliced

Pour the stock into a saucepan and place over medium-high heat. Put the smaller flavoring extras you're using into a tea ball or spice bag. Add all your flavoring extras to the saucepan with the stock. Turn down the heat to medium-low and simmer for 15 minutes. Scoop out all the flavoring extras with a slotted spoon. Taste and add salt or soy sauce as needed.

Add any soup extras to the stock and simmer for five minutes. Save some scallions for sprinkling on top of the soup at the end.

Scoop out 1/4 cup or so of the stock and whisk it with 1 tablespoon of cornstarch in a small bowl. Whisk this back into the stock and let it simmer for a minute or two until the broth no longer tastes starchy.

Whisk together the eggs in a small bowl with the remaining teaspoon of cornstarch. Make sure your soup is at a bare simmer. Holding a fork over the bowl (see photo), pour the eggs slowly through the tines. Whisk the broth gently with your other hand as you pour. Let the soup stand for a few seconds to finish cooking the eggs.

Serve immediately, topped with thinly sliced scallions.

"This recipe will make four small cups of soup, but can be easily scaled up if you have more guests at your table. I generally use 1 to 2 cups of broth and one egg per person.
One last parting note: this is not a soup that keeps well. It's best poured straight from the saucepan into the serving bowls and then eaten as soon as it's cool enough to swallow."

The version that I did was this!
Flavoring Extras - Use one or all
ginger,
garlic,
2 point of star anise,
1/3 of a cinnamon stick ish,
1 tablespoon soy sauce,
2 tablespoons miso,

Soup Extras - Use one or all
2 dried shitaki mushrooms, thinly sliced (don't do this, not ideal),
small handful of leftover enoki mushrooms from a hotpot night last week,
4 spring onions, thinly sliced

The pringles are optional, and not recommended for the soup.

It's November?

So yeah, that whole blogging thing.

Ye olde month of October was a bit busy, on all fronts. I'm sorry.

Also, since it is now November, and Christmas season has started, so there will be a few Christmas stuff posts in the upcoming weeks. You've been warned.

The beginning of the month saw me at my first executive meeting for the Photographical Historic Society of Canada, because I am their new Image Curator for the Spring Photo Show! I am also acting as a content manager for an exhibition in the spring that will e using the various collections of various members. I'm attempting to change a few things about the Spring Image show, all of which will hopefully result in better attendance. We shall see.

The middle of October saw a busy 2 weeks! I have returned to the great world of paid employment (finally) and am back at an Art Gallery I worked at before and during my graduate degree. This coincided with the week that I GRADUATED with my Master's degree and went to my first, adult wedding. The vintage dress I had hoped to wear was not going to happen, but the back-up dress I ordered from Eshakti turned out to be amazing. I ended up wearing it to both events. And I wore heels. Both times. My feet really hated me by Sunday morning.

I have no pictures of the graduation ceremony, since I was mildly distracted by seeing all my classmates again for the first time in months. We spent most of the afternoon calling each other "Master," fussing over the gowns and hoods and hugging each other frequently. We survived getting a Master's. I almost cried when I saw my parents after the ceremony. Almost. Saved it for the wedding a few days later.

Two days later my best friend from highschool/undergrad got married. They had a lovely, short ceremony in the church that we grew up in in Mississauga, and a fun little reception several hours later in another town. If I sound slightly bitter about that, I am. I love them dearly, and am so proud of the two of them, but arranging transport and dealing with the 4 hour break in-between when you don't drive was a little annoying. I wanted my date (who was a friend of mine that I borrowed from his girlfriend for the day) to be able to drink since he'd never met these people, so that eliminated him driving too. Thankfully my Dad offered to ferry us around all afternoon. Thanks Dad!

The only picture I got during the wedding. Seriously. Was a little busy beaming with pride over Brendan and Kathryn. And then crying during their vows.

St. Stephen's on the Hill. Actually on a hill, cannot be seen form the road as our cab driver proved.

 

 

And then of course, Halloween. My costume was a bit last minute this year, surprise surprise. I had been rummaging through my closet and found my old chicken purse. I love that purse. and haven't used it very much. It was the key prop in a Halloween costume from almost four years ago when I dressed up as a farmer. Creative, I know. It was about 5 days before Halloween when I remembered that I needed a costume since we were going out and figured I'd just do the farmer again. My roommate was not impressed by this idea, and after some further searching on how to incorporate chicken into a costume, we came across the Robot Chicken mad scientist. Perfect. I just needed a lab coat, black work gloves and boots and a wig, and then make a costume for my chicken. 

Ze chicken, with some of the tools used to give him his costume. Those wings are pockets. Amazing.

The rest of the ingredients for this outfit. Most of which were found at the local dollarama.

I opened up a paper bag and painted it to recreate the Chicken's metal parts. I wanted this costume to be as reversible as possible so my chicken purse wouldn't be modified. 

 Scrunch up for added texture.

I added some black and gold with a really dry paint brush to give some more depth to the metal.

And scrunched again.

Then I cut up the pieces to vaguely resemble where the metal is on the real Robot Chicken chicken, and held them on with a few small whip stitches. I'm hoping (haven't done this yet) that I can just snip some of the threads and pull these all off later.

The 'eye' is a giant plastic rhinestone I'm probably going to salvage when I take his costume apart. 

All in all, I think it worked out well. Again, I have no pictures of the night itself. I think my roommate may still have a group portrait of the 4 of us that went out that night, I'll see if I can find it.

Here's hoping I can be a little more diligent with the blogging in the upcoming months.