Category Archives: Homemade

Mid-Autumn Moon Picnic

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Kaia’s current school does an annual Mid-Autumn Moon Family Picnic, which, weather permitting, is usually held outside at a nearby school’s playground. This year, they had to move it indoors into the school gym. They used the downstairs classrooms surrounding the gym for activities like face painting, moon cake making, beading, arts and crafts, visor making, ballon artistry, and temporary tattoos. While pizza is provided for all the kids, all the families are asked to bring food that can serve at least 12 other people, and they specifically asked for the food to be bite-sized.

My initial pause when I read this was around the “bite-sized” restriction. I originally wanted to do something savory, but what could possibly be “bite sized” I could make easily that would be savory? Then, I moved into the idea of an autumn bake (double baking weekend!), something simple like a mini pumpkin “donut” (really a mini muffin) rolled in cinnamon sugar. Our buddy family told us that last year, everyone over indexed on desserts, so there were too many desserts and not enough savories. I understood that completely given the “bite sized” description. But I figured it would be better to come with the homemade mini pumpkin donuts so I wouldn’t have to overthink things.

Something that I need to learn from, a mistake I make over and over again, is multitasking too much in the kitchen. The biggest case in point here: Chris gets mad at me whenever I multi task while double boiling chai, as chai boils over very quickly because of the milk. Today, I was doing the ultimate multi-tasking: I was making three different savory dishes for this week’s dinners, while at the same time trying to measure out all my wet and dry ingredients for these mini pumpkin muffins. When I popped the mini muffin tin into the oven, I couldn’t figure out why the batter wasn’t “evening” itself out the way it normally does given the high temperature bake. The batter can look a bit bumpy and not smooth on top, but that usually solves itself within the first five minutes in the oven. This didn’t happen this time. The muffins rose, but they didn’t rise the way I expected and still looked bumpy and lumpy when I took them out when the timer went off.

I went back to the recipe and scanned over every ingredient… and it immediately dawned on me that I NEVER ADDED THE BROWN SUGAR. I never even took out the brown sugar bag to measure it out! I essentially ended up making a pumpkin spiced whole wheat mini bun, not a real donut or muffin because there wasn’t even a granule of sugar in this!

I ate it, and it tasted fine, but nothing to get excited about. It tasted like… seasoned carbs. You could definitely taste the pumpkin spice. It has pumpkin puree, egg, and whole wheat, so it’s not like it’s nutritionally void. Kaia ate one and said she liked it (bless her heart, as they say down in the South). So I guess I’ll be packing these for her school snacks this week to prevent waste. I ended up re-making the entire recipe all over again — this time, with the brown sugar. I went over the full ingredient list one more time before I finished the batter, re-filled the mini muffin tin, and baked. Then I rolled each in butter and cinnamon sugar and packed them away to take to the indoor picnic. These tasted good, and they were quick and easy… well, easy as long as you read the damn recipe and measure out every ingredient properly and do not multitask.

Well, once again, the food spread had more desserts than savories. And the savories were definitely not all bite-sized: people brought everything from empanadas to platters of dumplings to various noodles. There was even fried chicken! As we all know, “noodle” dishes are certainly not “bite-sized.” I guess I took the “bite sized” suggestion too seriously. Maybe next year, I’ll do what I originally wanted to make and bring a savory dish. I could make a sticky rice, a tossed noodle, or if I am feeling really fancy, a scallion milk bread bao.

Okara crackers: a cooking experiment with leftovers

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After making my soybean milk, I had the okara left over, which is the soybean pulp remaining from straining all the soy milk out. With soy beans because they are water soluble, the majority of the protein goes into the milk; the leftover pulp just has a little residual protein and a lot of leftover fiber. So I didn’t want to let this go to waste. Culturally in China and Japan, nothing goes to waste, so this leftover okara is usually blended into soups, stews, or even made into a batter or dough to make fritters or pancakes. I personally hate waste, so I wanted to use this up: so much good dietary fiber! I took some of the leftover okara and blended it into my breakfast smoothie one day. Another day, I spooned some into my yogurt with a little black sesame paste and fruit for a mid-afternoon treat. I still had about half a cup left, so I decided to try using it for homemade okara crackers. I initially thought it would be a good school snack to pack for Kaia.

