Save the world: Eat a meatless meal

http://reducefootprints.blogspot.com/2010/06/vegan-recipes-cantaloupe-and-cherry.html
I have been following Reduce Footprints and link her site with mine. Her idea is "Easy ways for each of us to reduce our footprint on the earth". Her philosophy is similar to mine.

It's the first Friday of the month and that means ... a vegan recipe. Eating meatless meals is one of the easiest ways to walk gently on the earth. Even one meal a week makes a tremendous difference.

I am a meat eater and my daughter is a vegetarian. I separate my meat dish with my vegetable dish so I don't contaminate her vegetables.

Recently, I started making spring rolls. The boys like it deep fried so they come crispy. The daughter likes it unfried like the popiah in Singapore. It is such a coincidence that my good friend and fellow blogger Sarawakiana has just done a post on the spring roll history and of the spring roll wrapper of our home town Sibu.

Recipe:

Step one:
Ingredients for the filling:
shredded cabbage, carrots, capsicum in different colours, bean sprouts, onions, mushroom, leeks.
salt and pepper to taste.
(Optional, dried mushrooms, ear fungus, fried eggs if your diet permits)
A quick sautee in two spoons of cooking oil.
For a more substantial meal, you may add a little rice noodles or vermicilli.

Step 2: Put the cooked vegetables in a strainer and press as much liquid out of the vegetables. Let them cool a little.


You can buy fresh wrappers if possible or frozen ones. Remember after you have opened the packet, you have to cover them in a moist tea towel to prevent them from drying out.

Wrapping: I learned this new technique from a famous food caterer in Australia, place the square in front of you, fold about 1/3 from one corner. This is the secret to not having the spring roll from bursting when you cook them, as there is double layers where you put the filling, and the moist filling will not seep through and cause a hole and leakage.

make a little glue with corn starch.

when you wrap, wrap it tight.


Technique:
Carefully separate the wrappers so they don't split.

Place two table spoons of veg filling, fold from the pre-folded side once, then fold from the sides, roll or fold until you have two inch corner,

Smear some glue at the corner and seal.

Deep fry until golden brown. It should not take very long as the wrapper is very thin and your veg is already cooked.

You may or may not want a dipping sauce, which can be a sweet chilli sauce or a lemon, ginger, chilli, honey mix, or even mayonaise.

For an unfried spring roll/ popiah.
You may like to smear some Hoisin sauce on the wrapper, wrap as you would do with the fried ones.

My friend K in Singapore always has a lettuce leaf before she places her filling. Sprinkles some chopped peanut as well. And she being my best friend and "sister". she remembers I am allergic to peanuts always makes sure I don't get the peanut ones.

The best thing about this is the whole family can make this. As you can see from the photo, the spring rolls are uneven. My 13 year old son made his own.

Some treat this as an entree, We treat it as a meal. After all the shredding, wrapping and frying, I don't feel like cooking again.

Sunday Stills, the next challenge: Hot Sauces or Salsas

Sunday Stills, the next challenge: Hot Sauces or Salsas
Posted in Sunday Stills Challenge of the Week, the next challenge with tags Sunday Stills on January 31, 2010 by Ed

Yep you read right, whatever you put on food or dip chips into or spoon on your eggs, lets see some spice in this weeks pics and stay in and stay warm..:-)
http://sundaystills.wordpress.com/

Guacamole avocado dip
I am told that avocado has the good kind of fat, so I don't feel guilty eating them.
I also made this Guacamole with the yogurt I made myself.
To add the heat, I put a teaspoon of hot chilli powder and half a chilli.
For crunch, I chop up a quarter of red capsicum aka red pepper or bell pepper.
To taste, I add half a teaspoon of salt and one tablespoon of lemon juice.
You may like to serve your dip in the avocado shells.



A spicy fusion of Chinese and Indian lamb shank.







My famous lamb shanks, I don't know if it qualifies as a sauce. It has a lot of gravy and you put it on rice or noodles or dip bread it in. That day, I cooked one of my most elaborate dish I have ever cooked. With Sam as the kitchen hand, I reminisce cooking lamb shank for my sister Grace and my good friend Manchala.

When I was in Singapore, Grace was more adventurous with food. This is partly because the water engineer who was then teaching at the University was the opposite of the Chan family in our discovery of food. Grace and I would walk past Little India and secretly salivate the Indian eating their reddish concoction of lamb shank.

