Trung Kho Recipe (Easier and Improved)

Trung Kho
11 eggs
1/4 c. nuoc mam (fish sauce)
3 large slices of ginger
1/2 tsp. sugar
2-3 c. water

Heat stove to medium high.

Caramellize sugar.

Add water, nuoc mam, and ginger. Add eggs. Simmer:


The yellow wedges are ginger.

Simmer down to about 1/4 c. sauce (or more or less depending on preferences).

The little brown marks are due to the pan being short so the surface of eggs was in direct contact with the bottom of the pan.

Voila, done!

Easy Eggplant Recipe

FS is all about easy, cheap comforts when it comes to food. Case in point: trung kho, which got even easier since the last time FS posted about it. Today, FS devotes a post to eggplant.

FS loves eggplant. FS has not met anyone else who loves eggplant as FS does. FS's mother developed this recipe with FS in mind just as FS developed the rum and raisin ice cream with FS's mother in mind. Such is the love between FS and her mother!

This is a supremely easy recipe requiring only a few ingredients and only a few steps.

Steamed and Broiled Egplant with Soy Sauce and Sesame Oil
3 eggplants
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp pepper (optional, perhaps only a dash for your taste, but FS likes this dish spicy)
1/2 to 1 tsp sugar (depends on flavor presence)

Eighth or sixteenth the eggplants into short strips.

From the back to front: two fourths, two eights, four sixteenths.

Place in steamer container.

Place in a plastic or glass covered container to steam. Microwave it. For FS, FS steamed each eggplant for 3 minutes since FS's container is small. 

A leftover plastic container from to-go order from the Chinese restaurant across the street = perfect steamer.

3 minutes per eggplant.

Meanwhile, mix the soy sauce and sesame oil and sugar in a medium-size bowl.

Take out steamed eggplant and drench and roll strip by strip in the mixture above to coat and then lay across aluminum foil.

All of the sliced eggplant: two different sizes for eating variation (maybe with rice or maybe with toast).

Close up of eggplant now covered in sauce.

Do this to all the eggplant strips. Place eggplant onto the top rack of the oven.

Then broil for 10-20 minutes depending on how crisp and well caramelized you want the strips to be. FS broiled hers for 18 minutes.

Serve with rice or on toast.

In reality, this could be flavored however you like. Sometimes FS and her family will do olive oil and salt and pepper.

And, of course, store in your rescued plastic:

Pumpkin Pie Filling Recipe and Sweet Potato Pie Filling Recipe

Pumpkin Pie Filling

1 c. pumpkin

3/4 c. milk

1 ripe banana

Dash of cinnamon and nutmeg (or as much as to your heart's content)

Heat milk and pumpkin together in microwave (since FS was using frozen pumpkin). Mash with banana and spices. Pour into an oven-safe bowl or pan such as aluminum foil or Pyrex or Corningware glass.

Bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes or longer depending on caramelization desire.

The pumpkin could also be switched out for sweet potato.

Sweet Potato Pie Filling

FS used a similar recipe to the one above, except that the pumpkin was replaced with sweet potato and the milk was replaced with soy milk. However, sweet potato requires some sugar to be added to it since sweet potato is starchier than pumpkin. Depending on the soy milk you use, the resulting mixture may be fairly thick. Also, this requires no baking (except for the crust, the crust requires baking).

Microwave the sweet potato. Then blend sweet potato, ripe banana, soy milk, and sugar. Add water as need be to adjust consistency and sugar as need be for sweetness.

Close-up of the sweet potato pie with slices of banana pressed into it.

Sweet potato pie.

Later on FS and her mother because lazy about the crust and just had sweet potato pie filling.

Pumpkin Pancakes Recipe

Pumpkin Pancakes 

1/4 c. flour

1/4 c. pumpkin

1/4 c. milk

1/2 tbsp. oil

1 tsp. honey

Mix. Cook on oiled pan. Makes two large pancakes. FS ate the pumpkin pancakes with slices of ripe banana instead of syrup.

Bake a Pumpkin Recipe

FS is a scavenger through and through. So, during October, people often buy pumpkins to decorate with by carving them and making them into jack-o-lanterns like so:

Meanwhile, FS roams about the campus finding those unneeded pumpkins left out to die on a kitchenette table or on the floor of a kitchen or was used by the dining hall as a decoration. For FS would never use a pumpkin to decorate, when she could possible be eating it.

In dedication to Fall, below is a pumpkin recipe.

Baked Pumpkin

Pumpkin

Utensils: knife, aluminum foil

Optional: salt for pumpkin seeds 

Ready your aluminum foil

FS reuses aluminum foil. She uses it and then washes it with soap and water.

Ready your pumpkin by scrubbing the outside with soap and water.

Examine the visible water droplets coating the pumpkin.