The base recipe I put together based on a ChatGPT suggestion was the okara, a little whole wheat flour, corn meal, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, freshly grated parmesan, a tablespoon of olive oil, and black pepper. I mixed and then kneaded it into a pliable dough, let it rest for 20 minutes. Then I rolled it out and cut it into 2mm thick 1.5-inch rounds (love my biscuit cutters!). I relied on ChatGPT too much, though, to put the recipe together for me; I didn’t really love the final result, as it needs a ton of tweaking. it told me not to add more salt on top of my grated parmesan, but the crackers were definitely under seasoned. I probably also under baked the crackers because Chris said that after cooling, the texture was more stale than crunchy. When I tried it fresh out of the oven, the texture was nice and crisp. But three hours later, they definitely seemed stale. I’m not sure if Kaia will like these, but I will pack them anyway and see what she thinks.

She saw them on the counter when she came home from school today and got excited. It was as though she was a little puppy with her ears perking up. Her eyes immediately went to it and she asked if she could smell them.

“Is this for me?” she asked me, her eyes sparkling. “Is this a special treat for me?”

Well… I hope she likes them, at least a little. I hope she isn’t too disappointed when she takes her first bite and thinks they are stale. But… she doesn’t even know what “stale” means, right, at least… not yet?

Homemade soybean milk: a bit of labor, a lot of love, and an unexpected crap ton of cleanup

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I wasn’t really that thorough when researching how to make soy milk. I gave ChatGPT and Claude a few general prompts and decided I’d make the soy milk with the Instant Pot method. For traditional Chinese (or Asian) style soy milk, the process goes like this: soak the dried soybeans overnight, strain and rinse the beans the next day; then add the beans to a blender and grind with water until smooth. Then, you add this mixture into a big pot with some additional water, bring to a boil, then simmer for about 15-20 minutes. You strain it again, and voila! You have fresh soy milk. At this stage, you can choose to add some sugar to it if you’d like, but it’s pretty much done.

What is not written in this general instruction set is that during the boiling and simmering process, you have to stir the pot constantly. If you do not do this, the bean solids will stick to the bottom of the pan and burn. This could cause your soy milk to have an off or burnt flavor, which you don’t want. I thought I could avoid the need to stir constantly if I did this process in the Instant Pot. Well, I was wrong: I got the dreaded “burn” error, so I ended up having to boil it in the Instant Pot on the “saute” setting and let it simmer there. Sadly, no AI tool warned me that soy milk foams and boils over even quicker and more vigorously than cow milk. When I thought the soy milk was just heating up in the Instant Pot, it actually started bubbling over and onto my kitchen counter! It got everywhere, even inside the inner pot of my Instant Pot. This worried me because if too much liquid gets into the inner pot, it could actually malfunction. So I spent over an hour cleaning up this whole beany mess all over the inside and outside of my poor Instant Pot after the soy milk was finished cooking. I had to whip out sponges, towels of various sizes, chopsticks, brushes, Q-tips, and even toothpicks to get it all out! That was a lot more manual work than I had originally planned for. The Instant Pot base is now air drying, sitting on its side. This will remain until I am definitely in the clear two days from now.

I am quite proud of my final product, though: I ended up with about 5.5 cups of super fresh, thick, luscious, beany soy milk. I added a pinch of sea salt during the boiling process and a little less than 4 teaspoons of sugar at the end. The flavor was even beanier than I had imagined! The entire kitchen was so fragrant of fresh, hot soybean milk when it was cooking; I really enjoyed that smell and found it so comforting. When I smelled the milk, I knew it was successful. But I had another visible sign of success: when I let the hot soy milk sit after straining, it created this beautiful, thick layer of yuba on the top, the “skin” of the soy milk. This is a positive sign that the heat has caused the proteins and fats in the milk to rise to the surface and bind together into that delicious, cohesive layer of what is essentially paper-thin tofu!

There’s so much magic in just soybeans, water, and a pinch of salt. I have also learned my lessons for next time: use the steamer basket to hold the soybean solids during pressure cooking and keep them from the bottom of the pot. If this works, this will mean there will be no reason to worry about anything boiling over since the “saute” function would not be used.

