American Cheesecake Experiment

I've always been a big fan of cheesecake, but while I've made some pretty tasty cheesecakes, I've never been 100% successful. My cakes ended up cracked or the texture too dense. After making a bunch of Japanese cheesecakes and finally having a good oven, I turned my attention back to American cheesecake once again. I tried the chocolate swirl cheesecake recipe found in Better Homes and Gardens' Old-Fashioned Home Baking but with a few minor changes. Instead of 24 oz (680 g) of softened cream cheese, I only had 670 g of cheese instead. I also use 1.5 cup of Oreo crumbs with about 2 tablespoons of melted butter as the crust. The springform pan was 9".

With a hand mixer I mixed cream cheese, imported fine granulated sugar, vanilla, and all purpose flour together until the ingredients were well combined. Then, I added two eggs and a yolk to the mixture and, again using the hand mixer, beat the mixture until just till combined. The mixture was actually still a bit chunky but I switched to my wooden spoon to finish the mixing. After the milk was added, I split the batter in half and added the melted chocolate to one half. I poured all the batter into the pan, made swirls using a small spatula, and placed the cake in the oven.

The starting temperature was 375 but it dropped down to around 350 when the cake was in the oven. I noticed that oil (butter in the crust?) kept dripping out of the springform pan. Thank goodness I placed a cookie sheet under the springform pan. I let the cake bake for around 35 minutes before I checked it. I finally took the cake out around 45-50 minutes when tiny cracks started to appear. I think I could have taken the cake out around 40-45 minutes instead. I let the cake cool on a wire rack for about 15 minutes before I ran my knife around the edge of the cake. I then let the cake cool for another 30 minutes before taking the pan off the cake. I chilled the cake in the fridge overnight after the cake completely cooled on the counter.

The cake received very favorable comments from Wid's parents and Wid. It's surprising because Wid isn't a fan of American cheesecake yet he liked the one I made this time. The cook's sister who's the baker of the family said she likes the swirly pattern. Overall the cake had really good flavor and texture. It's not as fluffy as the ones from Cheesecake Factory, but the texture is still very cheesecake-like. The sweetness is just right for everyone. The edge of the cake was really brown so next time I'll have to remember to use more crumbs and build the crust up about an inch.

Now I'm tempted to try new cheesecake recipe though using 24 oz of cheese at a time is rather scary. Hehe.

Katsudon

I can't believe I have never made katsudon until last week. The in laws looooooved it! The sauce, similar to the one for donburi, was perfect with the pork. Mami said it tasted even better than the Ryoshi version though my dish still isn't as good as the one from Hana. Next time I should get some Japanese or Chinese short grain rice instead of the local rice we normally eat. I'm not sure why the pork was tougher than usual, but at least the flavor was still good. I also want to add a bit of shredded nori and the red pickled ginger for extra taste and color.

Mmmmmmm Mangoes

One of the advantages of living on a tropical island--mangoes, lots of them

I still think it's crazy how well the guys working at our house can climb.

Food in Pixel Form

I've been in the mood to make little pixel arts, and these are the result of having too much time this weekend. I got really favorable comments about the slices of cake. Maybe my wanting of decent cake has subconsciously worked its way into the creation of those pictures. Ah, I love combining my interests into one project, sort of like my various comic projects.

Candies

Inspired by a conversation I had with Koyar a while back and we were running out of our favorite gummy candy, we popped over to Papya the local Japanese grocery store to get some candies. They didn't have the gummy in strawberry so we ended up just getting something else instead. What we found was this candy. It has the texture of gum so at first we thought that we bought gum, but it's a fruit-flavored chewy candy. The flavor is not bad. It certainly tasted like fruit (apple, lemon, strawberry, and grape). I think I like the apple and grape the most.



I should track down some of my favorite Asian candies and make another note about it later.

Donburi and Miso Soup

I cooked lunch two days in a roll!! Pretty shocking. Haha. Yesterday I made donburi with miso soup for Wid and his parents. The donburi was a better batch than the previous version. The taste was stronger (less diluted than the previous one), and I think the reason is the ratio of meat/onion/shiitaki mushroom to sauce was balanced. Wid's mom said that she likes my donburi so much that she refuses to buy the dish at local Japanese restaurant because mine is tastier and cheaper. Hehe. I think another reason why the dish tasted better is that instead of water, I used the water from mushroom soaking as the base for the sauce. Too bad Wid's bro wouldn't have liked it because he developed a dislike for shiitaki mushroom, but he wasn't there for the lunch so it didn't matter too mucj.

I also made miso soup to go with the donburi. Instead of the usual wakame with tofu and scallions, I replaced the tofu with eggs. Nothing super exciting about the soup. It was salty enough for everyone. Hehe.


Natural light is certainly better but my pictures always come out blurry.

Some Old Pics

Looking at the disc I noticed I have a couple (not so nice) photos of food from the end of last year. One was of sandwich fillings (tuna fish and egg salad). Another one was a blurry picture of tzatziki, Greek cucumber and yogurt concoction for breads and souvlaki. I have not made tzatziki since my stay in Greece back in 1998. I always loved this dish, but I couldn't make it back in US because it was impossible to find Greek yogurt. Then, I managed to find "Greek-style" yogurt made in Australia at an import store. The dip is actually really easy to make. It consisted of yogurt, olive oil, oregano, cucumber, salt, and a bit of pepper. The end result was a bit more sour than I remembered, but I guess it's because of the yogurt I used. Still, it was great on French bread and it brought back fond memories of Greece. I do miss Greek food a lot, but I haven't found a good cookbook dealing with that subject. Plus, nothing here will be better than home cooking that we had in Greece.

