‘Junk’ food: potato waffles

Sometimes one needs something junky to indulge in, and I was most impressed how unhealthy this tastes haha :D — must be the high fat content! This is a great snack that is free of gluten and sugar.

Making this potato snack or side dish couldn’t be easier. Simply make mashed potatoes by combining boiled waxy potatoes with butter, milk/broth/water, salt and pepper. Spoon into a waffle iron, which has been brushed with melted butter or oil.The final result was not crispy though….

Unlike some frozen potato products, by making this at home you can be assured that there are only natural ingredients.

‘Junk’ food: popcorn

When coated in artificial flavourings, tons of salt and/or sugar, popcorn can be very nasty (think of that fake butter smell from cinema popcorn — yuck!). However, natural popcorn is a great snack option which in its plain form is gluten-free, sugar-free, dairy-free and low in fat, so one can happily indulge!

Here’s how I make it:
* find a large pot with lid
* measure out the desired amount of raw corn kernels — I use three-quarters of one small rice bowl to make a huge salad bowl amount of cooked popcorn
* poor into pot just enough oil to coat all the kernels of corn
* turn on medium-high heat and wait for oil to heat up
* once hot, put in the corn kernels, stir to coat all kernels with oil and try to make sure that as many kernels as possible are in touch with the bottom surface of the pot (to get them heated up as effectively as possible)
* cover and wait for popping to cease
* occasionally shake the pot — whilst holding the lid on tight — to encourage all the kernels to pop
* occasionally lift the lid a crack to allow the steam to escape (or use the steam vent if your pot lid has one), but be careful not to open so wide as to allow popping corn to spring out!
* remove popcorn from pot, I put in a large plastic basket to allow the popcorn to cool down
* store in airtight containers as soon as it has cooled down as popcorn goes soft very quickly

As I try to avoid sugar, I go with salted popcorn and simply sprinkle salt on the cooked popcorn.

Food intolerance-friendly airline meals

Hello again after a long break! I have been away and will be travelling again soon so have some possibly helpful travel tips for anyone flying by Singapore Airlines.

The last time I went overseas by Cathay Pacific, I prepared an elaborate set of bento boxes to last me halfway round the globe, as I described here. This time, it was just a short 5-hour flight and I decided to order one of Singapore Airlines’ special ‘Medical Meals’.

Here is the amazing list of ‘Medical Meal’ choices:

• Bland Meal: No “irritants” (e.g. black pepper, chilli powder, caffeine, cocoa, alcohol)
• Diabetic Meal: No sugar; limited salt
• Fruit Platter Meal: Fresh fruits only
• Gluten Free Meal: No wheat, rye, barley, oats in any form
• Low Sodium, No Salt Added Meal: Avoid naturally-salted, sodium-added processed foods (e.g. Baking powder, soda, MSG); no salt added during preparation
• Low Calorie Meal: Limited fats, sauces, gravy and fried items; limited sugar-rich items
• Low Fat/Cholesterol Meal: No animal fats but poly-unsaturated fatty acids allowed; limited fats, sauces, and gravy fried items; no butter, cream, whole milk cheese; only lean meat allowed
• Low Fibre/Residue Meal: Limited fibrous items (e.g. fruit, legumes, vegetables, wholegrain products)
• Non-Carbohydrate Meal: No starch and carbohydrates in any form
• Non-Lactose Meal: No lactose and dairy products (e.g. milk, milk solids, casein, cheese, cream, butter, margarine)
• Soft Fluid Meal: Mainly sieved, soupy items
• Semi Fluid Meal: Mainly pureed, minced, easily digestible items (e.g. pureed vegetables, potatoes, fruits, minced, homogenized meat, porridge, congee)
• Ulcer Diet Meal: Contains easily digestive plain poached/broiled foods (e.g. white meat, fish); no acidic food and fruits
• Nut Free Meal: Please contact our Reservation Office for the necessary arrangement

After a short discussion on the phone with the airline staff, I chose the ‘Low Sodium, No Salt Added Meal’. On my return flight, the meal label was in Chinese, which said “無調味料”, which actually means  no added seasoning. I found out there is a option of Asian or Western versions, and I chose Western. It was a chicken breast with side vegetables and rice on the outgoing flight, and a very tender beef steak with side vegetables and potatoes on the return flight. There were also no sweet desserts. I loved the way they were all totally plain with no sauces or spices/herbs etc. yet the ingredients were flavourful enough on their own. Fabulous! Amines in the meats and salicylates in the vegetables aside, this is a pretty safe choice for me. No need to starve on long-distance travel anymore! (As long as I fly on Singapore Airlines, that is.)