I told Grace that I would try to cook that dish, and bought a lot of lamb shanks from Mustafa Halah store. I went to my friend Manchala, and together, we came up with a fusion of Indian-Chinese Dish which would mask the musky smell of the lamb that the water engineer was particular about.

Manchala gave me, cumin, cardimon, fenugreek, and I went to my garden and got some lemon grass. All in all, I added 16 spices to this dish, and braised it. My friends and Grace ate it and wanted more. I didn't care whether the water engineer liked it or not.

I am invited by a Flippino friend for a pot luck dinner. In passing, J. said the Filippinoes like lamb. In my freezer was a pack of lamb shank that I had bought to have a cook out competition with my other friend J. This session was cancelled because the water engineer went gallivanting so often to Australia.

Any way, Sam counted I had twenty ingredients to make up for the lack of lemon grass. I added mint ( a touch of European), vietnamese basil. Here's the rest, ginger, onion, garlic, freshly cracked Sarawak black pepper, white pepper, whole dried chillis, tumeric, cumin, feenugreek, cinnamom bark, tomato, tomato paste, sugar, salt, five spice powder, spring onion and curry.

The verdict is in the tasting. Oh yes, you may say why not saffron. This is an expensive spice which I am using for saffron rice.

***This pack of lamb was bought at a Pakistani Halah butcher shop in Sandringham. Their meat are more choice and leaner. When I asked if he was from Aghanistan like some of my students, he said, he was Pakistani. Then he asked where I was from, I said Sarawak, he didn't quite know, and I said, Malaysia. He said, Selamat hari. I replied, Assamalakum. He asked how I knew, I said, I have Muslim students. Now, the butcher is my boyfriend. He gives me the best cuts.****

Sunday Stills, the next challenge: Hot Sauces or Salsas

Sunday Stills, the next challenge: Hot Sauces or Salsas
Posted in Sunday Stills Challenge of the Week, the next challenge with tags Sunday Stills on January 31, 2010 by Ed

Yep you read right, whatever you put on food or dip chips into or spoon on your eggs, lets see some spice in this weeks pics and stay in and stay warm..:-)
http://sundaystills.wordpress.com/

Guacamole avocado dip
I am told that avocado has the good kind of fat, so I don't feel guilty eating them.
I also made this Guacamole with the yogurt I made myself.
To add the heat, I put a teaspoon of hot chilli powder and half a chilli.
For crunch, I chop up a quarter of red capsicum aka red pepper or bell pepper.
To taste, I add half a teaspoon of salt and one tablespoon of lemon juice.
You may like to serve your dip in the avocado shells.



A spicy fusion of Chinese and Indian lamb shank.







My famous lamb shanks, I don't know if it qualifies as a sauce. It has a lot of gravy and you put it on rice or noodles or dip bread it in. That day, I cooked one of my most elaborate dish I have ever cooked. With Sam as the kitchen hand, I reminisce cooking lamb shank for my sister Grace and my good friend Manchala.

When I was in Singapore, Grace was more adventurous with food. This is partly because the water engineer who was then teaching at the University was the opposite of the Chan family in our discovery of food. Grace and I would walk past Little India and secretly salivate the Indian eating their reddish concoction of lamb shank.

I told Grace that I would try to cook that dish, and bought a lot of lamb shanks from Mustafa Halah store. I went to my friend Manchala, and together, we came up with a fusion of Indian-Chinese Dish which would mask the musky smell of the lamb that the water engineer was particular about.

Manchala gave me, cumin, cardimon, fenugreek, and I went to my garden and got some lemon grass. All in all, I added 16 spices to this dish, and braised it. My friends and Grace ate it and wanted more. I didn't care whether the water engineer liked it or not.

I am invited by a Flippino friend for a pot luck dinner. In passing, J. said the Filippinoes like lamb. In my freezer was a pack of lamb shank that I had bought to have a cook out competition with my other friend J. This session was cancelled because the water engineer went gallivanting so often to Australia.

Any way, Sam counted I had twenty ingredients to make up for the lack of lemon grass. I added mint ( a touch of European), vietnamese basil. Here's the rest, ginger, onion, garlic, freshly cracked Sarawak black pepper, white pepper, whole dried chillis, tumeric, cumin, feenugreek, cinnamom bark, tomato, tomato paste, sugar, salt, five spice powder, spring onion and curry.

The verdict is in the tasting. Oh yes, you may say why not saffron. This is an expensive spice which I am using for saffron rice.

