Attempting to Bake with Blueberries

A lovely blueberry, almond and lemon cake

After you have filled an 8L bucket with blueberries, what do you do with them?

The first thing I did when I went home was to grab them by the handful and quickly pick out any stems or leaves before putting the berries in plastic bags and freezing them. It's best not to wash the blueberries before freezing because it with wash away the natural protective coating, causing them to deteriorate faster.

At the bottom of the bucket I found three small spiders we had carried 27km away from their home! I humanely left them on our patio ledge...

Then with a bag of blueberries I had stored in the refrigerator I attempted to make blueberry muffins. 

The recipe was pretty straight forward, but somehow I managed to bungle it and ended up with muffins that tasted good, but were very dense, thankfully not as hard as a rock. 

Unfortunately they were not fluffy at all. I had added baking powder, perhaps not enough milk... 

Another factor is possibly not mixing the butter enough to incorporate more air.

I thought it was strange the recipe had called for mixing the berries in some of the flour mixture, but it turns out this is correct; it's so that the blueberries don't all sink to the bottom.

Today I decided to try another recipe, a blueberry, almond and lemon cake by British chef, restaurateur and food writer Yotam Ottolenghi. I even watched the New York Times video of him making it so that I would not get it wrong this time.

I made sure the butter was room temperature and mixed it with lemon zest, sugar, vanilla extract and three eggs before adding the dry ingredients of flour, almond flour, baking powder and salt. 

The batter came together nicely and added almost all the blueberries before putting the mixture in a loaf pan lined with parchment paper that was covered with butter. 

It was in the oven for 15 minutes, then the rest of the blueberries were added on top (so that they didn't all sink to the bottom) and then it was baking for another 35 minutes.

The end result?

The loaf was very fluffy in the middle, had a wonderful lemony taste, not too sweet, and the edges crisped up a bit thanks to the almond flour. The only fault was putting it in a bigger loaf pan; will put it in a smaller one next time for more height.

I managed to redeem myself!

After taking a bite, my father asks, "Why didn't you make two loaves?"

Making Hot and Sour Soup

Hot and sour soup has many textures, from crunchy to soft

Hot and sour soup is one of those concoctions that is hearty and comforting. It's choc full of ingredients in every bite, and with a combination of sour and spice, you can't stop eating it. 

While it can be tedious to make with a lot of chopping involved, it's quite satisfying when it all comes together, and tastes like a hug in a bowl.

I watched a few different videos on how to make it, with variations on the step-by-step process, and then cobbled together my own version.

First I sliced up some pork that was then marinated in soy sauce, sesame oil, water and cornstarch. Some recipes specify lean pork which in general is a good idea, but slightly fatty pork is fine too.

Some dry ingredients need to be rehydrated, such as black fungus and dried lily flower which I separately rinsed off and and then soaked in their own bowls of hot water.

Lots of ingredients for this soup

Then came the task of chopping. I chopped a few diagonal slices of a thick carrot into thin matchsticks, followed by some mushrooms; most recipes call for shiitake, but they can be any mushrooms you have, including enoki. Also chopped up the rehydrated black fungus and fresh bamboo shoots.

It can be a lot of work removing the thick fibrous leaves to get to the shoots, but it's so worth it in the end, as they give the soup a crunchy texture. Like an artichoke, remove the leaves until you get to the tender yellowish part and then slice into thin strips.

While recipes call for firm tofu to be sliced into thin strips, I only had silky tofu in the refrigerator and sliced it into thick strips to avoid too much breakage. 

Now it was time to make the soup. Unfortunately I didn't buy enough chicken stock (six cups), so I added more water and some chicken powder, and it worked fine in a pinch. Three tablespoons of soy sauce was added to the stock.

When it started simmering, I added the bamboo shoots, mushrooms, rehydrated lily flower and the black fungus. 

Before adding the pork, I mixed it in its own marinade and then carefully added it into the soup in small clumps and used chopsticks to make sure they didn't stick together. 

After a minute or two I gingerly added the tofu, trying not to break them. Afterwards I avoided stirring the soup vigorously.

