Celtuce - spring veggie

First week of spring after a long winter - it's timely to think about spring vegetables.  I discovered celtuce (篙筍) last year and thought it a nice change from asparagus and the usual spring vegetables.  Celtuce is also called celery lettuce or asparagus lettuce, and is apparently a very popular vegetable in China.  This is what it looks like in the supermarket.  .

The first time I saw the celtuce, I asked a woman who was picking through the pile how she cooks it.   It was great practice for my mandarin as that was the only thing she spoke.  So with a combination of hand signs and half-understood mandarin, I was able to figure out how it's done.

So what do you do with this stick sitting on your counter?

With a sharp knife, slice off the skin side ways, holding on to the top of the celtuce so you don't cut yourself

With skin removed, it's just a matter of cutting it up into chunks or slices.  I cut mine into half inch slices for stir-frying.

While the celtuce is crisp, it can be a little bland.  I would use it mostly for texture and add other vegetables beside it for contrast and flavour.

The lotus root is a good companion as it is even more crisp than the celtuce and it's a different colour.

Peel off skin with a potato peeler.  Cut off the ends.

Slice cross-wise to get the half moon shape

Stir fry the celtuce and lotus root in hot oil. Season to taste with salt and pepper or a dash of fermented soy sauce.  I usually add red peppers and king mushrooms for contrast in colour and texture. This would make a great backdrop for stir-fried shrimp.

 

Food in Taipei

Our first stop after we checked into our hotel in Taipei was the famous Din Tai Fung.  We've tried the famous pork dumplings at the Toronto branch before it closed and found it mediocre at best.  But we were told we have to try it at the Michelin starred original flagship store on Yong Kang Street in Taipei, and so we did.  It was indeed excellent.  I subsequently learned that each dumpling had to have exactly 18 folds at the top to give it the right consistency when one bit into it.  I just counted the folds on the dumplings in my photo - there were indeed 18 folds!

We also ordered drunken chicken and braised pork but we were most impressed with the noodles in meat sauce (炸槳麪), a dish that I remembered from childhood and thought I would never find a place that could duplicate what I had, having ordered them wherever I visited in North America and Hong Kong.  But I found it here in Din Tai Fung.  It was worth the wait!

Al dente noodles in meat sauce that tasted "just right"!

The Din Tai Fung main branch - a very busy main floor that didn't look like a restaurant, with takeout orders and kitchen - guests waited outside on the street; waiting time was noted on an LED board; ushers organized and assigned tables on the upper floors with military precision.

As we were just around the corner from the night market, we decided to explore it right after dinner, which was a mistake as we were really too full to try anything.  But it was an eye-opener at least to see the night market in action.  

What were these people lining up for?

                                                                         

                                                                Scallion pancakes!  

I tried one the following day - layers of flakiness...mmm...

Local oysters ready for making into oyster pancakes (below)

Street dinner...looked yummy!

Restaurant dinner - even yummier!  (Thanks to my cousin for this delicious meal at the Howard Plaza which started with crispy Peking duck)

Grilled yams!  They tasted even better when eaten on the street!

Charcoal grilled dried squid on the way to Golden Falls outside Taipei

More street food on our last day in Taiwan when we travelled to Jiufen, an old town about an hour from Taipei.    Coming up on Travelswithrarecat

Memories of Macau

The most memorable food experience I had in Macau was having the good fortune of tasting the best Portuguese tart ever.  We were doing our own walking tour of Macau and basically followed our noses to this bakery.  It was not in a touristy area, just on a side street we happened to be walking along but I smelled it a block away.  And when I paid for just one to try, it turned out to be the best I'd ever tasted.  Could be it's hot and just out of the oven, could be that I was hungry, but I've never had such flaky pastry and the custard centre with exactly the right consistency.  I gobbled that one up on the street and bought another one to take with me to wherever we were going to eat lunch.  Then on the return trip on the way to dinner, I bought another one.  I was surprised that I didn't get indigestion from all this indulgence!  The store called itself a "bread specialty" store, an unusual name for a bakery in this part of the world and the closest thing I could think of was "artisanal" - which indeed it was.  By the time we got to Senado Square where there were lots of Portuguese tarts but no enticing aroma, I knew I didn't need to try them - they just didn't look as good as this one.