Clam Chowder - Success

The parents-in-laws have been big fans of New England clam chowder, and they have very fond memories from their visits to US. A few days ago Wid's dad reminded me about the soup, and I decided to try making the soup for them last night. Originally, I was supposed to make this around New Year's eve but things were very crazy.

I studied a bunch of recipes before I made the dish. What I ended up doing was a bit of improv, but the result was pretty nice. Since I only had one can of clams, I ended up scaling down the recipe. I cooked several strips of streaky bacon in the pan, and then I used the bacon grease (and a bit of butter) to cook the chopped onion, minced garlic, and potato. I then added flour to the mix and let everything cook a bit longer before adding the clam juice from the can. I then added milk and let the soup boil and then simmer before finally adding the canned clams. A bit of whipping cream, salt, and pepper for flavoring. The soup, with bits of bacon sprinkled on top, was served with crusty French bread.

The soup got a very enthusiastic thumbs up from Wid's parents. The only thing Wid's mom wanted was have more liquid because she wanted to sop up the bread with soup. Wid's dad thought it was perfect (salty enough). I think they were both very surprised by how thick and chunky the soup was, but that's how I like it. Wid's mom liked it so much that she wants to serve the soup for Wid's dad's upcoming birthday. Next time I'll add some chopped celery bits to the soup. I'm happy that the soup turned out well, and for once something actually worked on the first try.

Chocolate-Covered Chocolate Croissant

We're on strike to protest Wid's mom's policy regarding dogs so no cooking for at least a week. Times like this makes me glad that I didn't teach anyone in the house the recipes I brought with me.

Wid and I have been obsessing about chocolate-covered chocolate croissant from BreadTalk. Previous, we were crazy about their custard filled bread with dipped chocolate on each ends (double impact), but we got kind of tired of that after eating way too many of them. At first I ate a whole croissant on my own, but then we decided to share because it's so sweet and filling. It's the perfect midnight snack along with a glass of cold milk. It's a croissant filled with dark chocolate that has a different flavor than the chocolate coating, which is a bit sweeter. What I like about the chocolate used by BreadTalk is that it doesn't have that greasy aftertaste that I experience with chocolates from other bakery. I suspect the other bakery puts margarine in their chocolate mixture. Ick.



As much as I like the price and taste of breads from BreadTalk (a chain from either Singapore or Malaysia?), I feel bad about its impact on the rest of the bakery businesses in Bali. The others cannot compete because of BreadTalk's cost cutting measurements and business structure. At least for some local bakeries, like Bali Bakery, they learned to adopt by focusing more on the cafe aspect of the business. My Japanese-style cheesecake still kicks ass compared to BreadTalk version. Haw.

Dinner with Friends

Last Saturday we went to an acquaintance's villa for dinner in Ubud. Since our friends were all bringing something, I decided to make something to bring to the dinner also. In the end I decided on the salty cake (鹹蛋糕) because at least two other people (turned out there was another person) who were Taiwanese, and I figure they might want something familiar yet unusual. I had surprisingly little problem with this cake, and it turned out fluffy and goregous. Too bad I didn't get to eat the cake so I don't know if it was as fluffy as it looked. At least everyone seemed to like it, after recovering from the initial shock that there's meat on the cake. Lexo, our friend from HK, really loved the cake, and he requested Ma La Gao (馬拉糕) next (steamed cake that's commonly found in dimsum).

The villa was goregous and cozy. The host provided so much delicious food. Her dishes seemed like a mix of Asian (Chinese and Indonesian) and western style. Once example was the baked rolls, which had the consistency/density/taste of Chinese buns. My favorite was the dumplings and its spicy, gingery dipping sauce. One couple brought egg rolls which were fanastic because they fried the rolls at the villa. Lexo brought his Cantonese-style chicken soup which was very light and delicious. I managed to figure out the "secret" ingredient by tasting the soup. The interesting thing is that locals aren't very keen on Chinese soup because the soup is not salty and therefore the locals think it's bland. Wid said that many of them judge the saltiness of the dish by how well it salts/flavors the rice.

After the food was the drinking and talking. Carol the host invited a bunch of other expats so it was nice meeting new people. We tried a bunch of wines while others had beer and whiskey. Wine of the Gods brand wines (Pinot noir and a red whose name escaped me at the moment) weren't too bad, but the rose from Hatten was pretty gross.

Next week we're visiting one of Honey's friends' place for early dinner (We met the Australian dude and his local wife at this dinner in Ubud).

I didn't take pics of the dinner, but here's my cake:



Some quick notes about the cake for my own purpose. The pan is around 23.5 cm in diameter. Almost exactly the same preparations were made like the previous cake, except I shortened the cooking time to 16-17 min for the first layer and 10-12 min for the second layer.

What is That?

This morning I noticed these really huge fruits with light green skin. Each fruit was about a palm and a half long. It turned out that these are white mango, a Balinese speicality. I've had white mangoes here before, but I've never seen it whole before. Beside the white flesh, the fruit is slightly alcoholic which gives it a distinct taste. Wid's mom mentioned that there are white mangoes in Java too, but those are usually sour or bitter. Another reason why I'm happy to be in Bali instead of Java. Haha.

