This was part of my menu for a tea party. I had to choose some foods to suit the extremely hot weather at the moment, as well as things that would go well with Chinese tea. I flipped through my summer wagashi recipe books and decided that a co0l, non-melting kanten/agar agar dish would go down well.

strawberry & pear agar-agar

Started out planning green tea and red bean agar, but found my matcha had expired and turned a dusky brown colour *yuck*. Looking around in the kitchen for tasty alternatives, I found  some strawberries in the fridge — small Korean strawberries which, if you’re lucky, can be very sweet. This batch wasn’t, so I didn’t mind using them to make agar-agar instead of enjoying fresh with crème frâiche (Carrefour’s La Reflets de France premium house brand, great with scones too).

I put the strawberries into the microwave for a short while, then mashed them with a potato masher (a fork will also do). As there were only  a few strawberries, I chucked in some canned pears leftover from the improvised gluten-free pear muffins, and mashed up the whole lot.

Measured the fruit puree then added water to make up 1 litre. Put in quite a lot of sugar, which I normally wouldn’t do but since these were for a party, the tastebuds of the guests took priority over my own food preferences.

Heated the mixture and added the agar-agar powder according to the packet instructions, then chilled it in moulds. Super easy and they were a big hit!

The full tea party menu:
Strawberry & pear agar-agar
Pumpkin walnut sponge cake [adapted from this]
Earl Grey creme caramel [using this basic recipe]
Chinese “gong fu” tea: oolong and pu-er

More bento tips:
Bento primer part 1: foods for bento

Ramen

After watching too many Korean TV shows with people slurping enticing-looking noodles, the ramen craving became quite unbearable! Of course commercial packet instant noodles are quite out of the question for me. Not only do the noodles themselves contain plenty of additives, the flavouring is usually more MSG (or other similarly glutamate-heavy MSG-substitute in ‘No MSG’ varieties) than anything else. The last time I gave into a packet noodle craving some years ago, I suffered indigestion, fuzzy-headedness and terrible itching — not worth it at all!

So this time, I whipped up a midnight ramen snack using what was on-hand in my kitchen cupboard. At least with control over individual ingredients, I would stand a much better chance of surviving — and enjoying! — my noodles.

Ingredients for ramen

INGREDIENTS
Multigrain ramen — packet is divided into single serve sections
Organic wheat-free tamari
Sesame oil
Furikake , Muso brand (white sesame seeds, black sesame seeds, salted shiso leaves, ao nori)
Shredded nori seaweed (make sure it’s plain without any seasoning)

To prepare the ramen, cook the noodles in boiling water. This multigrain variety takes at least 4 minutes but it’s much more substantial and more chewy than regular noodles, which I like because it gives a good ‘bite’ and is more filling. Drain noodles and simply toss with other ingredients to taste!

It’s worth mentioning that my ’safe’ version is only relatively safe. The tamari and seaweed are rich in glutamates and the ramen, although a multigrain variety from the health food shop, is certainly not gluten-free. Watch out also for high salicylate level in the sesame oil. Personally, I would only resort to this once in a way.

If your bento aesthetics lean towards zakka (such as FrankTastes), and you are hoping for Shinzi Katoh items to appear in your Christmas stocking this year, you might want to hint to your friends and family with these Singapore Shinzi Katoh shopping tips (^.^).

Maameemoo (Orchard Cineleisure, 02-09) is a tiny zakka heaven, with a selection of Shinzi Katoh items, including bento boxes and bags. Short totes (which can double as lunch bags) cost S$39 and there are regular new shipments, according to the sales assistant. I’ve seen a much larger zakka shop at Cathay Building, but can’t remember if they actually had Shinzi Katoh or bento items.

However, an online search turns up a few Singapore-based online zakka stores:
The Little Happy Shop
Zakkaart.com

Both of these seem well-organised at very similar prices: lunch totes at S$26.90 (The Little Happy Shop) and S$26 (Zakkaart.com), double-tier bento boxes at S$29.90 (The Little Happy Shop) and $$28 (Zakkaart.com), single-tier boxes at S$17.80 (The Little Happy Shop) and S$24 (Zakkaart.com). Don’t forget to factor in the delivery charges (pretty minimal if by standard mail within Singapore).

There is also Momo’s World, which seems to be a new online shop, less professionally-organised website than the other two and with a limited selection.

Or perhaps you want to order directly from Shinzi Katoh’s Japan online shop; prices vary according to design. Here’s a guide for English-speakers to navigate the site. Shinzi Katoh’s UK website also does international orders (currently 25% off lunchboxes): lunch totes are £18, single-tier boxes on sale at £7.50, double-tier ones – £8.65.

Don’t forget: if ordering lunchboxes, do check the size as the double-tier ones come in 460ml and 540ml. If the lunch bags are too small for you, another option could be the short tote bags which are the same height but twice the length of the lunch bags (W315×H160×D110mm).

N.B.: I haven’t purchased from any of these shops myself so no comments on the actual level of service. I’ll just keep wishing hard for my Christmas this year… or next.

As long-standing readers here may have noticed, I like the idea of making from scratch at home products which are often bought as ready-made commercial products. I’ve had a reasonable amount of success with soya bean milk, tofu and salted eggs, which are all very easy.

I’ve also considered making soya sauce at home. While it can be done, as I mentioned in my earlier posting, I’ve decided not to try (at least for now) after chatting to a food scientist who used to work at Kikkoman. During the commercial production process at Kikkoman factories, there is assiduous testing to make sure that the fermentation process does not attract toxic microbes instead of the ‘right’ kind of bacteria, which can easily happen. I’ve also heard how difficult it is to make tempeh at home, and I assume it’s partly for those same reasons.