The store was on Rua do Padre Antonio, for anyone who would like to find it

Much of this trip was for us nostalgic and the almond cookies from Macau were fond childhood memories.  The local bakeries had taken advantage of this general nostalgia and created a store with a history display of the evolution of the cookie.  Lots of food sampling - in fact, we tried so many we didn't have to buy any!  The  best was still the almond cookie with almond chunks in them.

Beef and pork jerky galore

We walked off most of the calories from all these samplings so there was still room for dinner.  This was at a small cozy, purportedly authentic Portuguese restaurant A Lorcha - fish cakes were good but the best was the grilled sardines. The "Portuguese" chicken was okay.  It was a fine end to a long day.  See Travelswithrarecat for the rest of our day.

Fish cakes

Grilled sardines

"Portuguese" chicken

No knead bread - whole wheat

So I experimented with whole wheat no knead bread.  It worked as expected.  I followed the ingredients in the recipe on the Jo Cooks blog, but used the same technique as for the white bread - 4 cups of wheat flour, 2 tsp salt, 2 cups water and 1 tsp yeast overnight  (Jo used 3/4 tsp but I used 1 tsp for lack of a proper measure).  

I noticed that the NY Times whole wheat recipe added rye and corn meal to the wheat flour and took less rising time.  Since my dough was quite cool in the morning, I decided to leave it longer in the kitchen which was quickly warming up with a south facing exposure. But I'll definitely try mixing in the rye flour and corn meal next time to perhaps  give it a lighter texture.  Unlike the white bread recipe, this NY Times recipe did not use a cast iron pot but used a regular loaf pan instead, which would be a plus for bakers who don't own a cast iron pot, however useful it can be.

Given the almost anything goes nature of this no knead bread, I think one can safely try experimenting with different times, ingredients, utensils, etc. I am certainly going to continue the experiment when I get home!

Fold after taking it out of the bowl

Floured and flipped over on a cotton towel, cover, let rise for two hours, and flip again seam side down into Dutch oven.

This is what it looked like when done

Great texture!

No knead bread!

The first time I heard about the "No knead bread" was at a dinner which I blogged about in my last post "Portuguese homecooking".  My hostess, who baked the delicious bread, told us it was like the bread her grandmother used to bake in Portugal.  When she told us how simple the recipe was, I (and I'm sure everyone else who first heard it) listened with some skepticism.  When I googled "no knead bread", the first thing that came up was the New York Times recipe.  With a video and step by step instructions, it seemed almost too good to be true.  It's inevitable that I'd try it.

It didn't take long for the opportunity to come up.  New Year's Eve, I was showing my dinner host this blog and he questioned me about the No knead bread in the Portuguese homecooking post - whether I have tried it.  So here I was, at my son's house for an extended stay and with time on my hands after an early dinner.  My sister had left her Le Creuset pot with me for the week.  I checked the cupboards and found unbleached flour, a package of active dry yeast (with a 2016 expiry date - what a surprise, considering that there isn't a baker in the house!). And then water and salt are the only other ingredients. 

It was close to bedtime.  I did the calculations and figured that if it's that easy I could get the batter ready in 5 minutes (just mixing the flour, yeast, salt and water together), and it would be ready around noon the following day (recipe says 12-18 hours). Allow another 2 hours for it to rise, 45 minutes for it to bake, and I'd still be able to leave for a dinner date at 4 pm. It all turned out as the recipe indicated, and I was even able to go out for a walk while waiting for the bread to rise. 

Yes, it seemed that working out the logistics was the hardest part of the recipe.  No wonder it was the most popular recipe on the New York Times cooking page!  Check out the recipe and try it.  Since it came out there have been whole wheat and sour dough among other versions.  I know what I will experiment with next...

Finished bread in the French oven which was slightly too big for it 

Enticing on the rack

Visibly great texture and crust

Portuguese Homecooking

We tasted some delicious Portuguese homecooking last night and it's hard to let it go by without sharing it.  The highlight for me was the cod cakes.  My hostess made this for us several years ago and I have yet to taste any cod cakes that tasted better, not even in Newfoundland, the Canadian home of cod cakes.  