Cut around the top of the rind.

Cut around the steam.

Cut in half.

Note: use a large, sharp knife for this.

Scrape out insides into a bowl. Save for later.

Place pumpkin halves face down so that the skin and rind faces you.

FS saved space at the top for another rack to bake pumpkin seeds on.

Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 1 hour on the lower middle or middle rack.

FS is the kind of forgetful creature who remembers not the temperature settings of the things she makes. Ergo, take a picture of it!

Yay for pumpkin baking!

Meanwhile, sort the pumpkin insides for all the pumpkin seeds.

Wash pumpkin seeds.

FS's roommate in action. For love of food!

Spread across aluminum foil. Sprinkle salt all over. Bake on a top or bottom rack along with pumpkin for about 10-15 minutes. Remove. Cool. Enjoy.

Meanwhile, for the pumpkin itself. After baking, the skin is very soft and slides right off the pumpkin meat. FS is particularly judicious and will scrape off every bit of pumpkin flesh from the skin. Cooked pumpkin flesh is very soft and a little fibrous. FS then stored the cooked pumpkin in the freezer.

But, you may ask, what you will you do with it FS?

Which is where FS replies, Make pumpkin pie of course! Or pumpkin pie filling. FS is lazy so FS made up a recipe using banana for creaminess and sweetness, a little milk, and a dash (or many more dashes...) of cinnamon. FS also made pumpkin pancakes.

Taipan Bakery, Chinatown, NY

FS recently discovered her love for cake. She happened to find this bakery, which has her taro bun and... mousse cake, many different kinds of mousse cake, where chocolate was the unpopular one. FS had chocolate and it was light and fluffy and delicious.

On Yelp, it's Tai Pan, but as you can see from the sign, it's Taipan Bakery so FS goes with then sign.

Taipan Bakery (links to Yelp page)

194 Canal St
(between Mott St & Mulberry St)
New York, NY 10013
Neighborhood: Chinatown

Inside the bakery:

FS's purchased goodies (the trifecta of tea, chocolate mousse cake, and taro bun): 

Chocolate Mousse Cake:

Close-up.

The mousse cake has a thin cake wrap-around (the spotted portion). Inside, the top half is chocolate mousse and the bottom half is chocolate cake.

The taro bun:

The top part is actually flecked with small pieces of the same dough as the bun, but since the pieces are small, when baked, they become crispy. So the top part is nicely crunchy, which is common in most of Taipan's buns.

The taro inside is lightly sweet and very obviously mashed taro instead of a sugary taro paste, which might have less taro.

FS can't wait to go back to New York and sample more food.

Golden Steamer, Chinatown, New York

The Food Scavenger loves Yelp. However, there are never enough pictures for FS. FS wants to see the food, see the restaurant outside, and also see the inside of the food itself. FS has been tempted by many pictures of buns and then been struck by the mystery of it all, since the outside looks perfectly scrumptious, but what about the all important stuffing, the inside, the what makes a bun more than a piece of hollow bread?!

Today's post is devoted to the Golden Steamer in Chinatown, NY.

What wonders are hidden in Golden Steamer's bag?

Golden Steamer (links to Yelp's page)

143-A Mott St

(between Hester St & Grand St)

New York, NY 10013

Neighborhood: Little Italy

Oh, steamed buns. The indulgence of any poor college student, who just wants some pillow-y, edible fluff in their life, perhaps savory with ground pork and vegetables (with the tantalizing link of Chinese sausage and the refreshing hard-boiled egg nestled within) or sweet with red bean paste.

To note: FS neither speaks nor reads Chinese. The receipt was in Chinese. Thus, FS knows she was charged $4.00 each for two containers of buns and $3.75 each for one container. 

The Savory Bun with Ground Pork and Vegetables (came in a pack of four):

Look at the size of this thing in comparison to FS's hand!

Alone and beautiful...

 

The juicy, beautiful, scrumptious insides...

Close-up.

The Sweet Bun with Red Bean (came in a pack of six):

Alone and beautiful.

Inside.

Close-up.

 The Sweet bun with Pumpkin (came in a pack of six):

Beautiful.

Although there seems to be not that much filling, the filling was just enough to accentuate the pillow-y softness of the bun.

Ah. Yet again, looks little, but when eating it, the proportions seem perfect.

Ah...

FS also froze some of the buns. (Not that they lasted the week, but FS thought she'd be perfectly judicious in preserving her buns integrity.) The buns freeze very well. Simply place in a bowl and cover with a wet paper towel and heat for a minute to a minute and a half depending on your microwave's strength. To test whether the bun is ready, simply press on the bun to check that it is pillow-y soft and hot. This is the same procedure even when the buns are fresh. The heating time, though, is below a minute in the microwave.

The Food Scavenger in New York: Day 1