Chinese snacks - Part two (Roast Duck)

Half a roast duck from Chinatown, Boston. Only $9!

While most people might not classify roast duck as a "snack," it can be. In Chinatown, look for the windows with various roasted animals hanging in the window and you'll probably find a great deal. For only $9 at most places there, you can get half a duck, roasted and chopped up into bite-size pieces with some sauce to go. With that half duck, a whole bunch of things can be prepared at home.

1. First, get the meaty breast pieces and have those as a snack or main dish with your meal. When you get home, it's probably going to be hard to resist having a piece or two as soon as you open the box and get a whiff of the roasted duck aroma. Or, if you would like to make appetizers, cut up some of the meat and use it with scallions or other vegetables for wonton appetizers (see my blog post, "Wonton wrappers - not only for wontons!"

If you ask for the duck in Chinese, they might give you the head
and all the internal organs! Otherwise, they'll probably assume that
you won't appreciate those parts.

2. Then, there are going to be some bony parts, like the neck and rib section of the duck. In the picture above, there's a head and a bony piece on the left. Keep those because you can use those to make a tasty duck broth. Just boil the bones in some water with some scallions and whatever you'd like to add. Take the bones out and strain it if you think there are still some pieces of bones in there. The skin is tasty so leave that in there.  For a more fancy version, check out eHow. Here are some dishes you can make with duck broth:

• Add noodles and vegetables to the broth to make a noodle soup dish.
• Use the broth as a base for dumpling (or other) soup. Whatever you would make with chicken broth, you could probably make with duck broth.
• Braise vegetables with the broth.
• Use the broth to make polenta.
• Instead of using water, use the broth to make rice.

The head and internal organs, ready to store in the freezer.

For more inspiration, here are some websites that feature duck broth:

The Japanese Food Report

Chowhound

Chinese snacks - part 1

If you go to any large Chinese supermarket (e.g. Super 88, C-Mart, etc.), your whole grocery bill should be lower than if you go to Shaw's or Stop & Shop. One of my favorite aisles is the snack section, with imported Asian sweets and snacks, all for great prices. In this post, I will review one of those snacks: Crispiroll - Latte Coffee.

Each box is only $3.49 at C-Mart, in Chinatown. There are 32 pieces in each box. According to the box, these snacks are from Taiwan and "suitable for ovo-lacto vegetarian," in case you were into that sort of thing. The cappuccino on the box looks much better than the snack, right? Well, it turns out that the snack doesn't really look as tasty as the picture. However, for $3.49, it's a pretty good snack for munching on while you have a cup of coffee. What else could you get for about 11 cents a piece? When I opened one of the packages, I could smell coffee. The "cream" on the inside is not really smooth on its own but you won't notice it because the brown outside part is crunchy. All in all, it's like a cheap and smaller version of Pirouline rolled wafers but a little crunchier and coffee flavored. Think of it as pirated Pirouline, if you will. I'd buy this again.

Nice picture on the box. Only $3.49 for 32 individually wrapped pieces.

32 individually wrapped snacks

Comparison of the real thing with the picture.

Of course the picture looks better!

Sponge toffee - Part Deux

The advantage of making your own sponge toffee is that you can create your own flavors. In this post, we will look at espresso flavored sponge toffee. The recipe is:

1/4 cup espresso

1/4 cup honey

1 cup sugar (any combination of white, brown, and/or Turbinado)

1 tsp vanilla

2 tsp baking soda

(Notice that there is no vinegar here. It really does not bring anything to the party, so leave it out.)

As with any other sponge toffee recipe, heat the first 4 ingredients in a sauce pan until 300 F, quickly mix in the baking soda, and pour it all into a greased pan or parchment paper-lined pan. If you use a silicon mat, make sure the sides of the pan are either greased or lined with parchment paper. That's it. For the results, here's a video:

In the video, I tried putting a few chocolate chips on the bottom of the pan to see what would happen. It's actually a good idea if you were going to drizzle chocolate on it anyway. The advantage is that the heat of the toffee when you pour it on top of the chocolate will melt the chocolate and make it flat. I'm not sure why that's a good thing, but if you want that kind of presentation, there you go. Fancy, eh?