Mushroom Velouté with(out) Almonds

Psyched up from the success of the salsa and the chicken, I wanted to try out the mushroom soup recipe from Fast Food My Way. I have never made pureed soup before, but after seeing soups made this way on various shows, I decided to check out this type of soup. The recipe looked very tempting, and I thought it was something Wid's parents might enjoy.

It was amazing how much shallots and mushrooms (button and wood ear) were needed for this soup. The shallots and garlic were browned in butter and then a bit of flour was added to the mixture before stock and mushrooms were added. Once the soup has been cooked for about half an hour, I tasted the soup and found it to be bland. I then realized that our chicken stock is homemade (and also contained no salt). It's amazing how a bit of salt really brings out the flavor of dishes, yet when too much salt is added, the dish becomes inedible. I then used the blender to puree the soup. Heavy cream was added to the soup before the whole mixture was boiled again. To serve the soup, I laddled generous portion onto a bowl. For garnish, I drizzled a bit of the cream and placed a bit of the chopped wood ear mushroom in the center of the bowl. The recipe suggested adding some almonds, but since I'm not sure where to find good almonds here, I had to omit it this time. Fresh French bread and a simple green salad rounded out the rest of the lunch menu.

I really liked the idea of using shallots and wood ears to enhance the flavor of the soup. I was pleasantly surprised about using wood ears (木耳) because it's known more in Chinese cooking than western cooking. It gave a good flavor and crunch to the soup.

Wid's parents thought the soup was excellent and it was even better than the mushroom soup from one of our favorite restaurants (too earthy). I think now Wid's mom is so confident about my ability in soup making even though all I did was follow a recipe, she wants me to tackle New England clam chowder.

Cauliflower and Chicken with Red Hot Salsa

Last night I tried out a recipe from the Jacques Pépin: Fast Food My Way book. This time was the cauliflower and chicken with red hot salsa. I made the salsa from the same book twice already, and it has been a hit with the family. Then, last Thursday Wid's dad and I was watching the show (how I found the cookbook in the first place), and Wid's dad thought the chicken dish looked quite good so I decided to try the recipe. I ended up boiling the cauliflower instead of half steaming/half boiling like the instruction, but it turned out ok to me. The chicken breasts, seasoned with salt and pepper, were cooked in a covered pot with a bit of water and butter. I was so surprised that the chicken was done in about five minutes. Once the chicken and the cauliflower were cooked, the salsa with a bit of olive oil was poured on top for more color and flavor.

Everyone seemed to like the dish, especially Wid's dad who had seconds. Wid didn't like it with the rice, and I have to agree with him there. To us rice need to be paired with something cooked. It reminded Wid's mom of Thai food, while the dish reminded me of Mexican (like a burritto). For today's lunch, our cook reassembled the dish with the leftover chicken by adding more freshly cooked cauliflower. I'm still amazed by how fast the dish was done and how light yet flavorful it was. Fast food indeed.

Tonkatsu Sandwich

Yesterday for lunch Widhy and I decided to make tonkatsu sandwich. We tried this dish a few months ago after we saw this really informative Japanese food show Fit for a King. Wid's bro saw the same episode around the same time as us and also had the idea of trying the dish out, but we beat him to it and made the sandwiches right after we saw that particular episode. It was pretty good last night, but based on our experience from the last attempt, we made little changes to make the dish even better. The sandwich basically consisted of a piece or two thin tonkatsu, sauce made by Widhy, shredded cabbage, thinly sliced onions, thickly cut white bread, and lettuce. The secret of the nice presentation (and keeping the sandwich from falling apart) is pressing the sandwich with a cutting board for 30 seconds. Our cook was very impressed by the sandwich for its taste and look. Wid's parents like the sandwich too. Wid's dad even requested a sandwich made for dinner.

Next time we'll try a croquette sandwich. We don't care that Wid's mom complained that it's too much carb. Haha.

Gâteau au Chocolat (Chocolate Cake)

While I read reading my new book Jacques Pépin's The Complete Techniques, I came across a recipe for the basic sponge cake (génoise) that's very versatile. I decided to try out the recipe because I'm a fan of sponge cakes. The recipe called for two 8-inches round pan but we didn't have any in the house so I ended up using two 9-inches pan instead. What I thought was interesting was the first step where you heat the eggs, sugar, and vanilla over boiling water or the burner to make it lukewarm. Then you "over beat" the mixture for about 10 minutes because you need to add the melted butter at the very last stage. Flour was then sifted and folded into the mixture. Because the oven temperature is almost impossible to adjust, I ended up baking the cakes at around 170-175 C. When the cake came out of the oven, it looked gorgeous with this wonderful golden brown color. The smell was lovely also. Wid's mom thought the cake was a bit undercook, but it looked and felt fine to me. It was a bit hard to get the cake out of the pan, but maybe I was a bit too impatient while waiting for the cake to cool a bit.

