Buy chinese eggplant. Cut them into finger length pieces and cut each piece into cross sections of 4-8 pieces depending on mood. Soak eggplant in solution of 8 cups water and 1 cup vinegar for 5 minutes. Vinegar soak helps eggplant retain purple color during steaming. Squeeze whatever little excess water out of the eggplants.

Turn on a steamer. Put eggplants on a plate that can get hot, or a tray, or anything that will fit easily inside your steamer. If at home, steam eggplants for 10 minutes. If using a commercial steamer, steam for 3-4 minutes.

Dump the sauce on the steamed eggplants. Garnish with slanted sliced green onions.

Serve cold or warm. Works well with sticky rice.

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ¾ cup brown sugar
• ½ cup softened butter
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 2 cups mashed overripe bananas
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• ½ cup flaxseed meal
• 1 ½ tsp chai seasoning
• ¾ cup chopped walnuts

1. Mix flour, salt, baking soda, and chai seasoning in medium bowl.

2. In a separate bowl, mix butter and brown sugar. Whisk until smooth and incorporated.

3. In butter and sugar bowl, add bananas, vanilla extract, flaxseed meal, walnuts, and eggs. Mix well.

4. Add the flour bowl in 3 parts to the butter bowl, mixing until just combined in each part. Do not overmix.

5. Set oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Pour batter into greased pan. Bake for 50 minutes or until it passes the toothpick test.

Here I am, with an abundance of handpicked apples, year-old frozen berries, and a free day. I’ve got a bottle of cream sherry sitting in the fridge that tastes too much like vanilla extract. Not my ideal sipping experience. All of this is taking too much space in my fridge. What could I do to get rid of this?

I used this recipe to clean the fridge. For a recipe so easy as crumble, I made a few modifications on the first try:

• Substitute the 1/2 cup caster sugar with 1/4 cup brown sugar
• Generous splash of cream sherry to the simmering apples
• Substitute the ground cinnamon and nutmeg for 1 tsp of chai mix
• Add few tablespoons of ground flaxseed to the rolled oat mix

The taste is beautiful. I emptied out the bag of frozen berries. One thing I’d love to do next is possibly mix the fruit with flour or cornstarch. The baked fruit is too runny for my taste.

Great crust! Moist and not too sweet. Followed the recipe for an orange cardamom cake and put it in my 9 inch bundt cake pan. The recipe can be found here: https://food52.com/recipes/84827-olive-oil-cake-recipe-with-cardamom-orange

I tripled the recipe to get enough batter to fill the mould. As a result, I had to increase bake time by 10 more minutes as it’s a much deeper cake. I’m interested in adding a little ginger and extra cardamom in here for an extra spice to make it more interesting.

I made an orange vanilla salted glaze using this recipe: https://www.chocolatemoosey.com/bundt-cake-glaze/

I didn’t have milk at the time, so I used leftover squeezed orange juice and water to loosen the glaze. I also did not have powdered sugar, so I tried to blend white sugar as much as possible. What a mess! Next time use powdered sugar or else the glaze will be gritty. I mistakenly added too much liquid to the glaze and it became runny.

Overall a good recipe.

Also a great soup for cold winter days! Very customizable. Taken large inspiration from Woks of Life recipe.

https://thewoksoflife.com/vegetarian-hot-sour-soup/#recipe

Here are my minor adjustments:

– Increase sugar to 1 tsp

– Reduce vinegar by 2 tbsp and add more to taste

– Egg must be boiled to ensure it is fully cooked

– Increase corn starch by 1-2 tbsp according to taste

– Use chicken stock

– Add whatever veggies to the soup! I added butternut squash and it tasted great

Korean seaweed soup

Great for a easy, throw everything in the pot type of soup. Been perfect for me during the sick season.

– 8 cups water

– 15 korean anchovies with guts removed

– 6 dried shiitake mushrooms, rinsed

– 13g wakame seaweed strips

– 4’x4’ dried powdered seaweed

– 4 tbsp soy sauce (I use light)

– garlic powder to taste

– white pepper to taste

– 1/4 tsp sea salt, to taste

– 2 tbsp sesame oil

– 0.5 inch cubed tofu, firm or silken

– frozen sliced rice cakes (optional)

1. Simmer anchovies, shiitake mushrooms, and dried powdered seaweed in a pot with the water on medium heat for an hour.

2. Remove the anchovies, shiitake mushrooms, and dried powdered seaweed strip. Slice the shiitake mushrooms into 1/4 inch strips. Throw away the anchovies and seaweed strip.

