March 7, 2010

Cookbook Challenge: Week 16, Noodles

Agnes chinese, cookbook challenge, cuisine, recipe, vegetarian

Recipe: Chinese mushrooms with cellophane noodles
From: Chinese, the essence of Asian cooking

The theme for this week’s Cookbook Challenge is “noodles” and for the recipe I’ve gone very Chinese. And by very Chinese, I mean – I’m not sure anyone but us Asians would eat this. :p

This week I made Chinese (shiitake) mushrooms with cellophane noodles. This is a very hearty vegetarian dish, that contains shiitake mushrooms, bean curd skins, fermented bean curd and wood ears/black fungus. It’s very filling. I ate a bowl of it and felt like I had eaten a seven course banquet!

Left: dried wood ear. Right: rehydrated wood ear

Are you wondering what wood ears are? They’re an edible fungus, commonly sold dried, and they’re used for their texture as they don’t have much flavour on their own. The texture is firm, gelatinous and slightly crunchy and they soak up the flavours of whatever they’re cooked in.

Chinese mushrooms with cellophane noodles

I love the strong, meatiness of shiitake mushrooms, so I really enjoyed them in this dish. I’ve never been a huge fan of dried bean curd though, and I think there was far too much in this recipe. It made it all taste very “beany”. I think halving, or even quartering the amount specified in the recipe would be a good idea.

But I’ll just have to get over the “beaniness” of the dish since I have rather a lot left over. Alastair tried it and didn’t like it, so it looks like it’s up to me!

See previous Cookbook Challenge posts here

Update: See the round up at My Food Trail.

Chinese mushrooms with cellophane noodles

From Chinese, the essence of Asian cooking

Serves 4

115g dried Chinese mushrooms
25g dried wood ears
115g dried bean curd, broken into small pieces
30 ml vegetable oil
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 slices fresh ginger, finely chopped
10 Szechuan peppercorns, crushed
15ml (about 1 tablespoon) red fermented bean curd
1/2 star anise
pinch of sugar
15-30ml soy sauce
50g cellophane noodles, soaked in hot water until soft
salt

In separate bowls, soak the Chinese mushroom, wood ears and dried bean curd in plenty of hot water for 30 minutes.

Strain the mushrooms, squeezing out as much liquid as possible, and reserving the liquid. Discard the stems and cut the mushrooms in half if they are vey big.

Drain the wood ears, rinse thoroughly and cut into 2-3cm pieces.

In a heavy based pan, heat the oil, and add the garlic, ginger and Szechuan peppercorns. Fry for a few seconds, then add the mushrooms and red fermented bean curd. Stir and fry for several minutes.

Add the reserved mushroom liquid to the pan, with enough liquid to completely cover the mushrooms. Add the star anise, sugar and soy sauce, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

Add the chopped wood ears and reconstituted drained bean curd pieces to the pan. Cover and cook for another 10 minutes.

Drain the noodles and add them to the pan and cook for another 10 minutes, or until tender. Add more liquid if necessary. Season with salt to taste and serve.

March 1, 2010

Citrus poppy seed muffins

Agnes baking - muffins, cookbook challenge, recipe

Cookbook Challenge: Week 15
Theme: Muffins
Recipe: Citrus poppy seed muffins
Cookbook: Australian Women’s Weekly “Bake”

The theme for the Cookbook Challenge last week was “muffins”, so I turned to the trusty AWW Bake as it has a whole chapter on muffins. Despite the entire chapter, nothing really took my fancy. Perhaps there’s still a lingering obsession with cupcakes, and muffins just seem unrefined and boring by comparison?

In Bake, there were a lot of recipes for savoury muffins, but I had already decided I wanted to make sweet ones. There were also quite a few recipes with berries and banana, neither of which I wanted to use. In the end, I finally decided on citrus poppy seed muffins. It was a pretty good choice because it’s a really easy recipe to put together. All the ingredients get thrown into an electric mixer and voila! Muffin batter! I think it took me longer to line the muffin trays with baking paper.

As you can see in the pictures, these have quite a cakey texture, unlike most other muffins. They definitely need a good amount of citrus rind – don’t skimp on the rind if you make them. It’s also far too easy to over bake them. Mine tasted okay when they were warm from the oven, but the next day they seemed a bit dry. Ahh well. It was okay when washed down with a cup of tea but I’m not sure if they’re good enough to warrant another try. So many muffins in the world, and so little time!

Update: See the round up at My Food Trail.

Citrus poppy seed muffins

From Australian Women’s Weekly “Bake”

Makes 12 regular sized muffins (I got 8 large ones out of the batter)

125g butter softened
6 teaspoons finely grated assorted citrus rind eg lemon, lime and orange
2/3 cup (150g) caster sugar
2 eggs
2 cups (300g) self-raising flour
1/2 cup (125ml) milk
2 tablespoons poppyseeds

Preheat oven to 200°C. Grease a 12 hole muffin pan.

In an electric mixer, beat the butter, citrus rind, sugar, eggs, flour and milk until combined. Increase the speed to medium and beat until the colour of the mixture is paler. Stir in the poppyseeds and spoon the mixture into the muffin tin.

Bake for about 20 minutes or until a skewer in the middle comes out clean. Stand the muffins int he pan for 5 minutes, and then tip out on to a wire rack to cool.