After thinking for quite a bit about what sort of cake to make (fruit with cream, chocolate, or tiramisu), I decided on the chocolate cake filled with whipped ganache and coated with more ganache. The next day I assembled the cake. I cut each cake into halves. I couldn't cut the cake into thirds because it was too thin. I made two batches of ganache with semisweet chocolate (instead of half bitter/half semisweet because it's impossible to find bitter chocolate here) and heavy cream. First batch was whipped and flavored with a bit of rum, and I used this to frost each layer of the cake and all over the cake once it was assembled. The second batch was allowed to cook to room temperature which was then poured all over the cake to make the shell/coating. I wanted to follow the direction in the book to make the white frosting, which was used as decorations, but because we ran out of eggs I couldn't make the frosting nor could I make another frosting that I used for neapoleon because we can't find corn syrup. In the end, I combined a bit of powdered sugar with a bit of honey, water, and lime juice to make something that's workable. Unfortunately, I found out later that it doesn't cool well, but at least I got to decorate the cake.

It was really fun trying to frost and decorate the cake (a first for me), but the best and messiest part of the experience was dumping a large amount of ganache on the cake and letting it run off to the counter. The cake looked very amateur-ish, but it tasted great. Widhy really liked the taste of the cake. I thought the chocolate and the sponge cake went well together and not overwhelmingly sweet, but I'm not happy with the texture of the cake. My mom's sponge cakes always been softer and finer in texture, but all the cakes I had here are coarse. I'm pretty sure one of the reason is that the local flour is inferior to flour from US. Maybe once I mastered basic cake making techniques, I can switch to imported flour to make a better cake.

It kind of sucks to be handicapped by not so awesome ingriendents and bad equiptments. It's very frustrating. Well, at least the chocolate was awesome and it did produce really awesome results.

Bavarois

Wid, his parents, and I returned from our trip to Singapore. I managed to find lots of ingredients for Chinese cooking as well as gelatine for cheap. With the last ingredient in hand, I decided to make Bavarois or Bavarian Cream Monday afternoon. The recipe I used was from my mom's Chinese-translated cookbook on creating desserts without an oven. Since the oven in the house is still broken, this cookbook comes in very handy. I already tried Blun's Mangen, which Wid really liked a few months ago. I read in several places on how to make Bavarois and they all seemed to differ in terms of the order of the steps. For this attempt, the steps were modified based a bit. I first soaked the gelatine powder in water. I warmed the milk and the sugar on the stove until the sugar melted. I then added the gelatine. I then beat two egg yolks in a glass bowl and slowed added the sugar-milk mixture to the eggs. I poured the mixture into a sieve, though I think the sieve was too coarse because everything simply passed through it. Instead of immediately putting the mixture on ice, I returned it to the stove and cooked the cream until it coated my wooden spoon. When I was able to draw a line on the spoon with the coated cream, the cream was the correct consistency. What was interesting is when the cream was almost done, I could hear the change in the sound of the spoon hitting the side of the pot. I let the cream cool in an ice bath as I beat the whipping cream. In my first attempt at beaten the cream, for some mysterious reason, the cream started to curdle like when milk and something acidic were combined together so I had to redo the batch. Once the cream was whipped, I had trouble incorporating the cream and the whipped cream. I think the problem was I added the whipped cream to the cream instead of vice versa. Eventually everything was mixed in nicely and I placed the dishes into the refridgerator.

To serve the Bavarois, I added freshly whipped cream and a piece of Hersey Kiss on each dish of cream. Everyone seemed to like it, but it might be too sweet for Wid's parents' pallet. I thought it was not too sweet, but next time I'll decrease the amount of sugar. I'm also tempted to make a chocolate version later.

Home-cooked Meal with Friends

Wid and I invited our friends Sulis and Lexo over for dinner while Wid's parents were in Bangkok back in early November. Since we know they love Japanese food, I decided to cook Japanese food for them. We had such a bad luck with gathering ingredients that day. Our favorite grocery store totally let us down because they didn't have sushi-grad tuna. We opted for salmon instead. They even ran out of kampyo which is needed for futomaki. In the end we had to adjust our menu to the ingredients that we did have on our hands. We had many of the dishes that we made previously, but this time I tried a new dish--tomago. Unfortunately, we didn't have a nice rectangle pan to make the egg omlet look good. First pan I used was our normal (kind of crappy) pan and the result was disasterous because the egg got stuck on the pan. The cook found the non-stick griddle pan for me and that was a better choice for making this kind of omlet. The size of the pan was still too big so I had quite a bit of trouble rolling and folding the soft eggy sheet into an appropriate shape (rectangular box). It wasn't very pretty but at least it tasted good.

The rest of the meal consisted of oyakodon, nasu miso, sushi (spicy salmon, avacado, cucumber), miso soup, and goma-ae. Widhy had a revelation about how to improve his spicy salmon sushi, so he was very happy about that and the resulting sushi. I didn't have too much trouble getting everything together, and I was done at 7 PM sharp, which was the first for me. Unfortunately, our friends got lost and they didn't arrive until about 7:30. At least the food didn't get cold and everyone seemed to enjoy the food. They gave us a very nice bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon (Fortant 2004, from Southern France). Sulis and Lexo want to invite us over to their place next time and Lexo will cook for us. I look forward to see what they'll make and enjoy our time with them.

Italian-style Meatball

This dish was made back in October 20, but I've been neglecting this journal because of lots of family activities and then the death of our favorite dog. Now I have a bit of catching up to do.

It seems like spaghetti and meatball is more likely an American invention than an authentic Italian dish, but it's still mighty tasty in my book. This was my second attempt at making meatballs, and I feel that I was more successful with this batch than the first trial. I pretty much used the same recipe as last time to make the meatballs, but I put more care into combining the ingredients and forming the meatballs so that they didn't fall apart this time. The sauce is the usual that I learned from an Italian friend of mine.