I am looking forward to making this again and again. The process was so satisfying. I still have over 4.5 lb. of dried soybeans left!

Buy-Nothing strikes again with non-GMO dried soybeans!

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I haven’t been very active on Buy-Nothing this year. Earlier in the year, I gave away a bunch of things on it. A handful of things I posted shockingly had zero interest, so I ended gathering a bunch of things to donate to some charity who was willing to pick up. But in terms of finding things to take, I haven’t seen much that would be relevant for us. Well, that was until two days ago, when a neighbor posted that she mistakenly got sent a 5-lb. bag of dried soybeans, though the label said “soybean seeds.” She said that if there was no interest by the end of the weekend, she would toss them.

I balked at this: she was planning to throw these out?! I could make quite a number of batches of fresh soy milk or tofu out of this! I raised my hand immediately! Only one other person was interested (also Asian), but she wasn’t able to pick up this weekend. So, I was the winner! Within hours, the original poster messaged me to say I could come pick it up on Sunday. So I walked out Sunday morning during this “Nor’easter” aka light drizzle and picked up my free dried soy bean haul. I was so, so excited. I have thought about making my own soy milk because I love it so much, but I wasn’t really sure if it would really be that cost effective if I bought organic / non-GMO dried soybeans. These beans are not organic, but they’re non-GMO, and that’s good enough for me for now. While I have settled on some western store-bought brands like the Trader Joe’s carton version (the ingredients are pure, just soybeans, water, and a little sea salt), I use them only for morning protein smoothies, not for their flavor or pure drinking. If I am drinking a soy milk straight, I want it to be Chinese style: luscious, smooth, creamy, a little thick, and beany. I strongly dislike that the western palate thinks “beany” is bad for soy milk. Soy is a bean, guys!! Plus, it’s a delicious one! Get with the program!

So, on my list of things to do this week is to make real, fresh, soybean milk from scratch in my Instant Pot. The first step is to soak the beans overnight. This will be my first time, and I’m really looking forward to it!

Tofu “noodles”

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As someone who is half (Cantonese) Chinese, I have probably done the most experimentation with my vast country’s food in last ten years than I have at any other point of my life. For those in the know and who are interested, Chinese cuisine’s endless variety and regional cuisines have been spotlighted a lot more, and because of this, demand for those ingredients has increased. So while amazing online sites like Mala Market exist, even our local Hong Kong Supermarket in Manhattan Chinatown stocks a lot of these rarer ingredients now. I feel like a lot of my food experimenting in the kitchen has just begun!

Before we ended our daily double commutes to Chinatown for Kaia’s preschool years (still a little sad and wistful this has come to an end…), I started stocking up on a lot of freezer and pantry items since I knew the daily access would be gone soon. A few of the things I stocked up on for the freezer were pressed tofu and tofu “noodles.” The “noodles” are pressed tofu strips that have been wound up into flat balls, waiting to be unraveled, cut, and blanched. These are not only tasty with a nice springy texture, but they are also extremely high in protein; an 85-gram serving is already 23 grams of complete plant-based protein!

I made them today using a Sichuanese method as a cold salad. The dish is known as “Three-Sliver Vegetable and Tofu Salad With Chili Oil Dressing” (Hóngyóu Sānsī, 红油三丝), which I got from Xueci Cheng, this Sichuanese recipe developer I’ve been following. It’s a really easy dish once you have the chili oil made. You mix a couple additional ingredients into the chili oil (soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, a pinch of salt) and whisk it. Then you add it to a plate of finely julienned and salted carrot and cucumbers (drained of excess liquid from the salting) and the tofu strips. I didn’t have the patience to finely slice the tofu strips into tiny noodles, but maybe i will try again next time. Then you add more chili oil on top, toss, and finish with minced cilantro. It was a nice, crunchy, chewy, spicy salad!

I really enjoyed this tofu salad. I’ve already added these tofu “noodles” to my list of things to buy again when I am in Chinatown next!

