Making Radish Cake

Radish cake is one of those dishes that Chinese people almost always order when they are having dim sum. That and "har gow" (shrimp dumpling) and shu mai (pork dumpling) are pretty common. While it's easy to find plenty of dumplings in the freezer section of any Asian market, radish cake (or "turnip cake") is something that has to be made from scratch. There are plenty of recipes online, such as this one (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Turnip-Cake-Law-Bock-Gow-100779), but they look like they take a ridiculous amount of time to make. So, the Poor Student has created a video to make the whole process easier. There are other videos on youtube that show you how to make radish cake, so check those out too, in case you want a second opinion...

Basically, you need 2 cups rice flour, 1.5 cups water, 6 shitake mushrooms, around 3 lbs daikon (Japanese radish), and 2 Chinese sausages (or other kind of sausage). Other things you can add are scallions and dried shrimp. The base of the recipe is rice flour, water, and radish. All of the other stuff is just for adding flavour. To make the process easier, you can use a grater to grate the daikon or a food processor (instead of dicing the daikon with a knife). Chop or process everything, cook the daikon with the flavouring ingredients, mix the water with the rice flour, and throw it all together in a loaf pan. Steam it for an hour. Cool it for several hours, slice it, and pan fry it. While you're waiting for it to cook, go do your homework and set an alarm to tell you when to do the next step. The recipe is time consuming mainly because of the time it takes to cook the daikon, steam it, and cool it. The rest of the steps are pretty quick.

Making this dish is like making polenta but perhaps with a bit more chopping involved. It's kinda time consuming but one batch will yield about 10 large slices, which can be stored in the fridge until you're ready to fry one up.

Fancy-Pants Sausage Squash Soup/Stew

Normally, I wouldn't bother making a fancy soup that involves putting the soup into the blender and back into the pot. However, I tried it recently and realized that it is worth the few minutes it takes to transform a simple squash soup into something similar to what I would get at a restaurant. When you puree the squash, it looks like a creamy soup even though you didn't add any cream or milk. Some people would insist on adding cream or dairy to make it richer but honestly, I don't think it was necessary. So, for vegans, this might be a good way to have a fancy soup that suits your diet needs. As a bonus, according to MyFinessPal, this recipe is loaded with Vitamin A and Vitamin C. Eat a bowl of this and you'll have enough of those vitamins for the day. Eat a big bowl of this and you'll be overdosing on those vitamins, which is not such a bad thing to do.

The ingredients can vary according to whatever you like but you definitely need some winter squash to create a creamy-looking soup, whether it's acorn squash, butternut, or whatever's on sale at the market. Pureeing at least some of the potatoes and chickpeas with the squash will also make the soup a little thicker.

Ingredients:
(serves 6 to 10 people, depending on their appetites and whether this is the meal itself or an appetizer)

1 package of Turkey smoked sausage sliced into thin coins (e.g. 14 oz Butterball) (leave out if you're vegetarian and add something else that has salt and spices in it)
A bunch of kale (or whatever green stuff you have in the fridge) chopped
3 to 6 cloves of garlic (as you like) chopped
2 to 3 tomatoes (diced)
1 to 2 onions (diced)
2 Tbsp olive oil
3 medium potatoes (diced)
2 small winter squash or 1 medium/large winter squash (cubed)
2 cups cooked chickpeas
1 cup of water
possible seasonings: cumin, soy sauce, finely diced jalapenos, Frank's hot sauce, black pepper, nutmeg

After everything is chopped and sliced, put it all into a slow cooker for about 4 hours at around 150F. If you have time and would like to be extra fancy, saute the garlic and onion in olive oil before adding to the pot. If you don't, just dump it all into the pot. At the end of the 4 hours, put the squash and vegetables into a blender with some liquid. Leave the sausage in the pot. There should be plenty of liquid in there because the vegetables give off a lot of moisture in addition to the cup of water that you added at the start. The trick is to let the soup cook and to avoid opening the cooker while the soup is cooking. Puree the squash and liquid in a couple of batches. The soup is hot, so if you put too much in, the blender top might fly off. Put the pureed soup back into the pot to warm until it's time to eat.