***This pack of lamb was bought at a Pakistani Halah butcher shop in Sandringham. Their meat are more choice and leaner. When I asked if he was from Aghanistan like some of my students, he said, he was Pakistani. Then he asked where I was from, I said Sarawak, he didn't quite know, and I said, Malaysia. He said, Selamat hari. I replied, Assamalakum. He asked how I knew, I said, I have Muslim students. Now, the butcher is my boyfriend. He gives me the best cuts.****

Sunday stills: Food: Japanese sushi

Sam's cheeky friend J tells his mum," Ann doesn't know how to make sushi."

Indeed he was right, I haven't got nimble fingers and patience to make such delicate things. But yesterday everything was fine and dandy, if only he was here to see these sushis that my Japanese coaches would be proud of.

Here we had salmon, prawns, carrots, telegraph cucumber and yellow capsicum. In Summer, it is too hot, I didn't want to spend too much time cooking. Sushi is an ideal food.

http://sundaystills.wordpress.com/
Sunday Stills, the next Challenge: Food
Posted in Sunday Stills Challenge of the Week, the next challenge with tags Sunday Stills on December 27, 2009 by Ed

We did this one early last year and is was a fun one, so lets do it again as the last SS for 2009..:-)

Cooking in a steam boat.

http://annkschin.blogspot.com/2009/07/fridayshoot-out-outdoor-food-steam-boat.html

In 1907, my dad's grandfather left China for Borneo. During this century, five generations have been born, and our taste of food has evolved round the food of the region. While we eat predominantly Chinese food, our favourite is Thai. When we do eat out, we go to our favourite Thai restaurant at Ponsonby.

We like the sweet sour spicy Tom Yum Khong, a prawn soup. They come in different utensils, and twice, they came in the above containers.

I was delighted to see a replica of the steamboat my mum had. This Mongolian fire pot, a donut-shaped brass or stainless steel pot is like a moat of a castle. It has a central funnel to hold hot coals or charcoal that sitting on a grill. Every now and then, mum had to replenish the burning charcoal, and we children would have to move away and be very still. This photo is a replica, the food was already cooked, The heat inside was more a decor.

The other black one looked more like the Mongolian soldier's conical hat. This was flamed to be the origins of the steam boat. The soldiers inverted their metal hat and cooked their food with it. I bet they hurdled round the fire as the winter can be bitterly cold.

The following was a post I did in July, and I am repeating this for Chef E.http://cookappeal.blogspot.com/

Let's eat Steamboat may incur a Huh??? look on your friends' faces. What is a steam boat?

Remember Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan and Marco Polo? During the time of the Mongolian Statesmen in Chinese history when the Great Wall of China was built, the fierce nomadic soldiers spread terror to China. Legend has it that the soldiers wore a metal hat, when it was time to cook their meals, they simply inverted their hats and used them to cook their meals. From them, came the Steamboat.

When I was little, my parents had a traditional steamboat. It was like a donut with the chimney in the middle. Mum would drop burning charcoal into the chimney, and on the donut ring, she had boiling soup. Thin slivers of meat of all sorts, vegetables, mushroom, tofu, noodles are quickly cooked. We used little basket like ladles to scoop up the food we like. Then we drank the delicious soup which is packed with all the goodness of the meat and vegetable stock.

Eating steamboat is a lengthy process. It is a good time for parents to tell children stories of the old, especially when we had left our home land. It would not suit people who are poor and have to rush through their meals to go and work.

These days, the cumbersome charcoal steamboats have given way to electric or gas ones. The chimney is gone, and it is more like cooking on the table. I am a person of nostalgia. I lament for Mum's steam boat. Steam boat has also evolved, in Singapore, some restaurants were serving runny rice porridge instead of soup to cook your morsels of meal and veg in.

This photo was taken on New Year's day. It was summer in New Zealand. My host, J had the steam boat outside her patio. We all sat outside eating, likened to what the Mongolians did, outside their tent.

Nostalgia and warm fuzzy feeling.

Bouquet of Bird of Paradise for Linda. I hope she likes it. I am too mean to get interflora to send her real flowers.





http://barrylindashootout.blogspot.com/

This is my first anniversary of blogging. November 2008, I posted my first entry. I didn't start off blogging on my own volition. I was into writing and an aspiring and wannabe writer getting no where with editors or publishers.

