6 posts tagged “food”
During their last visit, Mama Lin made her Classic Chinese Bing, knowing that my starch loving uncle and aunt would enjoy it. This past weekend, my uncle--the one that cooks--sheepishly confessed that while he loves eating the bing, it's just not practical to make. His substitute: flour tortillas. Here's his take on the "Subway Wrap" that he makes for the grandkids.
Flour tortillas
1 whole egg or 1 egg white
Slices of turkey lunchmeat
Pre-packaged salad mix
1. Heat skillet and spray with non-stick cooking spray or add about 1/2 - 1T of oil.
2. Add egg/egg white and cover with flour tortilla. Let cook for 1-2 minutes, flip.
3. Add slices of turkey or ham and let cook until underside of tortilla is golden brown.
4. Top with greens or other veggies of choice, roll and serve.
The mix and combination of toppings can be endless: I've tried mushrooms with grated parmesean cheese and topped with alfa alfa sprouts, red/green peppers with ham, tomatoes with mozzarella cheese and ham....The best part of this is that they're ultra portable. As proof - my uncle made 2 and wrapped them in foil to keep warm so that on their flight from PDX to ONT, they'd have their own little meal. Who needs peanuts?
The fruits came down from the alter this morning, and mom was complaining that they were going ripe before we'd be able to finish all of them, so a quick fix to the problem? Baked goods (fruit tea is another alternative).
Banana Bread
1 stick butter, room temp
3/4 c sugar
2 eggs
1 c all purpose flour
1 c whole wheat flour
1T baking soda
1/2 T salt
3 large ripe bananas, mashed
1 T vanilla extract
1/2 c walnuts, coarsely chopped
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a 9x5x3 bread pan. Cream butter & sugar until light an fluffy, add eggs 1 at at time, beating well after each addition. Sift all purpouse flour, baking soda and salt together. Stir in whole wheat flour and add to cream mix, stirring well. Fold in bananas, vanilla and walnuts. Pour mix into pan and bake for 50-60minutes or until cake tester comes out clean. Cool in pan 10 minutes then on rack.
Glazed Apple Walnut Mix
4 Pink Lady apples, chopped into 1 1/2 in cubes
1T sugar
cinnamon
1/2 c walnuts, coarsely chopped
1/2 c raisins
brown sugar to taste
Mix chopped apples with sugar and cinnamon and place on grease baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes, remove and turn with spatula and bake for another 10-12 minutes. Mix chopped walnuts with raisins and brown sugar and add to baked apple mix. Bake again for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. Set aside to cool and serve with slice of banana bread.
Easy Vege Sandwich
I used to enjoy the most flavorful Vegetarian sandwich from The Boar Head at Upper Campus at CSULB back when I was a vegetarian. The ingredients were super simple: swiss cheese, alfaalfa sprouts, tomato slices and avacado on either whole wheat or white bread. I didn't have any alfaalfa sprouts, but I did have mushrooms, so I made a substitute of the sandwich.
Layer alternating slices of avacados & mushrooms over potato bread and top with grated parmesan cheese. Fold and serve. (You could also make a paste with the avacado and a bit of salt and lemon juice to spread over bread and top with mushrooms and cheese)
Early Saturday morning raid revealed a nearly bare pantry but newly cleaned fridge stocked with 3 gallons of organic milk and half a dozen eggs (oh, and there's about another half dozen of the salted duck eggs - watch the cholesterol content there). Flipped through recipe books/scraps for something to make to have with coffee and morning paper and generally be awake enough to start the day. Can't quite recall where this recipe for French crepes came from.
French Crepe
2 eggs
1 1/3 c milk
1/2 tbs baking powder
1 c water
1 tbs sugar (substitute salt)
1 - 2 tbs oil
1 gram vanilla (substitute pepper)
mix-ins and/or toppings:
honey, confectioner's sugar, jelly, peanut butter, nutella <--wish we had this one
green onions, tabasco sauce, soy sauce/garlic/vinegar dipping sauce
Ended up with about 16-20 each of batch and kept them warm in a 150 degree oven covered with foil. The savory ones went quicker (maybe cause they're akin to Momma Lin's bing).
Chinkiang vinegar is a black rice vinegar that's a whole lot stronger (acidity) and smellier (femented) than traditional vinegar. We had guests over once and mistakenly added this vinegar into the dumpling sauce and our guests thought the food we'd made was rotten! As it's name suggests, rock sugar or rock candy is a crystallized form of sugar. The granules aren't as fine but in bigger chunks. Mom prefers this sugar over plain white sugar because it hasn't been processed as much and oddly enough it's not as sweet. Maybe that's why she would Ying and I sneak off bits and pieces when we were younger...
As with all recipes from Momma Lin, the measurments are estimates and everything can be adjusted to taste. So when I asked about the recipe, it went something like this:
1. Place meat in a pot and cover with water. Bring water to a rapid boil and remove any "junk froth" from meat. Drain meat and set aside.
2. In a separate pot: dilute vinegar with water to make 1 bowl (approx 1- 1 1/2 cups). Add 1 bowl of rock sugar and ginger slices to the vinegar mixture. Cook on medium heat until boiling and sugar has dissolved. Place pork meat side down and reduce heat. Simmer on low heat for 1 hour, until meat is brown. Turn meat and simmer for another hour.
3. Serve with steamed vegetables or greens.
Note: the meat we bought isn't particularly the healthiest as in nutritional (ie: it's fatty. The "bellies" should've been a clue). To counter the fattiness, once the meat is cool, store it in the fridge overnight. When the fat drippings get cold, it turns white (an appealing thought to those dieting) and can be removed with plastic wrap or spooned off. We do the same for soup stock made from left over bones (espeically the leftover bones from the rotisserie chicken at Costco as it's particularly flavorful). Now if only dieting was this easy!
A sent me a link to her new All Foods Blog and I've become a bit addicted. It's also made me realize that the recipes page of our site needs some updating. So I'm thinking of sitting down with ma to compile a "Recipes from Momma Lin" archive. I've already gotten a starter of sweets in the recipe book (from A!) and it's a good thing I've written down a couple of the recipes as she's forgotten them herself.
OMG-all this talk about food. I think my new catchphrase will be: I'm still hungry.