The roasted duck is bubbling and scenting up the house

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We are currently about 15 minutes away from a fully finished, whole roast duck. The entire house smells like a combination of five-spice blend and duck fat. I have already drained off over a cup of duck fat from the pan. From my office area, I can hear the duck’s fat bubbling off into the bottom of the roasting pan. I am eager to see how crispy my duck skin has gotten and how much of the fat has been rendered from the skin!

Assuming this is successful, I wonder if we will get lucky at our next Costco run (next month!) and score yet another reasonably priced whole duck to roast! Then I can really put my duck skills into repeat practice!

**Several hours later**

Okay, so I got the leg and thigh right: the skin was flavorful and crispy while the meat was juicy and tender. The breast is really where the challenge is. Even with two heat settings, 325 F for 75 minutes and a 425 F blast for 15 minutes, the breasts still had not rendered out enough fat to get crispy; they actually seemed annoyingly flabby. So I let the whole duck rest for about 30 minutes. Then I carved it… Okay, fine. I didn’t really carve it. I kind of butchered it and messed it up. A lot of the skin tore off. Rib bones got stuck to the breast. I am a pretty sloppy whole chicken carver, but this duck was even more challenging and frustrating! ChatGPT gave this explanation for why this was more frustrating: “Duck is trickier to carve than chicken because the breast sits tightly against a broad rib cage and the skin is thinner and more delicate. The easiest way to stop tearing it is to stop thinking of it as ‘slicing meat off the carcass’ and instead remove each breast as one whole piece first.” I guess I will have to heed that advice next time… If I decide to brave out a whole duck roasting experience again.

I still managed to have two separate and mostly in tact breast pieces with their skin on top. I took both pieces and laid them down in a hot, un-oiled carbon steel pan to render out more fat and crisp up the skin. The result was pretty good. But I have a feeling I would have done a better job if I had just carved up the duck into separate raw pieces to begin with, “confited” the legs, and seared the breasts the way we did in my duck cooking class Chris got me over three years ago. I’ll consider that for next time.

The cleanup was a little miserable to put it lightly. Duck grease got pretty much everywhere and made its way all over the stove, all the counters, on dishes that didn’t even have duck, all over the sink and faucets. Of course, it splattered in the oven, but luckily not as much as I had feared. I was able to clean most of it off easily with a mix of baking soda, soap, water, and elbow grease. I may try this one or two more times just for the experience and challenge, but I can see clearly now why duck is one of those dishes that people leave to the pros. Even if you do get it mostly right, like I did this time, the cleanup is so freaking annoying and time consuming. I am currently soaking my oven mitts now because the duck grease is caked on so badly!

The entire apartment also smells like duck fat; it doesn’t matter what room I am in. This may be okay for now, but tomorrow, I may change my mind.

A cooking challenge: whole duck

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Last autumn while at Costco, I stumbled upon a whole duck in the refrigerator section. I looked at it and realized it was quite a gem to find a WHOLE DUCK as an option, and for a bargain price of about $3.69/lb! So I decided to add it to our cart… and then was so intimidated by the thought of cooking a whole duck that I left it in the back of the freezer this entire time. The idea of cooking a whole duck has terrified me pretty much my entire cooking life.

So I finally gathered all my courage and yanked my 4.5-lb halal duck out of the back of the freezer and have been thawing it in the fridge since Saturday night. I took it out, drained it, then fully dried it. I decided I would cook it the only way I knew how to, which is Chinese-style. I created a Chinese five spice rub with my Burlap and Barrel five-spice blend (the best!), fresh minced garlic, ginger, salt, and pepper. I rubbed it all over inside and out after pricking the skin all over to allow the fat to render out during the roast. I placed it, uncovered, in our fridge to dry out. I plan to roast it tomorrow afternoon.

Am I terrified of how it will turn out? Yes. I am scared I will overcook the breasts and not achieve crispy skin. I have procrastinated on this long enough, though. And age is supposed to make me wiser, right? I kept trying to get reassurance from ChatGPT Pro, who has been telling me that while I may be a novice to cooking duck, I am certainly no novice cook. I know the usual signs of poultry doneness, whether it’s under or overcooked, etc. I just need to breathe. So tomorrow, I will do a two-temperature roasting, the first at 325 F, then the final blast at 425 F to crisp the skin. I need as many good vibes as possible to ensure I don’t smoke up the whole kitchen from all the duck fat that will be rendered; I read that it can be as much as two to three CUPS of rendered duck fat out of a single bird!! But as all my fitness app trainers have always said: if it doesn’t challenge you, then it won’t change you!

