Recipe: Homemade Coconut Snowballs

You've probably seen these in Chinese grocery stores or, if you're lucky, in pot lucks. These glutinous rice coconut snowballs can be filled with a variety of things like toasted ground peanuts, black sesame, sesame and sugar, or coconut and sugar. I've noticed that many cultures have a version of this. It's called nom plae ai in Cambodian, for instance; in Thai, it's kha nom tom; and banh bao chi in Vietnamese.

Here's the recipe Mom wrote down many years ago. She knew exactly what everything meant. I've seen her make this a few times so I'll try my best to break it down.

Banh Xeo: Do You Wrap or Mix

Banh xeo is a Vietnamese savoury pancake. We fill it with a meat mixture of ground pork or chicken, onions, toasted shredded coconut, soy sauce and fish sauce. Then we add blanched beansprouts before folding them over.




Since we grow our own thai basil, mint, and fish herbs, we usually eat banh xeo in the midst of a heatwave -- when the herbs grow like crazy. Now, depending on personal preferences, you either wrap the banh xeo in lettuce or chop/rip everything into a bowl and mix it up. Mom says it tastes better when you eat with your hands. I agree -- only in the summertime though. Where do you stand on your banh xeo?

Do you wrap it or mix it?

Edamame Bruschetta

While going back through my Instagram wall, I noticed that I had forgotten to write about this beauty. Back before Christmas, Vanna found a recipe for edamame bruschetta that she wanted to try out for her Xmas party. The recipe that we skimmed through was Honest Vanilla's rendition. Since we didn't closely follow the recipe, I recommend that you head over there to see the accurate measurements.

Here's the gist of the ingredients we used: frozen shelled edamame (that happened to be on sale -- bonus!), a whole whack of mint leaves, some garlic cloves, olive oil, chili flakes, salt, and black pepper. To make it fancy, we added so me oven-roasted cherry tomatoes and some charred green onions.


We started off by getting the edamame boiled. While that was doing it's thing, chopped mint was added to some chili flakes, olive oil, and minced garlic.


We also popped in some cherry tomatoes that were tossed in olive oil, and a bit of salt and black pepper. I also threw in a few cloves of garlic to make things interesting. Once the edamame was soft enough, we blended it until it had some texture and then seasoned it lightly with S&P. The final touch was charring some green onions in a bit of olive oil.

I'll be the first admit: me and vegetables don't get along very well. Despite our relationship, I loved these bruschetta! First off, you get the charred green onion character and then the sweetness of the tomatoes jumps in. Then the not-entirely-smooth edamame mix joins the party with the mint, followed by a hint of garlic and then the french bread. It was harmonious. This edamame bruschetta will definitely be making more appearances in the future. And whether you blend the edamame into a smoother mix or leave it with a bit of texture, I'm sure you'll enjoy this appetizer for lunch or even dinner. Hell, you could even turn this into a breakfast sandwich with some eggs!

Sfiha: Another Spin on Meat Pie

These were the finished product of my version of the Lebanese meat pies. We didn't have all of the ingredients in some of the recipes I found -- shocking, I know -- and so I just relied on the smell and the taste of the meat topping. This was the first time I made it, so I was a little worried about the final product.




Before I mixed the meat, I whipped up a double-batch of a yeast dough recipe I found. It almost had a 1:1 ratio of water to oil. The dough was wrapped up and allowed to rise. Then I focused my attention to the meat.

These were some of the ingredients in there: ground beef, ketchup, salt, ground nutmeg, ground cinnamon, ground cumin, cayenne pepper, and diced tomatoes. Legit, I know.


Once the dough was allowed to rise after a few hours, the dough was divided into portions, rolled out, and topped with the meat mixture. We don't have a pizza stone or anything, so I turned one of our oven pans upside down and used that as a cook top in the oven. We didn't have a pizza peel either, so I looked around the house and just used a long piece of cardboard from our Mama Instant Noodles. The cardboard was then wrapped with tin foil. Although it looked funny, it worked.




They didn't take longer than 10 minutes each. Once out of the oven, they were allowed to cool before being devoured. We probably ate half of what we made. The sfiha actually tasted similar to the real stuff at the Aladdin Bakery. The dough turned out like a crispy crumb crust, which reminded me of Joe's Pizza's aromatic crumbly dough. They were so addictive!

Quick Shepherd's Pie

Last Wednesday, Lucy and I planned to go skating on the Rideau Canal. Prior to dinner and our evening skate, I ran some errands which brought me to the Byward Market. There were so many better lunch options than the one I chose.


What a poor decision. I regretted it as soon as I opened my mouth and ordered a big mac meal.

Fast forward to dinner. Shepherd's pie was on the menu. Using two parts ground beef and one part ground pork, some diced onions, beef broth, crushed crackers, salt, black pepper and bay leaves, the bottom layer was ready in less than 15 minutes. The other layers were Green Giant corn and Lucy's mashed potatoes.


The two pans were broiled for a couple minutes until golden.


Lucy also made an addictive prosciutto and goat cheese salad to go with dinner.