Another type of food I thought of making at home is Chinese pickled vegetables: mui choy, chye poh, kiam chye — all the things that would give the right ‘kick’ to my somewhat bland dishes. Today’s Sunday Times food question column by Chris Tan addressed this precise issue. The bad news is:

They are not as easy to make as they might seem, requiring successive rounds of drying, seasoning, salting, brining or steaming. These methods may look simple or crude but they are very sensitive to the quality of the starting ingredients, the ambient humidity and temperature as well as the microbes naturally present in the immediate environment.Hence, an experienced eye is needed to tell if the fermentation or preservation is proceeding correctly. Doing this kind of multiple-stage preserving at home is very tricky, frequently entailing much trial and error. Therefore, nowadays most people are content to leave it to the specialists.

The good news is that “many Asian cuisines have easy recipes for mildly sour, briefly fermented pickled greens that are designed to be made and consumed within a few days.” Examples of pickled gai choy, which is a kind of mustard green, include Laotian som pak, Filipino burung mastasa and Vietnamese cai chua or dua chua.

The advice from Chris Tan concludes with this advice:

The Japanese pickling tradition also has many quick pickle recipes. For a good introduction to methods and ingredients, I recommend the book Tsukemono: Japanese Pickled Vegetables by Kay Shimizu.

I don’t have that particular title, but have already been pouring over TSUKEMONO―Japanese Pickling Recipes (Quick&Easy) which is part of my collection of food books. Unfortunately, I’m not familiar with how the different types of Japanese pickles taste and I’m not a big enough fan of pickles in general to go all out on experimenting. I wonder if quick pickles will taste more like nonya acar, rather than anything like chye poh…?

Finally! I have found functional bento boxes (as opposed to cutesy and child-sized type which are plentiful in Daiso) in different capacities on sale in Singapore! If you’re looking for a basic bento box similiar in design to my Asvel box, head straight to Meidi-ya.

Lustroware clear boxes in three sizes: 490ml (S$13.90), 670ml (S$14.90), and 890ml (S$18.90). They are microwavable, have leakproof seal, and a movable divider.

There are also dark grey and black, very large men’s style bento, some of which come with insulated slipcase, and which cost up to S$31.90. There are single layer and double layer men’s boxes.

The boxes are all labelled with Ag+, indicating silver ions to give the plastic an anti-bacterial property.

All the Lustroware boxes which I saw in Meidi-ya are manufactured in China for the Japanese market.

Following my attempt at making firm tofu using nigari as a coagulant, I picked up some Glucono-Delta Lactone (GDL) coagulant at Phoon Huat and decided to give this dessert-style tofu pudding (a.k.a. 豆花 douhua/tau huay/ tau foo fah) a go. GDL is thought to be a more healthy coagulant compared to inorganic calcium compounds.

Unlike moulded tofu, silken tofu doesn’t require any special container and produces a greater volume of tofu in relation to the amount of soya milk used. Typically, it takes less than an hour to be ready for serving.

William Shurtleff’s Book of Tofu says that

[GDL is] an organic acid that solidifies soymilk in much the same was that lactic acid or a yoghurt starter is used to curdle dairy milk. A newly discovered solidifier made from natural gluconic acid, lactone makes it possible for the first time to solidify very thin soymilk, and even cold soymilk, by simply heating it to somewhat below the boiling point.

Following the recipe in Shurtleff’s Book of Tofu:
1 tsp lactone, dissolved in 2 Tbs water
3 1/4 cups soya bean milk
1 Tbs matcha green tea powder
3 Tbs sugar or honey

1) First, I began by making soya bean milk and measured out 3 1/4 cups whilst it was still hot.
2) Mixed in 1 Tbs green tea matcha powder and 3 Tbs sugar. As matcha often clumps up, it helps to sift it into the milk and use a whisk to make sure it is thoroughly incorporated.
3) Dissolved the 1 tsp lactone in 2 Tbs of water.
4) Poured the lactone solution into the soya bean milk, whilst gently stirring.
5) I made individual portions by dividing the still liquid soya bean milk into 6 custard cups. You can also leave the tofu to set inside a single pot. There is no separation of curds and whey, unlike the other method of making firm tofu.
6) The Book of Tofu says to let the soya milk stand uncovered for half an hour while it cools and sets, then cover with cling film and refrigerate. I made the mistake of covering the custard cups with cling film right away, and ended up with condensation on the inside.

Verdict: compared to commercially prepared tofu, mine definitely tasted like an amateur’s attempt. The texture, while very light and soft, could have been smoother. There was also a faint sour taste The green tea flavour was quite subtle, and the amount of sugar was just nice – I wonder what it would have tasted like without any sugar at all?

Anyhow, this is definitely worth another try. The Book of Tofu says that nigari makes the most delicate and delicious silken tofu, so I may use that alternative the next time.

My previous tofu-making postings:
Coagulants for homemade tofu
Making tofu at home
Making tofu at home P.S.
Another word on tofu coagulants

This is just too yummy not to write about. I’m sorry I don’t have a photo because I made it for a midnight snack so no natural light for getting good shots. [P.S. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to consume green tea at midnight! I was so hyper when I went to bed :P]

Of all the commercial non-dairy milks, my favourite is the Rice & Soy Beverage from Eden Foods. It’s got a rich, creamy texture and it’s subtle tastes are probably due to the inclusion of amazake, which is made from organic short grain brown rice and the fermentation starter, koji (Aspergillus Oryzae) as well as kombu seaweed. As amazake is fermented, those on a strict anti-candida diet should probably avoid this milk alternative. Read more about amazake and a detailed description of the product here.