Chinese yam, pork, and carrot soup – a Cantonese soup standby

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It’s a bittersweet week this week for us, as it’s Kaia’s last week at summer camp at the same school in Chinatown for the last two years. She spent 3K and 4K/Pre-K at this Chinese immersion, dual language school, as part of New York City’s UPK program. It’s been a gift (and quite the savings…!) to not have to pay for school for the last two years, other than after-care fees and summer camp. What this also means is that this is our last week having daily trips to Chinatown… a very sad reality I have to spend time mourning. So I started going through my list of things to stock up on and also remembered a couple of things I wanted to make with fresh ingredients while I still have easy access to them.

This year, I was able to achieve my goal of making soups more frequently. According to TCM, soup is a nourishing component of a meal. In Chinese culture, it’s often noted that a complete meal should be “san cai yi tang” (三菜一汤), or three meat/protein/vegetable dishes and one soup, served alongside rice. I had a lot of bone broth in the fridge I made from chicken wings and chicken feet I got from Chinatown. And I ended up using it today with Chinese yam (or huai shan), pork shoulder (also from Chinatown!), carrots, red dates, ginger, goji berries, and shiitake mushrooms. Chinese yam is a pretty traditional Chinese vegetable. It’s used both fresh and dried; today, I bought it fresh for this soup. It’s considered a nourishing root vegetable that supports digestion, stabilizes blood sugar, and boosts overall vitality. I remember my grandma using it in soups growing up. The texture once cooked is almost like taro. When Chinese yam is raw and fresh, the stalks are long, hard, and thin. It has a really tough brown skin with lots of “hair” on it — definitely not the first vegetable you’d pick up when adventuring to explore new produce, as it’s on the “ugly” or even borderline “scary” looking side. And once you peel the skin off, the white flesh is hard to grasp firmly, as it becomes very sticky and gummy. On the plus side, the fresh root has active digestive enzymes; supposedly when you have mucus, it can help clear it for you!

So I made this soup today. I even served it for Chris and me with a tiny little shallow dish of high quality aged soy sauce for dipping the shredded pork pieces into — super traditional and like we had it growing up. And inhaling the familiar aromas and eating it really did remind me of home — at least, the happier parts. It’s funny that it’s taken me to age 40 to really understand and appreciate how much love and care my grandma put into all the soups she made for us almost every single day. I actually cannot remember a day living with her when there was not a huge pot of traditional Chinese soup on the stove!

And while I dipped some pieces of pork shoulder into the soy sauce, I could also faintly remember watching Ed try to fish out the biggest, most tender pieces of pork out of the stock pot so that he could eagerly dip and eat them himself. I always just ate and drank what was served to me and didn’t care about which pieces I got. Most of my happiest childhood memories are tied to food.

Xia pi 虾皮 aka “shrimp skin”

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Although I’ve been cooking since I was a teen, I am most definitely always learning about new ingredients, techniques, dishes, and recipes. When it comes to ingredients, it can get really overwhelming even in a single cuisine. Chinese cuisine could easily be hundreds of different cuisines across the entire country. Although “Eight Great Traditions” of cuisines are recognized across China, I still think this is simplifying the country too much given exactly how large it is and how many influences different parts have given their neighboring countries.

For a long while in the back of my mind, I’d been wanting to buy some xia pi 虾皮 or literally “shrimp skin” when translated into English. These are not actually shrimp skins, but are teeny tiny translucent sun-dried shrimp, just a bit bigger than a peppercorn, that are used as a savory, umami-rich condiment in Chinese cooking. They add a strong, salty sea flavor to dishes like soups and stir-fries. Given its strong umami flavor, they can replace salt in a dish and would definitely require you reduce any added salt/soy sauce to a dish. And because these shrimp are sun-dried, they make for great long-term storage in your fridge or freezer, and can even be used directly from the freezer and added to stocks and stir-fries. I got reminded of xia pi again when I was at the Elmhurst Chinese supermarket I used to frequent when living in the area yesterday. I saw them in packs of half a pound in the refrigerator section and decided that today I’d finally buy some and use. I am looking forward to adding them to near-future soups, vegetable stir-fries, and even an omelet.