Dinner was so comforting. I was actually surprised how quickly it was made from start to finish. Gotta make this again soon.

CNY at Grandma's

We headed to Grandma's house last Sunday to celebrate Chinese new year. Our feast last year was remarkably fancy; snow crab legs, dungeness crab, and a whole roasted pig! The spread this year was closer to the typical dishes we usually have. It was nice that we celebrated it early, cause I'm sure the local Chinese establishments were swamped this weekend. Again, the meal summed up in photos.















The highlights of the meal had to go to Grandma's soup, the meats from Double Happiness, and the sesame balls filled with lotus paste and red beans from Kowloon Market.

CNY Celebrations at Grandpa's

Happy Chinese new years! Chuc mung nam moi! Or to generalize it, happy lunar new year!


Although the holiday begins on Friday, our whole extended family got together and celebrated it this past weekend. First up, here's Saturday in photos.















Once we began to eat, I got carried away and inhaled all the food without taking photos. But I made a mental note. We were going over to Grandma's the next day.

Tasty Back to Back Dinners: 1 of 2 PPNS

Last weekend, I felt as though I got a mild case of a stomach virus; feeling fatigued and weak. I had no appetite and had issues staying hydrated. While on my break on Saturday, I sent Richard a request to make some kind of soup: chicken, pho, Phnom Penh noodle soup (aka PPNS) or something. There was no reply. Andrew and I agreed to go to Sea King for some food if dinner wasn't something I could eat. We were about to leave when I called home to double check:

"Hey, what's for dinner tonight?"
"Phnom Penh noodle soup."
Yuhssss!
"Okay, we'll be coming home soon."

We were both excited cause we were really hungry. We decided to go to Sea King the next night.

I became giddy when I walked into the kitchen and saw that all the prep work was ready. And I became overjoyed when the pork bone seafood soup tasted remarkable. Sometimes the soup can be disappointing. This was luckily not one of those times.

There was sliced raw beef, chicken, and shelled shrimps. The accompaniments we had were green onions, fried garlic oil, and preserved cabbage. There was satay sauce, Sriracha, and hoisin sauce too for dipping sauces. And for everyone who wanted to eat the dry version of Phnom Penh noodles, there was oyster sauce and dark soy sauce. A meal like this is one of the reasons why our fridge is stocked full of condiments.


We cooked the sliced chicken in the clear soup. We shouldn't have if we wanted to keep the soup clear.  Meh. I cooked the soaked rice noodles in a separate pot of boiling water for about twenty seconds. Then I pressed the cooked noodles with the back of the ladle to get rid of most of the noodle water, before dumping the cooked noodles into a waiting bowl. Andrew cooked some chicken and shrimp for me since he was making his bowl before mine. I added some green onions and tossed in some raw sliced beef.


Once Andrew was finished with his bowl, I topped my bowl up with some hot pork bone seafood soup and headed to the dinner table. There, I added the final touches of the fried garlic oil (with fried garlic) and preserved cabbage. Not many words were exchanged during dinner. It wasn't necessary.

2013 Xmas Holiday Baking

Let's start this by saying that I'm not much of a baker. I'd rather cook something instead. Don't you find that you're also baking a lot during the Christmas holidays?

For our Christmas dinner, which we held at Aunt IS's house, I knew I wanted to make at least two kinds of cookies. I was thinking of trying to make the DoubleTree chocolate walnut cookies again, and maybe some Biscoff cookies, or some chocolate chip cookies.

I used more chopped walnuts, less chocolate chunks, and less oatmeal flour for this batch of DoubleTree cookies. After I got started with the DoubleTree cookies, Richard into the kitchen and was also in a baking mood. He wanted to make Mom's chocolate chip cakey cookies. I suggested the Serious Eats' Food Lab recipe for "The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies." We made the cookies on Christmas Eve and then put them in the fridge to bake on Christmas afternoon.

Both bags of cookie dough were taken out to warm up a bit. After popping them into the oven, the remaining cookie dough was put in the freezer. Once the cookies were done and had cooled enough, we dug in. The results of the DoubleTree cookies were great! The ratio of walnuts to chocolate was perfect for me and they were slightly crisp on the edges while being chewy in the middle.

As for the cookies Richard made, they were disappointing. When he browned the butter the night before, the house smelled like caramel. It was so promising. The baked products were not only short on that depth of flavour, but they needed more flour (human error) too.

~

For the Xmas party with some friends, VN and I were thinking about attempting to make macarons again. Our last experience didn't turn out the greatest -- visually, that is. We thought we had everything, but we realized that I had forgot the icing sugar. Oops. We postponed it until Boxing Day.

After having lunch at the Authentic Vietnamese Pho House, we picked up some things to make macarons. We went to Bulk Barn and then went back to the kitchen. I had forgotten the icing sugar again. So fail. There was luckily a small bag of icing sugar left in the cupboards. Phew! The almond meal wasn't fine at all. We tried using a blender. Fail. We tried a coffee grinder. More fail. And then finally we resorted to a mortar and pestle to try and crush them finer. That didn't work too well either. We went on though.

