cassia

Some Rou Gui tea to ease the midterm woes:

Gongfu brewing for 1 requires all the tea cup in my possession to hold the minimum amount of water my kettle boil.

This time I tried the dry warming method instead of my usual wet method. The wet method consist of pouring boiling water into the pot, pouring it out and then putting in the leafs. On the other hand, I first put in the leaves and then poured hot water on the outside of the pot. Scroll down in this article for an in depth explanation, though I don't follow the ChaoZhou method. This resulted in a very chocolate-y and malty aroma, which I haven't experience in this tea before. Also finally tasted a hint of the cinnamon that Rou Gui is suppose to have, but I'm not sure if this can be attributed to the warming method.

sesame

Proof that energy exists in discreet quantas via breakfast: was toasting bagels on medium heat for ~10mins, no change in colour. Turns heat to high and it burns in less an a minute.

In other news: designer grocery packaging is awesome.

Run when the rhythms right

Though the remix is more study-friendly.

on cooking

You should follow The Food Lab, it's rigorous cooking. It's also a weekly column in Serious Eats, and they're currently running Vegan Month right now. Unsurprisingly it was started by Kenji, who also runs The Food Lab.

(psst Serious Eats, btw my favourite food website, also have a couple good articles on tea. see 1, 2, 3 in that order)

This fried....vegetables with spaghetti is inspired by a couple of techniques and recipes that Kenji developed for Vegan Month.

First it's fried vegetables with noodles because the ratios are reversed (inspo #1) from traditional fried noodles. This has more vegetables than noodles, in fact the cabbage in there alone is double the noodles.

The other vegetables accompanying the cabbage are onions, sugar peas, and shiitake mushrooms. The onions are somewhat caramelized since I don't have the patience, or more importantly time, on a day when class ends at 6 and the hardest midterm of the semester is just 2 days away to actually caramelize onion. The trick is to cut the onion first, and leave it cooking in the pan while you do the rest of your prep.

There's also some lentils (inspo #2) in there for a textual contrast and protein boost. It plays the role of my yummy minced meat (aka ground pork with preserved mustard leaf). 

Other time saving tricks:

• Cooking order matters. Lentils take ~20 mins to cook, so that was the first step. Since both boiling lentils and browning onions are hands off tasks that also require the most time, start them before the prep of the rest of the ingredients.
• Reuse. This is rather specific to this dish, but vegetable scraps (inner onion skin, shiitake mushroom stalks) went into the lentil's cooking liquid to add more flavour and the cooking liquid is then used to boil the spaghetti, and finally used as part of the sauce for the final dish. 
• Char vegetables (inspo #3), since it frees you to chop additional vegetables which is easily the most time consuming task. Plus charred vegetables taste better.

Additional thoughts on the dish:

• Layering flavour is the key. It currently has nice base and mid notes (sweet onion, mushroom) but would greatly benefit from some higher notes. Maybe add some herbs next time, like green onions or some pickled radishes.
• This is very much improved by having an egg on top. The omlette shape of the egg is just the result of my bad flipping skills, but I do like how folding the egg left the inside creamy, which contrasts nicely with the charred outside. Will start folding my fried eggs from now on. 
• On the topic of including eggs, I don't see myself ever going vegan. I love my yogurt and eggs too much. Surprisingly I don't miss meat much when I don't have them for prolonged periods. On the other hand, no vegetables for a couple of meals is painful. But contrary to my belief, cooking vegetarian dishes isn't less time consuming since there's just so darn many vegetables to chop. It does make washing dishes easier. 

Cooking in general, follows the 3rd rule of engineering that is "to find the answer you must know the answer". To cook something that taste good, you must be able to conceive the flavour profile beforehand.

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I really shouldn't be writing a long blog post when concrete midterm is on Friday.

snow

When can it stop looking like this?

year of the ram

Belated Chinese New Year celebration with family by making dumplings. I'm in charge of rolling out the skins.

Freshly made with lots of love (or rather 3 hours of labour for ~100 dumplings) does taste a heck lot better.

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Previous family dinner during winterlicious:

Mostly alright  but I do like confit and gnocchi. I am pretty over the -licious events.

second look at NYC

In summary:

• I drank more tea than I planned
• Ate much less than I expected
• Museums are great
• It's all in your attitude

Let's break these down.

Tea
1. Harney & Sons: paris blend
$6 for a pot of tea is a little pricy, but there was free wifi and I was really cold from walking around lower Manhattan. The shop is pretty nice, but I prefer the more niche places. Apparently they have good scones, but I was saving my stomach.

2. T Shop: charcoal roasted cui feng and aged heavy roasted oolong
This shop is much more of my style, bonus points that the store owner loves MUJI as well. It's $10 per tasting, but I'm fairly certain I was offered more than the usual amount of steepings as I came in when some old customers were around. We just ended up chatting for a long time, and hence drinking many infusions.