Upon closer inspection, the pan was actually too big to make a difference in thickness of the toffee. For this amount of candy, use a smaller pan, perhaps a square brownie pan, so that the toffee has less room to spread out. In the batch that I showed in the video, the sides were a little higher but the middle was exactly the same height as the other slab of sponge toffee. However, the taste was definitely better in this batch because the espresso and honey contribute some nice complex flavors. Corn syrup (replaced by honey here) is cheaper but really has no flavor. The molasses from the brown sugar also adds some nice dark flavor to the toffee. If you want to make a lot of sponge toffee with honey, BMS has a great deal - 5 pounds of wildflower honey for only $13.99. That's enough honey to make sponge toffee for your friends and your neighbors' friends.

For another person's experiences and pictures of the sponge toffee-making process, see the Chocolate Apprentice. That page also has a recipe for nut croquant.

Making sponge toffee and homemade Crunchie bars

When I was growing up in Canada, one of my favourite chocolate bars was the Cadbury Crunchie bar, which is not readily available in Boston. I found some a couple of weeks ago at a candy store in Back Bay but they were $3 each! [Update: you can get a case of 24 Crunchie bars on Amazon.com for less than $30 (and free shipping) now.] As a poor student, it is not possible to enjoy Crunchie on a regular basis. So, I decided to look online to see how easy it was to make sponge toffee at home. It's actually quite easy.

The first time I tried making sponge toffee, it didn't turn out right because I didn't use a candy thermometer and didn't heat the sugar up to the appropriate temperature (300F). So, if you want to try this, go to a kitchen supply store and spend the $11 or $12 for a candy thermometer! Kitchenwitch, in Jamaica Plain, carries them and BMS Paper Company usually has them too. Kitchenwitch also has a $4 thermometer but it's just a glass thermometer and I'm a bit of a klutz. That's why I went with the $11 model, which encases the thermometer in a stainless steel frame. It would take some effort to break that. Macy's and other stores with kitchen sections have candy thermometers too. If you don't want to leave your house, Amazon has a great selection. (Click on the pictures on this page to go directly to the product on Amazon.com)

There are several recipes online, in video form (e.g. on Youtube) and print form (e.g. Cooking Channel website). The basic recipe is 1 cup sugar (brown or white), 1 cup corn syrup (or other form of liquified sugar, such as molasses, Lyle's golden syrup or honey), and 1 Tbsp baking soda. However, it can easily be altered to make different flavors, such as ginger molasses, maple, or vanilla.

In addition to the ingredients, you will need a saucepan, a candy thermometer, and a parchment paper-lined or greased pan to put the toffee. Some recipes call for vinegar but it's not necessary. The baking soda will bubble up without it. Make sure your saucepan is large enough to accommodate the extra volume when the toffee bubbles up. Also, use a wooden spoon to stir the mixture. A whisk doesn't work well because the toffee gets stuck in between the wires. I also noticed that some recipes tell you to grease the parchment paper. This is not necessary because the whole point of using parchment paper is that it is naturally non-stick!

For those of you who are curious about the science behind sponge toffee, here's an article for your enjoyment:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/sep/24/sugar-honeycomb-cinder-toffee

Cheap but uber-awesome candy!
Even if you use honey and turbinado sugar, it should cost you less than $5 to make a pan of sponge toffee, which you can then dip into chocolate to make a bunch of homemade misshapen Crunchie bars (see pictures below). If you're really on a budget, use corn syrup (around $3-4 a bottle with enough for more than 2 batches) with some water and white sugar. For the price of a Crunchie bar, you can make a whole pan of sponge toffee. For chocolate dipping, get a bag of chocolate chips from Trader Joe's (around $3) and you're all set. A bag of chocolate chips should be enough to make at least 8 or 9 bars, making the cost of each bar about $1. The other advantage of making your own chocolate bars is that you can dip the sponge toffee in dark chocolate, which counter-balances the sweetness of the sponge toffee better than the milk chocolate in the store-bought bars. If you're too lazy to dip each piece in chocolate, pour the melted chocolate over the toffee before breaking it into pieces. This is probably one of the least expensive candies to make and it's a great gift to give at Christmas or any time.

Here is a video of me making this recipe:

In this video, I might have stirred the toffee a little too much. Stir until the baking soda is mixed in but not much more than that.