3. Add the sliced shiitake mushrooms back into the pot. Add the soy sauce, garlic powder, white pepper, salt, sesame oil, and tofu.

4. Simmer for 10 minutes. Add the wakame seaweed strips. Increase heat to medium-high. Simmer for 15 minutes or until wakame seaweed strips are soft to your preference.

5. Put rice cakes in a medium strainer and place strainer in the pot, making sure that the rice cakes are submerged in the broth. Let rice cakes simmer for 1-2 minutes.

6. Remove strainer with rice cakes away from the pot. Serve the soup into your serving bowl and add the desired amount of rice cakes from strainer to your serving bowl.

7. Top your serving with kimchi. If the kimchi is not sour, add a tbsp of white vinegar to the pot. The broth is naturally high with umami flavor, and acidity from either kimchi or white vinegar helps balance the umami.

I’ve added variations like cubed squash and dried tofu strips. This is a very flexible recipe to customize with any added ingredients. Traditionally, beef is added to the soup but I often skip it due to laziness and health reasons.

This past week, I baked two recipes of Red Velvet Cake. I baked both Preppy Kitchen’s recipe and Sally’s Baking Addiction’s recipe, and I found the following results:

• Preppy Kitchen’s recipe has a better, stronger flavor of red velvet cake. It calls for 1 tbsp of vinegar and 3 tbsps of cocoa powder. On the flip side, SBA’s recipe calls for only 1 tsp of vinegar and 2 tbsp of cocoa powder.
• SBA’s recipe had a much spongier and fluffier crumb, whereas Preppy Kitchen’s recipe was denser and more firm. SBA’s lighter crumb is probably attributed to the use of cake flour (she also provides a DIY cake flour recipe!) and folding in whipped egg whites.

Overall, it’s hard to say which I liked better. So I decided to combine both recipes in a way to get fluffy crumb and a flavorful cake.

Repeat SBA’s recipe while making the following changes:

• Add 1 tbsp of vinegar (instead of 1 tsp)
• Add 3 tbsp of cocoa powder (instead of 2 tbsp)
• Sift the cocoa powder

Hopefully this should be enough to strengthen the cake’s flavor without firming the cake crumb. Also note that SBA’s recipe creates way more batter than Preppy Kitchen, likely enough to make three to four 9-inch layers.

PK’s cream cheese frosting is also much easier to work with while decorating while also being better tasting.

All week, I was plagued by these intruding thoughts of blueberry pie. I wanted flaky, butter-crisped crust and sweet syrupy blueberries. So obviously, this blueberry pie pushed through the top of my list of Easter bakes.

I’ve made great pie crust before in my chicken pot pie post. I wanted to test out another pie crust. This one is by Erin McDowell, a baker for King Arthur Flour. The ingredients are listed below:

• 1 1/4 cup AP flour (150g)
• Pinch fine sea salt
• 1/2 cup cold unsalted butter (113g)
• 1/4 – 1/3 cup Ice water, depending on how wet the dough is

It’s a very easy dough to make since she simply rubs the butter into the flour using her fingers (so no food processor needed!). The dough is very flakey. It is a great pie dough, but I personally liked the structure and taste of the dough from the chicken pot pie recipe. Next time, I would add 1/2 tbsp sugar. Additionally, the lattice should be thicker height-wise to withstand the filling.

For the blueberry filling, I used the recipe from here: https://www.inspiredtaste.net/23159/homemade-blueberry-pie-recipe/

6 cups of frozen blueberries that were thawed over night and then drained of any juices. It’s important to drain or else the blueberry filling gets too runny in the pie, whereas I’m looking for a thicker consistency that stands on its own! I would also add more cornstarch to the mix, up to 1/3 cup total.

Edit: one thing I noticed is that the pie filling tasted a bit powdery from the cornstarch. Normally, the powdery feeling goes away when cooked with heat and liquid. I think next time I will simmer the blueberry pie mix until the desired consistency and the powder texture goes away.

All in all, this is something that I’d make again!