Japanese Curry

While Wid's parents are away, I usually can get in a bit of cooking done on my own without worrying about pleasing people or about food being sent away to the other families. Last night I made Japanese-style curry, which is one of my favorite dishes, but because most people here don't like Japanese curry (not hot enough for them), I haven't made this dish since I came to Bali. Instead of following the recipe from my favorite cookbook, I went with the set of instructions my mom gave me years ago when I first started to learn cooking. The funny thing is the "recipes" my mom gave me were more like guideline than actual recipes. Things were a bit crazy at first because I couldn't find the vegetables or the meat in the kitchen, and then I discovered that my vegetable peeler disappeared so I ended up peeling the vegetables with a knife. Another annoying thing I discovered was that one of the carrots became rather wooden (a tough, fiberous ring in the middle was present, which made cutting very difficult). At least later we found out that the carrots were very sweet and tasty.

After chopping all the ingredients, I was ready to cook. Instead of using oil, I used butter for this batch. Garlic, pork (tenderized with soy sauce and corn starch), and onions were cooked first, and then carrots and potatoes were added later. Instead of water only, I used mostly milk with a bit of hot water to cover all the vegetables and meat. Once the carrots and potatoes became soft, I added the curry cubes. Curry cubes are awesome and so convinient, but one of these days I'm planning to make Japanese curry from scratch.

Wid really liked the curry. I think it's one of my best batches so far, thanks to the tips from my mom.

The Return of Croquettes

Last night I made croquettes again. Instead of using the same recipe as last time, I tried the recipe posted on the official website of the Japanese drama/comedy show Kuitan. Overall the recipes were quite similar (about the same amount of potato, onion, and meat), but the details are a bit different. I also made some modifications of my own to, hopefully, improve the taste. Instead of boiling potatoes, they were steamed with their skin on to make the potatoes less soggy. I stir-fried the onion in oil and butter before adding the beef. Salt and pepper were added to the meat and onion for flavoring. The potatoes were mashed, seasoned with salt, and combined with the meat mixture before milk and finely chopped parsley were added. Then, patties were formed and coated with flour, egg, and panko before deep frying. We had to get one of the eggs from the offering stand because we ran out of eggs in the fridge. Hahaha. I had a couple of potatoes left so I mashed those and added chopped parsley, salt, and milk. I then added a piece of cheese in each patty to make cheese croquettes.

Widhy and I both thought the croquettes were much better than my last batch, but we wondered why his parents didn't make any comments. I guess the Chinese food we had overpowered the taste of the croquettes. Oh well. We'll have more croquettes today~

Next time we should have some finely shredded cabbage too.

Japanese Dinner (udons and more)

Wid's mom requested that we make udon and sushi. Initially, I planned to make croquettes, but I forgot to get onions. Instead I made "fluffy boiled potatoes" (Jagaimo no Tosa-fumi) that consisted of potato, soy sauce, sake, salt, and bonito flakes. This dish tasted better than my last attempt. I think it's because I used a lot more bonito flakes. I also sprinkled a bit of parsley on top to give it an extra flavor. It would be nice to get light-colored soy sauce so it doesn't make everything brown looking, but I can't find it anywhere here, even at my favorite Japanese grocery store.

Nothing too exciting with the udon and the broth that went with the noodles. One thing I did change this time was I didn't use bonito flakes as part of the soup stock (only used dashi powder), but Wid's mom noticed. She liked the broth with the bonito flakes better. Other than that, the soup consisted of soy sauce, sugar, mirin, and salt. I cooked the shitaki mushroom in the broth. Wakame seaweed was added right at the end when I reheated the broth. I poached eggs in the water that I cooked the udon. I just realized that I forgot to add the chopped scallions to the bowl because I had so many thing going on at once. Oh well.

Once again, I made inari for Wid's dad and Wid made his now famous spicy tuna roll. His latest batch was tastier than his previous attempts because of the nice balance of tuna and spicy sauce flavors. Also, the tuna mix was just more flavorful than before. Wid's mom loved it so much that she kept saying how tasty it was.

The in laws requested that we cook Japanese food again this Saturday, which I'm fine with as long as Wid's mom doesn't invite more uninvited guests at the last minute.

Beijing-Style Noodle Soup (麵疙搭)

Last night for dinner I finally had the opportunity to try out a recipe from my new Chinese Rice and Noodles cookbook from Wei-Chuan. This dish is called "home-made noodle soup with green onions," but its Chinese name (麵疙搭) is actually more descriptive and interesting. This dish is Beijin cuisine. What makes this dish interesting, I think, is the shape of the home-made noodle, which is basically bits of pulled dough.

First, I made the dough for the noodle by mixing flour and water. While I let the dough rest, I prepared the broth which is used to cook the noodles. The sections of scallions were stir-fried in oil before the dried shrimp and pork were added to the mix. Once the meat changed color, I added some soy sauce and lots of water. I brought the stock to boil before adding the bits of dough teared off from the big chunk of dough. I actually saw this method of cooking on a show on Discovery or National Geographic and I thought it was something fun to do. Wid joined in the fun and threw in bits of dough. To flavor the broth, salt, pepper, and sesame oil were added. Then, right before serving, some chopped scallions were added.

