Monday, April 7, 2014

Foodie Diary: 京东肉饼&红薯西米露

I took a nap this afternoon and after I woke up I had an overwhelming desire for grocery shopping.  I knew that Ben&Jerry ice creams were on sale, and I ended up deciding to try out two new recipes.

One was for 北京京东肉饼.  It's essentially meat and scallions stuffed inside pancakes.  It actually looks like quesadillas, but without the cheese and other quesadilla essentials.  Here's the website for the recipe (it's in Chinese): http://www.meishij.net/chufang/diy/gaodianxiaochi/59061.html

The recipe was... vague to say the least.  It gave no numerical amount for any of the ingredients, it didn't tell you how to make the pancake, you are apparently just supposed to know as part of you general knowledge.  And the direction was very... qualitative.  It was surprising that my food turned out very similar to the picture.  I was quite pleased with myself, even though I almost set off the smoke alarm.

Here's mine:

Looks alright, doesn't it?  This was actually my second try.  The first batch looked like this:

Oh boy...

It was too big and I left it in the pan for too long.  Tasted ok though.  

Tips:
  • Originally I wanted to add other things into it, like onions or bok choy, to make it veggie rich.  But my friend kindly told me that adding these things would increase the water content in the filling, making the crust very wet and soggy when you pan-fry it.  I might still try it next time though.
  • Add water to ground pork and mix before adding the other stuff.
  • I added too much soy sauce.  It didn't taste bad, just kinda weird.
  • don't fry it on one side for too long, it burns quite easily.  But don't take it out to quickly, there are layers of dough and meat that have to be cooked through
  • If you have leftovers, like I do, you can keep it in the fridge and pan-fry it before eating the next time.  But since I'm going to bring it to work tomorrow I will haven't to microwave.  It'll still be okay I believe.
红薯椰奶西米露

This one has no recipe since it was so simple.  All the ingredients are in the title.  I picked sweet potato for its color and natural sweet taste, but I think next time I will use purple sweet potato, if I can get my hands on some.  
I used small tapioca, but it still took a while to cook.  After all the tapioca turned transparent, I poured some coconut milk over it, and put diced sweet potato in it.  That's it.

Tips:
  • I microwaved the sweet potato chunks for about 3 minutes.  You don't want to steam or boil them completely through or they will just be a pile of mush.  Slightly microwaved chunks are just right.
  • The coconut milk I bought was only slightly sweetened, and I didn't add and sugar to the tapioca when I was boiling them.  So it was kind of bland.  I added some maple syrup since the coconut milk was cold and sugar just wouldn't dissolve.  It tasted pretty good.  
  • You have to constantly stir the tapioca or everything will stick to the bottom of your saucepan.  It was a bit tedious but otherwise you would be very sorry.

I think next time I will use a different colored bowl.




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