The Never-ending Curry

Sounds like something miraculous, no?

The reality is somewhat more mundane: I really like Thai curry, so when I saw some paste in the grocery store, I decided to give it a try. It didn’t sound too difficult: cook paste with coconut milk, then add whatever you want (vegetables, meat, etc.) and eat over noodles or rice. For the first round, I decided to use beef, onions, carrot, potatoes, and eggplant. Because I don’t go for super-spicy, I decided to add extra coconut milk to dilute the curry a bit more…

Eggplant chunks cooking nicely

Hence, the problem was not that the curry was bad (although the beef was awfully tough), but that there was too much of it! It took me 3 meals to finish the first round of meat/veggies, with enough sauce leftover for another round (I just kept it simple with carrots and cauliflower) that took me another two meals to finish. Despite the unappetizing color, it was quite tasty over udon noodles or with a piece of bread to wipe up the last of the sauce in the bowl.

Round 2: curry cauliflower and carrots

By the end of the sauce, I had been eating curry at either lunch or dinner for about a week heh. In general, my main problem cooking this year isn’t flavoring (although I could use a more varied spice rack), but correctly determining portion size =P This is also apparent from the corn soup experiment (3 bowls’ worth that took me 2 meals to finish) and the homemade chicken soup that also lasted about a week (with 2 rounds of vegetables)

Round 2 of chicken soup – the first had radish chunks instead of watercress

This week, I experimented with a vegetarian stir-fry (bamboo shoots, celery, mushrooms, and aged tofu) that stretched to 2.5 meals, eaten over egg noodles. (Another cooking note: if using canned bamboo shoots, maybe soak them in water for a day to dilute the pungent smell/taste.) Then again, it’s not really worth the effort of cooking just one portion at a time (except for easy things like pasta) so cooking double-batches makes my life easier…as long as I don’t run out of room in the fridge!

Aforementioned veggie/tofu stir fry

UM Iron Chef...sort of

Last week, a student named Bryce came to the office asking for two ETAs to serve as judges for the Dormitory Students’ Association (DSA) cooking competition. Susan and I ended up going, which worked out well considering Susan is the biggest food critic and I am the most experienced chef among the four of us heh. We were joined by two UM students, Ben and Ian, who could also have been considered “impartial” since they were from Mozambique and the teams were mostly cooking Chinese dishes from various regions =P

Putting up the banner for DSA "Dormitory Week"

Originally, the roster included an intimidating twelve teams (I really didn’t think I had the patience/stomach capacity to try twelve different things), but there were enough no-shows that the final roster was whittled down to eight or so. The judging criteria were taste, presentation, creativity, and nutrition, each out of a possible 25 points. As the students were preparing their entries, Susan and I walked around to chat a little…

Semi-ironically, the dorm was having fire safety training in the courtyard right next to us

Stir-frying on a hot plate hehe

Kneading dough o_O

Two teams hard at work

To be honest, the whole thing was rather disorganized. There didn’t seem to be any preset rules about what kind of food the students were supposed to cook, or any pre-arranged focus ingredient as there is in the real Iron Chef. We had everything from appetizers (e.g. chicken wings) to main entrees (e.g. noodles or spare ribs) to dessert (e.g. cake covered in whipped cream), so it was clearly a bumpy playing field. Some photos of the entries below:

Spare rib pieces with sweet 'n sour sauce plus pineapple chunks
(sauce way too sweet, plus overcooked broccoli = yuck)

This won my top ratings for creativity (counting effort) and nutrition: hand-made noodles (that's what the aforementioned dough was for) plus veggies and tomato/egg sauce

A crock pot-made broth with carrot and red dates

The cake smothered in whipped cream (it was supposed to be chocolate but it wasn't the least bit chocolaty...at least the strawberries added flavor)

It doesn't look like much, but this got top ranked for taste: spare rib stewed in an anise-flavored broth

At the end of the night, we handed in our score sheets – Bryce would tally them up and announce the winner at the end of the “UM Dormitory Week” on April 10, so we actually don’t know who won =P We made some suggestions for improving next year’s competition, e.g. informing all contestants that they have to prepare a certain type of dish (e.g. an appetizer) or feature a specific ingredient (e.g. eggs), as well as simplifying the scoring (just rank the best to worst for each category). Still, it was a pretty fun way to spend a Wednesday night, and now I have more ideas for things to cook (or avoid cooking!) on my own =D

You know you're back in Macau when...