There are instructions on the side of the carton to make the green tea smoothie:
1 cup Rice & Soy Beverage
1 tsp matcha green tea powder [1 used 1 1/2 tsp]
Blend till green tea dissolves and enjoy!

I have some homemade red bean paste in the fridge, so perhaps tomorrow morning I’ll try a red bean version.

After making soya bean milk at home, with okara and yuba as by-products, the next logical thing to try was making tofu. It was so easy and gave me a great sense of satisfaction (^_^). I refered to the ‘bible’ of tofu by William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi.

For the coagulant, I used nigari, purchased from a health food store (Nature’s Glory). This is the coagulant usually used in Japan comprising mostly magnesium sulphate and is made by evaporating sea water. Shurtleff advises that ‘calcium sulfate, a fine white powder, is sometimes mislabelled in the West and sold as nigari. The latter usually has a coarse, granular or crystalline texture, natural nigari is beige and refined nigari is white.’

Aside from nigari, Epsom salts/magnesium sulphate (a popular antidote for food intolerance reactions!), gypsum/calcium sulphate, lemon or lime juice or vinegar can also be used as coagulants. The coagulant used for Chinese tofu is gypsum/calcium sulphate. Glucono delta-lactone (GDL) is a naturally occurring organic acid that is used to produce ‘silken’ tofu. Read more in my earlier post on coagulants for tofu.

The choice of coagulant affects the texture and taste of the tofu, as does the amount used. For firmer tofu, use nigari; softer tofu, use calcium sulphate. The amount of pressure used when pressing the tofu and the length of time it’s pressed also influences how soft or firm it is.

For a quantity of soya bean milk using 1 1/2 cups soya beans + 16 cups water, Shurtleff suggests:
* for subtly sweet, nigari tofu: 2 tsp natural nigari (magnesium chloride) or refined nigari (calcium chloride)
* for mild, soft tofu: 2 tsp Epsom salts (magnesium sulphate) or gypsum (calcium sulphate)
* for subtly tart or sour tofu: 4 Tbs freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice or 3 Tbs apple cider vinegar.

Here’s what I did:

To use nigari, dissolve 1 tsp nigari in 1 cup water. Reduce quantities as appropriate.
For every 4 cups soya bean milk, use 1/2 cup nigari solution.

1) Start by making soya bean milk. See the detailed instructions at Just Hungry.
2) After boiling the milk for 5 mins, remove from heat and leave to cool for another five minutes.
3) Slowly add coagulant and stir gently. Watch the curds form.

4) Leave for 10 mins and allow curds to settle in the bottom.
5) Prepare tofu-mould. Ideally, use a square/rectangular box with holes. If not, you can improvise with a colander but you will end up with an unevenly-shaped piece of tofu (see photo below). Next time, I will try using one of those plastic boxes for storing ready-made tofu from Daiso, or by Lock & Lock, which have an inner container or even non-tofu specific Daiso plastic containers with inner strainers.
6) Place a piece of muslin cloth into the colander/mould.
7) Gently scoop the curds into the muslin cloth. Squeeze out whey liquid.
8) Fold the cloth over the top of the curds.
9) Place a plate or something flat on top of the curds, and weight it down. I used an unopened 1kg bag of rice and balanced a heavy tin can on top.
10) Leave to set. The firmness of the tofu depends on how long it is left to set and how heavily it is weighted down. I left mine for about 3hrs and ended up with the firm consistency of taukwa, which can be easily fried.

This small slab (about 12cm or 5 inches across) was made from 2 cups of soya bean milk.

What to do with the whey liquid? If you’ve added the correct amount of coagulant, the whey will be amber-coloured and taste sweetish. Too little coagulant and the whey will be cloudy from bits of loose curds; too much coagulant and the whey will taste bitter.

Don’t throw away the whey as it’s full of B vitamin nutrients, protein (9% of the protein originally found in the dry soya beans) and natural sugars. You can add it to soup, use in cooking in place of other liquids, or even use it as a biodegradable soap! According to Shurtleff, traditional tofu shops in Japan use the whey to wash their equipment at the end of the day because the soy lecithin in whey cuts through fats. Whey can also be used as a facial wash or shampoo (how’s that for homemade, environmentally-friendly, chemical-free toiletries ☺?), washing and polishing wooden floors or woodwork to give a natural, seasoned look, as well as a plant nutrient.

Please check out Just Hungry’s detailed tofu-making instructions complete with step-by-step photos (she’s got a real tofu press!).
The comprehensive Wikipedia entry on tofu.
Read about the history of tofu in China here.

Don’t forget to check out my postscript to this entry, with many more links, including how to make your own tofu mould/press from a used milk carton!

If you like kawaii character bento, I’m sure you’ll love this! It’s a ‘toy’ called Konepan that helps you to knead and shape bread dough into cutesy shapes which can then be baked in a regular oven. Watch a movie of how it works here. NOT a substitute for a real bread machine :D.

Link via TokyoMango.

Another vegetarian bento (ditch the omelette strips in the bee hoon and this would be vegan) that also tries to be anti-candida, plus low in salicylates, glutamates and amines.