The taste was surprisingly light even though it was a bit oily. The cooked sections of scallion were surprisingly sweet and flavorful. The slices of pork was too large so next time I'll try to cut smaller pieces. The noodles were good too, but Wid's dad wasn't too keen on it. I guess it's because that's not what he expected of noodles.

Wei-Chuan cookbooks are awesome. They haven't failed me yet!

Nasi Campur

Yesterday Wid's mom got all of us some Balinese-style nasi campur. The "mixed rice" has no real name and it came from a place with no real name either. Wid thinks it's a food stall/shack in a banjar. I'm normally not a huge fan of nasi campur, but this one was so good. The toppings are separated from the rice itself so that way you won't get what Wid called surprise--the unexpected blob of hot chili paste. The topping consisted of small pieces of egg omlet and chicken, fried coconut shavings (orange color thing in the pic), a bit of noodle mixed with veggies, some meat that tasted a lot like the Chinese-style beef jerky (the dark brown chunks), and braised beef (the light-brown, shreded meat). Everything is all wrapped up nicely in a banana leaf.

Widhy likes this dish so much that he always gets double portion. I can only eat one portion, but it is very enjoyable. I also love the fact that this dish came from a place with no name.

Bon Odori

On Saturday (10/7) Widhy, his family, and I went to Bon Odori that was sponsored by the Japan Club Bali. I'm assuming it's the Japanese version of Mid Autumn Festival. Normally, they have the festival outside by the beach, but because of the second Bali bombing (one of the targets was Jimbaran which is the beach), the organizers decided to have the festival at the Westin in Nusa Dua. The place was super packed with people. Lots of Japanese and surprisingly many locals. Many, many people wore kimono or yukata. I even saw two or three Muslim women wearing their head covering and yukata. Interesting thing was that most of the Japanese who married local were woman, unlike the rest of the island where the white guys are the ones who married local women. The place was packed with people, and I think the convention hall was too small to fit all these people. In the center of the hall was a dance stage where people were dancing traditional dances. Along the walls were game stations and food/drink stalls.

Many of the local Japanese restaurants were selling foods. We did get a bunch of stuff, like pannacotta (custard-like dessert that has a hint of almond and cheese flavor with a bit of strawberry sauce as topping), croquettes with some sort of stirred fried vegetables with lots of ginger taste (it was already cold), Korean style pancakes (it was cold but still tasted good), zaru soba, takoyaki, and okonomiyaki (??). Widhy wanted sushi, but because the lines were too long, he gave up. Eventually we did eat some sushi, which were bought by Wid's parents. The sushi from Take were quite good, but Hana still makes the better sushi (tuna~). When we had about 4 coupons left, Wid gave them to me to find something to use up the remaining coupons. I was going to get ice cream from the Papaya stall, but the lines were too long. I then looked down at the table, and I found "American dogs" (corn dogs) each costing 2 coupons. I snatched up two sticks and headed back. It was surprisingly good and warm. The sweetness of the fried batter complimented the salty hot dog. The best foods we tried were the zaru soba from Yakiniku Sama-sama(?) and okonomiyaki from Kai/Hai(?). I wanted candy apples but we didn't get the chance to try that. Overall we ended up a lot more stuffed that we thought we were.

The dancing was amusing to watch, but eventually they repeated the dancing and the songs that accompanied the dances. I think there were about three songs/dances. The drumming part was quite fun to watch too. We met one of Wid's parents' friend whose wife is a Japanese who makes and exports kimonos for 30,000 to 50,000 USD.

Overall, the event was pretty fun even if it was a bit clausterphobic. It was a lot like the cultural festival that Wid, Yanwen, and I went to back at University of Michigan a few years ago. What's good is that it got Wid's parents to think about going to Japan next year. We convinced them to see the cherry blossoms. :D

Full Moon and Pura's Birthday

On Saturday (10/7), according to the Balinese lunar calendar, was full moon. For some reason this meant that it's an extra auspicious day. It was also the pura's birthday so we had a big ceremony for it. From what I gathered, the ceremony was a lot like our wedding ceremony, but the chants and the offerings were different. I couldn't participate this time, so I ended up taking pictures of Wid's newphew and niece.

After the ceremony, we had suckling pig (babi guling) for lunch. Too bad this time they didn't bring the whole pig so I didn't get a nice picture of it. According to Anthony Bourdain (on the Indonesia episode of No Reservations), the Balinese makes THE best roasted pig in he world. If I remember correctly, the meat inside of the pig is taken out and cooked separately and flavored with lots of spices. Then, the meat is shoved back into the pig, and the pig is roasted slowly over a fire for hours. The pig is bathed with coconut water regularly. The end result is super crispy skin and the meat is soft and flavorful.

Tsao Bing (燒餅)

Earlier this week I tried to make tsao bing (燒餅), which is a delicious pan-fried or baked breakfast treat that is often stuffed with meat floss or Chinese crueller and washed down with a nice, steaming bowl of soy milk. I made one attempt before when I first got my awesome Chinese Snacks cookbook from Wei-chuan, but it failed miserably (bad flour, bad cooking technique). In order to learn the proper method of cooking tsao bing, again I relied on my mom's example.