…you go to Senado Square and see all sorts of crazy decorations being put up for the next holiday (in this case, Lunar New Year).

Other decorations are going up all around Macau: plastic plum-blossom trees, real kumquat bushes (those must have cost quite a bit, since they’re all loaded with fruit), and of course the ubiquitous animal figures, these being tigers in varying poses (some with clothes/props, some without). Almost every lamppost has some sort of decoration, and there are also red plywood walls going up mysteriously in many places.

Fake plum-blossom trees near St. Paul's ruins

Kumquat bushes and more fake plum blossoms in Taipa

Tiger fabric statues in Taipa, still under wraps

I’m planning to stay in Macau for the Lunar New Year itself (Feb 14-16), so it’ll be interesting to watch the celebrations around the city – I’m sure there will be fireworks, lion dances, and all the usual craziness. Those three days are also the only time that civil servants (including UM teachers!) are allowed to go gambling, so perhaps I’ll go casino-hopping not to gamble myself, but to see how many other teachers I can spot =P

In other news, I experimented with cooking Italian food last night, which turned out decently given what I had to work with, but still wasn’t the best I could I have done.
1) Chop onions, bell peppers, and garlic.
2) Cook the fusilli; drain and set aside.
3) Fry the onions, garlic, and bell pepper together to cook the onions.
4) Add 1 packet tomato sauce and another can of tomato paste to thicken the sauce. Stir to prevent from burning (the pan was really hot even with the lowest heat setting, so despite my stirring, it burned slightly anyway.)
5) Cut some chunks of (really expensive!) mozzarella cheese.
6) In a bowl, layer pasta + sauce + mozzarella. Repeat.

Finished product
(with garlic stir-fried sweet pea pods on the side)

The tomato sauce was sweeter than I would have liked (another reason why it burned), so if possible, I would have added more basil/oregano and maybe a bit of pepper to give it more savory/spicy flavor. I also probably should have used green pepper instead of yellow, but you just have to make do with what’s available.

Spring semester starts tomorrow – we’re only teaching one class each this semester, but consequently we’re adding a lot more extracurricular activities, at least one every other week, plus English table and admin table. What took up most of my time last semester was lesson-planning, not grading, so having just one class isn’t that much less work. I’m also hoping to kick-start my Chinese improvement with a tutor/language partner, get more exercise (Yogaworld heh), and maybe shadow some more at the Hope Clinic, so it’ll clearly be a busy semester regardless!

P.S. Now that I’ve finished editing all my Malaysia photos, blogs will be retroactively posted in the near future. In the meantime, you can check out my photos albums on Facebook, but you have to be a friend of mine to see them.

Winter break in NJ/NY

Let's see, winter break in a nutshell: sleeping in most mornings, getting my fill of snow and snow-shoveling (more like pushing), semi-creative gift-wrapping, visiting family, various cooking/baking experiments, and watching lots of movies =P The last pastime included quite an eclectic selection - I saw Monsters, Inc. (absolutely adorable), Real Genius (filled with Caltech nerd jokes), Into the Woods (starring Bernadette Peters), Red Cliff (both parts = epic), and Star Trek (the newest one). Anyway, a selection of photos from my time back in the USA:

My house's front yard --> winter wonderland =D

Rockefeller Center Christmas tree

Other massive decorations in NYC

A Spanish fish stew with potatoes, tomatoes, onions, and other yummy stuff...the recipe called for tuna, but we used mahi-mahi instead, which worked out pretty well

Benji with baby brother Oscar, the newest addition to the Yin-Ooi family =)

One more night in NJ, then tomorrow I'll be on the plane to Taipei!

Cooking for myself part 3

Tonight, I arrived home with three big bags of groceries, and Sam asks, "Oo, cooking something elaborate tonight?" My answer was no, because the groceries were meant to last me the whole week. I initially didn't have plans to make anything fancy because I was just plain hungry, but I guess it did turn into quite an undertaking. The result, however, was quite yummy =D

Yet another characteristically colorful plate

In case you can't see what's there, the plate has chewy udon-like noodles (they're a little thin to be real udon), pepper-marinated steak buried under slightly caramelized onions, lightly broiled Chinese vegetables (the name on the label is just 菜 心, literally meaning vegetable hearts, but I think think the English name is Chinese broccoli), topped with some stir-fried yellow pepper slices and sweet pea pods. In the bowl is a salad of lettuce, cherry tomatoes, more yellow pepper slices, pumpkin seeds, raisins, and slices of dried apricot, all in a light Italian herb vinaigrette.