Main dish:
* fried bee hoon (rice noodles) with garlic, cabbage, omelette strips, topped with fried shallots; seasoned with salt only;
* chap chye: dried soya mince, dried soya bean sticks (foo chok [Cantonese], 腐竹), Japanese freeze-dried kouya tofu (read more here and here) cut into chunks [I love the taste and texture of this style of tofu, which I only tried for the first time a few weeks ago], strips of konnyaku, cabbage, mung bean noodles — braised with a tiny bit of chopped garlic and miso.

Side dish:
* chunks of fried homemade tofu –> my first taste of my first homemade tofu!!
* cut-up pear.

It’s ‘summer’ time again, or rather, the hot season in Singapore, which means that refreshing cool snacks like jellies are very suitable for tempering the heat. Last year I experimented with the wonderful agar-agar, which creates jellies that do not melt in the tropical heat, making them ideal for putting in bento. The texture of agar-agar is firm and crisp.

In contrast, konnyaku jellies are chewy or “QQ” in Chinese slang. Several years back, konnyaku jellies were all the rage in faddish snacks in Singapore; many stalls sprung up and soon disappeared (just like bubble tea, Portuguese egg tarts and Roti Boy). These days, you’d probably have to make konnyaku jelly at home if you want to eat it, which from my point of view, is a much healthier way to go, allowing you to bypass all those nasty artificial colourings and flavourings.

While agar-agar and kanten are derived from seaweed (the terms are often used synonymously, but technically they are derived from different strains of seaweed), konnyaku, also known as konjac, is derived from a starchy root vegetable or corm. According to Wikipedia,

Konjac (Amorphophallus konjac; syn. A. rivieri; Japanese: 蒟蒻/菎蒻; こんにゃく; konnyaku; Korean: 곤약; gonyak; Chinese: 蒟蒻; pinyin: jǔ ruò), also known as konjak, konjaku, devil’s tongue, voodoo lily, snake palm, or elephant yam (though this name is also used for A. paeoniifolius), is a plant of the genus Amorphophallus. It is native to warm subtropical to tropical eastern Asia, from Japan and China south to Indonesia.

Just Hungry has a good introduction to the varieties and usage of konnyaku here. I love to use the noodle form, shirataki, in hotpot meals because unlike regular noodles, they do not go soft and soggy if cooked for a long time,

Konnyaku goes through various kinds of processing to make the different form it appears in commercially. This article provides a recipe for turning konnyaku flour into a versatile firm jelly, by adding an alkali, such as calcium hydroxide, usually in the form of pickling lime, or in traditional Japanese methods, extracted from eggshells.

Konnyaku is often promoted as a healthy food as it is virtually zero-calorie and is high in fibre, rich in minerals and is alkaline (read here) as well as absorbing toxic substances during digestion and elimination (see here).

However, so far all the brands of konnyaku jelly power I have come across in the shops contain various additives, sometimes in the form of colouring and flavouring, but many include carrageenan as the main ingredient, not konnyaku! Seaweed-derived carrageenan is used as a thickener and gelling substance. While carrageenan does not generally cause food sensitivity problems, it has been reported to be carcinogenic. However this article from the organic company, Eden Foods, clarifies that while chemically-treated ‘degraded carrageenan’ (non-food-grade) is a known carcinogen, food-grade or ‘undegraded carrageenan’, has been shown to be safe for consumption. Don’t forget that consumer agar-agar powder is also chemically bleached of colours and seaweed smells (see my earlier post).

Konnyaku jelly made with ‘Pinglin Baozhong’ oolong tea and kiwi seeds

Making konnyaku jelly is easy as one simply needs to follow the instructions on the packet of the jelly powder. One packet is enough for one litre of liquid. About 250g of sugar is included in the recipe but this isn’t necessary at all, just add however much you wish.

Having had great success with my earlier tea jellies – Pu-Erh agar-agar and mugicha agar-agar, I used the same idea to make konnyaku jelly. The Pinglin Baozhong tea is a very fragrant variety of oolong and the delicate aroma came through very well in jelly form. I added in a small amount of sugar — about 50g — which was perhaps unnecessary as it wasn’t enough to make the jelly sweet or add to the taste.

For visual effect, I also used kiwi seeds, which are sold in dehydrated form right next to the packets of konnyaku powder in Phoon Huat. As you can see from this Phoon Huat video on how to make konnyaku jelly, for some reason kiwi seeds are presented very much as an integral part of the way to make konnyaku jelly – I have no idea why. The seeds are easily rehydrated by soaking in water for twenty minutes. The suggested amount was half a teaspoon of dehydrated seeds for 1 litre of liquid jelly, but in retrospect, I think twice that amount would have been fine too.

The recipe for konnyaku jelly on the back of the packet says to use one-eigth teaspoon of citric acid. This makes the jelly more chewy. I forgot to add it in! but the texture was still very satisfactory. I wonder if the tannic acid in tea helped with that.

The photo shows my snack bento with two konnyaku jellies. The good news is that I found that, like agar-agar, they don’t melt either. Yay!!

I’m in a big konnyaku jelly craze right now. The other day, in the organic cafe at Fu Lu Shou Complex, Yogi DIY, I had a soya milk drink with flaxseed powder and cubes of honey (?) konnyaku jelly. The combination of flavours was very nice but I thought the preparation was rather sloppy as the flaxseed powder was in clumps and not properly stirred into the soya milk, while the jelly had obviously been made in a regular ice cube tray and the moulds overfilled such that the shapes were very untidy. It would have been much nicer to use ice cube trays in decorative shapes ☺ (plenty in Daiso!).