To make the tsao bing, I had to make the roux first, which is basically flour cooked in hot oil. While the roux cooled, I started on the dough. Like the "hot dough," I first mixed hot water into the flour, and then cold water was added to the dough mixture. Once the dough was rested and the roux cooled, I tried to assemble the bing. First, the dough was rolled out and roux, salt, and flour were poured on top of the flatten dough. Then, everything was rolled up jelly roll style before cutting into small pieces. I tried to pinch the ends before each cut, but the roux still spilled out of the dough, which made the counter, the hands, rolling pin, etc. oily and gross. I still don't know how to fix this problem, but even though the result wasn't very pretty, the bing was edible. Once I folded all the dough pieces, dippd the pieces in sesame, and rolled them flat, I pan fried them. I had to make sure the pan and the oil were hot before adding each piece. Once the bing was placed on the pan, the temperature was lowered. The tsao bing was done once each side turned slightly translucent and golden brown. Like I said before, the tsao bing wasn't pretty but it tasted really good so I guess mission (sort of) accomplished.

Pot Stickers (鍋貼)

After the third attempt, the pot stickers (鍋貼) finally looking and tasting more presentable. I never had any problem making the dough or the pot stickers themselves. The problem lie in the cooking. A couple months ago, when I tried to make the pot stickers for the very first time, they got stuck to the pan, and we had no idea why that happened. When Wid and I were visiting my parents, Ma showed us how she cooked the potstickers, and I wanted to see if I can try out what I learned. Thursday night we made some pot stickers. The filling consisted of pork, Chinese chives, a bit of sesame oil, salt, water, and soy sauce. I wanted to have some shrimp added to the mixture, but we didn't have any in the house. The dough was the so called hot dough which consisted of flour, boiling water, and cold water. Making the pot stickers was time consuming but relatively easy, but when it came to the cooking, things started to go wrong. The pot stickers were stuck to each other before going into the pan. I though the dough was too wet and others suspected the juice from the meat mixture seeped into the dough making everything stickier. Too much oil was added to the pan, and someone kept moving the pot stickers during the cooking so the bottom didn't get to brown. Then I added the flour/water/sesame oil/vinegar mixture, but it was thought that not enough liquid was in the pot so more water was added. In the end, while the pot stickers didn't get stuck to the pan like the first time, the texture was not correct either. The bottom was not crunchy and golden brown enough and the top was too soggy.

I had some dough and meat mixture left over so I tried again next day for lunch. This time the plate holding the pot stickers were coated with plenty of flour to prevent the pieces sticking to each other or to the plate. I tried to lessen the amount of oil this time, and I laid the pieces in a more orderly manner once the oil and the pan were hot. I waited until the bottom started to brown, and I checked to make sure the pieces were not sticking to the pan before adding half a cup of water and covered the pan. The pot stickers were allowed to cook for about 6 minutes, and then I made sure most of the water evaporated before taking the pot stickers out. In the end the pot stickers were getting a bit stuck to the pan, but we were able to remove all of them from the pan without the bottom getting fixed on the pan.

Wid made the dipping sauce which consisted of soy sauce, water, vinegar, and ginger. The end result is the following:


Wid suggested to add a bit of minced ginger into the meat mixture, and I think that'll be quite good. I'll also add shrimp to the mix. I think the lack of shrimp made the meat filling tasted a bit too dry. Wid's mom was telling me about the time she saw a dumpling master making dumplings/pot stickers. She seemed very impressed, and I wouldn't mind seeing a professional do it.

Japanese Cheesecake

I finally had time to make the Japanese cheesecake. Unlike American style cheesecake, the Japanese variety is fluffy and light in taste and texture. The lightness is achieved by beating the egg white until still peaks are formed and folded into the cheese/egg yolk/flour mixture. It has been a few months since the last time I baked the cake so I have forgotten some of the details. This time my cake shrunk quite a bit after it was taken out of the oven, but I suspect it's because of the eggs (not warmed up to room temp or too old). At least the cake didn't collapse and the taste was still good.

I was reluctant to make this cake because of our totally unreliable and overly large oven. Temperature control totally depended on the gas fire, and only one person in the house actually has the skills to keep the temperature steady. In the past the temperature would decrease or increase significantly (as much as 50 degrees celcius in about 30 minutes) which caused many baking failures. Miraculously enough, the Japanese cheesecake is my only cake that has not suffered any failure. I believe the reason is that this is the only baking recipe I have that uses a hot water bath (helps maintain a more uniform/steady temperature).

Almond Tofu

Yesterday Wid's mom requested almond tofu (杏仁豆腐) for tonight's dinner party. I made this dessert several times a couple times already, but the first time, it was kind of hard to convince Wid's mom that I knew what I was doing (i.e. I was using too much water). My guess is that people here haven't had "real" Chinese almond tofu and the only ones that they have tried are stiff cubes of agar agar. Almond tofu isn't made of soy bean; it's agar agar, flavored with almond extract and evaporated milk and sweetened by white sugar. Because of the large volume of liquid, the solidified agar agar is soft like tofu and quite slurpable. This dessert is often served with fruit cocktail. The guests at the party dinner loved the dessert because it's not too sweet.

The dinner consisted of Indonesian and Indo-Chinese foods (satay, fried meat balls, meat ball soup, grilled fish, gado-gado, etc.) and quite tasty. Some of the food were spicy (of course!) but I was able to eat them anyway.

I also made a Japanese cheesecake yesterday, but I'll post something about it tomorrow.