I love discovering and trying out new ingredients to make. But I definitely need to balance it with all my other seemingly endless ingredients at home! This is definitely a “first world” problem or challenge, but at least it’s a fun one!

Morning corn muffins gone awry

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This June will officially mark 18 years that I’ve been living in New York City. I have lived more of my life now on the East Coast than the West, and that feels kind of strange to acknowledge out loud. When people think of things that mark their new lives in a new place, especially in a concrete jungle like New York where tiny apartments and even tinier kitchens are the norm, most of them probably do not think about the kitchen gear they started with.

But I do. I still remember when I had to build my original kitchen from scratch, I slowly but surely made visits to the Kmart (RIP — one at Astor Place in Manhattan, which has since been replaced by the massive Wegman’s) and to Target at Queens Center Mall in Elmhurst, Queens. I remember some of my very first kitchen purchases quite fondly: my two tempered glass Anchor brand lasagna/casserole pans, my cheap $8 nonstick cookie sheets that lasted over 10 years, my Corelle dining set (with a design that I really dislike, but I was cheap at the time, so I got it since it was the cheapest option), and my standard sized metal 12-muffin tin.

I don’t have all those kitchen items anymore. Many I gave away, like some Corelle pieces that were duplicates of things Chris had when I moved in with him, or the smaller Anchor casserole pan that I rarely used (gifted to another friendly Buy-Nothing member!). The cookie sheets actually failed, warped, and somehow managed to snap in the oven — they literally went out with a bang — a pretty terrifying one! The muffin tin was heavily used when I lived in Elmhurst, but only sporadically since I moved to Manhattan. And then today, this 18-year-old muffin tin unfortunately saw its demise.

I got inspired to make muffins again during our recent May weekend up in the Finger Lakes/Ithaca with Chris’s parents. Along the way, we made a quick breakfast stop at this delicious, popular spot called Dottie Audrey’s Bakery + Kitchen. There, we ordered two perfectly made breakfast sandwiches, a walnut sticky bun, a sour cream coffee cake slice, and a huge, fat corn muffin stuffed with strawberry jam. While I loved everything we got from here, I will say that immediately, my first thought was that I wanted to try replicating the super crunchy corn top of the corn muffin. I loved the crunchy muffin top texture so much contrasted with the gritty, coarse, yet fluffy, not-too-sweet muffin innards. I remembered that a friend told me she used a blueberry corn muffin recipe she liked a lot from NYT Cooking, so I decided to go with that. The only swap I made was replacing half the all-purpose flour with whole wheat flour for extra whole grains.

Well, I didn’t have muffin liners, so I generously oiled the muffin tin and filled them with batter, then baked it. Unfortunately, the muffins didn’t beautifully dome the way I was hoping. Instead, they kind of flattened on top of the tin, and I realized immediately that I was going to have a frustrating (and messy!) time popping these muffins out. And it was super annoying: several of them broke apart as I removed them from the tin. One almost completely disintegrated into a pile of massive crumbs, and I ended up eating the crumbs by the handful. They were tasty, but they didn’t have a beautiful dome, and they were nowhere as crunchy as Dottie Audrey’s Bakery + Kitchen.

If we didn’t have Chris’s parents over as guests (or any guests for that matter), I’d never make muffins because Chris isn’t that into them, and I can’t bring myself to eat this many muffins. And then Kaia prefers the mini ones. Muffins are kind of like dessert to me: they are a special occasion-at-home bake like cake or cookies are. We need more mouths to warrant the effort to make them. But with this, I realized that the end of this muffin tin’s life had finally arrived. So after rinsing it, I said goodbye to it as I chucked it into the recycling bin (it’s metal, so it must be recyclable, right?!).

Now, I am debating whether I want to buy a replacement regular-sized silicone muffin plan, or if I should just live with a 6-muffin silicone pan I was gifted at graduation in 2008, plus the mini muffin pan I use for Kaia’s healthy muffin treats.