I've gotten pretty good at the make-everything-in-one-pan approach...tonight I fried the meat, adding the onions about halfway through, then cooked the noodles, then finally the vegetables, so both the noodles and the veggies had a bit of the savory beef flavor. Working in this order, it was also much easier to clean the pan heh.

However, one of the frustrating things about cooking in Macau is that it's not that much cheaper than eating out. All things considered, this meal probably cost me about 25 MOP (about $3 USD) to buy the ingredients, plus at least half an hour of prep/cooking time, whereas I could have gotten a big bowl of noodles with meat/veggies or 20+ dumplings for the same amount. On the plus side, cooking for myself is admittedly infinitely healthier, so I guess I'll keep working on it =P

Darn you, dumplings

I haven't expressly talked about it before, but one of my favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurants in Macau is this place, Peking Dumplings (missing a few vowels on the sign, but whatever):

It's convenient (just a block away from Senado), cheap (20 boiled dumplings cost 18 MOP, about $2.25 US), and pretty authentic - I've seen them hand-wrapping the dumplings and they even make their own fresh soy milk. Last week, I stopped by after work to get some take-out dumplings for dinner, and I decided to also get some non-cooked dumplings for later, figuring I could cook them at home for lunch the following day or something like that. Something to note that will become important for the following paragraphs: these dumplings were fresh-wrapped, never frozen, so I just put them in the fridge.

On my first attempt a few days ago, I just used a thin layer of hot oil in the pan (it's supposed to be a non-stick pan, but at this point I think the non-stick coating has worn off). The outsides crisped beautifully, they smelled and tasted delicious...but the inside filling wasn't fully cooked. I didn't realize this until I looked more closely at the last dumpling and saw some of the pork still looked pinkish, but by then I had already eaten six. Oops. In any case, I didn't get sick, so I figured I was ok.

My second attempt tonight also involved just oil, but I kept it at a lower heat, figuring that would help cook the insides more without charring the outsides. You would think that frying in hot oil for 10 minutes would cook just about anything, but nope, same problem. Lovely-looking crispy dumpling skins on the outside, stubbornly pink-ish filling inside. I even opened one up to check the inside, saw it was pink, and put it back in the pan, but the meat still didn't cook! I opened each of the six dumplings to check, but they were all like that, so I just ate the skin, scraping out the filling and setting it aside to separately cook more later.

Before my final attempt with the last five dumplings, I Googled "How to pan-fry dumplings" and the first few links all suggested the same thing: Fry until one side is golden, add water and steam for a few minutes, then finish frying until it's as crispy as you want it to be. This sounded somewhat like what I remember Mom doing at home (in a cast-iron pan), so I decided to give it a go.

The result? Perfectly golden, crispy outside, and...only slightly more cooked inside -_- Susan came to check on me and complimented how they looked on the plate, but then ran to get her camera so she could photograph me dissecting each dumpling and eventually frying the filling (which I should note is still slightly pinkish even though I know it's fully cooked). Seriously though, I don't understand why this is such a problem...I've made potstickers before just fine (my roommates from summer 2006 can vouch for this); these dumplings are very tasty when fried at the restaurant, and the point still remains that I was cooking them for over 10 minutes!

Gah. Maybe next time I'll just boil the heck out of them.

My typical dinner

For the reassurance of my worrywart mother, a more typical example of what I eat for dinner, aka what I ate tonight:

Some carbs (noodles), some protein (a pork chop in this case), and lots of veggies (sweet pea pods + 空 心 菜). Note how over half the plate is green!

I have to admit, I'm semi-impressed by my own cooking-with-limited-resources skills: I made all this in a single pan. The noodles and pea pods I cooked just using water and a little chicken bouillon, while the pork chop I bought pre-spiced (the black dots are pepper) and lightly pan-fried. The 空 心 菜 (or "tubers," as my cousin Yi-Ning would call them) I also lightly pan-fried with some diced garlic. Yum!