As honey is high in salicylates, I might try making a maple syrup konnyaku jelly next…. [Speaking of maple syrup, be careful not to end up buying maple-flavoured syrup by mistake; the real stuff is more expensive, but doesn’t have to be exorbitantly so - Carrefour sells organic pure maple syrup for just $9 a bottle, whereas it’s usually $15-$21 for other brands in health food shops.]

There are a million and one ways to enjoy soya beans that I’ve never tried before and many of them are described in this book that is often recommended as the bible about soya beans: The Book of Tofu by William Shurtleff. It’s partially available online at GoogleBooks, or else many of the community public libraries in Singapore have a copy; check the online catalogue.

The book is not just about tofu, but all kinds of soya bean products, the process of making them – and how to do it yourself (yay!).

Roasted soya beans are a great option to satisfy those TV-snacking cravings, and an alternative to the usual nuts. You can choose to salt or sweeten them or simply eat them plain, as I do.

In Japan, they are called irimame and enjoyed on the first day of the lunar new year. As roasted soya beans represent good fortune, a Japanese tradition is to throw them into the rooms in the house and also out the window. When coated with sugar, starch and nori seaweed, they are called Mishima Mame. (Read more here.)

Ground roasted soya beans is kinako ‘flour’, used for many Japanese wagashi snacks. It is deliciously fragrant and nutty; a super substitute for ground peanuts.

Ingredients

1 cup dried soya beans –> makes 1 cup roasted soya beans

Rinse and soak the beans for 5 to 6 hrs. If salty beans are desired, add salt to the soaking water.

Drain beans and dry them for 1 hr before roasting. Use towels or paper napkins to help soak up the water.

Transfer to unoiled baking trays in a layer 1-bean thick only.

Roast in slow oven of 100ºC-120ºC for 2 to 2.5 hrs or until beans are light brown. Check that the beans inside the lighter-coloured skins do not turn dark brown.

Shake the pans once every 15 mins for the first hour then every 30 mins.

Once done, remove the beans from the oven. They will still be soft, but will turn crunchy when cool.

I made some mistakes along the way by not letting the soya beans dry out enough before putting them in the oven, and piling too many into the same baking tray. As a result, the beans were still soft and moist inside after 3hrs in the oven. I ate a handful of these late in the evening and got bad indigestion that kept me up half the night!

My beans were easily rescued the next morning by dry roasting them in a pan on the stove. This time the beans became noticeably shrunken and were completely dry and crunchy.

The heat was a bit too high hence the burnt look on the soya beans in my photo. You’ll also notice the flaking skins, which come off very easily, just as with roasted groundnuts.

I’m sticking my neck out here but I’m going to venture that this will be the highlight of my kitchen tool discoveries for 2008.

Ceramic knives were something totally new to me and did not attract my attention despite walking past the shelf full of them at Tangs many times. It took a trip out to the obscure Tan Boon Liat Building in Outram, where Nature’s Glory is located, where I happened to step into a shop on the ground floor selling kitchen equipment. I later discovered that the very knowledgeable and friendly man in the shop who introduced me to Kyocera ceramic cutlery tools, is food blogger, Chubby Hubby’s ‘knife sensei’, David, at Razor Sharp – a knife sharpening service and shop that is also the agent for various lines of premium kitchen equipment, including Kyocera.

Finally, motivated by our dreadful old vegetable peeler that’s worn-out, rusty with blades that are twisted out of shape and almost impossible to use. I decided to invest in a Kyocera vegetable peeler with blades made of ceramic which won’t rust or get bent. Fruits like apples and pears also won’t brown so easily because they haven’t been peeled with a metal blade that promotes oxidation.

I used it to peel daikon today for a steamed Chinese radish cake 蘿蔔糕 and it was a jaw-dropping experience! Razor-sharp and utterly smooth, it also sliced terrifically fine so just the peel comes off with no wastage.

Of course it’s an expensive tool, but just the thing if you need an antidote to one-too-many Daiso $2 disasters :D. Tangs offers 25% off selected Kyocera products, including the vegetable peeler (full price, S$35), or next time you pop down to Nature’s Glory, you could go straight to the agent, Razor Sharp (unfortunately, all items are typically full list price except for occasional sale – right now, it’s the veg peeler with U-shaped handle on sale at a fabulous S$12! also the ceramic julienne slicer for S$19, usual price S$52) .

As for ceramic knives, although they can be great to use, they are more brittle than steel knives, hence the mixed reviews here and here, and if you go for the hard (haha!) details of knife construction, do check out this review.

If you’re still keen to try out a ceramic knife as well as the peeler, rush down to the current Isetan sale where a medium-sized kitchen knife is paired with the vegetable peeler for S$69, a fraction of the regular price (plus 20% discount for Isetan members, I think).

A: When it’s a sweet potato or a taro!

I have recently discovered that I have been using imprecise names, and probably confused some of you in other parts of the world where different words are used.

For example, I learnt from reading this that in America, what are called ‘yams’ are really varieties of sweet potato which have a moist texture.

