Er…
So this is possibly quite silly, but the H and I need someone who can read Chinese. See, we bought ourselves a nice rice cooker from the local Chinatown. What we hadn’t planned for was that although it came with an English instruction manual, it doesn’t provide an explanation of the different settings in a language either of us speaks. There’s a row of white Chinese characters around the central LCD screen (which is meant to be the cooking modes), and a further set of five settings on the LCD screen itself (which is meant to be the rice type, if we read the instruction manual correctly). I have no idea if they’re traditional or simplified Chinese.

Pictures below after the cut. If anyone can provide us with translations, we’d be pretty grateful (it would avoid our messing up dinner by confusing congee, steam-cooking and standard rice cooking…)

EDIT: we’re pretty reasonably sure the white characters are the following (or some variant): regular, quick, small amount, cake, steam, soup, congee, casserole. We just don’t know which ones correspond to which…
Read More »

Calling on the combined wisdom of readers of this blog…

Would anyone happen to know good recipes which involve tortilla flour? (not tortillas, obviously :-p. We don’t own a tortilla press, and it’s a bit too much of a hassle without one).

Thanks in advance!

And on a more cheerful topic–we had two lemongrass stalks leftover from a previous meal, and I was looking for a way to use them. Ended up making lemongrass chicken, which tasted awesome. So before I forget how I came to this result, here’s the lowdown.

The recipe is a mix between two Lemongrass Roasted Chicken recipes: one from Wandering Chopsticks’ blog, and the other from Mai Pham’s Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table. They both used a whole chicken, which I couldn’t find at this time of the year (usual provider on holiday, as befits the month of August), so I made do with chicken breasts.

You’ll need:
-4 boneless chicken breasts (about 400-500g)

-5 small onions, or 1 large onion (I used the bottom part of 5 scallions, though the ones I bought had bulbs double the size of “standard” Asian scallions, such as the ones you see in the topmost picture here)
-2 stalks lemongrass, minced
-5-6 garlic cloves, minced
-2 tblsp. fish sauce
-2 tblsp. sugar (or 1 tblsp. sugar, 1 tblsp. honey)
-2 tblsp. soy sauce
-1 tsp. salt

-2 tblsp. fresh chopped coriander (the recipe called for 2 tblsp. The only coriander I could find was at the supermarket and came in one of those little translucid boxes, pre-washed–I’m pretty sure it was 20g, but not 100%. I ended up using all of it, because I’ve found it keeps very badly in the fridge and didn’t want to freeze it. Overall, I’d definitely add more than 2 tablespoons. Maybe 3-4).

Combine all the ingredients except the coriander and the chicken. Put the chicken in the marinade–if you have time, leave it for 1 hour in the fridge. If you don’t, then skip this part.
Pre-heat oven to 180-200°C (thermostat 6-7), put the chicken and about half the marinade, and let it cook for 40 minutes, until top part is starting to turn golden. Then turn chicken over, brush with rest of marinade, and cook for another 40 minutes until golden. Sprinkle coriander on top of the finished product, and serve with steamed rice.

There you go. Shiny and yummy.

EDIT: now with picture!

Swamped. Or ocean-ed, quite possibly.

Working on a new short in the Xuya continuity, involving spaceships and poets.

Made my first serious phở ersatz, mostly pre-prepared broth and paste, but with veggies and spices thrown in for a better taste. Yummy… Next up, I think, is using pre-prepared beef broth (instead of the pre-made phở broth, which is full of MSG). The full broth including beef is at least three hours’ simmering, too long to make for an evening dish, but I can live with cubes of beef broth and additional spice. Now to find some cloves, which my local supermarket doesn’t stock…

Vietnamese continues apace; we now have a book. Or rather, four books, out of which the first one is entirely dedicated to pronunciation. Arg. Still struggling with normal vowels and consonants, and then we move to diphtongs…
Fun stuff I’ve learnt: my default tone isn’t the level one (ngang), but rather the falling-rising one (hỏi). When I’m really tired, I default to this, with hilarious results…
Also, the day I can pronounce “Wednesday” in Vietnamese is going to be a red-letter one (“ngày thứ tư”, lit. “the fourth day”, regroups four sounds I can’t manage,, the “ng”, the “th” which should be somewhat harsh but distinct from the “t”, and the “ư”).

Went over to the supermarket to buy some celery. When I got to the tills, the cashier looked at the vegetable with a dubious air. He then turned to his colleague brandishing it and asked, “How much is that?” His colleague shrugged and said he had no idea what the thing was.

“It’s celery,” I pointed out.