I let the soup cook for a few more minutes and then added a small spoonful of chilli oil (add more if you prefer it to be more spicy), some pepper, and a slurry of 3 tablespoons of cornstarch, 3 tablespoons of water and 5 tablespoons of vinegar to thicken the soup.

The final step is taking the soup off the heat and adding a beaten egg to create "ribbons" in the soup. I watched one video that suggested placing the beaten egg into a ladle and then slightly submerging it in the middle of the pot and swirling it around to spread the egg mixture around the surface of the soup. It worked quite well in the end. Good tip!

It turned out to be a delicious soup that could use a bit more vinegar, which I'll add tomorrow when we finish the rest of the soup!

Making Radish Cake or Lo Bak Go

Cooked radish cake that had been steamed for an hour

When I lived in Hong Kong, my great aunt would make large round containers of radish cake, or lo bak go (萝卜糕) for Lunar New Year. When people came to visit (bai leen), she would cut several slices of radish cake and pan fry them over the stove to serve guests. We also ate it on the first day of Lunar New Year.

I finally got a chance to make it myself the other day with my mother. It's a lot of work, but fun to make at home.

Stir frying the meats and shrimp together first

My mother's recipe called for 4kg of radish, but we only had 2kg (two daikon), so I was tasked with grating them. I was surprised there was a lot of water from this vegetable, and I remember my great aunt saying the grated radish had to be squeezed to prevent the finished product from being too wet.

However this version did not require this step (thankfully!).

We also chopped up dried shrimp, and lap cheung or Chinese sausage and lap yuk (cured pork belly) that had been steamed. I diced the Chinese sausage into smaller pieces, and chopped off the fat from the lap yuk before dicing the meat. To add a bit more flavour we also shredded some conpoy that had already been soaking the day before.

In the meantime my mother mixed rice flour (not glutinous rice flour) with cornstarch and water.

Then adding the grated radish to the wok

To make the radish cake, we stir fried the meat and shrimp together, and then added the grated radish, including the water. In hindsight may be we should have added the floury mixture right afterwards to mix with the water to make it easier to combine all the ingredients together. 

We had stir-fried the grated radish for some time and the moisture was almost all gone before adding the floury mixture which made it quite hard to mix properly and started sticking to the bottom of the pan.

Nevertheless, once everything was thoroughly mixed, I portioned the mixture into two round pans that had already been oiled and then we steamed them one by one for an hour.

We ate the first pan and while the radish cake was pretty sticky when scooping it out of the pan, it tasted pretty good; perhaps it could have been seasoned with salt, or added some chicken stock to it for a bit more flavour. Nevertheless we were pretty pleased with the result!

Finally combining with rice flour and cornstarch

The following day we pan fried the second pan of radish cake and it tasted better of course.

Looking forward to making this again!

Relatively Easy to Make Snowflake Crisps

Our first attempt at snowflake crisps!

My mom heard about a recipe to make snowflake crisps, though they aren't related to Christmas per se. She learned about this sweet Taiwanese snack from a friend and I Googled it to find the recipe, which is very similar to Rice Krispies squares. The snowflake part of the name refers to milk powder that is sprinkled in it and on top at the end.

A very basic recipe uses five ingredients: unsalted butter, mini marshmallows (to melt faster), Ritz Crackers, milk powder, and dried cranberries. When we attempted ours today, we added chopped pecans.

Several recipes warned not to crush the Ritz Crackers too small, so I just broke them in half, or at most thirds. They give the snack some structure, and a hint of savoury flavour. If Rice Krispies were used, I would imagine it would taste sweeter and less complex.

Once the butter melted and the marshmallows too, the addition of the milk powder immediately made the gooey mixture more solid which in turn made it harder to combine the rest of the ingredients -- the crackers, cranberries and nuts.

We had a heck of a time trying to integrate them all together and tried to mix them by hand even, but not much luck. In the end we put the giant clump in a parchment paper-lined baking tray and tried to pack it together as densely as possible. It did not look as easy as the one in the YouTube video!

Nevertheless, it really did taste different from Rice Krispies, which are more chewy, while this snowflake crisp is more solid thanks to the crackers and pecans. Hopefully we can nail down the mixing better next time, probably need to work a bit faster incorporating all the ingredients while the melted marshmallow mixture is still warm!