Tag: tofu

Yelly Eats

Mango and sago pudding

Yelly

This dessert is mostly Chinese, or more specifically, Taiwanese, I think. Alan and I first had this at Cafe TPT in Chinatown in London. At the time, I could still have grapefruit, so the variant we got was mango, grapefruit, tofu and sago. It was so yummy! Cafe TPT has quite an extensive dessert menu and I think one day, I’m going to have to just go and have all the cold desserts! It’s well worth the trip!

This dessert is so simple but so yummy. It’s basically mango pulp with sweet bean curd and sago. I love the bean curd because it’s silken texture reminds me of taho (I think it actually is taho!)- a silken fresh soy bean curd street food that most Filipinos will have at breakfast.

But because going to London involves a 90-minute train journey from Harwich to Liverpool Street station, and then a 20-minute tube ride (with at least 1 change), I told myself that it was necessary for me to learn how to make a version of this that I was happy to eat to tide me over in between London Chinatown visits. I’ve made this several times now and am happy with the result each time, so I’m finally happy to share this with you.

Ingredients:

  • 1 850g can of mango pulp (or you can blitz up the same amount of mango flesh — use ripe Pakistan or Alfonso mangoes, or if you’re lucky enough to live in Southeast Asia, ripe mangoes)
  • 100g mini sago cooked according to instructions
  • 2 247g cans of peach slices (don’t use canned mangoes, better to use fresh if you can)
  • 1 410g can of evaporated milk
  • 2 349g packs of silken tofu diced.

It’s so easy to put together. First drain the juice from the canned peaches. Then in a appropriately sized container, mix the mango pulp and the evaporated milk. i don’t usually feel the need to add any sugar because I find that the mango pulp is already sweet enough. However, if you are using freshly made mango pulp, it might be necessary to switch the evaporated milk with condensed milk, or if you don’t want it to be too rich, use sugar to sweeten. Add the drained peach slices and gently fold in the tofu cubes. As the sago will absorb as much liquid as it possibly can, I usually store them in cold water in a separate container. I spoon the appropriate amount of sago in the bottom of my dessert bowl and top it with the mango pulp-peach-tofu mixture.

Et voila! Now you can enjoy mango sago pudding as much as you want at home.

Let me know if you try the recipe and let me know what you think! I’d love to hear from you!

Yelly Eats

Choi sum in a ginger-garlic-wine sauce

Yelly

After eating at the HK Diner, I’ve been wanting to duplicate the choi sum dish that we had there.  It was stir-fried choi sum in garlic, ginger and rice wine.  It was lovely and very light.  Something I could snack on really.

So I haven’t really eaten rice in a while.  And just eating vegetables was probably not going to be filling enough.  I went to the Oriental Supermarket last night and bought a few things.  We’ve been wanting to have fried tofu so I thought it would be a good way to fill out the vegetable dish I was planning in my head.

It turned out amazing so I thought I’d share the recipe!

Choi sum & tofuIngredients

  • 400g choi sum (or chinese broccoli) or tenderstem broccoli (or purple sprouting broccoli)
  • 200g fried tofu cubes
  • 15g ginger root, peeled, cut into thin strips
  • 5 large cloves of garlic
  • 4 tbsp rice wine
  • 1 tbsp oyster sauce
  • 1 tbsp vegetable oil
  • 100ml water
  • salt and pepper to taste
  1. With a pestle and mortar (or a food processor, but a pestle and mortar is infinitely more cathartic!), pound the ginger and garlic to a paste.
  2. In a wok or sautee pan, heat the oil.  Sautee your garlic-ginger paste until garlic starts turning golden brown.
  3. Add rice wine and simmer for about 2 minutes.  Turn down the heat to medium to low making sure that the rice wine doesn’t dry out completely.  Add the oyster sauce and and half the water.  Simmer for another minute.  Add the broccoli.  Cook for about 3 minutes covered.
  4. When the vegetable turns bright green, add the rest of the water and simmer for 2 minutes.  Add the tofu, making sure you toss the vegetables and tofu so that the tofu is covered in the ginger and rice wine sauce.
  5. Simmer for a further 5 minutes, covered.  Serve.
  6. Will feed 2-3 without rice, 4-5 if served with rice.

Look, Ma!  No rice! 🙂

Yelly Eats

A Working Girl’s Mapo Tofu Don

Yelly

I started writing this entry with the words “When I think of home…” and started laughing.  Because in my head I started singing “…I think of a place where there’s love overflowing…”  If you don’t know the song I’m singing, well, your musical education isn’t as good as you think it is.  Well, either that or you weren’t alive in the 80’s (that’s when I first saw it, on RPN9 on a Saturday evening), or you’ve never heard of The Wiz.  It’s the Michael Jackson-Diana Ross adaptation of The Wizard of Oz.

And as usual, I digress!

I miss home and the little comforts that are so close (that or I can easily jump into the family car–our trusty Revo–and drive to where I want to go get things).  I miss having nail bars everywhere, I miss Ditas of David’s Salon in SM Fairview who does my hair perfectly, I miss Starbucks and the occasional green tea latte frap, I miss tocino, Purefoods corned beef.  I miss eating at the eat-all-you-can lunches (and dinners) of Saisaki (although, it may not be the same now), I miss the shawarma place in Fairlane (also in Fairview), I miss Mercury Drug (because buying things over the counter is sometimes quicker).  I miss my Tita Rescy’s cafe called Indulgence on…(argh! I can’t remember!) Perea.  I miss Ineng’s barbecue and I miss Teriyaki Boy!  Apart from their sushi, I miss their mapo tofu don.

Mapo tofu was one of the first dishes that I learned to replicate when I moved to the UK.  I loved it a lot (I think it loved me too, because I KNOW I gained weight because I ate a lot of mapo tofu don from Teriyaki Boy) and missed it so much that I looked for a recipe and searched for ingredients.  I can now, and I say this with absolute confidence, whip up mapo tofu in minutes.  I now have what I call the working girl’s version of this wonderful tofu-pork-black bean sauce dish.  It’s quick, and really easy.  I also like to think that it’s really healthy (because of the tofu! :)).  And all the ingredients are things you can get at the supermarket!

Ingredients:
Serves 4 people

  • 1 block soft tofu (about 350g), drained and diced
  • 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 500g minced pork
  • 1 Blue Dragon black bean stirfry sauce packet
  • 2-3 spring onions, sliced into thin diagonals and separate the white sections from the green leafier bits
  • 1 packet coriander chopped finely
  • 1-2 teaspoons chili oil (depending on how hot you want it, you can include the chili paste at the bottom of the jar)
  • 1 pork stock cube (I use Knorr)
  • 2 teaspoons light soy sauce
  • Salt to taste

Directions:

  1. Heat oil in the pan and brown minced pork.  Add blackbean stirfry sauce and pork stock cube.  Allow to simmer for 3 minutes.
  2. Add chili oil (and paste, if you want it hot, hot, hot!) and allow to simmer for 3 minutes.
  3. Add the chopped white sections fo the spring onions, the soy sauce and two-thirds of the coriander.  Add salt to taste (I like to make it salty, according to my taste as the tofu hasn’t been added to the pork mince at this stage).
  4. Add the diced tofu and mix gently, making sure the tofu isn’t mashed but is distributed well.  Allow to simmer for 5 mins.
  5. Serve over a bowl of steamed rice.