Sponge toffee from another batch - with honey and less stirring after the baking soda was added.

Sponge toffee pieces - ready to be dipped in chocolate (or stored in an airtight container)

Sponge toffee, freshly dipped in melted semi-sweet chocolate chips

Chocolate-dipped sponge toffee ready to store (or devour)!

For more variations on this recipe, please see my other posts on sponge toffee:

Sponge Toffee - Part Deux

Sponge Toffee - Part Trois (with butter)

Wonton wrappers - not just for wontons!

 For less than $2, you can get a package of wonton wrappers from Super 88 or any of the Chinese grocers in Chinatown. At C-Mart, they have a selection of white and yellow wrappers, in either square or round shapes. With these wrappers, you can make a light lasagna, wonton dumplings (duh, of course), baked appetizers, or a lighter version of some Italian pasta dishes. The great thing about wonton wrappers is that they're basically cheap fresh pasta. However, the fact that they are fresh also means that they don't last forever in your fridge. I've thrown away several packages because I had forgotten that they were there and mold grew on them. So, if you think you won't use some for a while, divide them into useable portions and freeze them in Ziploc bags. Defrost them in the fridge the day before you are going to use them.

If you don't live near an Asian supermarket and can't find them in your local supermarket, there are recipes online that show you how to make your own. However, they take a bit of time to make.

Light Lasagna
Ok, so the first dish I made was not wontons. I made a light lasagna, using wonton wrappers, jarred tomato sauce, mushrooms, cheese, ramekin dishes, and a toaster oven. If you'd like to make a bigger lasagna in a baking pan, that's great too but the point of using wonton wrappers is that you can make a small lasagna for one person, you don't have to boil the noodles, and you can do this in your humble toaster oven. In the pictures below, you can see that you can eat it straight out of the ramekin dish, if you don't want to dirty up a plate. For all you fancy folks, use an oven mitt to flip the lasagna onto a plate. Either way, you have a light snack (one ramekin) or a meal (2 ramekins).

Layer ingredients, starting with the sauce (so the pasta doesn't stick to the ramekin and the noodles get cooked).

Repeat layers until you use up all the ingredients. 

Keep layering!

Bake in the toaster oven at about 325-350F for 15 minutes (until the noodles are cooked).

All done!

Flip it onto a plate, if you like.

Wonton Appetizers
I'll show you just one more idea for wonton wrappers because it's not as obvious as making a pasta dish. All you need for this is a mini-muffin pan, wonton wrappers, tomato sauce, cheese, and whatever you have in the fridge that would be a good pizza topping. A regular muffin tin will work too. This is not my original idea so I'd like to acknowledge a similar recipe that includes sausage and cheese on Allrecipes.com. If you're into Indian flavors, there's a good one that was recently posted on 365 Days of Eating. It requires a lot more ingredients though. [Update - July 2012]: Here's one for buffalo chicken cups.

1. Lightly oil the muffin tin. This will ensure that the appetizers come out easily and the oil will make the wonton skins taste like they were fried (a bit).

2. Put a wonton wrapper in each muffin cup. You will need to make a couple of folds to make it fit. See the pictures below.

3. In each wonton, place 1 teaspoon of sauce, whatever toppings you like, and then top it off with shredded cheese.

4. If you want the appetizers to have more of a fried taste, lightly brush the wonton wrappers with oil. This is entirely optional because the top parts of the appetizers will get crunchy without brushing with oil.

5. Bake in a toaster oven for about 10 minutes at 325 F. Since all toaster ovens are different, watch the baking process carefully the first time. They are done when the tops are golden brown. The ones in the first picture below were a minute or two over-baked. The color in the second picture was better.

Another way to do this is to pre-bake the wonton wrappers before putting the fillings in and then bake them for a few more minutes to melt the cheese. It just depends on whether you'd like the whole wonton to be crunchy or not. If you don't pre-bake the wonton wrappers, the bottom parts of the appetizers will be soft.

Use chopped up leftovers and cheese!

Wonton appetizers in a mini muffin tin.

Wonton appetizers in a regular muffin tin.

Round wonton appetizers with duck and prosciutto pieces

 Alright, so there you have it - two ideas for wonton wrappers. They're cheap, fast to cook, and tasty too.