P.S. Don’t forget Singapore Airlines offers also offers Religious Meals, Infant & Child Meals, a Seafood Meal and a range of Vegetarian Meals:

• Raw Vegetarian Meal: Only raw fruits and vegetables
• Vegetarian Oriental Meal: No meat or seafood of any sort; no dairy products; cooked Chinese-style
• Vegetarian Indian Meal (non-strict): No meat of any sort; can contain dairy products; cooked Indian-style
• Vegetarian Jain Meal (strict; suitable for Jain): No meat of any sort; no onion, garlic, ginger and all root vegetables; cooked Indian-style
• Western Vegetarian (non-strict; ovo-lacto): No meat of any sort; can contain dairy products; cooked Western-style
• Vegetarian Vegan Meal (strict): No meat of any sort; no dairy products; cooked Western-style

Strawberry & pear agar-agar

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

Chye tau kueh (fried savoury radish cake)

Recently, some friends gobbled down two plates of chye tau kueh from the hawker centre in front of me whilst I munched on my gluten-free carob muffin. They felt a bit guilty comparing their fried dish with my healthy snack but actually I really wished I could eat chye tau kueh too!

I came home and flipped through my mountain of cookbooks and finally found a somewhat poorly-written recipe for ‘Singapore-Styled Stir-Fried Turnip Pudding 星洲炒蘿蔔糕’ in a Hong Kong produced cookbook called Asian Snacks Cooking Course 亞洲小食製作教程.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a more authentic recipe in any of my Malaysian cookbooks (an excuse to buy even more :) ?!?). Anyway, it worked really well so am sharing here with you. You may want to compare this recipe with the one from Lily’s Wai Sek Hong.

This is a great snack option that’s wheat- and gluten-free, also no sugar. As long as you don’t find fried foods too unhealthy :).

INGREDIENTS FOR STEAMED RADISH CAKE

960g white radish/daikon
320g rice flour

Wash, peel and chop the daikon.

Use a blender to puree it, then using a sieve, squeeze out as much juice as possible. You need 3 cups of daikon juice.

Mix rice flour with daikon juice in a pot over low heat. The original recipe only uses the juice, but I put in all the daikon pulp as well so as not to waste it.

Stir until it the mixture thickens. This part requires careful attention as it can take quite a while to thicken on low heat but if the stove is too hot, it will clump together very quickly.

Pour the thickened batter into a greased mould, such as an aluminium cake tin. A 9-inch round tin is actually better than the one I used in the photo because it won’t be so full, and because the cake won’t be in such a thick layer, it will take a shorter time to be fully cook. Dark-coloured heavy cake tins are not good for steaming, they don’t seem to conduct heat very well.

Steam for 1 hour. Test for doneness with a chopstick, which should come out clean.

FRIED RADISH CAKE

Cut the steamed and cooled cake into cubes.

Fry ingredients of your choice until fragrant, such as garlic, shallots, minced meat, red or green chilli, spring onions. Add seasonings of your choice.  Traditionally, this is cooked with thick dark soya sauce and preserved turnip and preserved Chinese sausages are a must, with a special chilli sauce for those who like it spicy.

Add the steamed radish cake cubes and fry until browned.

Push ingredients to one side of the wok (or remove from pan), add a beaten egg and when semi-cooked, toss well with all the other ingredients.

My version shown below is cooked with salt (or organic tamari), garlic, stir-fried shallots, green and red capsicums, and topped with raw spring onions and deep fried shallots.

Verdict: close enough to the real thing to keep me happy! Loved the distinct daikon taste in the cake. Now if I can just figure out how to make preserved turnip or chye poh at home, the other members of the family might actually enjoy this as much as me :).

Nearly 1kg of daikon makes a lot of chye tau kueh and I had this in my lunch bento for days!! Next time I’ll only make half the quantity!

Baked beans – homemade & failsafe!

For ages, I have been watching my family members eating tinned baked beans for breakfast, unable to join in because of the tomato sauce which is high in glutamates, amines and salicylates (not to mention plenty of salt & sugar)!! The other day, I finally got down to making Failsafe baked beans from the recipe in the Friendly Foods cookbook.