I didn't want to get rich or famous from my writing, I just wanted a hard copy book. My friends suggested me to start a blog. Even before I read a blog, I was on my high horse, shamelessly saying," it's only people who shamelessly scream out, " Read Me!" My oldest daughter said, "Try it, Mum" and started this blog for me.

The rest is history, I love it. I love looking at the beautiful photos, and reading the writings and most of all I made many friends, some I consider as the Chinese say, "YU YUAN",(fate) yes, Barry and Linda, we are oceans away, but we have this YUAN which I can't explain. I even found Sarawakiana who was my role model and I secretly admired when I was a 13 year old. You couldn't imagine the joy it was, reading her posts and wondering if she was who I thought she is and then to have her telling me she remembered me.

Blogging also improved my knowledge, I do research when I need it. Finally I have a sharpen mind, when we are out, I have my camera with me, always having a keen eye on what I could blog on.

What has this carton of coconut cream got to do with my nostalgia and fuzzy feeling. Many of you will remember I studied in Windsor, Canada. There is not much of Windsor I remember as it was so long ago. (1975-77).

This carton of coconut brought me back then to my discussion with Linda that I used to visit Toronto with my friends.

The first year I was at Windsor U, I was the Assistant Liaison officer of the Malaysia Indonesia Singaporean Students association. Later, I was the secretary. Once a year, on International Night, each international group had to present it's own ethnic food. As curry was the common food among these three countries, we chose to cook curry chicken and also satay kebabs. Both these food needed coconut cream. My friends who were Indonesians and purists, insisted we had to use a particular brand of Indonesian coconut cream, that cream was available only in Toronto.

So sometimes, when some one went to Toronto to buy the cream, I tagged along. So Linda, may be at one of those trips, I may have bumped into you. Only then, we didn't know we were to become great cyber friends.

Since then, I have cooked a "container" load of curry chicken during our FOODSALE, my charity for the Deaf children in Kenya. I used to cook five chickens. I have left Singapore three years, and it is a fuzzy feeling when friends tell me that they my chicken curry. Being involved in FOODSALE gained me friends from all over the world.

When I left Canada, I didn't use the Indonesian coconut cream, but reverted back to the watery coconut milk or santan that we in Malaysia and Singapore use.

This week, I bought a carton what I thought was the watery santan or coconut milk I always use. When I opened it, it wasn't. It was the solidified Santan Kelapa Murni. Opening it was like opening the Pandora's box of memories of my friends I made in Canada almost 35 years ago..

Hangi

What is a Maori celebration without the hangi?

Basically a hangi is cooking food in a deep pit heated by hot rocks. These days the food is wrapped in aluminium foil. In the old days, in leaves. The food like chicken, pork, lamb, kumara, pumpkin are layered in the pit, and cover with sacks. This is cooked for hours and hours.

I brought back a pack of Hangi food, and before I could tell the kids, wait til I have taken a pix, they had dug into it. In it was pork, chicken, stuffing, kumara and pumpkin. So very sorry I can't show it to you.

Ngarimu also mentioned that for a celebration, there must be water melon and raw fish. They served water melons slices and also in halves piled high with ice cream as water melon sundae.

I was fortunate about thirty years ago, I went to "assist", actually I watched because woman is not allowed to dig the pit. A hangi chef prepared a hangi. The Navigators of Auckland University has a celebration. He also showed me to make raw fish the Maori way. That was one experience not many people have. I have also written about this in my book, Mail Order bride and Short Story Nadine. In my post in November on Maori Hangi, I had a photo with a Hangi chef. I claimed him to be my boyfriend.

***In this post, I have another Hangi Chef, who was very obliging when I asked if I could take his photo. I didn't have anyone around me to take a photo of me slithering to him. LOL Maoris are very warm people.***

The Kiwis are also celebrating the New Zealand day with lots of hangis allover the Gold coast :Charles

I have become a Maori, I told my family. I ate with them, slept with them in a Marae. They consider me Whanau/family. Now I am one of them.I guess it like Henry going to the jungles to sleep with the Punans and becoming a Punan, going to long houses of the Kayans and Ibans and adopted by them to be their son.Henry is an anthropolist in Borneo.

You get your face tattooed? Joseph.

I told the water engineer. When I find a rich handsome Maori man who wants to marry me, then I tattoo my face.

WH is pronounced F in Maori.

