Monday, 29 June 2009 12:24 AM
fish food, part duex
This is looking more and more like a food blog...
Well, so be it. Mom and I tried our hand at making
nyonya dumplings. It's a first for both of us, especially seeing the inky blue colouring oozing from the
bunga telang soaked in hot water. And the dumplings turned out good too even though we forgot to add the peanuts.
Not bad for a first attempt. :-)
Labels: bunga telang, food, nyonya dumpling, zongzi
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Sunday, 31 May 2009 2:40 PM
How about some fish food?
Zongzi. Yum.
I helped my mom make them last weekend. Wrapping the zongzi or dumplings is a real challenge and it has taken me years to master it. Even now, I would say I’ve achieved only 70% of mom’s dexterity in wrapping all that glutinous rice, beans, pork, salted egg, Chinese chestnut, mushrooms and dried shrimps with two pieces of bamboo leaves and tying them all up with straw into little bundles of delight.
So among the perfectly wrapped pyramids of sticky glutinous rice in my mom’s house, you’ll find a handful of bulging imperfect pyramids, some bursting at the corners – those would be my handiwork.
Every year, I’d eat zongzi without really knowing why. It has something to do with a tradition of throwing the zongzi into the river. Today I came across an article in the Weekend Journal, saying that occasion of eating zongzi which is also known as the Dragon Boat festival, is to commemorate Qu Yuan, a poet and member of the Chu state ruling family during the Warring States period between 475 and 221 BC.
The story goes that Qu Yuan threw himself into tributary of the Yangtze river in despair when the Chu state fell to the Qins. He had warned the Chus about the Qins but was played out by political rivals and banished to a region south of the Yangtze river.
The people were overcome by sorrow and threw rice balls into the river so that the fish would not eat Qu Yuan’s body, which they couldn’t find. They also took dragon boats out into the rivers along with the load drums to scare the fish.
And that’s how we end up eating zongzi every fifth day of the fifth lunar month.
The story got me thinking, does that mean that all these years we have effectively been eating fish food? Well, even so, I’m not complaining. It’s good fish food, after all.Labels: Festivals, food
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Tuesday, 19 May 2009 10:32 PM
Weddings and funerals
I love weddings. The flowers, ribbons and lace, flower girls and ring bearer…
…even when you are one of the odd singles forced to dine with a group of aunties and uncles you've never met because the hosts want to make up the number at empty tables...
…even when you have to listen to mushy love songs from the 1980s the whole night…
…even when you have given a big
angpow for bad food disguised as five-star hotel offering…
…even when there's a chance you may bump into the jerk you once dated…
Okay, I lied, I don’t
lurve weddings that much but they are tolerable only if the ones tying the knot are close friends or family. What I dread the most is the dude you’ve not met in a million years, who comes along with some preconceived perceptions of you. This is how one episode went:
“So, which category are you?”
“What?”
“You know, are you one of them or us?”
“Ohhh….whatever I am, I’m the opposite of you.”
An audible gasp is heard.
“You’re still single then. So when’s your turn?”
“My turn to win the lottery, fly kites or kick your ass, you bonehead? You know, if this were a funeral, I’ll make sure I’m the first to ask you ‘When’s your turn?’”
Hah…I love having the last word.
Labels: Musings
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Tuesday, 5 May 2009 9:11 PM
Hello stranger
I finally have something significant to share. It’s been a while I know and it’s not that I wasn’t inspired. The simple truth is, I got lazy.
There’s so much to read these days that you just take and take but there’s no output. Was I constipated then? Well, if there’s such a thing as verbal diarrhea why not verbal constipation? That’s a thought.
Anyway, last week, I experimented with a macro lens borrowed from a fellow photographer and put them to use with my baking friend’s gumpaste flowers - that's edible flower, FYI. They look as good as real. I know I could have been fooled.
Here are some of the shots of the lovely flowers.
Check out more of the sugar artist's work
here.
Labels: Photography
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Tuesday, 3 March 2009 10:51 PM
The rocky road ahead
How many ways are there to say "recession"? Let’s see, there’s economic downturn, slowdown, slump, depression, contraction…honestly, I ran out of words to describe the mess we are in as I wrote about the economic situation last week for the publication I work for.
And as the whole world worries about surviving this global financial and economic crisis, Malaysia’s been hit by a political crisis. Dudes (as in the politicos), we don’t need a political crisis now, geddit? Sheesh...well, obviously not, as the fighting continues and crises deepen.
In the midst of all these, a former co-worker asked me to bake cupcakes for her. Well, why not? There were no monetary gains given the small order but I did profit from the extra cupcakes made and experience a surge of entrepreneurial spirit long buried deep within.
The verdict? I can’t quit my day job just yet. I probably only have a sliver of enterprising spirit in me, if any at all. In any case, who wants to eat cupcakes when a recession looms?
But I have to say it was really nice icing and decorating the cupcakes, putting them in a nice box tied with a bow and delivering them to a happy face. That, as MasterCard would say, is priceless.
The cupcakes I made were called Rocky Road Cupcakes. Very apt given the challenges ahead be it political or financial.
So am I worried? Hah! Have a cupcake, dude.Labels: Baking
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