A Typical Japanese Dinner (for us)

Last night I cooked Japanese food for the family. We were supposed to go to an arisan at the Hong Kong Garden, but we weren't in the mood. Besides, earlier in the day Wid's mom requested us to make a Japanese dinner for them. She "ordered" donburi, goma-ai, and miso soup. Wid and I went out to look for gifts for my family, and on our way back we stopped by at our favorite Japanese grocery store Papaya to buy, among other things, tofu skin and fresh tuna. We decided to make spicy tuna and inari for Wid's parents even though Wid's mom was worried that it might be too much work for us.

First, I made sushi rice using the freshly cooked Japanese rice. While waiting for the rice to cook down a bit and for the sugar and salt to dissolve in the rice vinegar, I chopped veggies and stuff for the other dishes. Once the rice was ready, I showed our awesome cook how to fill the inari. Wid made the dressing for the goma-ai and the spicy tuna mix. Wid's spicy tuna is a huge hit with the family, but he's still constantly trying to perfect it. I think he's trying to recreate his favorite spicy tuna sushi at our favorite Michigan restaurant Yamato. His goma-ai (spinach and green bean topped with sesame dressing) is a crowd pleaser too.

Since I didn't have to keep an eye on the sushi rolling, I started on the hot dishes. While boiling the hot water for the miso soup, I started cooking the donburi. Oyako donburi (chicken and egg) was one of the very first Japanese dish I learned to cook, and to this day it's still one of my favorite dishes. The dish is chicken, shiitake mushroom, and onions cooked in a soy sauce/mirin mixture. To finish the dish, beaten eggs are added to the top and cooked slowly. Miso soup is the usual stuff (bonito flakes, a tad of dashi, shiro miso, tofu, wakame seaweed, and scallions).

Once I finished cooking the dishes, Wid was done with his stuff and the cook finished rolling the spicy tuna. She and her assistant were inspired by the picture on the nori pack and made a couple of hand rolls using the last bit of the spicy tuna mix. They also places one of those plastic grass sheet on the plate. I have no idea where they found the plastic grass. Hehe. For the final touch, the cook placed a tomato flower on the platter.

Everyone enjoyed the dinner. We went got out the brand new ceramic soy sauce dishes that we bought earlier that day (hurray for the anniversary sale at Jenggala). Wid's mom said that now she's less tempted to go to Japanese restaurants because I can make all these dishes at home. I think her favorite is still Wid's spicy tuna, followed by my donburi. Wid's dad always wants goma-ai and inari. All the dishes turned out ok, but that's because I had plenty of practice already. Haha.

Taiwanese Cake

Last night I made some salty cake (鹹蛋糕) which is a Taiwanese speciality. The cake is actually sweet but the topping consisted of minced pork and fried shallots which give the cake its unusual taste. This is the third time I experimented with this recipe. The first time I was forced to use the oven to bake the cake because I didn't have a large steamer. The second time I used a steamer but because I cut down the amount of ingredients, the cake was a bit too flat. This time the result was much better and the cake is much fuller, but I still have to experiment with the cooking time.

Before making the actual cake, I cooked the minced meat. Instead of following the recipe, I went with my mom's way of preparing this dish. The meat was normally used as an awesome topping for noodles or rice, but it is great for this cake. The pork was stir-fried with garlic and ginger, followed by the addition of water, rice wine, soy sauce, sugar, black and white pepper, and salt if necessary. Fried shallots was added right at the end before everything was transferred to a pot for slow cooking.

While the meat is being slow cooked, I started with the cake batter, which consisted only of eggs, flour, and sugar. Once the eggs and the flour were beaten until stiff and cream-colored, flour was sifted and folded into the egg-sugar mixture. About half of the batter was poured into a 20 cm pan that's greased and lined, and some of the meat and fried shallots were added on top of the batter. After about 10 minutes, the remaining batter, meat, and shallots were added, and the cake was steamed for another 10 minutes. Wid's mom complained that the cake was not completely cooked so she steamed it for another 40 minutes, which I thought was too much time because the cake ended up being more doughy than it supposed to be. Oh well. I'll try again next time and cut the cooking time to around 40 minutes instead of over an hour.

With the exception of the chewiness, the cake turned out well. The taste is perfect, and the saltiness of the meat and the sweetness of the cake complemented each other nicely. Besides trying to perfect this recipe, the next steamed cake I'll try is Ma La Gao (馬拉糕), which is a Cantonese style cake that you often find in dimsums.

Here's a picture of the cake. Click on the image for a larger version

Fun with Croquettes

Last night I tried to make Japanese style croquettes for the very first time. The recipe is from my favorite Japanese cook book, and I've been eyeing that recipe ever since I got the book a few years back. I was hoping that Hana would have some croquettes, but because they didn't have any to satisfy our craving, I decided to try to make it myself. The croquette consisted of mashed potato (made from steamed potato so there's less water), ground beef, frozen mixed veggies, chopped onion, and a bit of salt and pepper for flavor. When I was cooking the ground beef and onions, I was soooo tempted to add soy sauce, but luckily I stopped that impulse or else it was going to turn into some sort of Chinese stir fry. While I was making the paddies, the smell of the beef combined with the potato was so good. After the suckers were deep fried, Wid and I immediately attack one of them. Burning hotness.

Here are some pics. Click on the image to see larger version.


I noticed that our current favorite food show (Kuitan/喰いタン) has a recipe for croquettes too. I should try that one too.