Saffron Rice

 I  use the spice knowing that it is more expensive than gold, and when I produce  my "Bring a Plate" my pot of saffron rice, my host will know that I brought something special. It's aroma is very unusual, and you don't need to doctor the taste with lots of addictives. I just fry up some ginger, garlic and onion.
In the past, I used to cook the cheaper verson of yellow rice, using tumeric or yellow ginger. The rice turns out more yellow, and to make it more aromatic, I have to add coconut milk or suntan. In South East Asia, they call it nasi Kunic.
There is no need to reinvent the wheel. This info is from wikipedia.
Saffron (pronounced /ˈsæfrən/, /ˈsæfrɒn/; Persian: زَعْفَرَان; Chinese: 藏红花) is a spice derived from the dried stigma of the flower of the saffron crocus (Crocus sativus), a species of crocus in the family Iridaceae. The flower has three stigmas, which are the distal ends of the plant's carpels. Together with its style, the stalk connecting the stigmas to the rest of the plant, these components are often dried and used in cooking as a seasoning and coloring agent. Saffron, which has for decades been the world's most expensive spice by weight,[1][2] is native to Southwest Asia.[2][3]. Saffron is known as 'Kesar' in India.
Most saffron is grown in a belt of land ranging from the Mediterranean in the west to Kashmir in the east. Annually, around 300 tonnes of saffron are produced worldwide.[5] Iran ranks first in the world production of saffron, with more than 94 percent of the world yield.[67] Iran's annual saffron production is expected to hit 300 tons by the end of the nation's Fourth Five-Year Socioeconomic Development Plan in 2009. Other minor producers of saffron are Spain, India, Greece, Azerbaijan, Morocco, and Italy. A pound of dry saffron (0.45 kg) requires 50,000–75,000 flowers, the equivalent of a football field's area of cultivation.[68][69] Some forty hours of labour are needed to pick 150,000 flowers.[70] Upon extraction, stigmas are dried quickly and (preferably) sealed in airtight containers.[71]
Saffron prices at wholesale and retail rates range from US$500/pound to US$5,000/pound (US$1,100–US$11,000 per kilogram)—equivalent to £250/€350 per pound or £5,500/€7,500 per kilo. In Western countries, the average retail price is $1,000/£500/€700 per pound (US$2,200/£1,100/€1,550 per kilogram).[2] A pound comprises between 70,000 and 200,000 threads. Vivid crimson colouring, slight moistness, elasticity, recent harvest date, and lack of broken-off thread debris are all traits of fresh saffron.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saffron

New Year's Party

sl

We had a Bring a Plate party at J & J's place on New year's evening. I had already posted on her Steam Boat. We had chicken, fish balls, crabs, prawns, noodles, dumplings and th elist goes on.

http://annkschin.blogspot.com/2009/01/new-years-day-steam-boat.html

J is from the Phlippines, and she said that they like lamb there. She roasted a leg of lamb, made almond topped brownies, apple pies, roasted chickens, fruit salad of exotic berries. Friends brought hors devours , lasange, spaghetti   and macaronis with names I couldn't pronounce. I brought my lamb shanks, chocolate mousse and saffron rice.

With such a long list of yummy food, I soon became a pig. I was snorting down the delicacies and slurping down her fruit punch. Oh dear, I had packed kilos of unwanted fat.

The next day, when the water engineer suggested we went for a bush track, there was no time to be pig headed. I put on my running shoes and agreed to go straight away. I didn't complain when we walked miles and miles, hoping to burn off some of the unwanted calories.

Bring a plate.

I had a dinner party at my friends D. and J. place. They always have us over for a pot luck dinner, or in the Kiwi 's term,"Bring a plate."

Manynew comers to New Zealand get confused when their host asks them to bring a plate to their dinner party. Some wonder why the host doesn't have enough plates. I was told when I first arrived in New Zealand by a elderly lady who took me around as she orientated me to Kiwi life. She said, some guests even brought an empty plate.

"Bring a plate" means bring something on top of the plate or a plate of food. I think because of this confusion, the term pot luck is more frequently used.  Also bring a plate doesn't mean just one plate, you may bring one or two ot three.

***Here's the pot luck dinner, I didn't snap all the dishes. Curried Veg, kebabs, butter chicken, fish pie, Thai salad, lamb shanks, saffron rice, stewed chinese mushroom and fungus.

For dessert or pudding, there were apple pie, icecream and a healthy chocolate cake that J had made without butter. She got the cake recipe from the Epsom Girl School.

To finished off, we have a refreshing Green Chinese Tea.

To finished off, we have a refreshing Green Chinese Tea.

***