Also, you don't have to puree all of the squash and veggies. It's nice to have a few chunks in there for texture. Actually, I like leaving most of the potato in there in chunk form. The chickpeas also add some interesting texture to the dish. If you're trying to impress someone, drizzle some olive oil on top of the soup when you serve it.

JP Kitchen - in Jamaica Plain

The first time I went to JP Kitchen, I ordered the seafood special. It came with a bread roll instead of rice. Whatever. When I got home, I was a little surprised to see that it was deep fried, which is not a bad thing but I was expecting that it was cooked in a wok. Whatever. There were a few chunks of fake crab and the jalapenos kinda threw me off. I liked the squid and shrimp though. It was tasty but I wanted to try something else. This is the kind of dish that needs another dish to go with it.

Salt & Pepper Seafood

A couple of days later, I tried their combo #34. It included lobster sauce, which is actually made of pork. I really liked the fact that it came in a separate container with a lid, within the box. At some places, they just  put it in one of the dividers of the box so it spills all over the place. JP Kitchen's lobster sauce is also unique because there are scallops in the sauce! At first, I was wondering what that round white thing was and was pleasantly surprised to find not just one, but 3 scallops! The rice was good and had plenty of shrimp. Not too salty either. I'm usually ambivalent about crab rangoon but these were actually quite good. I'd actually order this combo again in the future. As you can tell in the picture below, it's a lot of food and enough for at least two meals. You might want to add some sauteed veggies to make it a healthier meal though.

Combo #34 - shrimp fried rice, crab rangoon, and lobster sauce

The lobster sauce has scallops in it!

If you can't finish the lobster sauce, save it to use for cooking some vegetables such as Chinese cabbage or spinach. It's a tasty sauce that you can put in a frying pan, add your chopped veggies, and make a nice side dish in about 10 minutes or less. Or, if you're just really lazy, make some rice and pour the sauce on top for a meal.

More dishes from subsequent visits (to be updated with each visit):

 Click on the pictures for a larger image.

Scootin' in Boston - Searching for Ribena

In this episode of Scootin' in Boston, the Poor Student rides from Route 9 to Kiki's Kwik-Mart (in Brighton) via Washington Street. For those of you who are not familiar with Ribena, it's a British black currant syrup that used to be available in Asian markets. However, the only place in town that carries it in Boston now is Kiki's in Brighton. If anyone knows of other places that carry Ribena, please leave a comment.

The video footage was from a Sunday afternoon ride at the end of August, before the students moved back to Boston. There was very little traffic and it was nice ride.

Mac & Cheese

Mac & Cheese is a dish that's almost as convenient as packaged ramen noodles. It requires a little more time than ramen noodles but is probably a little closer to "comfort food" than the ramen. However, a box of mac & cheese is basically a box of carbs and you need to add some stuff to it if you want to make a healthier and more balanced meal. It's a pretty flexible meal, so whatever is in your fridge will probably be a nice addition to the cheese sauce. Some examples are: a handful of frozen vegetables, mushrooms, bacon & diced onion, or egg & scallion. If you want to be extra fancy, dump the finished mac & cheese into a baking pan, sprinkle some crushed potato chips and shredded cheese over it, and broil it until the cheese is golden brown.

O'Day's brand, only 50 cents at the Save-a lot!

Once you mix in some veggies, bacon, other meat, and whatever, the taste of the mac & cheese will not be very important in the overall dish. So, if you're planning on using mac & cheese as a "foundation" for the rest of your meal, just get the cheap stuff. Make it healthy by adding veggies and beans. Actually, bean chili is a tasty addition and you'll get your daily intake of fibre quite easily.

Mac & Cheese brands: O'Day's, Trader Joe's, and CVS

How different are these brands of mac & cheese? See for yourself:

Nutrition labels for O'Day's, Trader Joe's, and CVS brands