In contrast, I have been referring to taro as ‘yam’, basically equating anything we call in Chinese yu4tou3 芋頭 with ‘yam’. While one could put it down to a combination of my poor plant-recognition skills and half-baked linguistic ability, I’m not the only person who equates yu4tou3 芋頭 and ‘yam’; so does this bilingual food blog from Singapore. And after all, we call steamed 芋頭糕 yu4tou2gao1 [Mandarin]/ wu tao gou [Cantonese], ‘Yam Cake’ (and I made some Shredded Yam Cake 芋絲餅). Lily’s Wai Sek Hong, a Malaysian writing from America helps to unravel the puzzle with this explanation:

In Malaysia, ‘Woo Tau’ in Cantonese is called YAM but it is TARO here in the States and yam is sweet potato.

Trying to look for bilingual dictionary definitions can be hugely confusing too. On the Chinese-language internet, the most common list of food words provides this translation:

yam — shan1yu4 — 山芋
taro — yu4tou2 — 芋头

On the other hand, my US-produced dictionary follows the American usage:

sweet potato – shan1yu4 — 山芋
yam — shu3 — 薯

［How, er, not helpful: ma3ling2shu3 馬鈴薯 = potato; mu4shu3 木薯 = tapioca; and to Southeast Asian Chinese, fan1shu3 番薯= sweet potato, following Cantonese usage, cf. China, where sweet potatoes are called di4gua1 地瓜].

But back to 山芋 (shan1yu4 in Mandarin). When pronounced in Japanese, it’s yamaimo — that very special ingredient needed to make okonomiyaki! Yamaimo is usually translated into English as ‘mountain yam’.

To get to the root (no pun intended!) of the issue, we’ll have to look at the botanical names:
yam – genus: Dioscorea
taro — genus: Colocasia
sweet potato — genus: Ipomoea

While the Colocasia genus comprises only six to eight different types of flowering plants, there are 600 varieties of Dioscorea, of which the edible ones are known as yams. The genus Ipomoea also has over 500 species, some of which we commonly recognise as the morning glory flower, and others in the form of edible tubers, i.e. sweet potatoes.

Within the Dioscorea family, the species of edible tubers we call yams come in a mind-boggling diversity. From the long, cream-coloured, stick-like Chinese/Japanese mountain yam 山芋, to huge, dark brown, ugly, knobly lumps. But don’t be put off by the external appearance, a yam that looked like a piece of elephant dung on the outside, turned out like this:

Aren’t the variegated colours beautiful? I have no idea what the correct name for this kind of yam is, but here’s a photo of the whole tuber from a Japanese blog that refers to it as murasaki yamaimo 紫山芋, ‘purple yam’. Unfortunately, to me this was rather bland, taste-wise, and too dry and powdery in texture for my liking (think of powdery potatoes, the kind used for baked potatoes, as compared to the smooth, waxy kind used for roast potatoes).

Previously, I was also wasthe misconception that yams are always purple and anything purple is a yam. After all, yam-flavoured ice cream is always purple isn’t it? Of course that’s just food colouring, but it is based on the perception that yams are purple. It was only when I bought purple sweet potatoes for these two-coloured sweet potato balls and this purple soup, did I realise that yams do not have a monopoly on this rich colour.

Here’s a photo from Nakashima Farms, a Californian-Japanese producer of sweet potatoes, showing the four varieties they sell. I was amazed and impressed by the different coloured flesh (yikes! no wonder the sweet potato I bought didn’t look like the one in the recipe book!).

The purple sweet potato shown here is known as the Okinawan variety from Japan. I’m not sure whether the ones I got for the two-coloured sweet potato balls and purple soup were also the Okinawan variety, but they were labelled as originating from Thailand (purchased in Sheng Siong).

Right now, my favourite kind is the Japanese variety, satsumaimo さつまいも, shown on the extreme left (or see photo here). It’s purple on the outside but not on the inside ^_^. The pale yellow flesh is sweet and very smooth. In contrast, the typical local sweet potatoes, which are orange both outside and within, I’ve found are extremely fibrous, making the texture unpleasant when eating them whole, and necessitating a lot of sieving if you want to use them in recipes like the two-coloured sweet potato balls.

Satsumaimo from Japan can be rather pricey, so an alternative is are the ‘Japanese sweet potatoes’ grown in Vietnam. They are usually very small – just the right size for a snack bento – and are often sold in bags at the supermarket. The other day, I bought a full-sized satsumaimo for the first time, and found it much more satisfying than the tiny Vietnamese ones.

Now that we’ve got yam, taro and sweet potato sorted out, what about the difference between roots, tubers, corms and rhizomes? … Maybe another time, my head is spinning already :P.

If you’re dying to pursue this line of inquiry further, do have a look at this page from S. J. Kays at the University of Georgia on Cultivated Edible Root, Tuber, Rhizome, Bulb and Corm Crops of the World, which includes a list of the most commonly cultivated root and tuber crops with their names in sixteen different languages (and botanical name, of course), photographs and even bibliographies of the latest scientific publications on each variety. From a more culinary perspective, the Cook’s Thesaurus on ‘Sweet Potatoes & Yams‘ as well as on ‘Tubers & Corms‘ are a good reference.

P.S. Maybe you’ve guessed already, my favourite rhizome is wasabi (^_*)!

I’m sorry this Daiso consumer watch is a month late – which means that Daiso is probably completely depleted of stocks by now, but please keep a lookout at the three Singapore Daiso branches :). [Daiso shopping tip: never go on weekends! It's too crowded to move and all the items are in a huge mess -- a most distressing shopping experience!]

The Urara range of bento equipment by Lube Sheep is one of the most common bento boxes/sets out there. Just Google and it appears that every other bento fan on the internet seems to have one, often purchased through J-List/J-Box. No wonder that Just Bento recently posted a review of the Lube Sheep lines.