Everything was gently mixed together and we were almost ready to pipe the macarons before VN brought something up. We had forgotten the icing sugar! Wow. I tried folding in the icing sugar in 20, 000 times as delicately as I could. But it didn't work. We had enough ingredients to make only one final batch.

It looked great. All the ingredients were added.

After a quick exchange, we agreed that it wouldn't be a big deal if we piped the macarons directly onto the pan. It was non-stick after all. It would be okay? Right? Riiiight?

We nervously popped the two trays of piped macarons and put it into the 280F to bake. That's what the recipe we used said. The macarons didn't like the high oven temperature. The macarons not only cracked but they weren't fully cooked through. When I took out the tray, this was what I saw. It was like tunnel vision.

Upon further inspection, there was one that looked perfect! Enhance!

Enhance! What a beauty. It was smooth on top and had feet! Unfortunately, all of the macarons -- including the pretty-looking one -- was under baked.

After the 4+ hours that it took VN and I to make macarons, I still tried to make it work. We were going to eat these macarons with some chocolate mint icing! So I grabbed the tub of chocolate icing and as I slid my fingers around the lid to open it, a piece of tinfoil that poked out sliced my fingers.


Yup. I sliced my fingers by trying to open a container of icing. You'd think that after all of those bad omens, VN and I would've stopped. But no. Clearly, me and macarons don't go well together. Just like me and Scrabble.

Despite two failed attempts at making macarons, I'm determined to make at least one good batch. This is not the end.

~


Yesterday (December 30th), I went over to SM's place to hang out. We also did some baking. I brought along some cookie dough from the Christmas Eve batches. I baked the cookies before the World Junior game began, that way we could enjoy them warm when the game began. We were watching Canada play against Slovakia. By the time I brought the cookies downstairs, they were already announcing the starting goalies. Once I got back to my seat and took a bite out of a warm chocolate chunk cookie, Drouin took a major penalty for hitting the head of a Slovenian player. Lame. But the game got better and Canada managed to earn a win with the help of a great hardworking shift by the Lazar-Patan-Reinhart line in the second period.


Once the game had finished, we went upstairs and began to make sugar cookies with a recipe given from SM's co-worker. We had a lot of fun using the cookie cutters to make feet, stars, snowmen, and hearts. There weren't any angels. No angels! SM also had some leftover icing so she topped off some of the cooled sugar cookies. When we were mixing the dough, it looked like the cookie dough needed more liquids. I wasn't sure what to do about it, so we didn't do anything about it. We put it in the fridge to let it set for an hour and hoped that it would turn out. And it did!

The end of December involved lots of baking. There were some successful batches and some that didn't work out. It's all good though. It's not always about the journey, it's about the results. Wait. Uh... whatever. Never mind. Scratch that. Rewind.

Wurch-ch-chi-chi-chi-chit!

The end of December involved lots of baking. It was fun to bake and cook for my friends and family, and even cook and bake with my friends and family. I hope the new year will continue to be full of new adventures, even if they don't turn out the way I want them to. To good health and lots of fun times ahead! Happy new years everyone! Cheers! *raises a glass of watered down juice* *clink*

Quick Cuon Meal

We often make large batches of stuff and freeze a portion for later. The best part of that are the relatively quick meals as a result.

Exhibit A: Cuon, a Vietnamese rice paper roll filled with vermicelli and a variety of ingredients


We had spring rolls, nem, and grilled pork -- all homemade. Being winter and all, we didn't lots of herbs in our pots. There were plenty of the fish herbs for Mom to enjoy though.


These are my sad summer rolls. From left to right: whole spring roll with grilled pork, grilled pork with homemade slaw, grilled pork with half a spring roll.




At first, I scoffed at the idea of adding slaw in the cuon. I gave it a try and it was actually pleasant. This reminded me of a banh mi.

I prefer to have bun cha gio instead of cuon though -- in the summer when the herbs are fresh and plentiful. When it's a cold winter day like today, I'd rather go for a hot bowl of bo kho or something.

Leftover Prime Rib: Tacos

With the leftover prime rib meat that we had for dinner a few weeks ago, I shredded some for an open-faced hot beef sandwich. It's just too easy. That was my quick lunch. We still had quite a bit of meat left. I thought of turning it into tacos. Actually, I was first tempted to chop it up and turn it into some kind of dip but thought otherwise.


Tacos. We didn't have any tortillas. Using Taste of Home's homemade tortillas recipe as a guide, I made some homemade tortillas. I didn't use as much olive oil and it still turned out soft. We rolled them out instead of pressing them.


While cooking up the tortillas on the griddle, we decided to make some cheesy quesadillas by stuffing them with mozzarella prior to cooking. They were tasty dipped with salsa.

The tortillas themselves were tender and looked good. Richard and I didn't like the taste of cheap olive oil that I used in the tortillas though. I'll try using vegetable oil instead olive oil.


For the star of the dish, the prime rib was chopped up, mixed with caramelized onions, a sauce that I made, and then reheated in the toaster oven before eating.

In the words of Richard: "Who eats prime rib tacos? We do."


What would've you done with the leftover prime rib meat?