The result was wonderfully satisfying! Even my family members who are used to the over-flavoured commercial version pronounced this ‘surprisingly edible’.

RECIPE

300g (1 1/2 cups) dried beans – navy, cannellini or flageolet
1 leek, washed and sliced
2 sprigs parsley
1 clove garlic, peeled
2 x 5cm pieces celery
2 Tbs soft brown sugar
1/4 tsp citric acid
3/4 tsp saffron threads [which I omitted, hence the anemic colour of my baked beans]
sea salt

Wash beans and soak overnight with 1.5 litres water. Drain the next day.

Place beans & leek in saucepan. A heavy-bottomed pot for slow-cooking is good, such as a cast iron pot. You can also use a crockpot.Main-Main Masak-Masak › Edit Post — WordPress

Tie the parsley, garlic and celery into a bouquet garni with a piece of string and add this to the pot.

Pour in enough water to cover the beans. Simmer uncovered for about 1 hour or until tender. Remove the bouquet garni.

Add the sugar, citric acid, saffron and salt to taste. Simmer for another 10 minutes.

Here I used dried organic navy beans which I bought at Nature’s Glory.

If you don’t have time to soak the beans overnight, you can use canned beans. It can be hard to find navy/cannellini/flageolet beans, but I’ve seen them at Carrefour and Cold Storage, as well as at health food stores like Eat Organic and Nature’s Glory. Basically, check the stores which stock more western ingredients.

With navy and cannnellini beans being more unusual products in Singapore, even the non-organic canned ones only come in relatively expensive foreign brands. The good news is that tinned, organic navy and cannnellini beans are available at about the same price as non-organic ones :), S$2.30 per tin for Eden brand. Other organic brands cost about a dollar more.

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6/12/8 Update:

Tip 1: Make a large batch, divide into serving portions and freeze. Defrost as necessary.

Tip 2: Aside from eating baked beans with bread (gluten-free bean bread for me) and rice cakes, it’s also good with rice. Especially quick and easy if you have cooked rice on hand at all times in the fridge or freezer.

Recently, I enjoyed a midnight snack of Japanese rice and homemade baked beans, topped with strips of Japanese nori seaweed — delicious!

Hummus

Blue corn tortilla chips with red lentil dip (top) and hummus (bottom).

My first encounter with hummus was when I started on the anti-candida diet and found hummus inside Xandria William’s Overcoming Candida cookbook. Recently, I’ve also seen hummus variations (no tahini, no olive oil) in Sue Dengate’s Failsafe Cookbook. It’s a dish that you can easily adapt to your own taste and desired consistency, so the recipes don’t need to be followed exactly at all.

The basic ingredients are:

1) Chickpeas — canned or cook your own from dried chickpeas. If cooking, soak them overnight (they will swell considerably), change the water, then bring to a boil and simmer, scooping away the froth. Cook for 1 1/2 to 2 hrs, or until soft enough to crush easily. Save the cooking liquid for pulverising stage.

2) Garlic. To taste. Xandria William’s recipe uses 2 cloves to 450g of dried chickpeas, whereas Sue Dengate’s uses 2 cloves to one 440g tin of cooked chickpeas!

3) Oil. For best flavour, use olive oil. But olive oil is also high in salicylates, so choose a failsafe oil if you need to (sunflower, safflower, canola, and most failsafers can also tolerate rice bran). My take on oil is also to avoid GMO foods if you can.

4) Tahini. To taste. Sesame seeds are high in salicylates, so omit tahini completely if you have to. If using tahini, do stir in the oil floating at the top properly first. In the photo above, the hummus looks very dark because I used tahini made from unhulled sesame seeds. This kind of tahini also has a stronger nutty taste.

5) A tangy flavour. To taste. Traditionally, it’s lemon juice, but again lemons are high in salicylates, so use the standard failsafe substitute – citric acid dissolved in a bit of water. Usually 1/4 tsp will be enough to produce the equivalent of a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice.

6) Salt. To taste.

7) Parsley, chopped. To taste.

Put all into a food processor and blend till smooth. Adding as much oil and chickpea liquid until you get the desired consistency.