He still looked very much bemused. After he found the barcode for it and I was in the process of paying for the shopping, he wanted to know if there was any use for it and what you actually did with this weird-looking veggie.

Clearly, celery isn’t as recognisable as carrots :=)

So, I did promise the recipe for the scones…

Here you go.
You will need
230 g flour
11 g baking soda
60g butter
1 teaspoon caster sugar
145 mL of milk
2 tablespoons Orange Blossom water
120g chocolate, chopped into coarse bits
Zest of half an orange, chopped into tiny bits
Pinch of salt

(makes 8-9 scones)
-Preheat the oven at 200°C. Leave the butter out to soften a bit.
-Sift the flour, the sugar and the baking soda in a bowl, and gently rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the milk little by little, until you have a spongy dough.
-Work in the orange blossom water, the orange zest and the chocolate chips until the dough is smooth and uniform.
-Grease a baking sheet. Divide the dough into 8-9 parts and shape it like cylinders (roughly 5cm across, 1cm thick). Or, if it’s too much trouble, just put dollops of the dough onto the baking sheet
-Bake for about 15-20 minutes, until the scones are risen and light golden in colour.

Those are my VD scones (though I didn’t put enough baking soda in, and ended up making oversized cookies. They are supposed to look a bit better than this normally):

Enjoy :=)

(I originally was looking for a chocolate and orange scone recipe after eating very tasty ones in Montreal, but couldn’t find one that worked on the net. In the end, I adapted this from the plain oven scones recipe contained in Scottish Teatime Recipes by Johanna Mathie)

As the radio silence might indicate, I’ve been fairly busy, though most of it wasn’t writing. Had a fun and busy weekend with friends and family, saw Neil Williamson on his way through Paris, tried an Asian recipe (cha siu, which turned out awesome and which I heartily recommend. There will be pics next time, I swear), and worked my way through more Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries.

And now it’s back to the grind–aka researching the next Obsidian and Blood novel. I’ve already got a fairly good idea of what it’s about, but now I need a detailed outline and a plot that (hopefully) makes sense. Got a pile of books on the sofa, a full teapot, and my trusty notebook…

In an Asian cookbook that was among the bookstore’s pick for the month:
“Nước mắm sauce: pick it amber, and not black and/or smelly, as the last denotes inferior quality.”

Er… My nước mắm sauce is as black and smelly as they come, and it’s certainly not inferior quality (it’s got the official Vietnamese seal of approval). Amber says weak to me, aka the Thai fish sauce I tried a few months ago that just wouldn’t decent dipping sauce no matter how much I poured. But I guess if we’re talking about European palates…

(yes, the BF thinks my latest batch of nước chấm is a little…extreme? I think I finally managed to mix it with the proper kick)

Yesterday, my Mom and I went to eat Vietnamese–and Mom wrangled some freshly-ground chillies from the restaurant, which she gave me to take home. So, yesterday evening, all proud of my new toy, I mix some fresh nước mắm sauce, and my hand hovers over the chillies, wondering how much to put in. After a while, I settled on the smallest unit I knew, one coffee spoon–dumped it in, and mixed everything.

After trying out the sauce with some fried rolls, I might need to rethink my smallest unit…

Also, it’s been said many times, but don’t let me loose in an Asian foodstore. I managed to get out with only a handful of bottles (sesame oil, undiluted nước mắm, and rice vinegar) , some fresh noodles, some fruit and some ginger, but still, it was a heavy trek back home. (also, I’m now the proud owner of a garlic press, various wooden spatulas of different shapes, and a large vegetable peeler…)

And as a parting short, via SF Signal: Samurai Wars, aka the Star Wars Universe redone in ukiyo-e (traditional apanese) style. Made of awesome (for some reason, can’t link to any of the images, but check out the following: Admiral Ackbar, Jabba the Hutt, Obi-Wan Kenobi).

Well, it’s official: I’ve caught the grandmother of all colds, probably spread to me via the air conditioning system. The only question now is how long the BF will survive without catching it

On the plus side, my books arrived today–I immediately lent the Alastair Reynolds to the BF, who needed reading for a train journey, and kept the Daniel Fox in my grubby little paws. Also made some progress in a new story, after a couple abortive starts–1500 words so far, aiming for 2,500 so should be done soon.

In the cooking experiment series, we bought fresh Chinese noodles yesterday, and I cooked them with cha lua (alias Vietnamese sausage/ham). Yummy. I love this; usually, I stick it in a sandwich or cook rice to go with it, but frying noodles, scallions and putting soy sauce on top of everything was pretty nice.