I was overwhelmed when I came across an entire wall of Urara products at Daiso recently. Tons of blue Dragonfly (とんぼ – a new Japanese word for me, which also brings back childhood memories of Tombow stationery ^_^! I still swear by their ‘Mono’ erasers!), red Rabbit (うさぎ) and yellow flower (はな).

Not only did they have these same long two-tiered sets which everyone seems to have (above), there was a two-tier box in a more stocky rectangular shape (volume: 250ml+ 360ml; total approx. 20ml more than the long version, which is what I chose) and even a two-tiered box with triangular upper half for a large onigiri! I can’t even find pictures of these other shapes on the official Urara homepage by the manufacturer, Nakano Lunch. Everything else you see on the Urara official page was also available at Daiso, with the exception of perhaps the boxy thermal bag.

These are the items I ended up getting:

blue Dragonfly short two-tier box

lunch belt [Shopping tip for lunchbelts in Daiso, Singapore : they are to be found all over the shop - felt ones in sewing section, cute ones with character goods, some near the bento equipment, some in stationery. Basically it's because the staff have no idea what they are for! I tried explaining to one of the staff in Plaza Singapura once but I don't think she believed me, or didn't care or whatever... anyway, in all three Daiso branches, the lunchbelts are all over the place! Good luck!!]

lunch bag

fork in plastic case (useful for snack bento)

ランチーフ, which I presume can be used as a furoshiki and place mat

bag for plastic cup

I didn’t buy the tiny plastic cup, but loved the quality of the bag which has a smooth, gauzy lining, great for storing miscellaneous odds & ends.

There’s also a wonderful range of chopsticks in three lengths, one type with a cloth case and separate plastic boxes available for the other types. However, as I already have a much more convenient pair of folding chopsticks, I managed not to succumb to the Urara chopsticks.

P.S. A word of warning: I had another Daiso disaster (see my previous disasters here and here). One of the handles on a lunchbag I bought broke when I put a 1 litre water-bottle inside it, along with my bento box. It was the only bag I had with a square base – just right for the square type Lock & Lock box. I have since consoled myself with an extravagant Muji purchase (especially compared to S$2 Daiso items!) – more on that one later (^_^)!

I’ve made soya bean milk at home quite a few times (as mentioned here and here) and written about how one could make soya sauce at home too. Today’s Sunday Times food question column by Chris Tan addresses the issue of making soya bean curd/tofu at home.

The basic process involves setting soya bean milk into a solid form by using a coagulating agent. Chris Tan explains the differences between the types of coagulants, which also helps us to understand the different ingredients used in commercial tofu.

The three main types of coagulants are:

1) Calcium sulphate, a.k.a. gypsum. As this is also one of the ingredients in plaster of paris, the Chinese word is shi2 gao1 石膏, which can also refer to a plaster cast for a broken bone, so don’t be surprised if you see poorly-translated Chinese language cookbooks calling for ‘plaster of paris’. This coagulant is used in Chinese-style tofu, and produces a more soft, moist texture. Available from Chinese provision or medicine shops.

2 ) Nigari. A extract of seawater containing a high proportion of magnesium chloride. Used in Japanese-style tofu, and explains why some Japanese tofu-makers use seawater. A smoother,  subtly sweeter effect is created by using nigari. Powdered or liquid form available at Japanese supermarkets and health food stores such as Nature’s Glory.

3) Glucono delta-lactone (GDL). An organic compound developed a few decades ago, and makes a delicate, pudding-like tofu. Instant tofu kits from Japanese supermarkets use GDL, alongside packets of soya bean milk powder to which you add water. Many years ago, when I visited an aunt who lives in Britain, she made a soya bean curd dessert 豆花 for me using one of these kits; as I remember, the texture was very smooth.

Each type of coagulant produces different textures and subtle flavours, and commercial tofu manufacturers often mix up blends of coagulants. You’ll need to experiment and see which you prefer. Food intolerance sufferers might find they are more sensitive to certain types of coagulants as compared to others.

Read about my experimental attempt at homemade tofu and further information on coagulants:
Making tofu at home
Making tofu at home P.S.
Another word on tofu coagulants

I posted earlier on this subject, and today’s Sunday Times food question column written by Chris Tan provides some useful further information.

As I mentioned before, one way to get rid of gas caused by beans is to blanch the beans, followed by several hours of soaking with frequent changes of water. However, this may also cause a diminishing of flavour.

Chris Tan suggests that traditional methods of cooking beans may provide a solution to the gas problem:

Indian legume dishes almost always include a pinch of asafoetida, a garlicky-tasting powdered dried plant sap with a reputation for reducing flatulence. Mexican bean dishes call on epazote, a green herb, for the same reason. In Japan, cooks simmer beans with a piece of kombu or dried kelp, to help the beans soften and to nullify their gases. Of somewhat lesser fame are spices that combat gases, including cumin, fennel, caraway and ginger.

Only problem is, one might not want the taste of these herbs and spices in a sweet azuki bean dish!

But don’t worry, because gas from beans might not be a problem for everyone. Chris Tan goes on to say,

Anecdotal evidence says that people who eat beans frequently suffer less gas than occasional bean-eaters, perhaps because our intestinal microbe populations evolve to accommodate the situation.

Given the paucity of bento gear outside of Daiso, I was impressed to see on sale in Isetan’s household section bread-slice-shaped sandwich cutters similar to the one used by Lunch in a Box. They’re hanging on a shelf with other fun-shaped cutters underneath a TV playing a promotional video of some Japanese kitchen gadget.

