A friend gave me butternut squash, sweet potato, and apple flours (non-GMO-certified, of course) as a birthday gift. It was certainly a unique present, as I had no idea that fruit and vegetable “flours” were even being made. I’ve made my own almond flour, but fruit flour is so novel to me. Then again, I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised with all the crazy food movements for gluten-free, soy-free, nut-free, paleo, etc.

I spent some time on anti-grain.com looking at recipes for my new flours. I found an interesting cheese bread, and even pastas. i can make my own sweet potato pasta noodles! It’s a new culinary area for me to explore. I love my regular wheat flour, but this will just add variety to my pantry and perhaps make me realize that a gluten-free diet really could be feasible (and tasty) in today’s world.

I’m still not giving up my wheat, though.

Today, a friend gifted me an Indian cookbook. It’s a bit different this time because he actually got it through a Kickstarter project that he funded, which I really appreciate.

I think that as someone who cooks, I am seen as someone who would appreciate cookbooks, and so as a result, I have received an endless number of cookbooks from everyone from my own relatives to even colleagues. A number of them are cookbooks that are better as coffee table cookbooks (i.e. you wouldn’t ever really cook using their recipes, but damn, the photos are great), and some of them are kind of dumbed down versions of the authentic cuisine that I am after when I am preparing food at home.

I’m hoping this cookbook is better than my other Indian cookbook, which was also a gift and written by a reputable Indian chef. In this cookbook, every time I used any of the recipes, I always had to either double or triple the amount of spices she recommended or add additional spices to make the dish taste “more Indian.” When this happens, you know that your source isn’t reliable… when you feel more Indian than the Indian chef you are trying to imitate.

I woke up this morning to find out that our cooking prep for Christmas day had to be delayed due to a supposed gas leak in the kitchen. I was originally concerned because I knew I was the last person to use the stove, and I was pretty certain I checked the stove to make sure everything was fully off before we went to bed this morning at 2am. I went on with my mincing of all the dumpling ingredients and just stayed away from the stove and oven for a few hours.

As I am mincing up the shiitake mushroom caps, Chris’s mom is standing across the counter from me, watching me do my prep work, and asking if I could smell the gas. I told her I couldn’t smell anything gas-like, and maybe it was because my nose was slightly stuffed. I had left the mushrooms out on the counter to re-hydrate and soak overnight. She then puts her nose closer to the mushrooms for a sniff and exclaims, “I think these mushrooms are emitting that smell!” She calls Tony over, and Tony runs up to the mushrooms, takes a whiff, and declares these silly mushrooms to be the culprit. He calls the gas company to let them know it was a false alarm, but they let him know that someone is already on the way, and it’s better to be safe and check anyway. A dispatcher comes, does his thorough check, and declares the mushrooms as the cause of the smell. I never would have guessed that these little mushrooms could cause so much drama. Who would have ever thought that these shiitakes could be thought to be gaseous?

It’s been one of my goals this year to expand my cooking horizons cuisine-wise, so I’ve been adding a lot of different spices and sauces to my pantry that span from around the world. This isn’t just an Asian/Western kitchen anymore, but it’s also South Asian, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and African. I’d been perusing multiple dosa (South Indian style rice and lentil-based crepe) recipes, and I finally stumbled upon one that seemed very authentic and doable… with a three-day process. And we can’t have dosa without having an accompanying potato filling, sambar, and coconut chutney, so I’m making those from scratch, too.

Today is day two of the process, and I’m already exhausted. I was thinking about this today while grinding lentils and rice with water in my blender: how the heck did Indians suddenly decide to start grinding rice or lentils with water and make them into a batter for a crepe, to then fill with potato? How would they have learned that rice and beans could be fermented? Dosa is actually a fermented food, which I never would have guessed while eating it in a restaurant. When I look back at the history of different foods and how they came to be, it makes me think that maybe way back when, people were extremely smart and inventive, and now, people like me aren’t that creative and we just rely on finding “new” things via the internet. There are pluses and minuses to everything, especially the internet.

While Chris is away for work this week, I decided to indulge my doughy side and try to make my own seitan. I was inspired by a vegan friend, who had taken me to multiple vegetarian restaurants that served seitan as the “mock meat.” I realized after doing some research that seitan is actually something I ate quite often as a child growing up, yet I didn’t realize it had an English name. It was made in vegetarian stir-fries and eaten during periods when you weren’t supposed to have meat, as my grandma was a Buddhist. In Chinese, it’s called “kaofu.”

Store-bought seitan looked to be quite pricey, so I went to buy some vital wheat gluten flour and make my own. The process is actually pretty simple, and as usual, I found the kneading of the dough very therapeutic. However, this dough was remarkably different than bread dough, as the dough was squishier and even squeaked a lot from the air pockets as I kneaded.

The finished product looked pretty impressive, and I’m looking forward to cooking with it in a stir-fry tomorrow. 🙂

I spent most of today cooking, which made me really happy. I spent the morning and early afternoon making banh bao, Vietnamese steamed buns filled with a pork mixture, slivers of hard boiled egg, and pieces of Chinese sausage. I love the feeling of dough in my fingers, of kneading and lightly adding in more flour, and of testing the springiness of the dough to see if it’s ready or not. I’m not terribly good at shaping and pleating the buns; in fact, they ended up looking pretty sub par even after I intently studied these Chinese women and their hands pleating over and over in bao YouTube videos.

Marcus Buckingham, in his books, likes to talk about how we all have “strong moments,” but we just need to identify them and maximize them in our lives to be happy and fulfilled. Maybe one of my strong moments is when I have dough in my hands.

When I first moved to New York, for the first few years, it would always be my own tradition to make taro cake and Chinese New Year cake (sticky and subtly sweet nian gao) at home and share with friends. For the last two years, I have slacked off, and I decided to recommence this tradition this year. I began the process yesterday night, soaking shiitake mushrooms and dried scallops, boiling Chinese sausage and bacon, and simmering taro root, and today, I finished my taro cake.

When I think of Chinese New Year traditions, I always think of my grandma and how she used to make all of these treats for us once a year, every year, to mark the beginning of the new year that mattered to her. She never used a recipe and did everything from her head or by touching, feeling, and smelling. I don’t recall her ever even being the type to taste test her food to adjust for seasoning. It always came out perfectly.

Ed didn’t care for New Year’s cake much, but he did like taro cake, as well as the other fried New Year’s delights, because who can reject something that is deliciously fried to perfection? Bart will get a bite of this cake tomorrow.