The Portuguese cod cakes (Bolinhos de bacalhau) were made from dried salted cod fish (soaked in water for at least two days) and potatoes. The proportion of cod to potatoes is the key to the tasty treat.  It's likely that the cod cakes we had in most restaurants had more potatoes than cod due to the cost factor so we have never been able to taste anything like the flaky homemade cod cakes our hostess pan fried in a minimum amount of oil.  The starch from the potatoes together with some eggs enabled the browning of the cakes without a batter.  Onions, garlic and parsley enhanced the flavour.  It was served as an appetizer although we would have been perfectly happy gobbling up all the cod cakes had we not been held back by the thought of more food to come.  (Recipe)

And indeed there were, as you can see below.  Chicken and four different kinds of Portuguese sausages, including blood sausage.  Cabbage greens, edoes (or taros), potatoes and carrots complemented the meat.  Our hostess drizzled everything on her plate with vinegar and olive oil (that's how it was done in Portugal).  I tried it, it certainly added a tang to the food. 

Our hostess made the "No knead bread" made famous by the New York Times and it tasted so good we had to restrain ourselves - the texture of the bread was unbelievable.  I will have to try making it myself!

We finished with Portuguese egg tarts.  These do not have the flaky crusts that we are used to getting in Chinese bakeries.  But according to my hostess, both are authentic Portuguese. They are both very good.  But this one, without the crust, is healthier.  

Bolinhos de bacalhau (Portuguese salted cod cakes)

"No knead bread"

Blood sausages, smoked sausages, hot and mild, chiken

The veggies

Portuguese egg tarts!

Tapas lunch

What a novel idea, I thought, when I first saw the noodle-wrapped shrimp, one of the tapas we had for lunch today at the West Hill Wine Bar.  The shrimp was wrapped in egg noodles and then deep-fried. The noodles protected the shrimp and sealed in the flavour, you get the crunch from the noodle instead of from the batter.  I can see this can be a fail-safe way to get crunchy shrimp and not having to worry about preparing a batter, avoid the mess often associated with it and the uncertainty when it comes to crunchiness.

Of course, when I looked it up on the internet, there is really nothing novel about it at all. There were lots of recipes and variations on this primarily Thai dish.  The shrimp could be wrapped in all kinds of noodles, from single strand egg noodles to a whole mass of egg noodles, tightly bound or loosely fluffed, vermicelli, or basically any kind of soft noodle - your imagination is the limit.  Some recipes called for marinating the shrimp but I would nix that as shrimp tastes best in its natural state.   At the Wine Bar, it was served with a mango slaw and a tamarind soy dip - all very refreshing contrast to the deep-fried shrimp.

We also had fried egg plant with sesame, wild mushrooms, grilled calamari, grilled sirloin, sweet potato tower and Baba Ganoush with nan.  All quite tasty although slightly on the salty side.  This is the first time we had tapas for lunch and when I come to think of it, it is actually a format more suited to lunch than dinner - rather like Chinese dim sum!

Noodle-wrapped shrimp with mango salad; fried egg plant with sesame

Grilled calamari

Grilled sirloin and sweet potato tower

Baba Ganoush with nan - such drama in the presentation!  Nothing Spanish about that but then this is a Toronto version of tapas - a celebration of cultures by Chef Chris Kanka, one of the competitors for the Top Chef of Canada title.  Good luck with his new restaurant - fine dining in "Scarberia".

Cajun Cooking at home

We had a different kind of meal last night at a friend's home - a New Orleans themed meal which was a first for us.  We visited New Orleans in the early nineties - it happened to be Halloween and our memories of the place were mostly of erotic costumes in rowdy parades down cobbled streets awash with beer.  It was fun - something I had always associated with New Orleans, in spite of the sombre stories coming out post Katrina.

But back to the meal.  Before dinner, I helped my hostess cut up the corn bread, and being a person who loves bread warmed up, I politely asked her if she would like to warm up the bread.  She said "no" and I  discovered the wisdom of that after we started the meal.

The jambalaya was delicious - rice with chicken, shrimp and the "holy trinity" of Cajun cuisine - bell peppers, celery and onion.  Made in a Le Creuset pot, it retained the moisture and the flavour of a ton of spices.  But the blackened chicken liver beat this hands down in terms of spiciness.  This is when I realized that the "cool" corn bread actually provided a nice soothing contrast to the hot spicy dishes that are the signature of Cajun cuisine.  It literally had a cooling effect - I must have doubled my bread quota for the day, as well as my wine quota.  The Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc was a perfect pairing for the spicy dishes and ample quantities were needed.  For spices typical of this cuisine, read this interesting article on Cajun cuisine.  

Delicious jumbalaya 

Blackened chicken liver in butter

Chorizo

Soothing corn bread to the resuce

Mellow George Dickel whisky and dark chocolate pecan pie with ice cream to finish the meal