Having just made a small tubful of hummus, I’m going to use it as:

a) a dip for my favourite Kettle’s organic blue corn or multigrain tortilla chips (shown in photo). They work out cheaper than Kettle’s non-organic potato chips even, and the blue corn chips are barely salted – fabulous! Food sensitive failsafe eaters will know that Kettle’s chips are better-tolerated than other commercial brands, which I myself have also personally experienced.

b) a spread for sandwiches, which can be combined with other sandwich fillings like roast chicken, roasted vegetables or salad.

Green tea silken tofu

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

Green tea smoothie with rice & soy milk

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.

Kitchen disaster & a look at ‘rice cakes’

When you hear the words ‘rice cake’, is this what you think of?

Quite possibly yes if you frequent health food shops and are on a gluten-free diet. This style of rice cake actually reminds me of the traditional Chinese puffed rice cracker, 米通 mi3 tong1 [Mand.] / mai tong [Cant.].

However, as this Wikipedia entry reflects, many cultures have ‘rice cakes’ and the term encompasses an incredibly diverse range of food items produced from rice. Rice itself comes in thousands of strains, can be in the form of rice grains or rice flour, and can be boiled, steamed, baked, grilled etc.

Several weeks ago I tried out a recipe from a Taiwanese book labelled with the English name, ‘Brown Sugar Rice Cake’, and in Chinese, ‘黃鬆糕’(lit: yellow, light cake). I was attracted by the short list of simple ingredients and easy method.

Ingredients

300g glutinous rice flour 糯米粉
200g rice flour 大米粉
150g dark brown sugar 紅糖
150cc water

Method

1) Dissolve the brown sugar in the water. Discard any sediment.
2) Put the two kinds of rice flour in a bowl and add in the sugar water.
3) As the mixture will be lumpy, use your hands to break up the lumps.
4) Pass the mixture through a sieve to create the texture of sand. This is the most time consuming step, especially since there is quite a large volume of ingredients.
5) Prepare a tin by oiling the surface, then lining it with a wet cloth. Pour in the mixture and smoothen the top surface.
6) Steam for 10-15 minutes.
7) Leave to cool, then cut and serve.

That’s what the book says. My finished cake looked nothing like the photo in the book and it tasted awful! And here’s an awful picture of the cake! You can even see the holes where I poked a chopstick to test if it was done.

As with most of my other steamed cakes, this one seemed to take much much longer to be fully cooked than what was stated in the recipe (I must be doing something wrong, OR I simply can’t tell when the steamed cakes are ready :/ !). Admittedly, I didn’t follow the instructions to use line the tin with a wet cloth and just used cling film (as is illustrated in the same recipe book) to make it easier to remove the cake from the pan [17/4/08 update: in the comments to this post, CantonPixie reminded me of the dangerous dioxins released when cling film is heated! oops!]. In the photo you can see I’ve removed it from the pan after it set to continue cooking it in the hope that it would eventually be done!

Let me rewind — I actually think the root of the disaster started when I tried to get creative and replace Chinese rice flour – a very fine, light powder that puffs into the air at the slightest movement and leaves a layer of white all over the kitchen and you – with organic brown rice flour, which was heavy and sort of in damp clumps in the case of the type I bought. The cake had a sourish, uncooked taste even after being steamed for more than 45 minutes, and it’s quite likely that was due to the flour (which flour? I’m not sure, but my glutinous rice flour always makes delicious glutinous rice balls!).

Finally, we gave up steaming the damned thing, which didn’t look anything like the photo in the book, which showed a dry, crumbly texture resembling coarse sugar grains. In contrast, you can see from my photo that the cut edge looked like dried-out plasticine – yuck. I tried to rescue the dish by chopping the block into bite-sized squares then boiling them as one would do with glutinous rice balls. The taste remained unpalatable and I ran out of ideas how to salvage this disaster.

Moral of the story: ‘rice cake’ can mean a lot of things, ‘rice flour’ can mean a lot of things, don’t ‘anyhow’ substitute ingredients (as we would say in Singlish/ Singapore English), and well, you win some you lose some.

N.B.: If you want to try the recipe, you might want to also watch this YouTube video for making a very similar kind of Korean rice cake (and yes, it’s 15 mins in the steamer for 1kg of rice flour! I am definitely doing something wrong….).

N.B.: for further advice on using different kinds of flours, please see my page on Flours.