3. HK style milk tea at Tai Pan bakery
I thought it'd be like Marathon's, but woah they're worlds apart. This was gross, aka super weak tea via a Lipton tea bag. Their egg tart was great though, very creamy filling with a flakey crust:

4. Kajitsu / Ippodo: hot yuzu tea, matcha, iribancha,and hosen sencha (but I bought kumpu sencha instead since it came in a smaller package)

Aside: woah I paid $17 for my 50g bag, whereas it's $8.40 online? What is this...

But the sencha taste amazing. A hint of grass, and a good balance of sweet and bitter (leaning towards sweet). So much more flavour than Chinese green teas, though I do love my 竹叶青. Also managed to get around 5 infusions out of one brew. I'm definitely looking forward to trying more of their offerings, and hopefully attend a workshop the next time I visit. I regret not chatting more with the shop keeper, but I was feeling embarrassed to stay longer as I took the entire 2 hours that Kajitsu was open for lunch to finish my meal. The shop keeper was super nice too, he asked about my preferences and choose a hosen sencha out of their line up to brew for me to try.

5. Fang's Gourmet Tea: charcoal roasted lishan oolong and 2009 liubao
This place was recommened to me by T Shop's owner, and I'm glad I missioned up to Flushing to visit. First tasting is another charcoal roasted lishan oolong. This one alternated between smelling fruity and tasting vegetal, and vice versa. It also had a lingering after taste.

The second tasting is my first time trying a 六堡 (liu bao), love it! This one is processed differently, with no withering under the sun. It brewed into a deep gold liquor, with not much smell. The shop keeper first brewed it, and then boiled it for later infusions. Tasted earthy / mossy at the beginning of both the brew and boil, and was then very sweet, like dates. I was so tempted to buy this.
This was also an unusual tasting, which is normally either $5 or 10 per 5 steepings. But since I came on Chinese New Years, and there weren't other customers (aside from another old customer that we leisurely chatted with), I was able to enjoy 10+ steepings of the liu bao. The shop keeper even gave me candy :D


Eats
This has been pretty extensively covered, but here's what didn't make an appearance yet:

 Taro pun and pastry from Fay Da Bakery.

 Cheesecake from Lady M

Was not happy that they sold out of their signature crepe cakes, but really it's my fault that I went near closing time. Their cakes are pricy at $7-8 a) slice, but they are really good. This one is very decadent without being too rich.

and the best dish I've had all trip, in terms of taste along (Kajitsu is the best in terms of overall dining experience):

Xi'An Famous food: noodles and silken tofu

You just have to try it for yourself.
I went to their original location, which is in a super sketch, basement food court. The crowded hole in wall places are guaranteed to have good food haha. This experience kind of reminded me of eating at the food court in beijings 王府井, but really just the general atmosphere. Alex and I didn't have much of an appetite then, couldn't even finish one plate of lotus fried rice together. I surprised myself by finishing the noodles and most of the tofu, a feat considering I've been drinking tea non stop at Fang's for 2 hours beforehand.

Another random memory:
Riding on the 7 train to flushing reminds me of sitting on the train heading into London from Heathrow. It's really a superficial similarity, both trains are above ground, the stations look about the same. Too bad the 7 train's announcements aren't in a British accent :(

And related to the 7 train, but a couple days earlier:
Had a TTC moment on the MTA, four 7 trains passed in the other direction before the one I needed came.


Museums
They're warm, has free wifi, and takes more than the whole day to explore.

Starbucks are the next best thing. They are godsent for free wifi and a place to warm up. It's time to be obnoxious and just sit for a long while.


Attitude
part 1
What surprised me are my friends' general negative view on traveling alone. Out of everyone I've talked to, only 2 people had excitement as their initial reaction. Far more common was "why are you going by yourself?!" Perhaps it's because they are concerned about my safety? I should've been unapologetic in my answer. Traveling with people is great, it certainly makes it easier to eat out (well it may complicate the decision of where, but you can split food!) but traveling alone is great too, in different ways.

part 2
You’d think travelling alone gives you a lot of time to think. To think about grand questions like “why am I in New York?”. Well that question did occasionally pop into my mind, often as I am waiting for the subway to arrive in the unheated stations, but I did not have the efforts to pursue an answer*. Because when you are travelling alone, there are far more urgent questions that require answering, such as
-Am I going in the right direction?
-Am I doing good for time?
-Is my hand securely placed over my bag?
-My phone’s still in my pockets right?

So no, contrary to my expectations, I did not think much about profound matters.

*The best I’ve got is that if I didn’t go on this trip, I’d be in Toronto thinking “why am I not elsewhere?"

part 3
The magic of traveling is all about the mindset that it brings. You are more eager to explore your surroundings, and you are appropriately rewarded. When else will you subway for one and half hour for the sake of one tea shop? Or walk for a whole day when it's -20 with windchill out? That's my lesson learned from this trip, and I hope that I can summon this mindset while in Toronto.