Isetan supermarket always has some kind of Japanese food promotion going on, and up till tomorrow, it’s a ‘Japanese Sweets Fair’ with various kinds of wagashi, such as steamed manju (饅頭) buns and demonstrations of dorayaki pancake making, and ‘teyaki tsugarugi senbei honpo’ (crackers with nuts).

Click on picture for larger image of Isetan flyer.

It was also fun looking at the pre-packaged daifuku, warabi mochi and sakura mochi made from doumyoji as inspiration for future cooking projects ^_^.

However, what excited me the most was seeing fresh wasabi root on sale again! It’s not often they appear on the supermarket shelves in Singapore, which isn’t really surprising considering how difficult it is to grow wasabi, and even in Japan, only five percent of sushi shops use fresh wasabi root, with chefs paying up to ¥1,000 or more for a fresh wasabi root (read all about wasabi here)!

The last time I managed to buy fresh wasabi was when Isetan was having a Shizuoka promotion – Shizuoka being the home of wasabi-growing. The descriptions of wasabi growing in cold, clear mountain streams surrounded in gentle mist (see this photo) only help to enhance my infatuation with this rhizome.

The main reason, however, is the surprising delicate, yet complex, taste of fresh wasabi. A very pale green when grated, its hotness is tempered by a sharp bitter edge and a wonderful sweetness! Aside from using it as a sushi dip with soya sauce, I love wasabi with all kinds of meats, and in sandwiches it tastes so much nicer than powdered mustard which only made my food take on the aroma of rotten eggs :P. I’ve also eaten it smeared thinly over okonomiyaki. Here are my bento which have used wasabi in some way. Check out also this Shizuoka blog for suggestions on alternative ways to enjoy wasabi.

It should be no surprise that fresh grated wasabi tastes quite different from processed wasabi in tubes because the latter is actually made from a mixture with horseradish (a plant only introduced to Japan from Europe in the 19th century), colourings and flavourings etc. as this comprehensive list of ingredients shows. A much better alternative is the powdered wasabi from health food shops, such as Mitoku brand wasabi powder. While this powdered version may not be made from pure wasabi either (horseradish and mustard are commonly mixed in), at least it isn’t full of artificial additives and the unnatural lurid green colour of commercial supermarket powdered wasabi.

4/2/08 update : I experimented with eating wasabi in an alternative manner: by making very fine slices then frying them crisp and eating as topping on noodles. Well, I won’t be doing this again! They were rather bitter, no hint of characteristic wasabi hotness, and were more hard than crisp.

Inspired by the visual effect of this cake on Obachan’s Kitchen – the sliced black soya beans amidst the green cake, I decided that today’s rapid-baking session to fulfil urgent take-away snack needs would comprise my faithful muffin recipe, spiced up by matcha, azuki beans and pine nuts.

[N.B.: If you want to stick more strictly to anti-candida principles, then omit the pine nuts and replace dairy milk with alternatives, and perhaps avoid the green tea too. Guess that leaves you with a red bean muffin!]

Ingredients & baking notes:

1) 2 tsp matcha green tea powder for 2 cups of flour. This is the quantity I derived from making green tea glutinous rice balls. A very delicate matcha flavour and I think I could have used more in the muffins as wholemeal flour has a stronger taste compared to white flour so unless you are paying attention, the green tea flavours might just pass unnoticed. The brown colour of the muffin is from the wholemeal flour, no sign of green tea at all (no wonder so many commercial green tea products use colouring).

2) I cooked 1/2 cup dried red beans using this method. Cook till just soft and not disintegrated, and make sure they are dry enough to separate out into individual beans before mixing into the batter.

3) The pine nuts were roasted beforehand, by dry-frying in a skillet over very low heat.

4) Just over 1/4 cup of white sugar went in. I wasn’t sure what would be the appropriate amount to balance out the bitterness of the matcha and the bean taste. In the end, I think there wasn’t enough green tea taste and I could have used a little less sugar (or perhaps none at all, in which case everyone else in my family would be spitting this out at the first mouthful).

5) Decided to use butter instead of vegetable oil today.

Verdict: it was OK tastewise, but I think the main problem is that I don’t like the texture of this muffin recipe anymore. It seems too close-textured and sort of gummy. And they don’t rise enough to produce those enticing giant cracks on the top. [13/2/08 update: reheated the frozen muffin in microwave for a snack, and somehow they seem very nice today!?! The texture is crumbly and light - maybe they just needed a bit more cooking time? Useful to slightly underbake muffins that will all be frozen, so that the reheating won't dry them out too much. The pine nuts and red beans are great but not enough green tea taste.]

I got rather sick of these muffins after a period where I was making a big batch of them once every week or every fortnight (in the days when the only food intolerance friendly snacks I made were muffins and scones). Today was the first time in many months that I’d made them but no, I’m still sick of them.

Looks like it’s time to be more adventurous with my basic muffin recipe. I used to avoid ones that use buttermilk because it’s so expensive, but now that I know some substitutes for buttermilk, there’s no excuse not to try them ☺.

12/6/08 update: made these muffins again as I needed a sugar-free snack (omitted sugar this time) for bento. Increased the amount of green tea powder to 2 1/2 Tbsp and it was great. Also, the texture is definitely slightly gummy. A check on various troubleshooting websites suggests that there’s too much liquid. I also wonder if I have been over-mixing the batter…

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